The Topology of the Kantian Sublime
Lyotard, Heidegger, Rancière, Deleuze and Nancy
WILLIAM J. URBAN
Deleuze, Nancy and the Sublime Object
Our two remaining thinkers, Deleuze and Nancy, have gone further than Lyotard and Rancière in attempting to delimit the sublime object in art. We offer here a brief demonstration that this is the case, but we note upfront how their texts have an additional degree of complexity as it builds on the analysis above. If Rancière’s Kantian schema of the distribution of the sensible is difficult to discern, embedded as it is in a demanding text supported by the obscure mathematical logic of the sublime, then to further purport that another philosopher has theorized the ‘collapse’ of that schema into a point which it itself discloses is a difficulty of far greater magnitude. But there is at least one sense in which engaging with the texts of Deleuze and Nancy is easier than with those of Lyotard, Rancière, Heidegger or Kant: the former both have a sustained and focused analyses of particular artworks. Thus, we have visual objects to keep in mind as we follow along with their theoretical commentary on them and in doing so, we cannot but see how these paintings function as more than mere exemplifications of their theoretical discourse; rather, these objects of analysis are instantiations of their theoretical projects so that it is no exaggeration to claim that a particular artwork is the theoretical commentary ‘on’ it. In a word, the gap between the two is precisely sustained by the sublime object. This is perhaps Deleuze and Nancy’s secret in having been more successful in specifying the elusive sublime object in the aesthetic field, for indeed it would be hard to overlook the ‘stain’ in one’s field of vision which necessarily accompanies any prolonged viewing of a painting. If such a gaze emanating from the artwork has to do with the sublime object, an intensive analysis of a particular painting would not only expose and localize this object, but would reveal how it is identical with one’s search for it. We will proceed to sketch out how both Deleuze and Nancy theorize the sublime object as they discern it in paintings, particularly with respect to Francis Bacon in the case of Deleuze13 and with respect to Pontormo’s Visitation for Nancy. Fortunately, having already laid much of the conceptual groundwork with our discussion of Kant, Lyotard, Heidegger and Rancière, we can be relatively brief in identifying the proper elements involved in their articulation of the sublime object in paintings.
We know that according to Rancière, what may come to pass is the occasional dissociation or ‘rupture in the relationship between sense and sense’ which arises due to ‘a conflict between sense and sense’ and which we saw corresponds to the inherent imbalance in the Kantian faculty of imagination. (Rancière 2010: 143, 139) Rancière proceeds to argue that Deleuze reprises Kant’s thinking by theorizing that through this process, some ‘suprasensible element [is] encountered in the experience of the sublime... the pure sensible, the inhuman power of life.’ (ibid 181) Such an element is perfectly unacceptable to Rancière. If Rancière’s use of the term ‘inhuman’ brings to mind Lyotard, this is not merely coincidental as Rancière at once sets out to compare them to each other with respect to the Thing and reluctantly concludes that although the consequences of Lyotard’s aesthetics ‘are assuredly less appealing... [I fear] however, that they are more logical.’ (ibid 182) Without getting into the nuance of the comparison, Rancière would rather opt for Lyotard’s externally reflected relationship to the Thing than for Deleuze’s conceptualization of a ‘pure sensible’ element that indexes a transcendence from immanence. We offer that Rancière’s unease with this Deleuzian object is because it paradoxically at once condenses the Rancièrian schema of the distribution of the sensible to a singular point (in other words, it is an elusive object which necessarily ‘drops out’ of self-relating sense) and simultaneously transcends and unifies sense itself into a new state.14 Such a scenario would spell ruin for Rancière‘s eternal project of shunning all such exceptional points and bring his project to its disastrous and hitherto disavowed truth. No wonder he opts for the comparatively safer Lyotardian externalized relation to the Thing rather than with a potentially fatal confrontation with the Thing. Thus Rancière is certainly correct to suspect that Deleuze’s inhuman is not the same as Lyotard’s inhuman, though for the wrong reasons. The Deleuzian Thing perceived by Rancière is only the sublime object viewed from a certain (Lyotardian or Rancièrian) perspective. In Deleuze’s Francis Bacon, where do we find such an object?
We can approach this question by focusing on a key recurring theme announced in the opening pages and which underscore the entire work: the need to break the figural or Figure from mere figuration or narration. Deleuze approvingly points out how Bacon’s paintings offer us ‘two possible ways of escaping the figurative: toward pure form, through abstraction; or toward the purely figural, through extraction or isolation,’ the latter of which is ‘the simplest means, necessary though not sufficient, to escape illustration, to liberate the Figure.’ (Deleuze 2–3) In even stronger language, he tells us that ‘Bacon’s path’ is one in which ‘[f]iguration and narration are only effects, but for that reason they are all the more intrusive in painting. They are what must be eliminated.’ (ibid 136) Deleuze’s interest with suspending these intrusive elements is linked with a suspension point concerning the subject. He tells us that the ‘painter must enter into the canvas’ although paradoxically one in which ‘he is already there... [and must] get out of,’ all in order to ‘extract the improbable Figure from the set of figurative probabilities.’ (ibid 96, 95) Certainly a contradictory statement on the face of it, though it is just such an ‘irrational logic, or this logic of sensation, that constitutes painting’ that articulates just how ‘the act of painting is always shifting... constantly oscillating between a beforehand and an afterward: the hysteria of painting’ and in this shifting ‘the Figure will emerge into view.’ (ibid 83, 98) This experience is notably expressed in terms of (free) choice versus (mechanical) probabilities such that there involves an unaccountable ‘leap’ between two figurations from which emerges the ‘place of the Figure’ due to the ‘pictorial act’. (ibid 97) The artist as active subject is the central figure here and we can express how he is able to suspend the self-enclosing narrative field of painting in Kantian terms.
The artist accomplishes his suspension act with respect to the ‘diagram’ and it is here that Deleuze comes closest to specifying an equivalent to the Kantian schema, for it is variously described as a grid or graph or ‘the operative set of asignifying and nonrepresentative lines or zones’ which suggests or introduces ‘possibilities of fact’ and is ‘destined to give us the Figure.’ (ibid 100–1) Just as Kant’s schema is the ‘impossible’ mediating term between the chaotic faculty of sensibility and the pacifying and unifying conceptual functioning of the faculty of understanding, the diagram is a bit of two extremes but neither wholly one nor the other: ‘The diagram is indeed a chaos, a catastrophe, but it is also a germ of order or rhythm. It is a violent chaos in relation to the figurative givens, but it is a germ of rhythm in relation to the new order of the painting.’ (ibid 102) What Deleuze undeniably adds to our foregoing discussion of the Kantian schema is a stronger emphasis on the element of violence, on how there is a ‘collapse of visual coordinates’ whenever we experience this ‘chaos-germ, this ‘abyss,’ this ‘leap over itself,’ as ‘painting... necessarily, “hysterically,” integrates its own catastrophe, and consequently is constituted as a flight in advance.’ (ibid 102–3) It should be clear that with this notion of an abyss, we are dealing with the excessive dimension of subjectivity whose ‘presence’ is most felt in the sublime, whether the sublime object is indexed to the experience of devastating, chaotic nature or when viewing a Bacon painting. What is extremely interesting in light of our previous discussion is Deleuze’s response to this added dimension to Kant’s own formal understanding of the schema. He theorizes three paths to deal with this abyss and the first two should strike us as quite familiar: the first reminds us of Lyotard’s own path, as it attempts to reduce the abyss to a minimum, transforming the abstract form into a visual transformation and it is no surprise that Deleuze here makes an analogy to Kant’s own ‘ascetic’ morality; the second path of expressionism is at the opposite extreme of abstraction and likewise should bring to mind Rancière’s strategy, as the ‘abyss is deployed to the maximum... [so that] the diagram merges with the totality of the painting; the entire painting is diagrammatic.’ (ibid 104) Accordingly, this second path involves the ‘abandonment of any visual sovereignty’ and such a lack of exceptional points predictably leads to ‘the unity of the catastrophe and the diagram’ such that there is ‘no longer an inner vision that gives us the infinite, but a manual power that is spread out “all over” from one edge of the painting to the other.’ (ibid 106) In a word, we have the two options of Lyotardian abstraction and Rancièrian dispersion.
Both these paths are to be abandoned, or perhaps rather thought together for Bacon’s own (third) path, which is precisely the path in which we find an approximation to the logic of the sublime object. Indeed, because the diagram must not remain a purely external abstraction, nor must not be allowed to eat away at the entire painting, the only option left would be to specify a paradoxical ‘object’ that allows for the constitution of the Figure to ‘produce the new resemblance inside the visual whole, where the diagram must operate and be realized.’ (ibid 121) This realization of the schematic diagram is a ‘stopping point in the painting... [though this is] not to say that it completes or constitutes the painting; indeed, on the contrary. It acts as a relay... [so] that something must emerge from the diagram.’ (ibid 138) Thus, the diagram at the same time dismantles the optical world and re-injects something into the visual whole. And what is this something? ‘Roughly speaking, the law of the diagram... is this: one starts with the figurative form, a diagram intervenes and scrambles it, and a form of a completely different nature emerges from the diagram, which is called the Figure.’ (ibid 156) We would be hard pressed to find a more concise ‘political’ lesson from Francis Bacon on how to pass from one form to another, which underscores how true change is not gradual, nor that which results from an effort to introduce complete chaos, but one that ‘invokes two contradictory ideas at the same time: a gradual series and a sudden whole.’ (ibid 195n5) What is crucial to take out of Deleuze is how we can experience a stain of sorts in the visual field of a painting, as the diagram acts by ‘imposing a zone of objective indiscernibility or indeterminabililty between two forms, one of which was no longer, and the other, not yet: it destroys the figuration of the first and neutralizes that of the second. And between the two, it imposes the Figure, through its original relations.’ (ibid 157–8) In a word, the Figure delimits the sublime object, embodying the atemporal minimal gap between two forms. It is precisely this logic that allows us to overcome a fascination or preoccupation with the Thing, for the ‘Figures seem to be monsters only from the viewpoint of a lingering figuration, but they cease to be so as soon as they are considered “figurally.”’ (ibid 153) The Thing is revealed here to be the result of a perspectival illusion; its truth is that it is a phantasm that fills out the empty shell of the sublime object.15 Hence, the ‘pure logic’ of painting as a lesson for politics: ‘The essential point about the diagram is that it is made in order for something to emerge from it, and if nothing emerges from it, it fails. And what emerges from the diagram, the Figure, emerges both gradually and all at once... where the whole is given all at once, while the series is at the same time constructed gradually.’ (ibid 159) As with the aesthetic universe, so with the political: neither is a self-enclosed field for ‘[w]e thus see how everything can be done inside the same form’ whereby one can introduce ‘new distances and new relations’ between existing relations in the same form. (ibid 158) This is possible because of the ex-sistence of a short-circuiting point, the sublime object of the Figure, that necessarily holds open our frame of the given whole of the field and prevents it from collapsing onto our piecemeal experience of the ‘reality’ of that field. (ibid 158) A formulation of such a paradoxical point can be found in Nancy’s work as well.
We have already indicated that Nancy undertakes a detailed commentary of Kant’s schema in The Ground of the Image in order to critique Heidegger’s own reading of it, but his best formulations of the logic of the sublime are found peppered throughout the remainder of the book. We will extract out some of these formulations with his discussion of Kant in mind and then consider how this informs his reading of the Visitation. Now, one feature of Nancy’s work that immediately strikes the eye is the reoccurring theme of the image qua monstrous (or alternatively as monstrative, monstrant and many other variations of the term) that is implicitly linked with the failure of the imagination to schematize the Kantian thing-in-itself. For instance, in the depths of photography ‘there stalks – like a Minotaur – the monster... [so that the] encounter is always monstrous, or monstrating, ostensive and threatening, invasive and evasive in the same moment, straying in its capture, released in being grasped. This is not a dialectic, or else it is the point – the seed or grain – of madness that vibrates at the heart of every dialectic.’ (Nancy 107) So when he tells us that ‘[t]he image is of the order of the monster,’ it is not a banal observation of the Thing’s manifestation at the level of the image; rather, there is an underlying logic to consider and again we must keep in mind how this madness references the excess of subjectivity. (ibid 21–2) As with Deleuze, Nancy indicates the logic of how these monsters arise when he discusses the intimate link between the image and violence (of the Kantian imagination). The manifestation of the Thing again seems to be linked to a singular point within the image, for ‘an image is detached from itself while also reframing itself as an image’ and this is expressly linked with subjectivity as ‘[t]here is no image without my too being in its image, but also without passing into it, as long as I look at it, that is, as long as I show it consideration, maintain my regard for it.’ (ibid 7) He further tells us that ‘[i]n this double operation, the ground disappears... [and thus] passes entirely into the image,’ becoming a force of the ‘impalpable non-place’ and the ‘insensible (intelligible) sense that is sensed as such.’ Are we not compelled to read Nancy’s conception of ground as the Kantian schema? Is he not further articulating the paradoxical collapse of the schema into a point that it itself discloses? If so, this would be precisely how ‘[t]he image suspends the course of the world and of meaning:’ it can only be due to that which ‘[i]n the image... is without an “inside”... a sense that is nonsignifying but not insignificant, a sense that is as certain as its force (its form).’ (ibid 10–1) Nancy in effect argues how our experience of art reveals an image within which must ex-sist a bit of nonsense but which simultaneously also functions as the enigmatic ‘unity buried under the ambivalence of violence.’ By formulating in this manner, do we not thereby specify the ex-sistence of a sublime object in artworks? Indeed, in Nancy’s own words art ‘is not semblance, but, on the contrary... art touches the real.’ (ibid 25) Consistent with the Lacanian notion of the objet a as real, Nancy writes that the true revelation of art is one that does not take place, but rather remains imminent ‘[o]r rather it is the revelation of this: that there is nothing to reveal... not even an abyss, and that the groundless is not the chasm of a conflagration, but imminence infinitely suspended over itself.’ (ibid 26)
By thus revealing the secret of the Thing as a mere phantasm of an ambiguous object which condenses the operative logic of the ground of the image, Nancy has no need to speak of monstrosity with respect to Pontormo’s Visitation. Rather, he uses another closely related term previously introduced concerning how the mark made by violence becomes (non-quantitatively) excessive due to the enjoyment [jouissance] embodied in that mark. (ibid 20) Elsewhere, this is formulated with respect to the ‘thing as image’ which reveals how such ‘a force of the same – the same differing in itself from itself’ – gives rise to ‘the enjoyment [jouissance] we take in it.’ (ibid 9) Evidently for Nancy as well there is ambivalence surrounding jouissance in the precise Lacanian sense we noted above with respect to the experience of the sublime. But further, if the unmasked Thing is void, jouissance must index a paradoxical singular point. But does this point lie with the object, the subject, both or neither so as to be radically decentered with respect to each? This ambivalence carries over to Nancy’s depiction of the Visitation as alternatively a painting which ‘finds itself enjoying [jouir] itself’ and at the same time jouissance indicates a subjective experience of the painting which proffers a ‘veil beneath which no presence is hidden and no god is waiting except the place itself, here, and the singular touch of our own exposure.’ (ibid 118, 123) We submit that we can understand these statements only by conceiving them together and this is instanced in Nancy’s actual procedure in analyzing the painting. He indicates that the key to the painting is how its gazes seemingly ensnarl the subject into its web, so that ‘[t]he fixity of the servants’ gazes... seek our own and await it... [so that] what the painting is seeking is the mutual visitation of a spectator and a painting, or a subject of painting.’ (ibid 112) This subject is further linked directly to an element within the painting: ‘the presence hidden in the womb.’ There is an overlap of those gazes emanating from the painting with those of the viewer and this overlap condenses into an element within the painting itself. Just like in dream analysis, such elements suspend signification such that if extracted, the entire (dream) work is unwoven; these elements disclose how meaning as such is dependent on the work’s nonsignifying elements. A page later Nancy’s own subjective gaze settles on two small indistinct figures and we could say that the mutual search for a subject again falls on an element in the painting which is equally as indiscernible as the Christ-child. This gesture is repeated many times where the only variation is with the settled-upon element (triangle areas, tufts of hair, folds of clothing, patches of light...). In each case and in each sublime object, we could say that the subjective framework used in analyzing the Visitation is itself re-framed or re-embodied. Such objects ground the schema by embodying its minimal gap with the artwork in question. In truth, it is only through such objects that the artwork could be said to have found a proper subject.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
