I have long
been considering writing this article, but have been daunted by the
realization that the idea would need, indeed deserves, a long,
comprehensive discussion. It could easily become a whole book. So
let this short text serve only as an exceedingly superficial
introduction to an idea which I intend to expand at a later date.
My notion is
rather straightforward, yet involves some fairly arcane vocabulary
to describe it. Bear with me. I am suggesting that challenging and
changing dominant important ideas, epistemological paradigm shifts
as Thomas Kuhn calls them, are only truly accomplished by subsuming
them within a perceived larger idea — not by countering them with
their diametrical opposite. These “larger ideas” both encompass the
ideas they are critiquing as truth, yet also contradict them by
envisioning them only as a detail of this new larger whole. A
profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events thus
occurs when we are able to metaphorically step back and see them
framed in a surprising new frame of reference. This, I suggest, is
best modelled in art, yet is also the truth for all paradigms, be
they philosophical, religious, scientific or artistic
This involves
the trope of metalepsis, also called transumption in an expanded
form. As I have written about previously on this site, I am
particularly inspired by Harold Bloom’s theory of misprision, which
stresses the prominence of allusion and the trope of metalepsis.
Metalepsis, also called transumption, is that figure of
speech which plays a trope on another previous trope, often in an
anachronistic or “frame-breaking” fashion. This trope-of-tropes
becomes the tool for an allusive yet affirmative struggle of
reversals, performed with purposeful discontinuity on a stage of
one's own knowledge, with psychological and spiritual desire. The
precursor’s, and history’s, presence is nether simply negated,
denied in feigned or sought out ignorance, nor granted a forfeit win
through worship. It is sucked into a new and more encompassing
revelation, it is subsumed.
I will give
only a handful of examples now, with the promise to delve into this
idea of mine more deeply at a later date.
First the Ontology of Art
We are perhaps
all aware of the dominance of the Dickie/Danto institutional theory
of the definition of art nowadays. To sum it up superficially for
those unfamiliar with it, it is the proposal that an object becomes
art by being presented within the context of the institution known
as “art” or “the artworld.” This I myself find it to be the truth,
having been proven in Duchamp’s oeuvre and widened in Warhol’s
Brillo Boxes and elsewhere. (In fact, as an aside, I would hope
that this ends the generally primitive arguments about the
definition of art and allows us to get to the much more important
yet thornier issues of quality, value and meaning. But that is an
issue for another discussion.)
Yet the institutional theory feels
somewhat limited. This can be seen in the exceedingly superficial
and trendy version of this theory generally embraced in the artworld,
especially in Neo-Conceptual Art. How could this theory, which seems
to be an important kernel of truth, be overcome? By widening it.
Subsuming it into a broader understanding through purposefully
re-understanding it, misprision.
In his essay “Refining Art Historically,” Jerrold Levinson has
proposed a logical, historical widening of the Dickie/Danto
institutional theory into an interpretive one emphasizing conscious
tradition. He sums his theory up in one sentence. “In short, it is
[the view] that an artwork is a thing (item, object, entity) that
has been seriously intended for regard-as-a-work-of-art, i.e.,
regard in any way preexisting artworks are or were correctly
regarded.”1
This is a promising re-reading of the institutional theory,
subsuming it into a wider and yet more personally delineated field.
(I would add that part of the definition of art is to explore this
“regard” through tropes, that art seeks to defy previous definitions
and redefine itself. Art has a metaphoric, agonistic ontology, which
is procedural and functional: things made to be regarded and
interpreted as art-as-before and not as-art-as-before.)
This
variation is brilliant. It advances a theory which can appear to
limit art to dry decisions made by momentary art power mongers to
include the practice of making art in studios, in society and in the
thoughts of creators and their public. The key metaphor of what the
“describing/deciding judicial body” is, is broadened in a healthy
fashion.
Second Religion
Christianity
grew out of Judaism, began as a sect of it. Their beliefs are in
many ways highly similar: One God who is almighty, eternal,
righteous, just, loving, forgiving, merciful and so on. They share
the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) as the authoritative Word
of God, although Christianity includes the New Testament as well.
And much more. The phrase Word of God, though was a great barrier
for the early Christians. The all-important difference between
Christianity and Judaism is the Person of Jesus Christ. Christianity
teaches that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the Old Testament
prophecies of a coming Messiah or Savior. Judaism often recognizes
Jesus as a good teacher, and perhaps even a prophet of God. Judaism
does not believe that Jesus was the Messiah,
but even more importantly, it sees the written Word, the Scriptures,
as the most important of all authority. The religion’s core and chief
trope. Christians see this in the man Yeshua ben
Yosef. Yet still felt that the Word was still paramount. We see a
problem. How was this overcome? By transformative metalepsis. Jesus
was declared the Word embodied as a human. The incarnate word. “And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”2
He is envisioned as a transcendent Logos, a widened
conception of the Word. When simply described this appears a bit
farfetched, in the concrete sense — they stretched far to get this
idea. The ultimate misprision. Yet it was a masterful subsumption
based in Biblical hermeneutics and scholarship, which resolved an
important issue for believers.
This has often
been the case when religions have been peaceful transformed, rather
than abandoned or attacked. As another example, several “esoteric”
groupings like Theosophy and particularly the Bahá’í faith attempt
to emphasize the spiritual unity of all humanity by likewise
subsuming the conceptions of Prophet and Messiah in Judaism, Messiah
and Son of God in Christianity, (Last) Prophet in Islam, Avatar in
Hinduism and more under the notion of “divine messengers.” It would
allow each religion to retain its vocabulary (which is very divisive
now), yet see a new unity. It does not appear to be working, but I
believe such metaleptical ideas are indeed the best, perhaps only,
path to success in a peaceful fashion.
Thirdly Science
As Thomas
Kuhn, discussing science, points out, these shifts are often NOT
peaceful, however. Indeed, create short periods of great discord and
battle. Kuhn furthermore saw the shifts as revolutions radically
overturning earlier beliefs. While this seems so on the surface, I
believe if one delves deeper, it can be seen that in truth most were
only revelations because those “in power” violently resisted them.
The ideas themselves can be seen to usually have been instances of
comprehensive subsumption and metalepsis.
As an example, these changes tend to be overly dramatic in sciences
that appear to be established. One of these was physics shortly
before Einstein. Physics seemed to be a simply assembling the
details of a largely conceptually cast-concrete system. Lord Kelvin
legendarily lectured in 1900 that “There is nothing new to be
discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise
measurement.”3
1905, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity,
which disputed the rules of so-called Newtonian mechanics. It did
indeed radically change understanding, but primarily by showing that
Newtonian physics was correct (and still now useful) only in smaller
limited arenas such as on the Earth but ignoring anything larger.
Newtonian physics became a subset of Einsteinian relativity physics.
Subsumption. Metalepsis. Gravity exists, but only as a local
description of curved space-time.
Closing
In art, we
need to do that right now. One example lies in composition. The
tackling of the practical and philosophical problems of composition
in art (especially painting) has been an impatient, important,
agonistic, metaleptical struggle. Not in order to simply form novel
conventions, but to move on to distinctive organizational
structures, new tropes useful for the embodiment of arisen desires.
Now we need one beyond the affected maniere a la
Duchamp of Postmodernism so far; one for our new critical anti-
purism.
To sum up: you
want to change a constricting, seemingly somehow-incorrect
conception in any field of human thought? Then attack it not by
simple inversion, but by creatively seeking a vision that
encompasses in while making it more progressive, accurate to
experience, or useful. This is done through creative purposeful
“misreading,” misprision, of the earlier metaphor. Find a new
metaphor that metaleptically contains yet widens the one you are
struggling with. It is my assertion that this is what has most often
been true of important re-imaginings of the past.
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