Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 2 Number 3, December 2001
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Luhmann,
Niklas, Art as a Social System, Stanford California, Stanford University Press,
2000, 422 pages, ISBN 0-8047-3907-2.
Reviewed by
This
is not a book for the faint-hearted, or for anyone with no understanding of the
technical vocabulary of social theory. The writing (in translation) has the
density of an ancient bramble hedge and is, at times, as difficult to enter. I
found my reading faltering here and there – partly due to the weight of
technical terms and also due to the repetitious and circular quality of the
writing. I assume accessibility to a lay reader is not high on the author’s
list of priorities. However despite the ponderous prose, the possible weaknesses
in translation and the extensive use of jargon, there are many interesting ideas
and arguments to be gleaned from the heavily textured text.
It
is impossible to reduce a book of this kind to a concise overview – there are
almost 90 pages of endnotes! Luhmann negotiates so many ideas that one can only
deal with a few in a review of this kind. Scanning through the first chapter we
find the following under discussion: the distinction between perception and
communication; perception framing all communication; art rendering visible what
is invisible without it (echoes of Klee and Kandinsky); and the way in which
“art escapes the strict application of the yes/no code”.
Though
Luhmann states early on that he aims to put forward a theoretical analysis that
moves beyond “a tradition that arranged psychological faculties
hierarchically, relegating ‘sensuousness’ – that is, perception – to a
lower position in comparison to higher, reflective functions of reason and
understanding”, one can’t help thinking that he often perpetuates the very
tradition he seeks to transcend.
Luhmann
argues that art considered as a social system is self-programming and he
examines in considerable detail the “self-describing” operations of this
system. His constructivist analysis, set against essentialist explications of
art, leads to a questioning of culture as a “given” and proposes that
culture is itself a self-describing system with an internal identity maintained
and developed by its participants. Luhmann’s analysis of the “distinctions
for describing art” – the binary vocabulary of the system – demonstrates
how the self-describing process erects boundaries within boundaries, setting up
a “dynamic from within”.
Luhmann
also has some interesting and perceptive ideas about the development of
“taste”, the binary distinctions of good/bad taste, and the whole question
as to how the capacity for qualitative judgements arises out of
“first-order” observations. He argues that the “naked eye does not
recognise artistic quality”. This suggests a rather outmoded and simplistic
view of perception and cognition as relatively discrete processes. Gibson and
others have shown how the perceptual and cognitive processes are intertwined and
interdependent - echoing Merleau-Ponty’s view that perceiving and interpreting
(making meaning) are indivisibly linked.
Statements
like, “staring at the work of art for a prolonged period of time is of no
help” in acquiring taste, have an immediate appeal but only confirm the
suspicion that Luhmann has an over-simplified view of the act of seeing. Indeed
he appears to denigrate perceptual processes – note the rather derogatory tone
creeping into the use of the term “staring”. There is a constant reiteration
of the mind/body, conceptual/perceptual divide – expressed in terms of these
binary opposites, and always favouring the conceptual/linguistic axis.
Luhmann
surveys the shifting power relations involved in the development of ideas of
taste, professional art criticism and the reaction against connoisseurship,
providing a useful introduction to an examination of other issues including
perspective, beauty and criteria of judgement. A more detailed account of the
nature and implications of second-order observations affirms the sophistication
of a second-order observer, who “harbours suspicion about [the]
‘philosophical’ project of a first-order observer [who] could still cherish
the hope of penetrating beneath the surface and grasping a Being beyond
appearance”. Indeed the second-order observer “is not particularly fond of
wisdom and know-how, nor does he love knowledge. Rather he wants to understand
how knowledge is produced and by whom, and how long the illusion might last…
To him, Being is an observational schema that produces ‘ontology’, and
nature is nothing more than a concept that promises a comfortable end and blocks
further questioning”.
This
apparent privileging of second-order over first-order observations is no
surprise given the social-constructivist discourse Luhmann employs and enacts.
In a brief reference to the deconstruction theories of Derrida and de Man he
acknowledges what is true of his own position and selected “distinctions”
– that any distinction “presupposes itself as its own blind spot”.
Deconstruction also provides a “crucial insight” in its critique of the
assumed distinction between “a material object and its description” and a
questioning of the “materiality of objects” – a “something” beyond the
description. This phenomenalism is now a standard characteristic of the
constructivist approach. The disbelief in “materiality” and the
corresponding belief in the enhanced substantiality of the linguistic/conceptual
domain, suggests Luhmann would like to transcend, or at least ignore, the
biological, corporeal, mass and mess of life - which no longer has status or
even actuality.
Luhmann
makes no bones about the fact that he has no intention of “offering a helpful
theory of art” but rather a “theoretical endeavour… to clarify the context
and contingency of art from a sociotheoretical perspective”. And one does get
the feeling that the cluttered object-strewn territory of art is something to be
flown over rather to be negotiated at ground level.
Luhmann’s
analysis sheds a perceptive, yet curiously remote, light upon the discourses
framing art, but has little to say about the corpus of objects, events and
behaviours self-described as art. This is like someone entering a dark attic
with a flickering candle who keeps stumbling over “something”, only to look
closer at the candle flame - analysing the shifting vocabulary of photo-retinal
experience - yet never bending down to touch or pick up the objects that impede
his free passage through the space. By concentrating on the discourse, the
linguistic frame, enveloping the artefact, Luhmann is in danger of not noticing
the objects that inhabit the space and over which competing discourses stumble.
In
a curious way Luhmann seems to perpetuate the longstanding western/christian
tendency to privilege rationality over sensuality, mind over matter, soul over
body. The corporeal lumpiness of actual existence is marginalised and devalued.
The linguistic, conceptualising domain is prioritised over all else. This is a
kind of idealism – a rather conservative, dualistic mode of thinking that
belies its own contemporaneity and apparent radicalism.
Overall
this is a fascinating, stimulating and thought-provoking book – not always in
ways that may have been intended by the author. Time and again Luhmann returns
to the theme of control, categorisation and “what counts as art”, as if he
regrets the disappearance of the clear distinctions between art and non-art that
may once have existed, and hankers after more certainty in distinguishing
between “success and failure” in art. Implicit in these concerns is a
lingering belief that a unified “grand narrative“ of art would be preferable
to the multi-perspectival, pluralist and relativist situation in which we
currently find ourselves.
Luhmann’s
final paragraph includes the sentence: “If anything is possible, [in art] then
the criteria for selecting what is admissible must be tightened”. Deciding
whether you agree with him, or whether you prefer the more inclusive and fluid
indeterminacy of contemporary cultures, may be indicative of how you will
respond to Luhmann’s analysis of art as a social system and his interrogation
of the discourse(s) that frame and validate the bewildering diversity of art
practices, products and audiences.
John
Danvers. Exeter School of Arts & Design, University of Plymouth, UK.