Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 4 Number 1, April 2003
_______________________________________________________________
Shusterman,
Richard, Surface & Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture, New York,
Cornell University Press, 2002. 273 pages, ISBN 0-8014-8683-1, Paperback -price
unknown.
Reviewed by
From
the opening pages it is clear that this is a wide-ranging, yet closely argued
book, contributing stimulating ideas and analyses of the many debates and issues
with which it engages. Shusterman’s aim is very ambitious: to bring into
productive interaction two tendencies in aesthetics that are usually seen as
divergent, or even mutually exclusive. These are: on the one hand, “the drive
toward depth analysis and emphasis on the nonperceptual in art”; and on the
other, “aesthetic experience, surface, and spontaneous pleasure”. An
argument is put forward for “greater recognition of the rich dialectical
connections between surface analysis and depth analysis in aesthetics”. And
the argument is very persuasive. In typical Deweyian pragmatist style Shusterman
aims, by removing artificial boundaries, to pull together
ideas and approaches that provide a multi-perspectival engagement with
the processes and products of art.
The
argument is developed through a lucid and incisive interrogation of analytic
aesthetics, deconstruction and pragmatism, with interesting commentaries on
“the social and cultural foundations of aesthetics” exemplified in the
writings of Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, T.S. Eliot and others. The different
approaches of late 20th Century cultural theorists (Danto, Rorty,
Margolis and Bourdieu) are critically described as affording a means of bridging
the apparent gap between surface and depth analysis.
Shusterman
regrets the lack of space for more “examples of concrete aesthetic
analysis”. In fact there are hardly any, and this is one of the few
disappointments of the book. It weakens one of the main strands of the argument
by neglecting the aesthetic (surface) specificity of the artwork in favour of
the theoretical exegesis that privileges commonalities, generalities, context
and hermeneutics. ‘Depth’ to some extent overshadows ‘surface’.
Morris
Weitz’s influential critique of essentialism (in The Role of Theory, 1956)
“implores us to ‘look and see’ the vast array of differences among
artworks rather than presume a common essence to search for as a definition of
art”. However Shusterman points out that the openness of early analytic
aestheticians to perceptual ‘empirical’ evidence and specificity, to the
materiality and surfaces of artworks, gradually disappeared after the
mid-60’s.
Arthur
Danto “helped initiate this turn from aesthetic perceptual properties by
stressing art’s imperceptible contextual features as the essential factor for
an artwork”. To be considered as art, artworks require what Danto describes
as, “something the eye cannot descry - an atmosphere of artistic theory, a
knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” This opened the door to
Dickie’s institutional theory of art, and to a growing preoccupation amongst
later analytic aestheticians with the cultural foundations of art, and to a
concomitant distrust or doubt regarding the very notion of ‘aesthetic
experience’.
Despite
the anti-essentialism of much early analytic aesthetics, a later exponent like
Danto exemplifies a return to essentialism, and to the essentialist tradition of
Croce, Collingwood, Bell and Fry. Danto acknowledges himself to be an
“essentialist in philosophy”, believing that all artworks “must exemplify
one identical essence” but “do not have to resemble each other”. As with
all essentialist theories the difficulty comes in how to define the
‘essence’ - and no satisfactory definition has emerged (nor, in my view, is
it likely to).
Shusterman
argues that there are a number of different logics of, and reasons for,
interpretation, and that no particular one can be considered supreme or more
true than any of the others. Three logics are considered in detail:
Descriptivism, Prescriptivism and Performatism. The various interpretive
‘games’ play around the artwork in different ways providing a variety of
cues, modes of access and reception, and other kinds of insight, analysis and
commentary. Each approach may have its own form of consistency and etiquette (as
all games must) and its own particular value, strengths and weaknesses, but none
can offer a total picture of the artwork. These interpretive processes co-exist
with “authorial intentionalism” in a plurality of narratives circulating
through and around the artwork.
There
is an interesting and unusual discussion of the similarities (and some
differences) between the aesthetics of Croce and Derrida. This focuses on a
shared belief in reality as being “a temporary and dynamically developing
linguistic construct”. “For Croce and Derrida, language not only constitutes
the world, but is an irrepressibly creative force which is continually
transforming itself”. However Croce believed that “interpretive truth could
be achieved through the recovery or reproduction of original meaning”, while
Derrida argues that there can be “no correct understanding or valid
interpretation” of a given text - indeed that all texts are “unreadable”.
Shusterman
analyses Croce’s idea of “true interpretation” from a ‘radical
pragmatist’ perspective and argues that Croce probably wouldn’t have
disagreed with the notion that an artist’s or author’s intuition/expression
can only be imaginatively reconstructed by each interpreter within a
historically framed interpretive community. The process of interpretation is
part of the reconstruction of objects, events, intentions and meanings that each
historian imagines and narrates as they make a
history within their history - and we
are all historians.
As
in his earlier book, Pragmatist Aesthetics, Shusterman emphasises the pragmatist
belief in “fallibilism and the possibility of interpretive revision”, which
provides a “promising option between rigidly analytic and recklessly
deconstructive accounts of interpretation”. Viewed from this ‘middle’
position meaning is always something relational, never an absolute or an object.
Chapter
Four comprises an interesting discussion of Wittgenstein’s views on
“critical reasoning” and on the “radical indeterminacy of aesthetic
concepts” - both exemplifying the critique of essentialism that characterised
so much of his thinking. Wittgenstein’s position on reasoning is also
articulated by Stuart Hampshire: “the critic’s role is only to ‘direct
attention… if one has been brought to see what there is to be seen in the
object, the purpose of discussion is achieved”. On the other hand Shusterman
argues that Wittgenstein’s support for a plurality of critical methods and
aims suggests that we should be sceptical of any attempts to consider one method
as being ‘correct’ or more ‘true’ than others.
Other
matters covered by Shusterman include: a lucid examination of the ways in which
aesthetic judgment and standards of taste are grounded in social conditioning
and class distinction (in the writings of Hume and Kant); an analysis of
convention, in which the apparent distinctions between convention and nature are
shown to be much less clearcut than philosophers like Hilary Putnam and David
Lewis maintain; and a lively discussion of pragmatist aesthetics in Alain Locke
and John Dewey, in which the following statement by Locke is a key theme: “I
project my personal history into its inevitable rationalization as cultural
pluralism and value relativism.”
In
a review of this brevity I can only point to other chapter headings as evidence
of Shusterman’s scope and ambition: Eliot and Adorno on the Critique of
Culture; Deep Theory and Surface Blindness; Art in a Box (about Arthur Danto);
Cultural Analysis and the Limits of Philosophy (about Bourdieu); Art as
Dramatization (a brief foray into the art/life debate - art leading “us back
to experience life more fully through the infectious intensity of aesthetic
experience and its release from affective inhibitions”. The last sentence of
the book makes reference to the “art of living” and it would be good to see
Shusterman further develop his ideas around this theme, perhaps picking up
Dewey’s art-as-experience thesis and providing a more sustained exploration of
the idea of art as dramatization.
‘Surface
and Depth’ is an excellent text, combining lucidity and keen analytical
thinking with an ability to challenge preconceptions, to make surprising
connections and to open up new avenues of enquiry. I would encourage anyone
interested in aesthetics, arts criticism, cultural theory and philosophy to read
this book and to enter into a richly rewarding engagement with a stimulating and
lively mind.
John
Danvers
University
of Plymouth, UK.