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HUM 102: Perspective and the Subject of Reason. Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz. Subject. Modernity of described in terms of ‘ the Rise of the Subject ’ Term with complex history and multiple definitions that are in tension with one another. Subject.
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HUM 102: Perspective and the Subject of Reason Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz
Subject • Modernity of described in terms of ‘the Rise of the Subject’ • Term with complex history and multiple definitions that are in tension with one another.
Subject • In everyday usage, “subjective” means “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions”; i.e., not“objective” (scientific, rational, etc.).
Subject • But we might also think of the term “subject” in grammar: the agent or actor in a sentence. E.g.,“The dog [subject] bites the man [object].”
Subject • Also an older, legal-political sense with which you might be familiar: “one that is placed under authority or control”; e.g. being a subject of the King or a subject of the Law. • This noun echoes an adjective and a verb: to be subject (adjective) to the King or indeed to be subjected (verb, past-tense) to the King. (Subjectum, Latin, ‘to be thrown under’)
Subject • None of these senses is the technical, philosophical sense of the term “subject”, though each of these is related to it. • Though Descartes does not use the term “Subject,” the Cartesian “I think”/Cogito is often described as the foundation of the modern concept of the subject.
Subject • Cartesian (17th century) “Subject”: a being defined by consciousness and self-consciousness. • Paradox of Post-Cartesian (i.e., modern) ‘Subjectivity’: it is by way of the Subject (cogito) that we arrive at scientific Objectivity.
Subject • Enlightenment (18th century) Expansion and Formalization of Subject: Subject judges and evaluates (its own) representations of the world; world appears for Subject. • Subject now also associated with universality: everyone is already or should become subject of reason.
The Subject Revised • What if becoming a subject (of reason, of freedom) also means being subject or subjected, literally ‘thrown under’ (Latin: subjectum)?
The Subject Revised • The example of language: in order to speak one must first accept the rules of language. All mastery, creativity, or expression within language requires submission or subjection to language as a system. • The “I”; the source of subjectivity in language is precisely an impersonal generality; in order to become a subject in language, one must give oneself up to this generality.
Review/Summary • Double-structure of Subject in Modernity: • On one side, consciousness and self-consciousness; freedom and reason; mastery • On the other side, subjectivity presupposes subjection to language, representation, institutions.
Perspective • In the most basic sense, perspective or linear perspective is a technique for visually representing a 3-dimensional world on a flat (2-dimensional) surface. • From the Latin perspectiva (literally, ‘seeing through’). • It is so natural for us that we hardly notice when it is being used in visual media, but it in fact has a history (i.e., it wasn’t always there) and can be dated in its dominant form to the 15th century.
In perspectival painting, the flat surface attains imaginary depth and comes to resemble a window ‘through which’ one sees the world. • Negation of actual material surface of canvas • “Picture plane”: the outer surface of the imaginary depth of the picture. • Perspective, in other words, simulates a continuity between ‘real space’ and ‘represented space,’ and the “picture plane” is the threshold or border between these two kinds of space.
Medieval Painting (Ca. 1125) Figurative, “flat” (i.e. non-perspectival)
20th Century Painting (Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five, 1947); flat, abstract
Basic Principle of Perspectival Construction: The Grid • The perspectival window must be covered with an (invisible or removable) grid that allows for the ‘translation’ between ‘depth’ and ‘flatness.’ • Marking points between ‘object, picture plane, and lines of vision’
Basic rules of perspective • Vanishing point: the ‘back’ of the imaginary depth, where the painting ends; most obvious illustration of vanishing point is principle that parallel lines converge at the vanishing point. • All perpendicular or “orthogonal” lines meet at this vanishing point.
‘Result’ of Perspectival Construction: • Infinite, unchanging, homogeneous, rational-mathematical space. • But: this requires an immobile spectator, who must – physically or in imagination – place himself at the correct distance from the image.
Tension between Subjectivity and Objectivity? • On one hand, perspective makes the human subject the new center, the point of orientation for the image. • On the other hand, it ultimately posits an infinite, ‘a-centric’ space.
Antonello, St. Jerome in His Study (1460-1475) • ‘Objectivism’ of perspective: frontal view, ‘straight’ approach to world; St. Jerome at a sharp right angle to spectator. • Coordination of viewpoint of spectator with orientation of represented architecture. Spectator conforms to architecture and ‘structure.’ • Picture plane functions as window and as limit.
Dürer, St. Jerome in his Study (1514) • Picture plane does not coincide with opening of represented space; ‘we’ share space with St. Jerome. • Oblique (‘crooked’) angle signifies freedom to take one’s own viewpoint on the world; perspective is not ‘lined up’ with a represented architectural structure.
‘Ideological’ Resolution of Tension between Subjectivity and Objectivity… • ‘Ideological’ resolution: both are expressions of ‘human greatness’; art plus science; the ideal of Renaissance Humanism… • Re-centering of man, even though we know the universe has no center. • What is hidden by this self-celebration of Man?
Proto-Perspectival Painting • Conflict between theological space (theo-centrism) and mathematical space. • On one hand, space of church/altar is marked off as having special transcendent value, place where infinite God *somehow* appears. • On the other hand, there are also aspects of mathematically infinite space. • So: mathematizationof space emancipates man from theo-centric hierarchy.
Lorenzetti, Annunciation (1344) • Proto-perspectival system: tiles on floor allow spectator to mark depth in picture – element of infinite/mathematical space but: • This space is framed within picture as a heterogeneous (‘special,’‘theological’) space; • Gabriel and Mary looks upwards towards absent or unrepresentable infinity of God • Conflict between homogeneous mathematical space and ‘hierarchy of being(s).’
Or Structure of Subject/ion? • One becomes a Subject by Subjecting oneself to the image. • Subject: world appears as if ‘for me’; is perfectly rational and intelligible • Subjection: but only if I place myself in the position dictated to me by the painting. • Analogy with language: I become subject in language only by accepting rules, structure, system of language.
Psychoanalysis • The Psychic ≠ The Conscious; ‘discovery of the unconscious’ (Freud). • The Visual ≠ The Visible. In other words: can we ‘see’ the unconscious? What is the unconscious in images? (Lacan)
Psychoanalysis • What do I not see, precisely because I have taken immobile position of Subject? • What if something (that I can’t see) is looking at me? • (Jacques Lacan, 4 Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a”)
Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533) • Image of human mastery: objects from all domains of human knowledge (arts and sciences), but also from various ‘discovered’ parts of the earth (Oriental rug); presence of globe suggests sovereignty and rational knowledge of totality. • Ambassadors: ideal representations of European Man.
