By Iona Singh
Aesthetics & Alienation
is rigorous, most of the chapters first appeared as peer-reviewed essays, and
it is audacious in its assimilation of the clash between ideology and
materialism, which Tedman elucidates in the early chapter ‘Ideology, the
State and the Aesthetic Level of Practice’:
“I am going to argue that ideas alone, even
ideas networked in the mutually compatible interrelations of an ideology,
cannot and do not (not solely) provide such a fusion of superstructure with
infrastructure as would be truly capable of consolidating a society
ravaged by inherent class divisions. For it appears to me to give too much
potency to the stuff of ideology – to ideas – than a materialist
should, perhaps, allow. “
Tedman wants to intervene here with emotions, rather than ideas, using an original conception of the term "aesthetic", the literal meaning of which is the heightening of human sensibilities and the opposite of anaesthetic, which is to dull them down. He analyses 'emotion' on a physiological and psychological level using Freud's concept of intuition and 'reflex' to endown this 'aesthetic' with a non-humanistic framework, separate from the transcendental and metaphysical history associated with the term. And in our current system it is the deadening of aesthetic sensibilities that "works up" physically derived alienation via the media, artworks, entertainment, and culture generally, not on critical or intellectual levels but on the basis of desires and reactions and in practical and physical forms.
Feelings are ‘deep’, they have libidinal and unconscious elements, they are slower to change than ideas, and
they straddle both the economic base and the superstructure. Consequently,
as Tedman carefully describes it: feelings, sensibilities and aesthetics are
the fundamental power sources that drive the reproduction of the means of production and hence enable
Capitalism to continue.
Tedman argues that the study of this qualifies as a new discipline and domain that he refers to as the
Aesthetic Level of Practice. Once defined in this aspect the concept is then utilised in the book as a powerful addendum to shift and conjecture the work of a host of writers,
including Marx, Freud and Walter Benjamin, as well as a number of historical
events, and artworks.
The theoretical framework is set up
first in Feelings and Ideas in Marx, Freud and Althusser and
specifically in their undermining of two “pinnacles of bourgeois ideology”. The
first being Freud's location of psychic forces that are beyond the conscious control of the indivdual and hence his shattering of the “self-aware unity of the thinking subject” - the myth that
humans are psychologically Captain of their own ship. The second of these is Marx’s dethroning of ‘Man’ as the subject of history and no longer the central, wilful, driving force, because of the impact of the
economic base and dialectical materialism. For Tedman, the amalgamation of these two critiques, the micro
and the macro, opens up the territory that exists between psychology and
politics that can only be bridged by the complex role of feeling. This expanse is so viable that bourgeois
ideology has been moved to prohibit the realisation of it, by keeping key
elements that compose it, mainly art and science, separate. Nevertheless, the outreach
of this level, as Tedman explains it, is present in all affective domains: the
media, education, entertainment and the arts, and in 'affective practices' - manners, class affiliations, modes of dress, which he then begins to examine the
mechanics of.
There is an early necessary
reflection on how nature and nurture fit in to this, in Notes towards a
Foundation for a Subjectless Aesthetic. Here, cognitive classification for
the concept is sought using the study of deaf children by the linguist Ann
Senghas, to show that the aesthetic level is a ‘merging’ of visceral and
intellectual faculties similar to those used in the development of language and like
language this ability is stimulated by the environment. These findings are a
counterclaim to the ‘innate’ humanist charge that overhangs discussions on
feelings and the sentient; claims that were most famously made against Marx's 1844
Manuscripts, when he discusses emotional alienation within the mode of
production. Hence Tedman’s chapter, Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts as a Work of Art
reexamines this early classic and contests that Marx was himself on the
path to understanding a non-humanist, materialist aesthetic component as
part of the base and superstructure model.
In fact Marx’s awareness of the
role of feeling resides not only in the ideas and writing in this text but
also because of the three-dimensional structure of Marx’s own original construction
of the text. For Marx did not create
this book in a linear fashion, as it has so far been published (and as book
publishing will allow), but he designed it so that the structure of the book expresses
its content in a sculptural, three-dimensional format. One example drawn from this by
Tedman, using some of Margaret Fay’s original research, is how Marx organised the
themes of Wages of Labour and Profit of Capital, in separate columns, on the same page side by
side, with the theoretical contradictions between them revealed in these
columns in adjacent positions. Eventually, some of the columns, overwhelmed by these
contradictions, cancel themselves out and disappear all-together, and hence the
shape of the work changes, suggesting that:
“Marx must have been attempting to restructure his own material method of textual production in line with the results of his research.”
Is Marx making a work of art out of
his ideas and forging them tactually and sensibly in order to communicate their influence to his reader, and does this work therefore perform on the aesthetic
level? It certainly shows that Marx was aware of the feelings of the reader and
that he could practice an engagement with the visceral and the corporeal to strengthen
his intellectual points, rather than just ignoring these things as many writers
do, or dulling them down, as in an alienating or biblical-narrative type framework. By the construction of the form
of this work Marx demonstrates that sensory alienation and also non-alienation, major theoretical themes in the Manuscripts, are not just cerebral but tied to materials and
shapes, design and general sensory environments.
The ‘bourgeois’ humanist accusation levelled at Marx in his discussion of feelings and alienation in the text is countered here in favour of the bodily reality and formality of his writing, and the physical ‘shape’ and texture of it (the large landscape sheets of paper handsewn together by Marx play an important part in this). Tedman concludes:
“the EPM, is equivalent to an
avant-garde left modernist artwork, but with a rather postmodern, hypertextual
deconstructive, textual strategy”.
For Tedman, Marx's awareness of an
aesthetic, sense level of practice is always present in his work (he furnishes
examples from Capital) even if it is not as radically and artistically
expressed as in this early work, understood as a radical new form for a radical new
content.
Tedman reconstructed Marx's original design for the 1844 Manuscripts using large sheets of paper and has also published an ebook facimile of this using hypertext links and the original pagination.
The origins of the aesthetic level are
examined in the following chapters: East/West and the Marx-Zeno Dialectic,
looks at the counter-feeling, logocentric tradition of Western philosophy. This
is posed against the ‘other’ sensuous element of some Eastern philosophies and in
relation to Marx’s interest, via Hegel, in the pre-Socratics, to throw light on the non-logocentric, feeling and hence aesthetic slant of his ideas.
The Origins of Kitsch and
Counterfeit Dialectics examines the emergence of an aesthetic that
is now integrated into everyday life - and how kitsch became the
proscribed aesthetic of the ruling class and entered into the class struggle via the official status given to it by the French Academy. And from here on in it emerged practically, specifically through art objects, actions, behaviours, mentalities, and
events, even whole periods (the Third Republic).
To examine this we are taken through
the changes in the mode of production in Capitalism that led to the specific
form of associated alienation for which kitsch is the formal, visual, psychological
and artistic expression. We see how
it was specially promoted via the work of artists like Charles Le Brun, who was
chosen in the 1600s to head up the group organisation of the French Academy of
Art. Based in anthropomorphism, Le Brun’s work heralds the debasement of
humanness and of the human senses, “the likening of humans to animals and
animals to humans (homo faber).” …and helped to forge the substantiation of dehumanisation and alienation. Tedman submits that imbuing Le Brun with such
power at this point in time created an important fulcrum for the state to fulfil
its political desires in aesthetics.
Another example of struggles taking place specifically on the aesthetic level comes from the political context of the July Monarchy of Louis
Phillippe, which is the theme of the chapter Paris 1844, Manet, Courbet,
Marx. Here Tedman demonstrates a convergence of clashes and contradictions
that appear to manifest on this date and place, various aspects of which are observed in the political,
philosophical and artist production of these three protagonists.
The origins of artists like Le Brun in all epochs, whose work fits neatly into the correct type of aesthetic
necessary for the needs of the dominating mode of production is revealed by Tedman’s intersection of the writings of Clement Greenberg,
Louis Althusser and Walter B enjamin, which leads him to the conclusion that there
is indeed such an entity as Art Aesthetic State Apparatuses. He finds this:- in Althusser’s
critique that bourgeois philosophers maintain a very strict distinction
(bifurcation) between science and ideology which then filters down through
education and specifically art education, coupled with a denial, on the part of
these philosophers of knowing what philosophy is actually doing, as a practice; and, from Walter Benjamin’s criticism of those “undergoing a revolutionary
development only in terms of mentality” and who distance their work from
technique (the amalgamation of tactile and ‘feelings’ in materials) and hence its
relationship to the current day mode of production and means of production. Artists who are
like this, says Benjamin, have solidarity with the proletariat only in the
mind and not as material producers; and while, says Tedman,
Greenberg champions the formal materialism of American Expressionism (Rothko, Jackson
Pollock) he still writes about it from a position of the unaccountable in tandem with
the general line in educational art departments that ‘there is no accounting
for taste’. And this point of view is the political and philosophical basis for the
artist who is embedded in the Capitalist social relations of production. These
relations are then refined and shaped by them in their specific field of production to become an aesthetic that emerges from the prevailing social
fabric and from the controlling state bodies behind them, as
Aesthetic State Apparatuses. This is also helped by the fact that the subject who
is embedded in this environment as an artist functions partly unconsciously amongst
the prevailing alienation of these conditions.
We find that a real examination of
the physical and mental affectivity of these issues is prohibited because this
would involve science over the prevalent denial of knowledge and a development
of the relationship between science and art. The argument that these conditions begin very early
in the formation of the subject, is also advanced in the chapters The Family as
Aesthetic State Apparatus and Art and Education.
One of the final chapters Soviet
Avant Garde Aesthetics: the Art ASA and Gender in the Russian Revolution uses
the aesthetic level and the concept of aesthetic state apparatuses to analyse “base/superstructure
interaction in the period of the emergence of the artistic avant-garde in
Russia” about 1917.
Here, Tedman charts the breaking down of gender barriers that led to a flurry of woman artists, such as has not been seen before or since, and of changes to the arts, artworks, literature and design because of changes in the base. This is complex. The domains of art and economics, for example, although they are obviously linked, do not develop at the same rate, and in relation to each other they are, using Lenin's concept, “uneven”. A mechanism for the aesthetic level is thus honed in on in the writings of Malevich, which tended to be quite meta-physical at times, though not always, (perhaps lost in translation also), and not quite in tandem with his more materialist artistic production. So we find that Malevich’s visual practice as it functions on the aesthetic level contradicts his intellectual theorisation, thus exposing a contradiction between the aesthetic level (his paintings) and what could probably be described as the ideological level (his conscious intellect and writings).
Aesthetics & Alienation offers
the chance to examine relationships between the state, the status quo, and sentient
emotion, the latter of which is argued as the most necessary element for ‘glueing’ the other elements and hence the base/superstructure and the social system, together. This is a basis for understanding how feelings can be and are directed by
the industries and institutions that primarily specialise in their arousal: the
media, the arts, design and education. The essays are anchored in convincing arguments
and research that give credence to the proposed ‘scientificity’ of the method and the enquiry. With so
much discussion in many domains, perhaps the conjecture steps a bit ahead of
itself sometimes and of the reader, but this is always reeled back quite
quickly and the overall points are eloquently concluded.
From my own point of view this book
offers an inspiring improvement on the gossipy narrative that grounds most art history and that I have always found inadequate, and of the possibility of
substantially linking art to other fields. Hence the poor dandyish ‘flimsy’ and
‘bourgeois’ subject no longer stands, sadly, alone but becomes engaged in
a whole fabric of connected knowledge including politics. Aesthetics & Alienation delivers real philosophical
and political credibility to the role of feelings which concerns every
discipline, social science and aesthetic practitioners like artists, designers and architects. Until now these latter have seen little inroad into the
huge traditional body of philosophy and science that can really offer support to the scientific materiality of their own disciplines, and signficantly place them in relation to other subjects that they are
intuitively, if not officially in the academic sense, intertwined with.
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