Philosophy
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At the present point of this study, after having inquired into some of the constituents of Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy in its general outlines, let me turn to the notion of art. Here, my interest is in the ontology of art as proposed by Nancy: how, and on which grounds, does the work of art and the aesthetic occur in his philosophy? This is a question that Nancy approaches, in the first place, by addressing the origin of art. I find his starting point is similar to Heidegger’s, whose criticism of metaphysical or Platonic accounts of art is directed at the idea that the work presents an existing signification in a material form. According to what one might regard as traditional aesthetic theories, art would be a material object which gives expression to a supersensible meaning. Art would thus be understood in terms of “allegory”, or “metaphor”, or “symbol” – as opposed to symbols, for Nancy art is what interrupts symbolization, or it is the symbolic itself in the place and instant of its interruption.721
For Nancy, it seems clear from the start that art does not embody any of these: instead, he gives an account of art as something which cannot be its own end and the origin of which is divided from the start. How does one approach the question of art, then? Why is there art at all, and what is the specific ontological position – provided there is one – that Nancy allows to art?
These are some of the questions to be posed in this part of my treatise, in which the focus will be on the exploration of the particular way of art’s coming into presence, that is, its presentation.
Nancy’s theory of art is closely linked with his general views on ontology, be it its being, the thought of its coming-into-presence, its singularity and plurality, or its sensibility. Is the ontology of the work of forms a radically separate section in Nancy’s thinking, or should it rather be seen as an integral part of it – how is it that Nancy puts forward the view that art is singular by character? As I see it, there are reasons to think that art does emerge as a sphere of specific importance in Nancy’s philosophy in that art undeniably has a status of its own as regards the questions of presentation and of sensibility. In the context of these notions, I shall consider, and reconsider, a number of points discussed earlier in my work:
the most fundamental of them is difference – spacing and distance, along with the concept of trace or vestige, by virtue of which any sense is born in Nancy’s thought. In fact, for Nancy “art has always begun in the distance”.722 Overall,
721 Cf. Nancy, The Sense of the World, p. 137 (Le sens du monde, p. 210).
722 Nancy (2003). Au fond des images. Paris: Galilée, p. 12.
1 the problem of the origin of art is dealt with in most detail in Nancy’s first collection of articles on art, The Muses.723
Especially in the past few years Nancy has published several brief texts in which he analyses visual works of art.724 In these books he focuses on the particular nature of, for example, a certain Christian tradition of paintings, like the ones represented by the type of “Touch me not” pictures (as in the book Noli me tangere), portraits (Le Regard du portrait), or nudes (Nus sommes). These sorts of pictorial interpretations are able to give an approach to Nancy’s accounts of art from a more practical angle and thus further elucidate his ontology of art by analysing actual works of art.
However, it seems evident that his interpretations of single works in most cases turn out to be philosophical reflection on art and tend to illuminate his central notions, yet contribute to them by giving them sensuous justification.
I consider it plausible to say that his philosophical views even come so close to the way he explains an artwork that they finally prove indissociable. The preliminary view I attempt to test here is how to define this relatedness of art and thought – in which way should we define Nancy’s thinking of art and its relation to his general ontology? But it is even more important, however, to examine the strategies he uses in breaking with the general ontological structure – that is, how thinking on art provides an alternative scheme to philosophy.
In Chapter 4, The Work of Art, I shall take up the notion of the work of art. This requires accounting for the meaning of art and its position in Nancy’s thinking. I first discuss the origin of art, in which the separation of the senses and the plurality of different arts is at stake, and conversely, thinking about one art in its dissolution. In attempting to explicate this, I shall examine Nancy’s ontological idea of art and how it is related to the thought of being as difference, as brought up in the previous part of my study. For Nancy the origin of art is not single but is originally heterogeneous, that is, divided or zoned. On the other hand, he also claims that the division of arts and that of senses cannot be identified, for art dislocates the sensuous difference. Nancy seeks, moreover, the source of the particularization of art zoned quality in the Hegelian position,
723 Nancy, The Muses (Les Muses, 1994; Les Muses, édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Galilée, 2001).
724 These include Visitation (de la peinture chrétienne) (Paris: Galilée, 2001); Le Regard du portrait (Paris: Galilée, 2000); L’Évidence du film: Abbas Kiarostami / The Evidence of Film: Abbas Kiarostami (Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert, 2001), Nancy and Federico Ferrari, Nus sommes (Bruxelles: Yves Gevaert, 2002), Noli me tangere (Paris: Bayard, 2003), Nancy and Mathilde Monnier, Allitérations: Conversations sur la danse (Paris: Galilée, 2005), and Nancy and Federico Ferrari, Iconographie de l’auteur (Paris:
Galilée, 2005).
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referring here, roughly speaking, to the Idea and its incarnation in sensuous presentation (sinnliche Darstellung der Idee). I have already discussed the points of departure for Nancy’s idea of presentation in Chapter 2, and I shall not therefore directly return to this question as such, but shall here reconsider it in the context of the aesthetic.
The presentation or coming into presence in the very context of art will be introduced in the chapter The Presentation of Art. Is there a particular way of the coming into presence of art, which is most proper to it? In other words, we need to ask how art exposes itself. Seeking to answer why, and in which conditions, there is something like art, is crucial to Nancy’s understanding of the ontology of art. Furthermore, my analysis goes on to inquire why he states that in art there is no question of representation, but only of presentation. Nancy detaches the thought of being from the thought of representation, as well as from the thinking of a meaning of being. Instead, being is to be approached beginning from the existence of singular existents. In his exploration of art, Nancy remains faithful to the central outlines of his own philosophy, recurrently taking a stand in regard to Heidegger’s thinking; however, my initial claim is that, as far as the ontology of art is concerned, Nancy tends to go beyond Heidegger. This can be seen in that Nancy brings forth problems such as sensibility and, associated with that, the distinctive ontological characteristics of art, its multiplicity and the differences between the arts. To some extent, Nancy also pays attention to artistic production.
What unites Nancy and Heidegger is the fact that the experience of art as such does not arise as a question. Instead, Heidegger turns to art as something which may reveal the truth of being by preserving it, whereas Nancy takes, above all, an interest not in the truth which might take place in art, but in sense which presents itself in art, sense which is always exterior to or in excess of itself in the work of art.
Heidegger’s influence is even more visible when Nancy puts art into the context of technique, which is what he does in various writings on art, “Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One?” included.725 I shall discuss the notion of techne in the chapter entitled Art and Techne, the central problem being Nancy’s relation to Heidegger’s notion of technique: while Heidegger speaks of a singular notion of technique, various techniques are in Nancy’s idea of art. In
725 See The Muses, p. 1-39 (Les Muses, p. 11-70).
1 the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger states that techne denotes a mode of knowing (Wissen), whose sense has not been thoroughly thought so far. In principle, technique as such does not have a negative connotation for Heidegger, nor does it for Nancy.
Their interpretations of technique do not end up in similar results, however.
While Heidegger speaks of technique as a singular notion, in Nancy, what he calls la technique and what is translated as “technique”, exists in plural form, as techniques.726 For Nancy technique is something that instantly multiplies itself in art, since technique is a question of the production of every detail of the work of art. Rather, in the case of art, technique partly provides an answer to the question of its ontological foundation, for technique accounts for the production of the ground that does not produce itself. Though it is not comparable as such with Heidegger’s corresponding notion, we need to examine in what terms Nancy refers to the ontology of art and its allegedly technological foundation.
Technicity puts art outside itself, making art touch its end, which is the premise for presentation or exposition to occur.727 Nor is technique foreign to the notion of the body: for Nancy the body is technical from the beginning.728
One answer to the question how does art present itself can be sought in the aforementioned notion of touch, which I discuss in Chapter 5, Presentation, Touch and Finitude: Touching the Limit of Sense. The prerequisite of thinking the touch of art is the notion of difference – difference which is born in touch, while touch is born by virtue of a difference. Touch, a term which is not to be understood as a metaphor, is for Nancy the paradigm of the five senses in that touch is the presentation of sensibility. Where does touch take place, and what is it that is touched? And how to describe the way in which art touches? These are some of the questions to be posed. Fundamental to touch is the fact that it takes place on a limit, to the extent that it is a limit-term – it takes place at the limit of being touched, at the limit of exposition or coming-into-presence.
726 The translator of The Muses points out that in this book la technique is rendered as “technics”
when Nancy intends the whole order of techne; in the case of technical skills, the translation is
“technique”. See The Muses, p. 104, n. 4.
727 Nancy, The Muses, p. 26, 37 (Les Muses, p. 50-51, 66-67). As Nancy claims, insofar as the “nexus”
of technologies (that is, existing itself) is not, but is the opening of its finitude, existing is technological through and through. Technique is no more immanence than it is transcendence, but it is “the putting into play of the exteriority of nature as existence”. Because technology is neither immanence nor transcendence, or because technology is the spacing in the middle of contact and hence deferring of the origin, there is nothing like technology “as such”, but the multiplicity of technologies. Nancy, A Finite Thinking, p. 24-25 (Une pensée finie, p. 43-46).
728 Technique, understood as ecotechnics, produces the human body by connecting it to the world. A similar thought was expressed earlier by F. T. Marinetti in the Futurist Manifesto in 1909. Cf. Nancy, Corpus, p. 77-82; Nancy (2000). L’Intrus. Paris: Galilée.
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I find this approach to touch the most rewarding aspect of Nancy’s philosophy, for by taking this path the consequences of his notion of presentation will perhaps also become clearer. What is central to presentation as proposed by Nancy is a distance, a difference: the fact that presentation touches itself and thus remains suspended in its passage, “in its coming and going”.729 How is touch structured? Suffice it to note here that touch touches itself, and this is the sense of self-affection, which, at the same time, is touching the other in oneself, in general. Of particular importance in the thought of art and its limit is Nancy’s interpretation of the Kantian sublime.
On the whole, what constitutes Nancy’s understanding of art and the aesthetic is considered in the final chapter, The Finite and the Infinite in the Aesthetic Experience, where I attempt to draw together the basic lines which have been discussed in various parts of my dissertation. My aim is to bring them together in Nancy’s notions of the finite and the infinite, concepts which, as I see it, crystallize his thinking on presentation and limit. What is implicated by the idea that art presents itself singularly at its own limit? In considering this, I go to the Heideggerian theme of finitude in order to understand its importance to Nancy’s conception of art. Thinking of the finite and the infinite – how finitude opens itself to the infinite – is at issue in Nancy’s dealing with subjectivity and presentation. It is a question of appropriating the inappropriable: the touch by which any sense of the world comes into presence is finite, whereas its sense is infinite, that is, limited in its scope. Finitude is the sensing-itself of the infinite in action.730 In particular, I try to find out what is the framework which a finite work of art gives to the infinite sense.731
729 Nancy, The Muses, p. 34 (Les Muses, p. 62). A similar structure is at stake in the relation which Heidegger sees between thinking and being: “[t]hinking is related to being as what arrives (l’avenant).
Thinking as such is bound to the advent of being, to being as advent.” See Heidegger, Pathmarks, p.
275.730 Nancy, The Muses, p. 33 (Les Muses, p. 61).
731 Cf. Nancy, Au fond des images, p. 30, 94.
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. the work of art
In the following, I wish to shed light on the problem of art as such by looking at what constitutes a work of art and its experience in Nancy’s thinking. I aim at elucidating the way in which Nancy examines the ontology of art, considering art’s specific position both in respect to its origin and its mode of coming-into-presence. This will be done by exploring the existence of art and of arts: that is, in question is a tension between one general notion of art and individual arts – the singular plural of art and of the arts.
Of a certain illustrative value is his thought of the singular multiplicity of being as being-with, which largely resonates with the being of a work of art in that its being is originally shared. Existence is singular: it always happens as a singular event, while the existence of the existent occurs an indefinite number of times “in” its individuality, this being its singularity.732 Yet being and the being of art cannot be identified in any straightforward manner. Above all, Nancy takes an interest in the traditional assumptions concerning the correspondence of the different arts and the five senses, and goes on to question this alleged distribution in relation to the birth of sense. The arts and the senses both involve discontinuity. The thresholds which are at stake here are the limits of coming-into-presentation, on the verge of being touched by each other. The mutual touch is the moment of the opening of sense – sense is what gives rise to signification, as we have learned elsewhere in Nancy’s philosophy. Sense cannot be approached as anything present, for it is always only coming. Hence art is always postponed, only coming, and in this way it is for Nancy presentation, in other words, setting itself to the work of exposition.733 By the same token art cannot be a question of representation. The notions of touch and exposition, which occupy a central place in Nancy’s discussion of art, are given further attention in Chapter 5.
732 Nancy, The Experience of Freedom, p. 190-191, n. 12 (L’expérience de la liberté, p. 78, n. 1).
733 Nancy, Le Regard du portrait, p. 34.