Aesthetics & Anaesthetics
Tuesday 20 June 2023
Art & Politics
notes
Summary & notes for the article Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered by Susan Buck Morss. Published in: October, Vol. 62 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 3-41
I
Buck-Morss starts the essay with a reversal of Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In this essay Benjamin writes that: ‘All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war…’, a statement that seeks to align fascist politics with aesthetic forms of justification (as in the Futurist Manifesto). He writes that with such reasoning humanity’s “self-alienation has reached such a degree that it is capable of experiencing its own destruction as an aesthetic enjoyment…” He posits, as a counter to this fascistic ‘aestheticization of politics’, a communist response, the ‘politicization of art’. (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 3-4)
However, as Buck-Morss notes, Benjamin must intend this in a more complex manner than simply making culture a vehicle for (Communist) propaganda. Instead, she argues, this is an issue of intepretation, that Benjamin shifts the meaning of his conceptual terms (politics, art, aesthetics) in setting out this dichotomy:
“He is demanding of art a task far more difficult -that is, to undo the alienation of the corporeal sensorium, to restore the instinctual power of the human bodily senses for the sake of humanity's self-preservation, and to do this, not by avoiding the new technologies, but by passing through them.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 5) (pdf)
Instead, Buck-Morss brings Benjamins analysis (and intentions) into line with other interpretations of modernity’s impact on aesthetic discourse (Ranciere). That, “if we were really to ‘politicize art’ in the radical way [Benjamin] is suggesting, art would cease to be art as we know it.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 5)
II
As Terry Eagleton writes, and as Buck-Morss quotes: "Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body.” In this ‘revision’ of Benjamins text she turns to an etymology of ‘aesthetics’ which, for Buck-Morss, he has returned us to:
“Aisthitikos is the ancient Greek word for that which is "perceptive by feeling." Aisthisis is the sensory experience of perception. The original field of aesthetics is not art but reality-corporeal, material nature.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 6) (pdf)
From this we can begin to make sense of the claim that in ‘politicising art’ we are also “undo[ing] the alienation of the corporeal sensorium.” Buck-Morss maintains the contemporary importance of this sensorium, that “[t]he senses maintain an uncivilized and uncivilzable trace…” and that this trace remains a part “biological apparatus, indispensable to the self-preservation of both the individual and the social group.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 6)
III
In the 1700’s, Buck-Morss notes, one might have placed a concern with aesthetics within the field of animal instincts as opposed to philosophical inquires of ‘Art, Beauty, and Truth’. Alexander Baumgarten, who first articulated ‘aesthetics’ as an autonomous field of study, worried “one could accuse him of concerning himself with things unworthy of a philosopher” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 7).
The fact that this sense had effectively reversed by the early C20th is remarkable – that ‘aesthetics refered to “cultural forms rather than sensible experience, to the imaginary rather than the empirical, to the illusory rather than the real” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 7) (pdf) . In his book, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton shows how the meaning of this term shifts from ‘critical-materialist connotations’ to ‘class-based sensibilities’, through German idealism (with caution) to the ‘neo-Kantian schemata of Habermas’ who uses it as a ‘sandbox’ to which are consigned ‘vague’, ‘irrational’ ideas.
What persists through this narrative, Buck-Morss argues, is a ‘motif of autogenesis’, the myth of man’s ability to imagine (and therefore create) something that is not; of ‘total control’, of creating the world according to plan. Modern man is, in this view, rendered asensual, anaesthetic: “The truly autogenetic being is entirely self-contained. If it has any body at all, it must be one impervious to the senses, hence safe from external control. Its potency is in its lack of corporeal response.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 8)
This can be seen in Kant’s writing on the sublime. Humankind, for Kant, is separated from nature in its ability to disobey its senses, to resist self-preservation in the face of danger. ‘Aesthetic’ judgement then defines ones ability to withstand all ‘sense-giving information of danger’, as in the case of the warrior or the general. In his example, an ‘aesthetic judgement’ decides in favor of the general over the statesman, and of both over the artist. Buck-Morss argues that this esteem is dervied from their desire to “[shape] reality rather than its representations” and in doing so “are mimicking the autogenetic prototype, the nature- and self-producing Judeo-Christian God.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 9)
“The moral being is sense-dead from the start. […] The moral will, cleansed of any contamination by the senses, sets up its own rule as a universal norm. Reason produces itself in Kant's morality the most ‘sublimely’ when one's own life is sacrificed to the idea” (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 9)
This motif of a masculine (homophilic), autonomous, autotelic, sense-dead subject, one capable of ‘self-starting’ or remaining ‘sublimely self-contained’ continues to develop throughout the C19th and into the 20th.
This is, however, not the view/history of the ‘aesthetic’ that Buck-Morss (or Benjamin?) percieves to be the most productive.
IV
Returning to this idea of the ‘human sensorium’ Buck-Morss turns from Kant to Hegel and his book ‘The Phenomenology of Mind’. In summarising Hegel’s claim that to understand the mind one should examine what it does not what it is (as a neurologist might) she also argues that the discourses of philosophy and of natural science split.
Buck-Morss then sketches out the (somewhat cybernetic?) concept of a ‘synaesthetic system’ that might reunite them, starting from the physiological idea of the ‘nervous system’ rather than the brain:
“The nervous system is not contained within the body's limits. The circuit from sense-perception to motor response begins and ends in the world. The brain is thus not an isolable anatomical body, but part of a system that passes through the person and her or his (culturally specific, historically transient) environment. (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 12) (pdf)
This system is ‘open’ not only to the world through sensory organs, but also internally through a discontinuous synaptic network.
VI
“Walter Benjamin's understanding of modern experience is [similarly] neurological” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 16) (pdf) . Relying on Freud’s insights into shellshock – in which the ego, under extreme stress, ‘employs conciousness as a buffer’ – one discovers anaesthetic processess designed to shield the organism against stimuli: “…blocking the openness of the synaesthetic system, thereby isolating present consciousness from past memory.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 16) (pdf)
Benjamin’s insight was to take this idea and apply it to modern life (industrial production, street crowds, casinos, etc) where shock ‘has become the norm’: “Perceptions that once occasioned conscious reflection are now the source of shock-impulses that consciousness must parry” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 16) (pdf) . Mimetic or compulsive responses to stimuli (such as those exhibited by those shocked) are used as a deflection against the outside world rather than a means of incoporating it (and empowering oneself). This is most evident (after Marx) in the experience of the factory.
Buck-Morss writes that “[p]erception becomes experience only when it connects with sense-memories of the past”, but in a world of constant injury, accident and ‘perceptual shock’ one becomes “cheated out of experience” as a general state. The synaesthetic system reverses its role: “[its] goal is to numb the organism, to deaden the senses, to repress memory: the cognitive system of synaesthetics has become, rather, one of anaesthetics” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 18).
What results is a ‘crisis in perception’ in which “[it] is no longer a question of training the eye to see beauty, but of restoring "perceptibility” (pdf) :
“The dialectical reversal, whereby aesthetics changes from a cognitive mode of being "in touch" with reality to a way of blocking out reality, destroys the human organism's power to respond politically even when self-preservation is at stake: Someone who is "past experiencing" is "no longer capable of telling … proven friend … from mortal enemy” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 18).
VII
Over the course of the C19th anaesthetics then becomes an ‘elaborate technics’, an industry unto itself. Hypnosis, hydrotherapy and opium are added to the narcotic arsenal of ‘coffee, tobacco, tea, and spirits…’ In 1869 doctors first prescribe ‘anaesthetic tecnhiques’ against ‘neurasthenia’, symptoms of which include ‘shattered nerves’, ‘breakdown’, etc. This condition, in line with the above, was thought to be brought about by the ‘wear and tear’ of modern life. (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 19)
Over the remainder of the C19th use of drugs such as opium became increasingly normalised, and expanded into other areas of life (day-care), medical treatment (surgery) and recreational use (‘ether frolics’). Buck-Morss notes it as significant that the “use of anaesthetics in medical surgery dates […] from the same period of manipulative experimentation with the elements of the synaesthetic system” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 21).
VIII
It is no surprise in all of this that ‘drug addiction is characteristic of modernity’ [^3 Bauman], Buck-Morss writes: “It is the correlate and counterpart of shock”. It is also no surprise, therefore, that the ‘experience of intoxication’ would expand out of this biochemical source and produce a ‘narcotic […] out of reality itself’ in the form of the phantasmagoria. (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 21-22)
A phantasmagoria is a form of technoaesthetics, described as ‘an appearance of reality that tricks the senses through technical manipulation’ (as in a light show, and later, shopping arcades, tourist bubbles and ‘experiences’). For Buck-Morss, the goal of such interventions is to manipulate ‘the synaesthetic system by control of environmental stimuli’ in an attempt to ‘anaesthetize’ the organism – not through numbing, but through flooding the senses. The political effect of this is realised in the shared experience of a physical phantasmagoric intervention (as opposed to an individualised ‘trip’) which further normalises such intoxication: “Sensory addiction to a compensatory reality becomes a means of social control” (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 22) (pdf) .
This creates a difficult situation for the artist:
“The role of "art" in this development is ambivalent because, under these conditions, the definition of "art" as a sensual experience that distinguishes itself precisely by its separation from "reality" becomes difficult to sustain” (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 22) (pdf) .
The flaneur is similarly indicative of this shift:
“Benjamin describes the flaneur as self-trained in this capacity of distancing oneself by turning reality into a phantasmagoria: rather than being caught up in the crowd, he slows his pace and observes it, making a pattern out of its surface. He sees the crowd as a reflection of his dream mood, an "intoxication" for his senses.” (Buck-Morss, 1992, p. 24) (pdf)
[The myth of ‘totality’ returns in the the unification of the senses, as in the operas of Wagner]
Marx, makes the term phantasmagoria ‘famous’ in his description of the world of commodities whic veils the production process and (much like the flaneur) encourage consumers to ‘identify them with subjective fantasies and dreams’ (Buck-Morss, 1992, page 25).