Anders Marner, Umeå University, Sweden,
Signs as communication and dialogue
Imatra, June 15 1996
George Lakoff has been discussing metaphor as a cognitive process, not just taking active part in poetry, but rather as a way of thinking. The hierarchy of values all humans encompass- the Great Chain of Being- creates possibilites to unite different domains that we are acquainted with or strange to us. It can be difficult to evaluate what is close to or strange to the individual but the natural point of departure is the hierarchy of values that is in the lifeworld. In that order man is more important than animals and animals are more important than plants or things. The things can be separated in complex objects and on a lower level natural physical objects.
The english linguist Michael Halliday talks about a theme rheme-relation which means that in a clause you separate what is talked about (theme) and what is said about this (rheme).
One could do the same with a picture. This means that the pictorial elements are hierarchized according to importance so that the theme is the center of attention and a recieving part for additional meaning and that a sending part, rheme, is subordinated and adds a new content to the thematized part. A way of reading comes up where a content is transmitted to the tematized part. The theme will be supplemented with further information. In such a way the picture will be given a message.
Surralism can be considered a great narrative with a before and an after and a human can be in different parts of this narrative. For surralism there is an eidetic faculty that has been lost in modern society. That's why we live in a limited lifeworld. Man in primitve cultures and children still has rests of this faculty of pure mental representation without the presence of the object, a unity of perception and representation. Surrealism is aiming at such a unity.
André Breton says that the spirit should pass by the manifest content of events to raise to consciousness about their latent content. That is, in a first step Breton, from a position in the lifeworld, is aiming at the latent and hidden content. In the lifeworld we are alienated and want to get in contact with something else. There is a spiritual point of experience that he wants to reach. Breton wants to counteract the opacity in the lifeworld and to create a transparent world. It can be done by connecting objects in rhetoric operations where sparks between the levels give rise to light and transparency. What is hidden and latent in the lifeworld shall be visible and life itself will be a work of art or a dream. The surrealistic experience can therefore in a first step be hidden and latent, or on the other hand, when surrealism is hegemonic, further in the narrative, be manifest and directly present.
In his article "Signe ascendant" Breton is discussing surrealism as a non-reversible process where the development is directed to what is put in the place of the other. The metaphor moves between the two levels in a certain direction and is never reversible, and it is aimed at pleasure, tranquility and concordant purposes.
While what is thematized in traditional metaphorics is the vehicle and the tenor stands for the vehicle, things tend to be the opposite in Bretons ascendant sign: the vehicle will be the tenor in the irreversible process. The tenor then is not referring unambigously to the vehicle, but replaces it. This means that also the tenor can be thematized. But if the tenor will be thematized the effect of the metaphor ceases and becomes an ascendant spiral of a successive spiritualization.
Now, if we put Bretons´ theory of metaphor next to Lakoffs model we find that it is ascending in the Great Chain. But Raoul Ubac has made a series of photographs where for instance the eiffeltower is transformed into fossils. The central part of the picture, the theme, is the building. The architecture (theme) in the pictures is connected with (plastic properties which can be seen as) fossiles (rheme) that makes the building more like a fossile and is not an ascending rhetoric, so Bretons theory is not always right.
Another aspect of Bretons theory is that it can be seen as a familiarization when he talks about the spiritual world moving into the lifeworld. The intention is to change the world, that's why the surrealists want the lifeworld to be carrier of the content of fantasy and not just art and dream.
So Bretons theory of metaphor has got a movement from low to high, where the high replaces the low, which leads to an ascending spiral. At the same time there also is an aspiration for placing what is high in the lifeworld which means that it no longer shall be hidden or latent but manifest and apparent.
If one part of a rhetoric union is more familiar and as a rheme in Hallidays meaning is projected to the strange theme a familiarization will occur. The strange part will be more familiar to the beholder. In advertising it is common that a rhetoric union consists of a for the beholder in the lifeworld positive valued object that appears next to the commodity. The commodity can be considered more strange to the beholder since the function of advertising is to make it more familiar. Positive and familiar values will be transferred to the commodity. If a beautiful girl shows her body next to a bottle of shampoo the commodity will be humanized/sexualized for the beholder and as a consequence more familiarized.
Breton gives some examples of familiarization. In a stalactitecave he in a stoneformation sees an egg in an egg cup. On a mountainwall he sees a sculpted cloak (its a clothing, a kind of mantle). Breton projects the egg, which is in absentia, onto the stone, that is in praesentia. So what is strange in the cave becomes something familiar on the breakfasttable. The familiarization in advertising, Bretons familiarization but also his ascending metaphorics can in this perspective be variations of similar processes in action.
Can the eiffeltowerfossile be familiarizing? Probably not, it would mean that the strange fossile as a theme would be more like the well known eiffeltower as a rheme.
But if one level of the rhetorics is more strange than another and this part as a rheme is transferred onto the familiar part as a theme an estrangement will occur (fig 1).
In what direction should a surrealistic work of art really be red? Are the surrealistic preferences for placing fantasies in landscapes with horizon an estrangement or a familiarization?
If we follow the recievers´ perspective of the pragueschool of semiotics estrangement and an ascending sign but also theme and rheme should be seen in relation to where the reciever is placed and to what he/she has the consciousness directed to. At least the naive viewer is in the lifeworld and in that case it must be that world that is thematized, in lifeworld or in picture. The beholder will only reluctantly move from the room of the beholder (that is the place in the art gallery from which the picture is seen) to the referential room (the place just outside the pictured room from which the illusion is seen). What in the picture, as a rheme, is transferred to the lifeworld (as theme) is then according to Breton an upwardgoing movement that in the long run will make the lifeworld more spiritualized.
As have been said the surrealistic view can be seen as a "great narrative" where people can place themselves in the different parts of the narrative. If the interest for an alternative lifeworld takes command, like in the case of Breton, further in the narrative, the ordinary lifeworld can't any longer be thematized, and something else will come in the foreground. What is highlighted ought to be the artworld and especially the surrealist experience. In this situation the beholder will be in a later phase of the great narrative when the surrealist experience is hegemonic and the dream seems to be "real" , while in the earlier phase the reality were like a dream.
It will be a manifest instead of hidden meaning that will be thematized. The beholder will now view the picture from inside it's referential room, which means that the insight will be more vivid.
In Bretons aesthetics the ascending movement probably dominates over the familiarizarion. The Bretonian surrealist narrative then is a successive spiritualization by an irreversible and ascending metaphorics with a constantly deferred thematization. The aim is to expand the lifeworld upwards.
But can we really talk about a surrealistic alternative lifeworld? Since rhetorics only works temporarily and ceases when the beholder leaves the work of art, the surrealist experience particularly will be effective only in the artworld. Can surrealism still be rhetoric and at the same time be a part of lifeworld? Metaphorics with a deferred tematization probably lifts to the sky without really influencing the theme. It can't work the way intended and works only in the picture and in the surrealistic experience because the connection between theme and rheme is to weak.
We are only temporarily in the surrealistic experience. The artist declares the lifeworld invalid in the pictures he paints in his studio, then drives home to the ordinary lifeworld (food, children, dishes etc) And the beholder leaves the gallery and goes home. Maybe the utopy of Breton cannot be carried out in large scale since everything tends to be as usual after an artexperience. Can we then talk about the surrealistic experience as an alternative lifeworld? There seems to exist a book-keeping with double entries, one in the lifeworld and another in the surrealistic experience and in the artworld.
Another problem concerns the relation between the two parts of the rhetorics. According to Breton a union is supposed but the picture may resist such a device. Since unions of figures and objects according to Göran Sonesson also can be seen as oxymorons, objects that are prototypically different and in opposition, one could reflect upon if Breton in his rhetorics counteract his own utopian aims.
The theory recommends a certain interpretation of pictures, but it may very well be a normative interpretation. To explain a surrealistic work of art with the help of the metaphortheory of Breton is therefore a risky enterprise and can be a linguistic imperialism since the interpretation is done with the help of another text, an instruction of how it is supposed to be red.
In that case it is an anchorage (ancrage) according to Roland Barthes or a separated figure in absentia according to Groupe µ. Why is it always in art history supposed that pictures (seen as texts) should be interpreted with the help of another (written) text? One can as well interprete Bretons writing with the help of a picture and then one may find that Bretons metaphortheory is questionable. Some themerhemeanalysis of surrealistic photographs suggests that the pictures are not unequivocally ascending- not preferred according to Bretons theory. The picture of Ubac really is an oxymoron. Nature (fossile) and Culture (eiffeltower), creates a tension.
The conflicts within surrealism gave rise to a surrealistic core connected to Breton and some of the defected surrealists gathered around Georges Bataille. Instead of focusing on spiritualization and union Bataille biased isolation, animalization and materialization.
He rejects the bretonian utopia, the final harmony and the spiritualization and he demands a frequent transgression of a prohibition. This can be done in sacrificial rituals, selfmutilation, perversion and feasting etc., through contact with the animal in man and only momentarily.
Another important opposition for Bataille is homogeneity and heterogeneity. Homogeneity means when human relations are governed by rules and when they are characterized by interchangability. The homogeneous repells the heterogeneous and works consequently as censorship. The heterogeneous on the other hand is the measureless and incomparable, the radical other.
There is a connection between the ideas of Bataille and some surrealist pictures. J-A Boiffard has extreme close-ups of male toes where the naturalistic physical properties are displayed; hair, wrinkles, the carelessly cut nails etc. Another example is an extreme close-up of a salivasoaked mouth with a formless tongue. The isolation in the extreme close-ups stands in an intertextual relationship to the ideas concerning sacifice and mutilation and are attempts to counteract the bretonian humanism. A part of the visible world is divided to counteract the homogeneity in the same way as in the sacrifice ritual and the selfmutilation of van Goghs ear, which Bataille honours.
But to reach outside himself Bataille is forced, for instance in the idea of the ritual of sacrifice, to apply signrelations, to ritualize. The heterogeneous flow of meaning seems to be dependent of agreements and should according to his theory become homogeneous, in opposition of his own intentions.
A metaphor of the type man is a plant means that man is with Lakoffs term target, or theme according to Halliday. What Lakoff calls source, or with Halliday rheme, is transferred to man and his special properties, reason, moral, art etc.will momentarily be annihilated for the advantage of lower biological properties that man shares with the plant. The aesthetics of Bataille functions as a downwardgoing in the great chain. Man is seen as bestial and the material is transferred onto the cultural. And what is descendant and isolated is also an estrangement, far away and lower. For Bataille estrangement is the main rhetoric device.
The fundamental operation in Batailles (as well as Bretons) theory therefore is metaphoric, in spite of all criticism directed to language, metaphorics and "idealism", and is aiming on seeing man as an animal or an object. His worldview as a whole is an oxymoron: man is an animal/ man is a thing.
What do the pictures mean? Naturally they can be experienced as pictures of the world at a short distance, but they can also in the world of Bataille be seen as (unsucessful) attempts to, with the help of isolation, reach beyond the discontinous.
In Bataille we find another narrative than in Breton. Man here develops through isolation and ejection. Bretons narrative on the other hand can be seen as an extension or a reconstruction of the lifeworld through union. The strange becomes familiarized by a ascending expansion of mans universe.
In the theory of Breton fantasy can always be carried out, that's why both parts of the rhetorics can be in praesentia. For Bataille on the contrary the discontinous is in praesentia and thematized while the hidden is in absentia and not wholly within reach and therfore rheme. In a "Bataillean" picture the beholder is enclosed in the discontinuity. We are here, but we long somewhere else.
This means that a surrealistic picture can have different meanings for Breton respectively Bataille since they place it in two different narratives. An interpretation of a work of art is determined by other aspects than the picture itself, above all the artworld and its hierarchies.
To read such secondary meanings in pictures demands a principle of relevance that a great narrative can offer and it determines the interpretation so that rhetorics is understood the "right" way. But it demands that the lifeworld is out of play and another text is put in relation to the picture.
Bretons or Batailles writings therefore give anchorage to the surrealistic photographs and has an intertextual role in relation to them. But one can't understand the pictures from their theories other than secondarily. The writings of Breton and Bataille seem to be semiotic, but since they are normative and don't bother about how the pictures are experienced but only how they should be experienced, their role is rhetoric. They are paratexts not metatexts. Maybe it's only semiotics that can explain the mechanism of the pictures.
Back to index
Author: Anders Marner
E-mail:
anders.marner@educ.umu.se