The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural Analysis. - book reviews

If it were true, as Mieke Bal critically reports and Jonathan Culler recounts, that some people assume there is "a general sense of what 'theory' is" such that "readers do not feel the need to ask what is meant by 'theory,'" then none of these four books would have any urgency, and one of them (PT) could only state the obvious (PT 33, 13).(1) For why ask about the point of theory if everybody knows what theory is, as part of knowing what theory is entails knowing its purpose? This entailment is not necessary but is warranted in this case, since all forty-plus authors who edited, introduced, wrote, or contributed to these four books have an instrumental view of theory. They understand theory mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of what it can do for them as art historians, and they have little interest in the truth (or even just value) of theory independently of this instrumentalism, or in the truth value of their own claims separate from their pursuit of particular methodological and political goals. Not surprisingly, given such an attitude about theory, there is no general sense among these art historians of what theory is, if by "general" is meant either "shared" or "overarching." For if they agree on anything, it is that no single theory has priority in art history, that there is no overarching theory for all the theories utilized in art history, and that, though here there is some dissension, there is no nonpolitical argument for using theory in art history. So it turns out that "theory" is very much up in the air after all, especially since there are other art historians who disagree with all the art theorists in these volumes.

We can therefore expect to find many different senses or, what is the same thing here, uses of theory, which can be delineated according to the distinct purposes theory is called on to serve.(2) First, theory investigates, challenges, and replaces the theoretical presuppositions and commitments of art history's methodology. Second, theory uncovers the political beliefs that shape art and the subjects who interpret it. Third, theory interprets the apparent or latent cultural meaning of images. Implicit in all three uses is a fourth one, where theory is employed to understand what constitutes (if not actually to constitute) historical artifacts as works of art (images or forms of representation) in the first place, that is, to grasp the psychological, social, and other causes or conditions of works of art, as well as of those who make and interpret them. Since the fourth use of theory remains mostly implicit, and the third generally presupposes one and two, I will group the four uses into the first two, the methodological and the political.(3) My aim is to combine an immanent critique of art theory - the self-critique of art theory as it develops within and among the essays under review here - with my own expectations of art theory as a philosopher writing on aesthetics.

The first use of theory focuses on the presuppositions of art history's methodology and is thus a form of self-criticism of what, on a theoretical level at least, shapes art history's understanding of art. The key presuppositions here relate to the concepts of truth, meaning, and, especially, objectivity. Resisted are the modernist versions of these concepts, namely, those characteristic of art history's mid-20th-century self-understanding. Instead of the modernist model of politically disinterested, ahistorical scholarship committed to objectivity (that is, standards and goals of research independent of the art historians' own values or conditions), art theorists favor politically and historically informed scholarship. Replacing modernist or objectivist art history are, to varying degrees, relativist, historicist, and, most emphatically, subjectivist methodologies. These methodologies are established through analyses of authorship, feminism, masculinity, identity/difference, vision, the gaze, power, death, and so on.(4) The net contribution of theory in art history is, on this account, multiple methodologies based on these concepts and analyses. Theory is, in effect, reduced to method.

Several essays exemplify this first use of theory while raising critical and important issues about art history, past and present. For example, in "Generating the Renaissance, or the Individualization of Culture" (PT 145-54), Stephen Bann argues that art history's notion of "the Renaissance" was invented in the 19th century as part of a generative series, a grammatical matrix including "Classical Antiquity" and "the Middle Ages" before it and "the Modern" (and "the Postmodern") after it. Calling this notion an "invention" means that it does not correspond to a positive periodization of historical reality and that it is not just a stylistic category. Rather, "the Renaissance" is "a promise of cultural synthesis" that energized 19th-century art history, enabling it to triumph symbolically over the dialectic of absence and presence that was initiated when modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment, tried to break radically from the historical past (PT 153). The implication of this "constructivist" view of art history is that periods of history and styles of art are not objective, that is, not independent of art history's methodological presuppositions. In "Form and Gender" (VC 384-411), David Summers continues this type of critical reflection on the "working language" of art history. He argues that the notion of "form" developed in philosophy since Aristotle, and utilized within art history since its inception, has been genderized throughout its history: "form," like much of the metaphorical language in which art historians discuss artistic creation, is active and masculine, while its counterpart, "content," is passive and female. The genderization of "form" was especially acute during the late 19th century, according to Summers, when art history became an established academic discipline, thereby making the institutional foundations and aesthetic assumptions of modern art history systematically exclusive of women. This last point is developed further by Lisa Tickner in "Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism" (VC 42-82), where she demonstrates how notions of masculinity and critiques of women were inscribed into British modernism between 1905 and 1915 through the writings of Augustus John, Roger Fry, and Wyndham Lewis. The very methodology of modernist art history is exclusive of women, and so is the history of art constructed on this basis. Donald Preziosi continues in this vein in "Modernity Again: The Museum as Trompe l'Oeil" (DVA 141-50) by examining the role of museums in the same foundations and assumptions of modern art history. Museums are not merely coterminous with modernity, but are actually "social instruments" for its fabrication and maintenance. In Preziosi's words, they are part of the history of the enframing of modern art and thus of art history itself. Once again, art history is not objective, in this case because it is not independent of the historical institutions that enframe it.(5)

What is problematic about this first use of theory, despite (and possibly threatening) its insights, is the following. The alleged uncritical acceptance of the modernist ahistorical methodology seems to be replaced here by different historical methodologies, each reflecting the diverse theories that inspired them, but about which these art historians are as uncritical as they have accused their modernist counterparts of being. Arguments are seldom given for this plurality of methodologies, neither singularly nor as a whole, as if the art historians believe their validity is self-evident once the interests and values of their predecessor are exposed. Or perhaps it is that the art theorists' explicitly instrumentalist view of theory has been surreptitiously converted into an implicit pragmatist view of truth, whereby the truth of theory is principally a function of its contribution to the establishment of the new methodologies, that is, of the "new art history." In this context, "truthful" means "useful," and the question "useful for what?" is answered by saying that theory is useful for constituting the subjectivity of art historians. Whatever such constitution and subjectivity mean here, and I will return to this below, it is clear that questions about the truth of art theory lead immanently to questions about subjectivity, which is to say that the first use of theory leads to the second.

Yet what about the truth claims made from within any of these new methodologies? How are we to judge them? By how well they are formulated and defended? On what terms, empirically and/or theoretically? Does it matter whether the claims could have been made without the use of theory? How are these questions to be answered? Are they even the right ones to ask? Do they need to be framed differently? And, in general, would such truth claims be weakened by attempts to argue for them? I think not, especially since the "modernist-objectivist" art history that these theorists deconstruct and replace may itself be merely their own construct, much the way they claim "the Renaissance" is a construct.(6) If I were to push these queries about truth too far, however, I would - again - encounter the second use of theory in art history, namely, the political. This is itself further evidence, I suspect, of the implicit pragmatist theory of truth in much of contemporary art theory.

Insofar as truth is discussed in these books at all, it appears in the form of the correspondence theory of truth, which is criticized as the philosophical underpinning of the modernist, objectivist methodology. Do theorists believe that art historians used to hold this theory, or that they still do? Do they? In philosophy, by contrast, the correspondence theory of truth has been considered to be untenable for most of this century in the Anglo-American as well as Continental traditions. Why is this the main if not the only theory of truth discussed explicitly in art theory (and only negatively at that)? What about the hermeneutic or semantic conceptions of truth developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Donald Davidson, respectively? What is their relationship to art theory or history? And what about the pragmatic theory of truth introduced above? Is there no argument that this theory is better in some sense than the alternatives available to art history from philosophy if not from its own resources? Do art theorists uncritically infer from Jacques Derrida's apparent conclusion in The Truth in Painting - that there is no truth in art - that therefore there is no truth in art history either? Finally, there is a further option here, namely, that a theory of truth of any type is no longer relevant to art history, as some have argued in the case of political theory (e.g., John Rawls) or science (e.g., Nelson Goodman, who of course also writes about aesthetics). But even this deflationary view of truth calls for argumentation. So, no matter how much art theorists try to avoid argumentation regarding truth, it seems they cannot escape it. This would still be true, I think, if instead of truth we were to inquire, following Nietzsche, about the "value of the values" the art theorists treasure as both the presuppositions and objects of their new methodologies. A case has to be made for these values over others, that is, a case against the values of the modernist methodology and then a case for the values of the new methodologies.

The focus of the second major use of theory is on the political values encoded in art history's object - works of art or images - and the counterpart values of the subjects of art history - the art historians who interpret art. Art history is now understood as being shaped by the interaction between these sets of values. At the same time, clear priority is given to the subject's values, so much so that "politics" in the context of art theory has more to do with "subjectivity" x Histories" (PT 202-10) that history matters because of its performative effects, not its truth.

12. Van Alphen criticizes Moxey for not disclosing his own politics; see Van Alphen's "Strategies of Identification" (VC 261). But Moxey aims only to secure the positionality of politics in art history's methodology, not to discuss specific politics, his or anybody else's (POT 17).

13. There are enough disagreements about feminism and masculinity in this context alone to suggest that these implications demand critical attention.

14. In "Light in Painting: Disseminating Art History" (DVA 49-64), Mieke Bal discusses three related notions - intertextuality, polysemy, and meaning - that are also invoked, at least implicitly, by some of the other authors.

15. The other three examples Moxey offers are intended to illustrate further that "the signifying systems of the past can be interpreted only in the light of the signifying systems [and politics] of the present" (TOP 114).

16. The invocation of Gadamer, and in particular his notion of the "fusion of horizons," suggests that convergence may be the implied norm. See, for example, F. R. Ankersmit, "Kantian Narrativism and Beyond" (PT 155-60, 193-97); Michael Ann Holly, "Witnessing an Annunciation" (PT 220-31, esp. 228); and Moxey's discussion of "reception" in POT. But we can still ask for an argument for this view, especially as Gadamer's "fusion" provokes divergent interpretations, only some of which are compatible with the views these theorists otherwise defend. In general, the appeal to Gadamer to defend a notion of subjectivity in art history is prima facie problematic since, in an admittedly different context, he critiques the subjectivization of aesthetics beginning with Kant.

17. The relevance of the "ought" here is to point out that Moxey's account is normative, not just descriptive, and that this normativity needs to be discussed explicitly, I think, if his argument is to be persuasive.

18. At one point, Moxey actually criticizes the notion of fusion in reception aesthetics (TOP 39), but at other times he seems to rely on it, or perhaps on a notion of identity or identification. On the last issue, cf. van Alphen's "Strategies of Identification" (VC 260-71).

19. Cf. Bal's depiction of theory as a "way of interacting with objects" (PT 47).

20. Norman Bryson claims that "reading" or interpretation is "as fundamental an element" in a painting as the paint itself; Looking at the Overlooked, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, 10. I think there is a link between this claim and Holly's argument here that works of art, as historical artifacts, prefigure their own historiographical accounts (VC 350), but I will have to pursue this link elsewhere.

21. It is perhaps in this context that Brian McHale's call for "descriptive poetics," or what he calls mid-range theory, ought to be heeded ("Whatever Happened to Descriptive Poetics," PT 56-65).

22. By contrast, Mark Wigley, in "The Domestication of the House: Deconstruction after Architecture" (DVA 203-27), analyzes, among other things, the role of architecture in Derrida's writing before he explicitly began to discuss it.

23. It is worth noting here that the topic of the 1996 College Art Association annual meeting is precisely this problem of the object in contemporary art history.

24. Particularly in relation to my role as editor of The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Garland, forthcoming).

25. Another example is D. N. Rodowick's "Impure Mimesis, or the Ends of the Aesthetic" (DVA 96-117), where he discusses the Derridian genealogical critique of the (Kantian) autonomy of aesthetics.

MICHAEL KELLY Department of Philosophy Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027

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