I
Let me formulate a bold hypothesis: “Art is perception generated by logic.”
In other words, while I tentatively acknowledge the well-known classical definition that science represents rational knowledge and art represents perceptual knowledge, this perception is in no way spontaneous or intuitive. Rather, it is a case here of secondary perception, which first becomes possible only through the mediation of reason, understood as the opposite of perception.
Of course perception preexists reason and is fully capable of standing alone even without that mediation. Dogs and monkeys lack reason, but perception undoubtedly exists in both. (This is the first system of conditioned response.)
Such perception is of course partially shared by man, who possesses reason (the second system of conditioned response). Although mutual understanding between man and animals is to some degree an anthropomorphic misunderstanding, one can nonetheless imagine that it is partly based on this shared perception. Yet even if such perception were the same in a physiological sense, it already exists in man in a qualitatively different form than it does in animals. This is what I mean by secondary perception, which is influenced and altered by the appearance of reason.
Take, for example, the apparently instinctive habit of walking. Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, the author of The Wild Boy of Aveyron, refers to the education of this wolf-boy to brilliantly describe how walking is by no means entirely instinctive but rather a habit that is only first acquired in the context of human society (society is formed through the mediation of reason). The wolf-boy had lived outside society and could move backward and forward only by leaping, despite the fact that his limbs were more than adequately developed. Also of interest is how difficult it was to train the boy to fix his gaze. Having built a bulwark against the contingencies of nature through the formation of society, man gained the freedom to gaze and concentrate on individual things. Wild animals are constantly exposed to contingent dangers, however, and so it is much more natural for them to pay close attention to all that takes place around them. It is only from the perspective of man that things appear free to seek new relations or agreements outside the immediate relation of friend or enemy.
This is, in a word, so-called “human sensibility,” and while this topic might not be worth taking up, it is nevertheless the case that the descriptive term “characteristically human” is excessively vague and somewhat difficult to use. Generally, this description remains fixed as an intuitive expression based on moral criteria. As goes without saying, however, my notion of human sensibility here is quite unrelated to moral law. This is precisely why I am rejecting the familiar term “characteristically human” and have chosen the slightly pedantic expression “secondary perception.”
There is also the danger that this term “characteristically human” will be understood in merely a popular sense as advanced through cultural refinement. Far from a process of simple, continuous refinement, properly human perception is accompanied by leaps and interruptions as based on the influence and transformation of “reason.” I have no intention to present here a discourse on human perception, but I would at least like to clarify the following point: the alteration of “perception” through the intervention of “reason” is dramatic and dialectical. In other words, the fact that changes in “perception” reveal the decisive influence of “reason” has already been proven materially (physiologically).
We can virtually declare as a scientific fact that all perceptual knowledge contains the hidden intervention of rational knowledge, without which it could not be formed. This can be seen, for example, in the deformation of spatial cognition (warped perception through damage to reason) that accompanies aphasia; or, conversely, in the parallel relation in infants between language acquisition and sensory differentiation; and also in the various relations between lower and higher responses as set forth in the theory of conditioned response.
II
The reason that I have started this essay with a long abstract discussion about the relation between reason and perception despite the fact that my theme here concerns artistic revolution is not due to any ulterior motive to endow my discourse with an academic style. Rather, it is because it seems easiest to judge both the properly revolutionary claims in art and that antirevolutionary activity that poses itself as revolutionary by seeing the understanding of perception as key.
Take, for example, one major trend in contemporary art: the claim for independence from literature. This claim is oriented toward artistic purification and has appeared in genres ranging from the fine arts, which was established prior to modernity, to such new forms as cinema. Such claim pretends to be new, but it is extremely doubtful whether it is new in any essential sense.
It is perhaps understandable why the ancient genre of the fine arts would wish to restore its independence and identity vis-à-vis the relatively (i.e., relative to fine arts) newer genre of literature. Insofar as it easily falls back on literary themes, the fine arts is no match for the more modern media that is the printed expression of literature. The fine arts thus surely requires an expression unique to it. The object to be sought in pictorial expression is strictly that which is irreplaceable by language.
Of course I am not completely disparaging of this orientation. On the contrary, I believe that the results produced by the pursuit of this antiliterary object are irreplaceably valuable. Efforts to pursue things more concretely and practically by isolating them from meaning have also been immensely stimulating for the literary world, which resides in the collusion between meaning and object. In its illumination of the world of the subconscious, for example, the surrealist movement has been the most successful in the genre of the fine arts.
One also finds an attempt to manipulate pure sensation in a purely sensory manner. Unlike surrealism, which in its aim to disrupt meaning revealed its attachment to the world of meaning, the path of the abstractionists can be described as more concrete and committed to the antiliterature movement in the sense that this group takes as its point of departure the rupture with meaning.
It might sound contradictory to describe the abstractionists as concrete, but my meaning is as follows. In terms of why the abstractionists are referred to as abstractionists, this abstraction appears in the sense that what is expressed (the painting) is detached not from the concrete “things” it expresses that exist behind it but rather from everything “on the other side.” This group is also abstract in the sense that the expressive materials it employs possess an abstract existence in, for example, color, line and matière. Yet such abstraction is slightly different in character from abstraction in a rigorous sense. If concrete entities are signs vis-à-vis human sensibility, then abstraction generally refers to the signs of those signs (as represented by language), which are unable to stimulate the senses directly. It is possible to act on the senses only by following an indirect course in which one evokes the first sign by eliciting sensory stimulation. However, the abstraction of abstract painting in no way aims for the sign of a sign. Rather, it very much takes as its primary goal the direct elicitation of the senses. That is to say, it does not stimulate the senses by recalling an actual “something”; rather, it seeks to create new signs by appealing more directly to the senses through those signs themselves. In other words, it artificially creates concrete things. In this sense, even the paradox that abstract painting is the most concrete appears fully viable.
Now this tendency is pushed to the extreme by the claims of Informel painting, which is regarded as the champion of the contemporary revolution in the fine arts. For me, however, such new claims are less important than the fact that Informel painting occupies the site at which one necessarily arrives by following the purification of the fine arts to its logical conclusion. It is clear that Informel painting was formed through a virtually complete rupture with literature. One can no longer discover any meaning or form that is organized by language and can be stored somewhere in an existing “cupboard of signs.” It seems that Informel painting can be described as one of the symbols of the antiliterature movement.
However, I by no means regard the claims of Informel painting as a revolutionary event in the context of contemporary art. The antiliterature movement was able to play a revolutionary role for a certain time because of the dialectical opposition it maintained in its tension with literature. By exceeding and severing that tension, this movement becomes unrelated to literature, exactly like the coelacanth, which endures a living death in being trapped in an evolutionary dead end. Informel painting is merely the reverse of the notion of literature for literature’s sake, and absolutely no actuality vis-à-vis the present can be expected of it.
III
The positive meaning of the antiliterature movement derives wholly from its challenge to the empiricism (i.e., the loss of any dialectic between meaning and thing) of literature for literature’s sake. If this movement simply remains content with the genre of antiliterature and lapses into a position of nonliterature, then it clearly will do nothing except fall into aestheticism.
As I wrote at the beginning of this essay, human perception is established by reason. The relation between reason and perception is not one of contradiction and conflict, as is generally believed, such that the expansion of one leads to the suppression or contraction of the other. Rather, it is easy to create a certain state of stability between them in which each supports the other. This balance appears in the stereotype of so-called “everyday sensibility.” Moreover, one often hears reference to the suffering caused by the conflict between reason and perception, but the truth is that conflict is not the substance of suffering. Rather, there are many cases in which suffering results from the urge to restore the balance that has been destroyed between reason and perception.
In other words, perception cannot be expanded by the contraction of reason, just as reason cannot be expanded by the contraction of perception. Balance itself is neither conservative nor progressive. But it is conservative to wish to avoid expansion on the part of either perception or reason so as to maintain balance, whereas a progressive function is introduced when one attempts to maintain equilibrium by expanding one of these in conjunction with the other. One might say that the task of art consists in temporarily disturbing this balance so as to make use of its restorative force in a progressive manner in order to expand and develop knowledge as a whole.
When one conceives of art in this manner, one realizes that literature is both extremely advantageous and disadvantageous.
The special characteristic of literature, in a word, is that it is an art that is expressed through language. Language is constituted by the signs of signs and is essentially abstract. Hence it was able to fully develop its abilities through the spread of print technology. Prose art reached its golden age through the mass production of signs of signs.
Insofar as prose art is art, however, it must appeal to perception. Yet the direct encoding of signs of signs would at most lead to calligraphy while the meaning of print media would be lost. Signs of signs strictly in and of themselves attempt to reproduce the stimulation of signs. From another perspective, this appears to be a very cumbersome detour. Simply because of this, some people feel that it is only natural to make way for such emerging arts as film and television. This is one of the grounds behind the discourse on the death of fiction.
Of course this is nothing more than a superficial discourse based on ignorance of literature. As a historical genre, the fine arts preexists literature, and I regard with some sympathy its fall into a nonliterary stance as an unfortunate instinct for self-preservation. Yet the fact that even such new media as television and film regard literature as a threat strikes me as delusional and a slight overestimation of literature. This is truly a senseless case of “literaphobia.” For even if one remains silent and leaves it alone, literature has already announced the end of its reign.
I regard the new claims on the part of “literature for literature’s sake” as themselves a verdict of literature’s bankruptcy. Of course the new proponents of literature for literature’s sake do not display any old-fashioned aestheticism. The principle of supremacy is similar, but it is articulated differently.
The proponents of literature for literature’s sake make the following case. Thought can be expressed only by language, and thus the art form most endowed with thought is language-based literature. Media such as film that treat language as subordinate are merely a secondary art form.
To be sure, thought can be expressed only by language. One can even say that thought is language itself. No one can deny this because thought is systematic reason and reason is structured by “signs of signs.” The only person who would deny this point is an unscientific idealist who divorces thought from language and makes no distinction between parrot talk and human words.
However, the present era is a time when men are desperately seeking thought or ideas. In this sense, even the notion of “literature for literature’s sake” seems to have a point.
Even when newly dressed up in the form of thought for thought’s sake, however, literature for literature’s sake is in the end nothing but a principle of supremacy. Just as proponents of nonliterature misunderstood the relation between reason and perception, so too does literature for literature’s sake completely overlook the dialectical relation between these two. One might regard this as ignorance of literature on the part of the proliterature advocates, for it mistakes the meaning of language (reason) in art in the same way as do proponents of the dead-end antiliterature movement. Even if one group underestimates literature while the other group overestimates it, the reverse side of a glove is still a glove.
“Existence” cannot be spoken of only through language, but neither can it be spoken of without language. It is only through the tension and dialectic between these two that “existence” first appears and becomes an object for human action and knowledge.
IV
The balance between reason and perception (everyday sensibility) contains the same powerful restorative force as a gyroscope. Expansion or damage on one side leads to an attempt to restore equilibrium as the other side immediately (if painfully) readjusts as a counterbalance. For example, the death of one’s father or lover destroys one’s everyday balance as based on their existence, and one must shed tears in order to offset that instability until finally creating a balance that takes their absence into account. Yet a new equilibrium is finally restored. If not, that is a sign of neurosis or mental illness.
Art can be described as a work that, so to speak, deliberately plots the murder of one’s father or lover. Of course this is true not only of art, for pure theory also shocks one’s everyday sense of balance. Marxism and the theory of evolution would be representative examples here. In these cases, the disruption of balance is triggered from the domain of reason. That explains why anticommunism is more emotional than rational.
Art, however, destroys one’s equilibrium strictly from the standpoint of perception. Or rather, the destruction or perhaps proliferation of perception is lumped together and called art. Unsurprisingly, then, one recognizes in art a clear effectiveness and sense of purpose. One example here would be the overcoming of an older balance for a new balance, while another consists of tempering and reinforcing the restorative force of balance itself.
The demand for such effectiveness in art rests less on the artist’s subjectivity or the recipient’s desire for self-improvement than it does on the much more powerful social situation. For despite individual differences, a person’s inner balance between reason and perception (knowledge is precisely the internal dialogue brought about by external reality) goes beyond these and involves a social and historical background, one that can certainly be categorized by such common factors as period, class, and ethnic-national characteristics.
The other day I saw Sugawara Takashi’s adaptation of Michael V. Gazzo’s play A Hatful of Rain (under the adapted title of Yoru no kisetsu [Night’s Seasons]). Not only were the lines and names changed to Japanese, but everything from customs to social background was replaced by an unmistakably Japanese reality. The words “A Work by Sugawara Takashi” appeared on the pamphlets, so it is likely that even the play’s story and plot underwent considerable changes. On the surface, at least, it was a completely Japanese play. Nevertheless, my experience at the theater was very strange. While watching the piece, America seemed to inadvertently ooze from the background onstage, and I suddenly felt as if I were watching an American play. Finally, I had to make great efforts to convince myself that this was a play set in Japan.
This goes to show that the ethnic-national characteristics that sustain an artwork—that is, the work’s proper social background—of course not only go beyond language, customs, and geographical conditions but even go beyond phenomenal events. Perhaps one must not simply acknowledge reality here but also consider the deeper question of form (i.e., the equation that represents the balance between reason and perception).
I am straying from my topic, but one often hears about the debate between theme and style. These terms are generally understood as opposites, with theme identified as content and style as vessel. In considering the common denominator of the ethnic-nation, however, it appears that the form of the theme itself must be reexamined. Isn’t it the case that abstract themes that depart from form lose even their actuality as theme? When one thinks about it, even works that are criticized as formalistic possess their own themes. If these works must be criticized, it is less because of form than of errors in theme. If it is true that there is no theme without form and no form without theme, then we must be bold enough to discontinue such confused assessments of a work as “formalistic.”
Yet to say that art is of its time—the notion of “ethnic-national characteristics” is another way of describing something as proper to its time—does not necessarily mean that art is unilaterally subordinate or adaptable to its time. Rather, it would be more correct to describe it as untimely in the sense that it takes as its goal the destruction of balance. Generally, however, this is fundamentally different from a supratemporality that negates its time. Art is based fully on affirming its time, and so one can indeed describe it as “of its time” since it intends to change that time. Virtually every time or period contains within itself a self-destructive dynamic, and this is constitutive of the period itself.
Just as a time or period contains aspects of both self-preservation and self-destruction, so too of course does art appear with these two corresponding tendencies. If one were to classify these formally, they would appear as conservative art and progressive art. It is no longer possible to ignore politics when trying to grasp the present in all its increasing enormity and complexity. Balzac depicted the necessity of his time despite remaining very conservative in his ideas, but such a situation no longer prevails today. Nevertheless, I do not believe that one can judge the conservative or progressive nature of art simply from the political perspective that appears in the work. Of course I have no intention to use as evaluative criteria such moods as conscientiousness, Establishment sensibility, or spirit of resistance. If one is interested in such things, then it seems more straightforward to use such stamped or formulaic criticism as, for example, how often the term “revolution” is used, how often the word “strike” appears, or how many workers appear.
I believe that the criteria for judging the progressiveness of art can be found entirely in the work’s ability to bring shock, excitement, and pain to the balance between reason and perception, thereby destabilizing and revitalizing that balance. In terms of the “image versus language debate” in film, the criteria can be found in the degree of disturbance caused by driving a wedge (or new image) between image and language in the context of their collusion and free exchange. (Thus I cannot agree either with those theorists who regard the camera as a fountain pen in believing that images alone can express thought nor with those theorists who view film as a secondary art form in claiming that the subordinate treatment of language renders it difficult to express thought. All images invariably possess a corresponding language as their counterbalance. New images destroy that balance and immediately develop a correspondingly new linguistic realm. Thus images can think in the sense that they must invariably give rise to linguistic activity.)
As goes without saying, however, this determination of the progressiveness of art is simply what I have repeatedly described as the function of art in general. I am hardly unbiased here, but I do believe that art must inherently be progressive in order to be art. Even if one doesn’t specifically speak of artistic revolution, true artistic creation is nothing other than artistic revolution. I am more or less indifferent to art that is not part of this artistic revolution, and I do not even regard such works as art—or at least I have omitted such works from the object of my criticism.
V
This role of artistic revolution was once played by the antiliterature movement, as represented by the avant-garde. This is not to say, of course, that the avant-garde as such was antiliterature. In their discovery of the subconscious and pursuit of the objet, etc., the avant-garde embodied an attitude of rejecting any collusion between perception (image) and reason (language) so as to challenge unknown perceptions. This attitude appeared most powerfully in the form of antiliterature, and it is certainly no accident that the avant-garde movement left its most substantial marks less in literature than in the fine arts, film, and theater. Even though it risked losing its oppositional tension with literature and so becoming trapped in a dead end, it is an undeniable fact that this antiliterature movement fulfilled the inherent role of art in revitalizing the relation between man and reality.
But I believe that the role played by the antiliterature movement is now over, or at least art can no longer be revolutionized according to its formulations. Antiliterature could become artistically revolutionary only in a nineteenth-century-type situation when prose fully reigned over all the other artistic genres. Today, however, literature has already been ousted from its throne, and this movement is being used as an excuse for aestheticism.
The work of artistic patricide as represented by destroying the balance between reason and perception cannot be replaced by the simple slogan of “antiliterature.” The antiliterature movement could be effective only as artistic revolution when literature visibly appeared as a powerful antithesis. If, however, there was a weakening in the earth’s gravitational pull and the moon’s rotational speed increased, the moon would stray from its orbit and cease being a satellite. In its neglect and abandonment of literature, the antiliterature movement has necessarily lost its critical spirit and ceased being art.
The revolution in culture brought about by print is already a thing of the past. Following the discovery of film, one sees in radio and television the beginning of a revolution brought about by the airwaves. This is not simply an issue of old and new. As with print at the time of its invention, this trend represents the proliferation of mass production and popularization through new media. Expansion in quantity is invariably converted to quality. Like those religious authorities who once denounced print as the invention of the devil, those who disdain the airwaves in their belief in the superiority of print will soon become but a distant memory.
One basic difference from the time of print’s invention, however, can be seen in the fact that airwave culture has from the beginning been supported and developed by vast amounts of capital. Might makes right. Although the situation today has not yet gotten to the point as to cause any qualitative changes, nonetheless one does see even university professors spout thoughtless, conventional views about literature’s uselessness.
In such circumstances, the role played by the antiliterature movement can be only a very strange one. These children of beggars have overnight come to be seen as the hidden progeny of kings. The popular notion regarding the purification of genres might appear as if art were defending its isolated outpost against the force of mass communication, but the antiliterature movement’s posture of resistance against their past beggary during the reign of literature is now nothing more than a fossilized relic. Although the notion of literary superiority would also form part of this purification of genres, the champions of such purification still speak of their antiliterary views, which makes me suspect that they have not yet forgotten their past resentments against literature.
If the goal of art is to revitalize the tension between reason and perception, I believe that today’s slogan for artistic revolution would be less “antiliterature” than, indeed, “a reevaluation of the spirit of literature.”
There are those who will reply, “Yes, but . . .” Of course cinema still hovers at the level of literary adaptations and literary films. I have repeatedly protested this trend, and my views remain unchanged today. I have not changed my mind on this point.
My notion of a reevaluation of the spirit of literature is essentially different from introducing literature to other genres. Literary films are of course merely abridged popularizations that save on their promotional funds by exploiting the titles of well-known works. These films don’t even introduce literary qualities, but I would reject them even if they did. I am calling for literature as an opposition in order to awaken tension. For that matter, this might also be referred to as “critical spirit,” which is the most prosaic of all prose.
In the past, the antiliterature movement was always intensely conscious of literature. Artistic revolution was thus possible. It is not that counterrevolutionary elements were found in literature itself. Literature of course cannot deny its own guilt in failing to duly criticize its own weakness as a linguistic art (its indirectness or abstraction consists in necessarily reexpressing the perceptual world through the mediation of language understood as reason or signs of signs), compliantly taking advantage of its reign to straddle the everyday balance (or stereotype) between reason and perception, and uncritically conflating meaning and existence. Nevertheless, it has worked to turn its weakness to good use and develop and expand perception.
Yet this ability to turn its own weakness to good use is by no means limited to already existing literature, for such function already exists in language itself. Just as man expanded his range of objects through the use of tools, language’s power of abstraction has provided important wings of imagination to the concrete world. Take for example the invention of the Invisible Man: it was the power of language that linked together the otherwise concretely incompatible entities of invisibility and man. Another example would be the Cheshire Cat that leaves behind its own “grin” in Alice in Wonderland, for such a figure cannot appear through any other method. It is hardly unusual to find examples in which literature has turned its indirectness to good use and successfully discovered new forms of concreteness. (Nevertheless, literature must be faulted for its inability to make such inventions part of the literary mainstream.)
I even suspect that it might be literature itself that was the arsonist responsible for lighting the fire of the antiliterature movement in the other genres. Since antiliterature is a conscious method, it is preceded by language and criticism, so such possibility cannot be discounted. Isn’t it correct that the substance of the antiliterature movement lies less in the search for genre propriety than in the shared task of art, which in revitalizing the tension between reason and perception goes beyond genre? This is precisely the meaning I refer to when speaking of a reevaluation of literature.
Discovering the shared task of art that goes beyond genre and revitalizing stereotypes through patricide—these are not simply ideals, for they must necessarily be reflected in concrete artistic creation. This requires an orientation toward synthesis rather than purification. Rather than a mere mechanical synthesis that integrates genres, however, this is an operation that animates the spirit of dialectical synthesis as found in the tension between reason (abstraction) and perception (the concrete) within all genres. My call for musicals of course relates to this point. The same is true of Brecht’s notion of Verfremdungseffekt, or “defamiliarization effect.” Brecht often brings print onstage, but his aim is very much conflict rather than harmony or explanation.
Artistic revolution today is thus beginning to move toward synthesis in its departure from the one-dimensional attempts at purification on the part of the antiliterature movement. When art joins together with the quantitative revolution taking place in the new mass media of airwave culture, it will invariably discover new relations with the masses. Establishing such new relations with the masses is precisely the ultimate goal of artistic revolution.