georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

History of Art, Practice 35a specifically art-historical point of view’’ has a chance of missing whatis essential. Not that the history of art must by definition miss theessential, quite the contrary. But the history of art must constantlyreformulate its epistemological extension.Like every defense and like every denial, the discourse of specificityaims to gloss over—but without ever managing to—this self-evidence;it is itself determined by a system of thought that, originally, wasforeign to it. The whole problem starts here, for it is by glossing overits own models that a knowledge alienates itself from them, forgetsitself, and ruins itself. The defense consists in rejecting all ‘‘imported’’concepts; the denial consists in refusing to see that this is all anyoneever does—use and transform imported concepts, borrowed concepts.Doing a catalogue does not come down to a pure and simple knowledgeof objects logically laid out, for there are always choices to bemade from among ten sorts of knowledge, ten logics of laying-out,and every catalogue is the result of a choice—implicit or not, consciousor not, ideological in any case—with regard to a particulartype of classification category. 26 Beyond the catalogue, attribution anddating themselves engage a whole ‘‘philosophy’’—namely a way ofunderstanding various ‘‘hands,’’ the paternity of a given ‘‘invention,’’the consistency or maturity of a ‘‘style,’’ and many other categoriesthat have their own histories: that were invented, that have not alwaysexisted. So it is indeed the order of discourse that, in the historyof art, leads the whole game of practice.Doing iconographic analysis is not a pure and simple matter ofknowing textual sources, symbolism, and meanings. What exactly isa text? What is a symbol, a source, a meaning? The art historian quiteoften doesn’t want to know too much about such things. The word‘‘signifier,’’ like the word ‘‘unconscious’’—all of this at worst makeshim afraid, at best gets on his nerves. Years having passed, and thepractice having become fashionable, he will perhaps agree to use thewords ‘‘sign’’ and ‘‘subconscious’’ . . . indicating by the same tokenhis complete unwillingness to understand them. 27 But his main argument,his final thrust against categories that he deems foreign or too‘‘contemporary,’’ consists of a ritual jab that we might call the historian’sblow: ‘‘How can you think it pertinent in history to use contem-