Screen - Dark Matter Archives

INTERNATIONAL INDEX TO FILM PERIODICALS 1978An annual guide (0 film literatureessential for film students and librariansPubillfted _",,,aUy Wlce 11HZ IlliJ Indu OOV'eQ thearbON th"t .ppul1:d dunn, cad. year 10 mOR !tun 100of the wortd'J $D111ITlpOrU1n1 filmjoumab. TIle; 1918mI~ torIUlDfOftf IO,OOOf-lllnn.1M .0111'*. d.ooed 11110 thRe maUl n ltpin IC'nem.,.bJc.:u flnc:looUIJ soaoqy of filla. l»odUCtiM,....1(1)'. 1t$lbet..:s., rI(".)~ fUms I~ rum ...,_~ or..Tlllm moul danllJ the yetr); and btop3phy (:teton.~Ion.cl~,)bUies ",dude allthor's .......,; hUe or art..:k. periodicalalll>Oll~ Ikl:lllll of IIluI.."tH)ftS. fill1lOCf11pb!rs CIt..; and"daalption of the QOcIlcnlJ of the attockllIoe Irtd" IS complkd by to_ JS rdlll,rduVlS lnrouafl­OUI the "'Orid, mo. o( whom arc mnn~n or theInlomulllW Fc

4FILM BOOKSPUBLISHED BY THE ARTS COUNCILOF GREAT BRITAINA PERSPECTIVE ON ENGLISH AVANT-GARDE FILM 84pp 37 illustrations £1.50 ISBN 0900229 54 3 An anthology of writings edited by Deke Dusinberre, covering a decade of film-making by English artists. 23 artists' statements and filmographies. FILM AS FILM formal experiment in film 1910-75 152pp 130 illustI1ltions £6.00 paperbound ISBN07287 0200 2 £8.00clothbound ISBN 07287 0201 0 A major hisroricaland critical survey offilms by artists. Articles on: abstract film, absolute film , avant·garde cinema, formal film, fururist film, kinetic theatre, Light-play, the non-objective film , notions of'avant-garde; 'other' avant-gardes, strucrural film, surrealist film. Statements, documentation and bio-filmographies from 100 international artist film-makers. ~~ft[[N----7I I15184381Spring 1980 Volume 21 Number 1published by the Society for Education in Film andTelevisionEditorialM 1 eKE A TON: Taste of the Past -on TelevisionCinema H istoryD O U G LA S GO MER y: Review - 'The Movie Brats'Preliminaries to a possibleTIM 0 THY J C L ARK:Treatment of ·Olympia' in 1865V leT 0 R BU R GIN:J 0 H N EL L I S: On pornographyPhotography. Phantasy. FunctIonSTANBRAKHAGE An American independent film-maker 46pp 63 illustrations £1.80 (£1.50 with exhibition) ISBN 09287 0218 5 Introduction to the work of one of America's most influential film-makers. Essays anda detailed chronology by Simon Field. An anthology ofBrakhage's own \\TItings, complete filmography. CORRECTION PLEASEor How We Got Into Pictures24pp 34 illustrations 90pThis booklet, containing 10 short observalionson film-language, isdesigned (0 complement Burch's 50 minute film 'Correction Please.'The film incorporates 10 complete films from the 'primitive' cinemaofl9OO-1906, and interweaves them with Burch'soWll wittynarrative, 're-constructed' according to evolving cinematic codes,DOCUMENTARIES ON THE ARTSlOOpp 110 illustl""dtions SOp ISBN 07287 0194 4Short background anicles and production delaiJs of75 films onpainting, sculprure, architecrure, music) pe.rfonnance) the-cltreetc, produced by the Arts Council ofGrear Britain.All enquiries should be addressed to the Film Office, ACGB,105 Piccadilly, London Wl. (Correction Plcase is also available fromMOMA, New York). February 19R0Arts CouncilOF GREAT HRITAI~E D iT O R: Mark Nash: ED I T O RI A.L OFF I CER: SusanHoneyford: ED ITO RI A LBO A R D: Ben Brewster, JohnCaughie, Elizabeth Cowie, Ian Connell, Phillip Drummond,Mi d;. Eaton, John Ellis, Stephen Heath, Claire Johnston,Mary Kelly, Annette Kuhn. Colin MacCabe, Steve Neale.Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Paul Willemen, A D VE R T I SING MANAG E R: Ann Sachs D ES I G N : Julian Rothenstein. C O R R ES PO N 0 E Ne E should be addressed to: The Editor,S e RE E N, 29 Old Compton Street, London WI V 5PL.CON T R I B U T O R 5 should note that the Editorial Board cannotlake responsi bility fo r any manuscript submitted to Screen,Subscription rates : sec P ItO5 eR E E N is indexed in the International Index to FilmPeriodicals, and the International In dex to Televisio nPe ri odicals (FIAF). Photocopies and microfilm copies ofScreen are available from University M icrofilms International18 Bedford RoW, London wet , and 300 North Zecb Road,Ann Arbour, Michigan 48106 USA.© 1980 The Society for Education in Film and Television,No artic le may b~ reproducl.!d or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical. including photocopy.recording, or any information stonlge and n:tricvalsystem without th e pl!rmission in writing of the Editor.ISSN 0036-9543.Printed in England by Vill iers Publications, London NW5.

6British Film InstituteSUMMER SCHOOL1980WHOlE CINEMAlEDITORIAL7, "­j: ') ,~iUNIVERSITY OF KENT AT CANTERBURY JULY 25 - AUGUST 2Oet:aas and AppIicatioo Form from SumIl'l8l' School Seaetaty, BFI EOOcatioo. 81 DeanStreet, loodon W1 V6AA.2300 CELEBRITY HOME ADDRESSES Latest Edition' iI Verifiedcurrent home addresses oftop movi e, TV , sports, recording,VIP's and supe r­stars available. Send $2.00($3 00 outside U.S.) for li stof names to:3utoclerk services Lincoln Savings Buildings 7060 Hollywood Boulevard Suite 1208H oll ywood Ca 90028I~I[USPECIAL OFFERBuy 4 back issues for theprice of 3Please state issues requiredand e ndose:UK £7.35Foreign £10,50 US $22.00(Postage and packing included)All issues from vol 15 no 3ava ilable, see inside back cover fordeta ilsScreen's work on visual representations has displaced traditionalcriticism of the artistic text as an object 'from' which aninherent meaning can be deciphered, to concentrate on theregimes of looking allowed to the spectator by texts and theirinstitutional plaCing. This displacement has been effected firstlyby semiotic analysis which insisted on the artistic text as theproduct of a social practice rather than a naturalised representationof reality. The extended consideration of realismwhich followed Screen's discussion of semiotics introduced thecrucial area of extra-textual determination that has beencentral to recent debates in Screen. Secondly, the concern withpsychoanalysis and psychoanalytic concepts raised thequestion of the semiotic status and functioning of the imageitself _ but so far this has been addressed in Screen onlyin terms of the sequencing of images, of film as system andprocess.Consequently, a certain area of the ideology of the visualhas remained unexamined, including a whole range of positionsfro m notions of the image as an excess of signification, escapingnarrative constraints, to an affect fo unded in pre-linguisticprocesses or as an extra-discursive phenomenological essence.Perhaps it is in the field of artistic practices which are notspecifically cinematic that future issues of Screen can examinethis area productively for film criticism and also continue ourrevised project to engage a widet sphere of cultural work.While the articles by Clark, Burgin and Ellis in this issuedeal with radically different codes of representation and institutionaldiscourses. they are crucially related in a political

8 trajectory which questions received definitions of fine art,photography or pornogtaphy as discrete and self-referentialsystems. This is accomplished on the one hand by analysingthe histotical specificity of the critical discourses whichconsttuct these definitions, and on the other, by considetingthe specific relations of subjectivity that constitute a 'picture'in terms of the look it solicits and returns.Tim Clark's article is the first of several to extend Screen'sconcerns with visual representations into the area of artisticpractice traditionally designated as fine art, but which isreconsidered here in terms of a critical discourse whichexamines the conditions of the work's readability as pictorialtext. Clark analyses the ways rwo discourses (representationsof women and of aesthetic judgement in France in the 1860s)created an unreadable text in Manet's painting Olympia. Hemaintains that the hostile response of the critics of the Salonof 1865 turned fmally on the question of Olympia's ambiguoussexual identity (effected through the picture's uncertainty ofaddress, the transgression of the codes of drawing and conventionsof the nude). He also points to a changing recognitionof possible representations of the body which have subsequentlyincorporated this avant-garde text into mainstreamart history. Clark continues Screen's discussion of the politicaleffectivity of artistic practice and the sociohistorical determinantsof their reading.Victor Burgin gives extended consideration to the questionof fetishism and atgues that the understanding it gives of theviewers' implication in the object of their vision enables us torecast the continuing debates about the social role of photographyand the possibilities of a progressive photographicpractice. In drawing on debates in the Soviet Union in the1920s he argues for combining the formalist approach (disruptingthe viewets' codes of reading - a position advocated byRodchenko) with an approach privileging progressive content,while at the same time recogniSing that struggles for meaningoccur within discutsive formations, at the interface of textand subject. He also argues against a modernist discourse(instanced in the criticism of Greenberg and Szarkowski) whichdefines categories of 'art' in terms of a medium (materialsubstrate) and calls for a consideration of representationalpractices within an 'intersemlotic and intertextual arena(q uoti ng Peter Wollen, 'Aesthetics and Photography', Screenvol 19 no 4).The issue of pornogtaphy is raised for the first time inScreen in an article by John Ellis. Questions such as whatconnects representations classed as 'pornographic', of whetherwe can say anything about their social effects are madeparticularly relevant in the context of the current debateinitiated by the Williams report. This Government commissionedstudy recommends the critetion of public acceptabilityin determining what materials should be on restricted Ot opensale. It differentiates between material media (writing/liveperformance/ film) for which diffetent criteria of potential harmcome into play. Whereas writing is not regarded as harmfuland therefore should not be subject to restrictions onavailability, film's 'realism' is regarded as sufficiently potentiallyharmful that they argue for the continuation of fUm censorship.Ellis initiates a study of the 'institution' of pornography andargues that a fuller understanding of the psychoanalyticmechanism of fetishism can help us understand existing formsof representation of sexuality in the struggle to displace currentforms with more progressive representations.MARY KELLYMARK N ASHROt. AND BAR THE 5 died in Paris on 26 March 1980 as a result of injuries sustained when he was knocked down by a van one month ear lier. He was 64. His work covered many topics central to Screen' s interestsand - from M~thologi e s to Elements of Semiology to S/Z ­bas been generally and decisively influential for our thinking, our projects. His last book, publisbed almost simultaneously with the accident that was to cost him his life, was an essay on thephotograph. La Ch ambre claire, in wbich certain of the ideas scattered in previous articles (notably 'The Tbird Meaning', the analysis of different levels of meaning in the response to someEisenstein stills) are taken up and developed in relation to thatconcem for the individual, the particular terms of the subjective, which had been so important to him in recent years (Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse). What we lose now with Bartbes. above all and quite simply, is a voice, a writing, an existence char constantly opened newquestions, proposed new forms of undem anding, changed thingsfor us.9

10RECENT BOOKS AND JOURNALS AVAILABLE FROM SEFTBooksD Bordwell and K ThompsonFilm as ArtM Chanan The Dream that Kick s : Prehistory andEarly Years of Cinema in Great Britain £12.50R DelmarB Edelma nG GenetteJ LotmanJ LotmanJoris IvensOwnership of the ImageNarrative DiscourseSemiotics of CinemaStructure of the Artistic textL Matejka and K Po merska (eds)Russian PoeticsReadings inA Mattelart· Multi national Corporations and theControl of CultureJ Mukarovsky Aes thetic Function, Norm andVal ue as s ocial FactM RaphaelProud hon, Ma rx , PicassoS Trukle Psychoanalytic Pol itics-Freud'sFrench RevolutionJ ournalsDiscourse/l (Riddles of the S phinx, Metzinterview etc )m / I nos 2.3Feminist Review nos 1,2.3October nos 5,6,7October nos 8.9Substance nos 20,21 ,22Ideology and Consciousness (Governing thePresent) no 6£8.25£2.45£1.95£8.95£2.00£3.50£3.50£14.95£2.00(8.25(6.95£3.00£1 .20£1 .50£3.40£1 .95(1 .95£1 .50$18.00$25.00$6.50$18.00$19.00$5.00$7.00$7.00$30.00$5.00$7.00$1 5.00$4 .00$4.00Pos tage and Packing 50p/ $1 .00 per item. Please makes cheq uespayable to SEFT, 20 Old Compton Street. Lo ndon WlMICK EATONTASTE OF THE PAST CINEMA HISTORY ON TELEVISION It should be of no little interest toreaders of Screen that in the past fewmonths the Hollywood cinema has beenthe subject of a wide-ranging process ofrehabilitation. A major Thames Televisionseries on the early days of Hollywood(Hollywood, the Pioneers) has recentlyfinished a 13 week run; the publishedspin-off from the series (same title.Collins, written by Kevin Brownlow, oneof the producer/ directors of the series)is in the hardback bestseller list and anexhibition at the Vic toria and AlbertMuseum on the 'Art of Hollywood', againpresented by Thames Television, has alsorecently finished. The research for theseries. conducted by Kevin Brownlow andhis colleagues. has taken several yearsand DC expense has been spared toacquire the best possible prints and totransfer them on to video at the speedsat which they should be shown, Giventhat the bulk of publications telati ng tothe 'history' of the cinema available onthe popular market are ill -researched.nostalgic fripperies merely perpetuatingtbe myt hs about the growth of theindustry. and given, also, that theknowledge of the silent cinema (not leastThis article is a revision and expansion of anearli er drafr written with Colin MacCabe.among those who teach film) is oftenextremely poor, this task is a laudableone. Brownlow and his collaborators wish[Q set the record straight. to reinstate thesilent cinema as an object of pop ularspeculation. However. perhaps it is timeto air a voice of dissent. to stand asidefrom the overwhelmingly uncriticalrecep tion of these projects by professionalcri tics . and to interrogate them. if onlybde£ly. from a position consonant withthe inquiry into foons of cinematicrepresenrarion articulated in the pages inScreen and elsewhere over the past fewyears.Almost by necessity this process ofrehabilitation is grounded on suchunde.fi ned and ultimately indefinablevalue5 as 'technique', 'artistry' and'quality'. The pioneers of the pte-soundcinema were not only achieving resultshenceforth unparalleled in the cinema.but the only reward they have receivedfor these ground-breaking tasks is tohave been forgo n en. 'History' becomes amatter of finding forgotten films,forgonen technicians. and inserting themback into their position of prominence .What emerges. then, is nothing less thana perpetuation of the old myths ofHollywood with a slight change ofemphasis and a somewhat larger [oster11

12 of leading characters. No longer is itpossible for us to dismiss the silentcinema. 'The magic of cinema' isenhanced. and our position as audiencewillingly implicated in the spectacles ofHollywood is confirmed. If anything wemay even feel a tinge of nostalgic regretthat those of us socialised to thef\inemalic experience through thehumdrum dramas of more recent yearsmay have missed Out on the more intensepleasures of our grandparents in thepicture palaces of yesteryear.The V and A exhibition poses slightlydifferent problems from those of thetelevision series - problems whichaccrue around the apparently contradictorynotions of authorship, and of film as a'collaborative art'. Rather than attemptingto introduce us to new possibilities ofcinematic spec(tac)ularit}', it took itsaudiences, assumed love of the cinemafor granted. co ncentrating ~on tried andtested memories of contemporary filmgoers. So there were rooms dedicated tothe movies that do good business inrevival houses - the 1930's musicals. thefilm noir - as well as all -time classicsof the screen - Intolerance, Gone with(he Wind and Citizen Kane, for example.In these rooms we were enjoined todiscover the talents of the art directors ofHollywood. In the pantheon of pleasurethe names of such 'forgotten figures ' asRichard Day, Anton Grot and Van NestPolglase can be added to those of Griffith ,Welles and Berkeley.Perhaps it is too much to expect the\....a1ls of the V&A or a peak-time televisionslot to be the sites of any historicalanalysis of how the cinema in Americamoved from being a minor fairgro undattraction to a vertically integrated,effective ly self-regulating major industrywith an annual investment of about oneand a half billion dollars, in a little lessthan twenty years. Perhaps it is also naive and idealistic to expect a television company to inaugurate any but the most superficial examination of the mechanics of visual pleasure and specularity in thecinema. The ramifications of this might befelt not only in the ratings. Obviously, thehistory of Hollywood as an industrycannOt be viewed in isolation from thewhole history of finance capital in theUSA. The investment in the possibility ofpleasure that the banks and big businessundertook in the early decades of thiscentury had directly determining effectson the fictional forms produced byHollywood. No simple relationship canof course exist between investments ofcapital and the pleasures of the audience.However, the way in which the Thamesseries continually skirts these issues doesnothing to make public knowledge of thedevelopment of Hollywood any more'historical' than it already is, and it isnot merely bad faith or academic gripingto insist on the necessity of the wri6ngof this history.Let us take a concre te example oferror by omission. In the third programmeof the series we were given an accoun[ ofa series of scandals in Hollywood which led to the eventual formation of the Motion PicnlCe Producers and Distributorsof America, the appointment of Will Haysas the 'moral watchdog' of the industry,and the establishment of a codecontrolling the coment of motion pic[Ures. The show presents this as a simple ideological decision: public outcryat the excesses of the stars' private livesand the films' treatment of sex andviolence results in the formation of aninstitution to curb these tendencies. Therealhy would, however. appear to bemuch more complicated. The majorstudios who formed the MPPDA welcomedthe opportunity for self-regulation, as thisprovided effective security of investmentand consolidation of control for thebanks who by that time had gained theeconomic whi p-hand in Hollywood, At thesame time, profiting from the economicchaos in Europe after the firsr world war.Hollywood was supplyi ng more and morefi lms for the world market. Theestablishment of the Hays Code ensuredthe industry's freedom from outsidecensorship by either state or federalgovernments. Similarly, the establishmentof the Code ensured that the studiosacquired a stranglehold over the outletsfor distribution throughout the States,The cinema becomes a much saferinvestment than, say, the press or radio.Perhaps even more important are [heeffects the Hays Code had on thedevelopment of fictional forms. This is,of course. easily determined withreference to content - American filmsfor [he European market continue to bemore sexual1y explicit. in terms of theexhibition of the female body, forexample. than the versions released onthe home market. Much more difficul t todetermine with any precision, and muchmore interesting, is the effect that, forexample, the 'control of sexualiry' exertedby the Code had on the organisation ofnarrative, We need only think of thetremendous weight given to marriage asan effective fo rm of closure in the classicHollywood fil m, and the narrativecomplexity generated by the repressionof the erotic, focus of much of theprogressive film theory generated inrecent years.­It is in regard to the in vestment in anddevelopment of certain fictional forms.certain conventions of narrativeorganisation. that the series is lamentablydeficient_ In its incessant need to reclaimthe silent cinema as a popular an whichwas at least, if not more, technica lJyinventive, than its contemporarycounterpart. the most pertinent questionsare jettisoned in advance. \"'hat emergesis a fami li ar pattern : the 'natural' or'universal' language of the cinema liesdormant. presen-t from (he s tart in thetechnology, merely waiting to be draw nout by the appropriate pioneer. Thediscovery of this natural language,'Esperanto for the eyes' as Brownlowcalls it, becomes a process of trial anderror - the experiments of the pioneersare either sanctioned or not b)' theaudience:And if the experience took you out ofyourself and fltriched you, you talkedabout it to }'our friends, creating theprecious 'word of mouth' publicity thattile industry depended upon. You mayhave exaggerated a little. but the moviesSOon matched your hyperbole. Theytl'olved to meet the demands of theiraudience. (Preface, p 7)So one glaring omission of the seriesso far is the lack of any account of thedevelopment of the standard shotsequences to forms of narrative. Twobrief examples will suffice. The famoussequence from The Great Train Robbery(1903) in which the gang-leader fires hisgun directly out of screen is merelyaccompanied by the commentator'sassurance that this shot made theaudience feel more involved in the drama.So although 'primitive', Porter's workbecomes 'pure cinema'. What is howevermuch more in teresting about this 'famousfirst' is the fact that it has no place inthe narrative of rhe fil m at al l. Rapidlythe Hollywood cinema would developconventional forms such as the 30-degreerule which would ensure that thepossibiliry of breaking the spell ofcollusion betw'een audience and diegesiswould be severely curtailed. As NoelBurch makes cl ear in his discussion ofPorter (,Porrer, or Ambivalence', ScreenWinter 1978/9 vol 19 no 4) rather thanthis shot being central in the developmentof the natural language of the cinema,it was in fact radically eccentric. So muchso tha t {he shot was delivered toexhibitors on a separate reel: 'it wasup to the exhibitors to decide whetherto stick it on at the beginning or end ofthe filin: Secondly, in the discussion ofGriffith (p 62) , Brownlow quotes from aBiograph advertisement :ltl cluded in the innovations which heintroduced and which are now generally13

14 lollowed by the most advanced producersare: the use 01 large close-up figures,distant views, the 'switchback', sus tainedsuspense , the 'lade-out' and restraint inexpressiotl. raising motion picture actingwhich has Won for it recognition as agenuine art.His comments on this weU~known piece ofhyperbole are as follows :Griffith was "ot responsible lor theclose-up or the lade-out nor would ithave made any difference il he hadbeetl. l1'hat counted was how such deviceswe re used. Griffith used them efficiently,sometimes brilliantly, and the ten dencyis to credit him with everything possiblein the cinema.We have already been told why Griffithshould have been the one to explOit thislanguage. Griffiths' days as a touring hamactor in melodrama gave him a knowledgeof audiences in the lower strata ofAmerican life. Karl Brown, Billy Bitzer'sassistant cameraman is quoted as fcHows(p 41):these same town-and-country yokelsbeca me the audietlCe upon which thenickelodeons depended lor their lile, liberty a"d the pursuit 01 happi"ess, Griffith k"ew th is. He also knew the psychology 01 the cheapest 01 cheap audietlccs as no New York producer evercould,Once again the complex determinationsoperating on the development of narrativecinema become naturalised, the questionof a simple transaction between audienceand producer. The cinema remains amonoJithic institution.In a recent harangue against semioticfilm criticism (,Cinematic Theology' _New Statesman, January 25, 1980 P 138)Brownlow expresses his desire to 'communicate to the Outside worJd', castigating Screen and others for their apparently fascistic disregard for rhenecessity of clear communication. Whenwe peer beneath the surface ofde-contexuaHsed fact and anecdote thatforms the veneer of his own particuJarprac tke it becomes clearer +hat what heso disparages is any attempt toundersrand..and to theorise the relationshipbetween the cbanging forms of film (both fictional and non-fictional) and changes in the technology and ins titutional forms(metbods of production and distribution) of the cinema. The unquestioning anirude to the forms of early cjnema is reproduced in the use of the forms of television in the Hollywood series. From the use ofthe authentica ting voice of the traditionalcommentator to the tantalising brevi ty ofthe film clips shown, and the use ofinterviews cu t into fragmen ts which onlyserve as a confirma tion of what we havealready seen and heard - every elementof the programme serves to confirm thenaturalness of the cinematic institutionand our love of it remains uncompromised.DOUGLAS GOMERYREVIEW: 'THE MOVIE BRATS' Mich:lel Pye, and Lynda Myles, The MovieBrats (New York: Holt, Rineha rt andWinston, 1979)Subtitled, 'How the film generation tookover Hollywood,' this volume" chroniclesand analyses the rise to power of FrancisCoppola, George Lucas, Brian DePalma,John Milius, Martin Scorsese, and StevenSpielberg. Tbese 'brats' created some ofHollywood's most spectacular box,officesuccesses during tbe past decade (forexample, The Godlather Parr 1 and II,Jaws, and Star Wa rs). The bulk of thisbook consists of standard 'biographical!critical' analyses of how these six (versusmany others who tried) were able togain a measure of power within tbecurrent Hollywood economic system.Little new material exists here (c 1978).The authors gleaned their data frommagazine articles in American Film, FilmComment, Esqu ire, and interviews. I shallnot critique their approach or sources forthis portion of the book; enough hasbeen done with such methods in Screenand elsewhere (compare Pye/ Myles'analysis of Jaws (pp 223-228) withStephen Heath's review in Frameworkno 4, Summer 1976).In the fi rsr quarter of their book Pye/Myles analyse how a new Holl ywoodeconomics replaced the classic studiosystem. in their own words 'how theplayground opened'. Pye/ Myles note thatthe US populace drifred away from thefilmgo ing habit after Worl d War II, andthen argue it took the six aforementioned'brats' to bring the masses back into thecinemas. Pye/Myles attempt to refute theconventional wisdom that television,principall y, and the 1948 US SupremeCourt Paramount Case and, secondarily,the McCarthyite Red Scare, caused theold Hollywood economic order to crumble.The two authors then argue tha t achanging social structure gave rise to theshift away from the movies. With theend of World War II, the principle focusof most US citizens turned to rais.ing afamil y and purchasing a single familydwelling. Pye/Myles assert thatThe young a"d educated, the mainaudience for film, were concen tra tingtheir attention on home and marriage.Television. cunningly. offered shows inwhich the star seemed to visit your home,addressed you confidently, and made theexperience of television a social actaround the hearth. More im portant.sitting in a darkened cinema did nothelp place you in a community, as goingto church did. It did not symbolize fa mily.It did not, like spectator sports, offer afo cIls to male solidarity away from Olefam ily. To families in suburbia. the cinemaserved no purpose. (p 18)Moreover the move to the su burbs tookthe new family un its fa r fro m downtownfirst-run cinemas. For Pye/Myles therelling statistics indicate that fil mattendance decl ined drastically from 194615

l13TIMOTHY J CLARKPRELIMINARIES TO A POSSIBLE TREATMENT OF 'OLYMPIA' IN 1865 zoc" < o'"MANET Olympia, Paris,MAN E TWA S N O T in the habit of hesitating before trying toput his l arge ~sc a l e works on public exhibition; he most often sentthem to the Salon the same year they were painted. But for reasonswe can only guess at. he kept tbe picture entitled Olympia in hisstudio for almost two years, perhaps repainted it, and submittedit to the Jury in 1865 (Figure 1). It was accepted for showing.initially hung in a good position, and was the subject of excitedpublic scrutiny and a great deal of writing in the daily newspapersand periodicals of the time. The 1860s were the beyday of theParisian press, and a review of the Salon was established as anecessary feature of almosr any journal; so that even a magazinecaJIed La Mode de Paris. which was little more than a set of coversfor fold-out dressmaking patterns, carried two long letters fromDumas the Younger in its May and June issues, entitled 'A Proposdu Sa lon. Alexandre Dumas a Edmond About'. The title - EdmondAbout was art critic of the Petit Journal - immediately suggeststhe degree of intertextuality involved . The 80·odd pieces of writingon the Salon in 1865, and the 60 or so which chose to mentionManer. were thoroughly aware of themselves as members of afamily, jibing at each other's preferences, borrOWing each other's[Urns of phrase, struggling for room (for 'originality') in a mono.tonous and consrricting discourse.~"

20BERTALL Caricature ofOlympia, L'lllustration,3 June 1865LIo IIIU.U, '11 cbll, 011 I. cbnbIlJUlI".......IJ....,II,• •n"-',n In" ........ 11 .. I .. n .. dl..ltl•."n,.• I\C, rI,.", r,o.,n . '''I,,,,l,. ~II.II. • ' jjl".a;.. ue'·n . ~ I< ~ " 1')01, I"~' L,· .,,,,,, . 1l'" ,"~.I.. hnl,fllp.!. I, t'h."""lI n~. I",1"''"''Ilict "'n' do.l ,.plt-r. )I . ~1.n "l. d _ """ , 101111,., I,on< ric I'Cxp

222 C MacCabe, 'TheDiscursive andthe Ideological inFilm', Screen vol19 no 4, p 36,3 P Willemen. 'Noteson Subjectivity ­On Reading 'SubjectiyityUnderSeige'. Screenvol 19 no I, p 55 .instead is to sketch the necessary components of such a study,to raise some theoretical questions which relate to Screen's recentconcerns, and to give, in conclusion. a rather fuller account of theways in which this exercise might providea materialist reading !specifying/ articulations within the [picture}on determinate grounds. 2ITThere has been an impatience lately in the pages of Screen withthe idea tbat texts construct spectators, and an awareness thatfilms are read unpredictably, they can be pulled into more orless any ideological space, they can be mobilised for diverse andeven contradictory projects. 3This is an impatience I share, and in particular find myself agreeingwith Willemen thatthe activity of the text must be thought in terms of which set ofdiscourses it encounters in any particular set of circumstances, andhow this encounter may restructure both the productivity of thetext and the discourses with which it combines to form an intertextualfield which is always in ideology, in history. Some textscan be mdre or less recalcitrant if pulled into a particular field,while others can be fitted comfortably into it.It seems to me that Olympia in 1865 provides us with somethingclose to a limiting case of this recalcitrance; and one which,with the array of critical writing at our disposal. can be piecedout step by step. Recalcitrance is almost too weak a word, andinsignificance or unavailability might do better, for what we aredealing with in 1865 are the remains of various failures - a collectivefailure, minus Ravenel - to pull Olympia within the fieldof any of the discourses available. and restrucrure it in terms whichgave it a sense. There is a danger of exaggeration here, since thedisallowed and the unforgivable are in themselves necessary tropesof nineteenth century an critiosm : there ha d to be occupants ofsuch places in every Salon. But a close and comprehensive readingof the sixty texts of 1865 ought to enable us to distinguish betweena rhetoric of incomprehension. produced smoothly as part of theordinary discourse of criticism, and another rhetoric - a breakingor spoiling of the critical text's consistency - which is producedby something else. a real reca1citrance in the object of study. It isan open question whether what we are studying here is an instanceof subversive refusal of the established codes. or of a simple ineffectiveness;and it is an important question. given Olympia'scanonical (and deserved) status in the history of avant-garde art.IIIJ would like to know which set of discourses Olympia encounteredin 1865, and why the encounter was so unhappy. I think itis clear that two main discourses were in question: a discoursein which the relations and disjunctions of the terms WomanlNudelProstitute were obsessively rebearsed (which I shall call, clumsily,the discourse on Woman in the 1860s), and the complex but deeplyrepetitive discourse of aesthetic judgement in the Second Empire.These are immediately historical categories, of an elusive anddeveloping kind; rhey cannot be deduced from the critical textsalone, and it is precisely their absence from the writings onOlympia - their appearance there in spasmodic and unlikelyform - which concerns us most. So we have to establish, in thefamiliar manner of the historian, some picture of normal function·ing: the regular ways in which these two discourses worked, andtheir function in the historical circumstances of the 1860s.Olympia is a picture of a prostitute: various signs declare thatunequivocally. The fact was occasionally acknowledged in 1865:several critics called the woman courtisane, one described her as'some redhead from the quartier Breda' (the notorious headquartersof the profession). another referred to her as 'une manolo du basctage'. Ravenel tried to specify more precisely, calling her a 'girlof the night from Paul Niquet's' - in other words, a prostituteoperating right at the bottom end of the trade, in the all-night barru n by Niquet in Les Halles, doing business with a clientele ofmarket porters. butchers and chiffonniers. But by and large thiskind of recognition was avoided, and the sense that Olympia'swas a sexuality laid out for inspection and sale appeared in [hecritics' writings in a vocabulary of uncleanness. dirt, death.physical corruption and actual bodily harm. Now this is odd,because both the discourse on Woman in the 18605, and theestablished realm of arr, had normally no grear difficulty in includingand accepti ng the prostitute as one of their possible categories.There is even a sense, as Alain Corbin es rablishes in his study ofie discours prostilutionnel in the nineteenth century, in which theprostitute was necessary to the articulation of discourse onWoman in general:' She was maintained - anxiously and insistently- as a unity, which existed as the end-stop to a series ofdifferences which constituted the feminine. The great and absolutedifference was that between fille publique and fem me honnete:the twO terms were defined by their relation to each other. andtherefore it was necessary that the fille publique - or at least he rhaute bourgeoise variant. the courrisane - should have her repIe·senrations. The courtisane was a category in use in a well·estab·Iished and ordinary ideology: she articulated various (false) rela­[ions between sexual identi[y. sexual power and social class. Of-----234 A Corbin, usFilles de noces.Misere sexuelle etprostitution aux1ge et 20e siedes,Paris 1978.

24 COULse at the same time she was declared to be almost unmentionable- at the furthest margin of the categorisable - but thatonly seemed to reaffirm her importance as a founding significationof Woman.So it was clearly not the mere fact - lhe palpable signs _ ofOlympia being a prostitute that produced the critics' verbalviolence. It was Some transgression of Ie discours prostitutionnelthat was at stake; or rather. since the characterisation of thecourtisane could nO[ be disentangled from tbe specification ofWoman in general in the 18605. it was some disturbance in thenormal relations between prostiwtion and fem ininity.When J introduced the notion of a discourse on Woman in the1860s, I included the nude as one of its terms. Certainly it deservesto take its place there, but the ,'ery word indicates tbe artificialityof the limits we have to inscribe - for description's sake _aro und our various 'discourses', The nude is indelibly a term of3rt and art criticism: the fact is that an criticism and sexual dis.COurse intersect at this point, and the one provides the other withcrucial representations, forms of knowledge, and standards ofdecorum. One could almost say that the nude is the mid·term ofthe series which goes from femme honnClc [0 fille publique: it isthe important form (the complex of established forms) in whicbsexuality is revea led and not·revealed, displayed and masked , madeout to be unproblematic. It is the frankness of tbe bourgeoisie:here, after aU, is wha't Woman looks like: and she can be known,in her nakedness, without too much danger of pollution. This tooOlympia called into question, or at least failed to confirm.One could put the matter schematically in this way. The criticsasked certain questions of Olympia in 1865. and did nOt get ananswer. One of them was: what sex is she, or has she? Has she asex at all? In other words, can we discover in the image of pre.ordained constellation of signifiers whkh keeps her sexuality inplace ? Further question: can Olympia be included within the dis.course on Woman/the nude/the prostitute? Can this particularbody, acknowledged as one for sale, be articulated as a term in anartistic tradition? Can it be made a modern example of the nude?Is there nOl a way in which the terms nude and fille pub/ique couldbe mapped on to each otber, and shown to belong together?There is no a priori reason wby nOt. (Though I think there may behistorical reasons why the mapping could not be done effectivelyin 1865: reasons to do with the special instabiHty of the term'prostitute' in the ] 860s, which was already producing. in thediscourse on \ 14 May1865, P ll; A JLorentz. DemitrJour de l'Exposi·tion de 1865,p B.25

26 _____6 See B Farwell,Manet and theNude, A Study inIconography in theSecond Empire.unpublished PhD,Unive rsiry ofCalifornia at LosAngeles 1973,pp 199-204.7 21 May 1865.I shall give two examples: one concerning Olympia's relation toTitian's so-called Venus of Urbina (Figure 5). and the otherRavenel's treatment of the picture's relation to the poetry ofBaudelaire. That Olympia is arranged in such a way as to invitecomparison with the Titian has become a commonplace of criticismin the twentieth century. and a simple charting of the stages ofManet's invention, in preparatory sketches for tbe work. is su{fivcient to show how deliberate was the reference back to the prototype.t;The reference was not obscure in tbe nineteenth century:the Titian painting was a hallowed and hackneyed example of thenude: when Maner had done an oil copy of it as a student, hewould have known he was learning the very alphabet of Art. Yetin the mass of commentary on Olympia in 1865, only twO criticstalked at all of this relation to Titian's Venus; only twice, in otherwords. was it allowed that Olympia existed 'with reference to'the great tradition of European painting. And the terms in whichit was allowed are enough to indicate why the other critics weresilent.'This Olympia: wrote Amedee Cantaloube in Le Grand Journal.the same paper that holds the bouquet in BertalJ's caricature,sort of female gorilla, grotesque in indiarubber surrounded byblack, apes on a bed, in a complete nudity, the horizontal attitude0/ the Venus 0/ Tit ian, the right arm rests on the body in the sameway, except fo r the hand which is flexed in a sort of shamelesscontraction. ~The other, a writer who called himself Pierror, in a fly -by-nightorgan called Les Tablettes de Pierrot, had this entry:a woman Ot1 a bed, or rather some form or other blown up like agrotesque in indiarubber; a sort oj monkey making fun of the posea1ld the movement of the arm of Titian' s Venus, with a handshamelessly fl exed.The duplication of phrases is too closely, surely, to be a matter ofchance, or even of dogged plagiarism. The two texts seem to meto be the wotk of the same hand - the same hack bashing out aswift paragraph in various places under various names. Whichmakes it one voice out of sixty, rather than two.In any case the point is this. For the most part, for almosteveryone, the reference back to tradition in Olympia was invisible.Or if jt could be seen, it could certainly not be said. And if, once,it could be spoken of, it was in these terms: Titian's arrangementof the nude was there, vestigially, but in the form of absolutetravesty, a kind of vicious aping wbich robbed the body of itsfem ininity, its humani ty, it very fleshiness, and put in its placeune forme quelconque, a rubber·covered gorilla flexing her dirtyhand above her crotch.I take Pierrot's entry, and the great silence of the other texts,as Hcense to say. quite crudely in the end, that the meaning contri..·ed in terms of Titian - on and against that privileged schemaof sex _ was no meaning . had no meaning , in 1865. (This is amatter which becomes fa miliar in the later history of the avantgarde: the moment at which negation and refutation becomessimply too complete; they erase what they are meant to negate,and therefore no negation takes place; they refute their prototypestoo effectively and the old dispositions are - sometimes literally ­painted our; they 'no longer apply'.)The example of Ravenel is more complex. J have already said thatRavenel's text is the only one in 1865 tbat cou ld possibly bedescribed as articulate. and somehow appropriate to the matter inhand. But it is an odd kind of articulacy. Ravenel's entry onOlym pia comes at rhe end of the eleventh long article in animmense series he published in L' Epoque, a paper of the far leftopposition.' It comes in the middle of an alphabetical listing ofpictures which he has so far let out of account, and not aUottedtheir proper place in the extended critical narrative of the fustten instalments of the Salon. The entry itself is a peculiar, bril·Iiant, inadvertent performance : a text which blurts out the obvious,blurts it out and passes on; ironic, staccato, as if aware of itsown uncertainty.~ 1. Manet - Olympia. The scapegoat 0/ the Sa lon, the vlcttmof Panslan lynch law. Each passer-by takes a srone and throws itin her fa ce. Olympia is a very cra zy piece of Spanis h madness.T ITIA."'l Venus of Urbino, Florence, Uf!izi8 7 June 1865.27

28 which is a thousand times better than the platitude and inertia ofPerhaps this alia podrida de toutes les CastiUes is not flatteringfor M. Manet, but all the same it is something. You do not29so many canvases on show in the Exhibition.Armed insurrection in the camp of the bourgeois: it is a glassmake an Olympia simply by wantingof iced water which each visitor gets full ill the face when he seesThjs is effective criticism, there is no doubt. But let me restrictthe BEAUTIFUL courtesan in full bloom.Painting of the school of Baudelaire, freely execu ted by a pu pilmyself to saying one thing about it. Ravenel - it is the achievementwhich first impreses us, I suppose - breaks the codes ofof Goya ; the vicious strangeness of the little faubourienne. womanof the night out of Paul Niguet, out of the mysteries of Pa ris andOlympia. He gers the picture right, and ties rhe picture down tothe nightmares of Edgar Poe. Her look has the sourness of someoneprematurely aged, her face the disturbing perfume of a fleurde mal; the body fatigued, corrupted ['corrum pu' also carries tbeBaudelaire and Goya: he is capable of discussing the image, halfplayfu lly and half in earnest, as deliberate provocation, designedto be anti-bourgeois: he can even give Olympia, for a moment, amean.ing "tainted', 'putrid'], but painted under a single transparentclass identity, and call her a petite faubourienne - a girl fromlight, with the shadows light and fine, tile bed and the pillowsare put down in a velvet modulated grey. Negress and flowe rsthe working-class suburbs - or a fille des nuits de Paul Niguel.insufficien t in execution, but with real harmony to t hem~ theshoulder and arm solidly established in a clean and pure light. Thecat arching its back makes the visitor laugl! and relax, it is whatsaves M. Mane t from a popular execution.De sa /o urrure tlOiTe [sic] et bruneSort un parIum 5i doux, qU'un soir}'en Ius embilume pour L'avoirCaresse [sic] une lois . .. rein qu·une.(From its black and brown fur / Comes a perfume sO sweet, thatone eve.ning / I was embalmed in it. from having / Caressed itonce . .. only once.)C'esl l'es prit lamilier du lieu;11 ;uge, il prtside, i/ inspireToutes chases d.:ms son empire;Peut-etre est-illee, est-it dieuJ(It is the familiar spirit of rhe place; / Ir judges. presides, inspires /AU things within its empire; / Is it perhaps a fairy. or a gad?)M. Mon et, instead of M. Astruc's verses would perJlaps havedone well to tilke as epigraph the quatrain devoted to Goya bythe most advanced painter oj Our epoch :GOYA-Cauchemar plein de chases incomwes Dc loetus qu'on fait cuire au milieu des sabbats , De vieilles au miroir et d'enfants toutes nues Pour tenter les demons ajustanr bien leurs bas. (Goya-- NighL-nare full of unknown rhings / Of foetuses cookedin the middle of wi tches' sabbarhs, / Of old women at the minorand children quite naked / To tempt demons who are making surerhei r stockings fit.)But getting tltings rigbt does not seem to enable Ravenel toaccede to meaning: it is almost as if brea king the codes makesmarcers worse from that point of vi ew: rhe more particu lar signifiers and signifieds are detected, the more perplexing and unstablethe totality of signs becomes. What, for instance, does the referenceto Baudelaire connote. for Ravenel? There are, as it were,four signs of that connotation in the text: the 'school of Baudelaire'leads on (1) to th e disturbing perfume of a fleur du "'

309 C MacCabe.Screen, op cit.p 36.ings does it open on to? It means nothing precise. nothing maintainable:it opens on to three phrases. 'fille des nuits de PaulNiquet, des mysteres de Paris et des caucbemars d'Edgar Poe',A working girl from the faubourgs/a woman from the farthestedges of fa prostitution populaire clandestine, soliciting the favoursof chiffonniers (one might reasonably ask: With a black maidbringing in a tribute of flowers? Looking like this, with theseaccessories, this decor, this imperious presentation of self?)/acharacter out of Eugene Sue 's melodramatic novel of the city'slower depths/a creature from Edgar Allen Poe. The shifts aremotivated clearly, but it is thoroughly unclear what the motivationis : the moves are too rapid and abrupt, they fail to confirmeach other's sense - or even to intimate some one thing, t ooelusive to be caught directly, but to which the various metaphorsof the text all tend.The identification of class is not a brake on meaning: it is thetrigger, once again, of a sequence of connotat.ions which do not addup, which fail to circle back on themselves, declaring their meaningevident and uniform. It may be that we are too eager, now, topoint to the ill usory quality of that circling back. that closureagainst· the 'free play of the signifier'. Illusion or not, it seemsto me the necessary ground on which meanings can be establishedand maintained : kept in being long enough, and endowed withenough co herence, for the ensuing work of dispersal and contradictionto be seen [Q matter - to have matter, in the text, towork against.VNashville articulates American politics and music in the space ofcinema, and that articulation can only be understood by mobilisinga heterogeneous set of knowledges (both cinematic and ideological)which will provide the specific analysis. Insofar as theknowledges we mobilise are, of necessity, heterogeneous, therecatl be no question that the reading produced is exhaustive.Between the alternatives of the formalist dream of the rea ding andthe voluntarist nightmare of my/our reading, both of whichexhaust the film' s significance, a materialist read ing specifiesarticulations within the film on determinate grounds.!)My questions about this passage would be: what determineswhich set of 'knowledges' are mobilised? Is there some means bywhich we can test which readings are, if not exhaustive, at leastappropriate? What is meant by 'determinate' in the last sentence?I suppose it will be obvious that my reading of Olympia will beproduced as a function of the analysis of its first readings: I donot claim that this gives it some kind of objectivity. or even someprivileged status 'within historical materialism'. But it providesthe reading with certain tests of appropriateness, or, to put itanother way. it presents the reading with a set of particular ques­tions to answer, which have been produced as part of historical enquiry. (I do not object to the formula 'historian's practice' here. as long as we are free to debate whether there are some prac­tices of knowledge with more articulated notions of evidence, t est ­ing and 'matching' than others.) My reading of Olympia would address the question: what is itin the image which produces, or helps produce, the critical silenceand uncertainty I have just described? What is it that induces thisinterminable displacement and conversion of meanings? I wouldlike. ideally. to give the answer to those questions an interleaved,almost a scholiastic form, tying my description back and back tothe terms of the critics' perplexity, and its blocked. unwilling insightinto its own causes. Clearly, the reading would hinge onOlympia's handling of sexuality. and its relation to the traditionof the nude. (It would also have to deal with its relation to a newand distinctive sub-set of that tradition: the burlesque and comicrefutation of the nude's conventions set in train by Courbet in the1850s. There is no doubt that the critics in 1'865 ~vanted Olympiato be part of that sub-set, whose terms they approximately understood.if only to abhor them; and there are ways in which thepicture does rela te to Courber's Realism. A painting of a prostitutein 1865 inevitably bore comparison with Courber's Demoisellesde la Seine or Venus Capitonnee; a comparison of subject-matter,obviously, but also of modes of address co the viewer, fo rms ofdisobedience to that 'p lacing of the spectator in a position ofimaginary knowledge' which was the nude's most delicate achievement.)I shall give some element .of the reading here.VIWe might approach the problem by asking. would it do to describethe disposition of signs in Olympia as producing some kind (variousforms) of ambiguity? The things I shall point out in the image mayseem at first sight nothing very different from this. And the wordwould provide us with a familiar critical comfort, since it seemsto legitimise the position of the a-historical 'interpreter' and allowthe open, endless procession of possible meanings to be the verynature of [he text, the way art (, li terature') works, as opposed tomere practical discourse. I do no t agree with that ethic of criticism,or the art practice it subtends. On the contrary. it seems to methat ambiguity is only functional in the text "...hen a certai n hierarchyof meanings is established and agree9 on, between text andreader - whether it be a hierarchy of exoteric and eso.reric, orcommon-sense and 'contrary', or narrative discourse and non­31

3210 See B Farwell,op cit, p 233.narrative connotation. or whatever. There has to be a structure ofdominant and dominated meanings. within which ambiguity OCtursas a qua li fie r, a chorus. a texture of overtone and undertone arounda tone which the trained ear recognises or invents , To PUt itanother way, there bas to be. stabilised within the text. someprimary and partially systematic signified, in order that the playof the Signifier - the refusal of the signifi er to adhere completelyto that one set of signifieds - be construed as any kind of threat.It could be argued tbat Olympia's recalcitrance is different fromthis. The work of contradiction - to repeat and generalise thepoint made with reference to Titi an - might seem to be so completein this picture that the reader is left w ith no primary systemof signified s to refer to, as a test fo r deviations. Olympia could bedescr ibed as a tissue of loose ends, false starts. unfinishedsequences of s,ignification: none of them the ma in theme. nontaccompaniment exactly; neither systematic n Or floating serncs.The picture turnS, inevitably. on the signs of sexual identity. Iwant to argue that. for tbe critics of 1865 . sexual identity wasprecisely what Olympia did not possess. She failed to occupy aplace in the discourse on "" oman, and specifically she was neithera nude, nor a prostitute: by tbat I mean she was not a modifica.rion of the nude in ways which made it clear that what was beingshown was sexuality on the point of escaping from the constraintsof decorum - sexuality proffered and scandalous. There is noscandal in Olympia, in spite of the critics' effort to construct one.It was the odd coexistence of decorum and disgrace - the way inwhich neither set of qualities established its dominance ovet theother - which was the difficulty of the picture in 1865.For instance. since the structure is grossly obvious hete. thepicture's textual support. On the one hand. there is the title itself:classical apparently. and perceived by some critics as a tefetenceto a notorious courtisane of the Renaissance; but in 1865, takingits place in the normal repertoire of prostitution, pan of thetawdry, mock-classical lexicon of the rrade. 1 0 But that falseclassical does not subsist as the undisputed timbre of Olympia:in the Salon lil1ret. the reader was confronted by the fhte linesof 'explanatory' verse I have quoted already_ It is bad poetry, butcorrect. It is a performance in an established mode, Parnassian;restrained in diction', formal. euphemistic . Is th e reader (0 take itseriousl y? Is it to be Olympia. cynical pseudonym. or Taugustejeune fi1le en qui' - preposterous evasion- 'Ia flamme ve ille'?The disparity was obvious. I bave said. and the critics could dealwith it by simple. calm derision: they regula rly did.Other kinds of uncooperati\,eness were subtler and more complete,and the :critics could onl y rarely identify what it was thatrefused their various strategies. I shaH deal With three aspects of,he mltl

34a travesty of the norma l canons of 'Seallty', obvjously. and anattempt to make the nude, of all unlikely genres, exemplify theorders of social class. The Bather was meant to be read as abourgeoise, not a nude: she was intended to register as the unclothedopposite and opponent of male proletarian nakedness; andso Courbet displayed the painting in the Salon alongside anotherof roughly equal size, in which a pair of gnarled and exhaustedprofessional wrestlers went through thejr paces in the Hippodromedes Champs-ElySl!es.But The Bather broke the rules of the nude in other ways, whichwere hardly more subtle. hut perhaps more effective. It seemed tobe searching for ways to establish rhe nude in opposition to rhespectator, in active refusal of his sight. It did so grossly, clumsily,but not without some measure of success, so tbat the critic at thetime who called the woman 'this heap of matter, powerfully rendered,who turns her back with cynid sm on the spectator' had gotthe matter right. The pose and the scale and the movement of thefigure end up being a positive aggression, a resistance to visionin normal terms.There is no doubt that for Manet and his critics in 1865 theseprecedents were inescapabJe: as I have said already, the critleSwanted Ma·net to be a ReaBst in Courbet's terms, But Olympia , Iwo uld argue, takes up neither the arrangements by which thecanonical images of the nude establish access, nor Realism's knockaboutrefutations. What it contrives is stalemate, a kind of baulkedinvita tion, in which the spectator is given no estabHshed place forviewing and identification, nor offered the tokens of exclusion andresistance. This is done most potently, I suppose, by the woman'sgaze - the jet-black pupils, the slight asymmetry of the lids, thesmudged and broken corner of the mouth, the features halfadheringto the pla in ova l of the face. It is a gaze which givesno th ing away, as the reader attempts to interpret its blatancy : alook direct and yet guarded, poised very precisely between addressand resistance. So precisely, so deHberately, that it comes to beread as a production of the depicted person herself; there is aninevitable elision between the quaHties of preciSion and contri v­ance in the image and those quaHties as inhedng in the fictivesubject; it is her look, her action on us, her composure, her compositionof herself. But the gaze wou ld not function as it does- as the focus of other uncertainties - were it not aided andabetted by the picture's whole compOsition. Pre-eminent1y, if it isacccess that is in question, there is the strange indeterminate scaleof the image, neither in timate nor monumental: and there is thedisposition of the unclothed body in relation to the spectator'simaginary position: she is put at a certain , deliberate markedheight, on the two great mattresses and the flounced-up piJIows:in terms of the tradition, she is at a heigbt whicb is just too high,suggesting the stately, tbe body out of relation to the viewer'sbody; and yet not stately either, not looking down at us, nothieratic, not imperial: looking directly out and across, with asteadying, dead level interpellation. Tbe stalemate of 'placings' isimpeccable and typical, that is my point. If at this primary level_ the arrangemenr within the rectangle, so to speak, the laying­. out in illusory depth - the spectator is offered neither access norexclusion, then the same applies, as I shall try to sbow, to thepicture's whole representation of the body.(b) Wbat the critics indicated by talk of 'incorrectness' in thedrawing of Olympia's body, and a wilder circuit of figures of dislocationand physical deformity, is, I would suggest, the way thebody is constructed in two inconsistent graphic modes. which onceagain are allowed to exist in too perfect and unresolved an equilibrium.One aspect of the drawing of Olympia's body is emphaticaUylinear: it was the aspect seized on by the critics, and given ametaphorical forc(>, in phrases like 'c ern~s de noir', ' dessin~e aucharbon', 'raies de drage' 'avec du charbon tout autour', 'Ie grosmatou noir . . air d~teint sur les contours de cette belle personne,apr~ s s'etre coule sur un ras de charbon'.ll (These arefigures which register also a reaction to Maner's elimination ofhalf-tones, and the abruptness of the shadows at the edges of hisforms: but this, of course, is an aspect of his drawing, taken inits widest sense.) The body is composed of smooth hard edges,deliberate intersections : the lines of the shou1ders, singular andsharp; the far nipp le breaking the contour of the arm with an artificial exactness; tbe edge of thigb and knee left flat and unmodulatedagainst the dark green and pink; the central hand markedout on a dark grey ground, 'impudiqument c ri sp~e' - in otherwords. as Pierrot implies. refusing to fade and elide with the sexbeneath, in the metaphoric way of Titian and Giorgione. Yet this isan incomplete account. 1he critics certainly conceived of Olympiaas toO definite - full of '!ignes heurtees qui brisent les ye ux'l~ ­but at the same time the image was accused of lacking definition.It was 'unfinished ', and drawing 'does not exist in it' ; it was'impossib le', elusive. 'informe'. Olympia was disarticulated, butshe was also inarticulate. I believe that this is a reaction on thecritics' part to other aspects of the drawing: the suppression ofdemarcations and definitions of parts: the indefinite contour ofOlympia's right breast, the faded bead of the nipple; the sliding,dislocated ]jne of the far fotearm as it crosses (tollches?) thebelly ; the elusive logic of the transition from breast to ribcage tostomach to hip to thigh. Tbere is a lack of atriculation here. It isnot unprecedented, this refusa1; and in a sense it tallies well with11 L de Laincel,C Echo deProvinces, 25 June1865, p 3.12 P Gill e, L' /nternational,1 June1865.35

36 the conventions of the nude. wbere the body is regularly offered asin 1865 it was not seen, or certainly not seen to do the things I37a flujd, infinite territory on which spectators are free to imposehave just described. And even if it is noticed - the connoisseur'stheir imaginary definitions. But the trouble here is the incompatibilityof this uncertainty and fu llness with the steely precisionof the edges which contain it. The body is. so to speak. tied downsmall reward for looking closely - it cannot. I would argue. beby drawing. held in place - by the hand. by the black tie aroundthe neck. by the brittle inscription of grey wherever flesh is to bedistinguished from flesh, or from the white of a piUow or thecolour of a cashmere shawl. The way in which this kind of drawingqualifies. or relates to. the other is unclear: it does not qualify it.because it does not relate : the two systems coexist: they describeaspects of the body. and point to aspects of that body's sexualidentity. but they do not bring those aspects together into somesingle economy of form.(c) The manipulation of· the signs of hair and hairlessness is adelicate matter for a painter of the nude. Peculiar matters ofdecorum are at stake, since hair let down is decent, but unequivocal:it is some kind of allowed disorder, inviting, unkempt,a sign of Woman's sexuality - a permissible sign, but qujte astrong one. Equally, hairlessness is a hallowed convention of thenude: ladies in paintings do not have hair in indecorous places,and that fact is one guarantee chat in the nude sexuality wiU bedisplayed but contained: nakedness in painting is nOt Jike nakednessin the world. There was no question of Olympia breaking therules entirely: pubic hair. for Manet as much as Cabanel andGiacomotti. was indicated by its abse nce. But Olympia offers usvarious substitutes. The hand itself. which insists so tangibly onwhat it hides; the trace of hair in the armpit; the grey shadowrunning up from the navel to the ribs: even, another kind ofelementary displacement. the frotbing grey. white and yellow fringeof the shawl. falling into the grey folds of pillow and sbeet - theone great accent in that open surface of different off· whites.There are these kinds of displacement. discreetly done; and thenthere is an odd and fastidious reversal of terms. Olympia's face isframed. mostly. by the brown of a Japanese screen. and theneutrality of that background is one of the things which makes tbeaddress and concision of the woman's face aU the sharper. But theneutrality is an illusion: to the right of Olympia's head there is ashock of auburn hair. just marked off enougb fr om the brown ofthe screen to be visible. with effort. Once it is seen, it changes thewhole disposition of head and shoulders: the flat. cut-out face issurrounded and rounded by the falling hair. the flower convertSfcom a plain silhouette into an object resting in the hair below ;the head is softened. given a more familiar kind of sexuality. Thequalification remains, however: once it is seen, this happens: butheld in focus. Because, once again, we are dealing with incompatibilitiespreCisely tuned: there are two faces, one produced by aruthless clarity of edge and a pungent cenainty of eyes and mouth.and the other less clearly demarcated. opening out into the surroundingspaces. Neither reading is suppressed by tbe other, norcan they be made into aspects of the same image, the sameimaginary shape. There is plenty of evidence of how difficult it wasto see , or keep seeing. this device. No critic mentioned it in 1865;the cartoonists eliminated it and seized, quite rightly, on the lackof loosened hair of Olympia's distinctive feature; even Gauguin,when he did a respectful copy of Olympia later. failed to includeit. The difficulty is vis ual: a matter of brown against brown. Butthat difficulty cannot be disentangled from th e other: the face andthe hair cannot be fitte d together because they do not obey theusual set of equations for sexual consistency, equations which tellus what bodies are like, how tbe world of bod ies is divided, intomale and fema le . resistant and yielding. closed and open, aggressiveand vulnerable, repressed and libidinous.Or we might want to make a more modest point. (Because ahidden feature is discovered, we sbould not necessarily treat ourselvesto a fea st of interpreta tion.) Whether it was noticed ('seenas') or not, the barely visible hair funC[ioned as a furth er interfer·ence in the spectator's fixing and appropriating of Olympia's gaze.Hair, pubic or otherwise, is a detail in Olympia, and should notbe promoted un duly. But the detail is significant. and it obe)'s thelarger rule I wish to indicate. The signs of sex are tbere in thepicture, in plenty, but drawn up in contradictory order ; one that isunfinished, or rather, more than one; orders interfering \\i th eachother. signs which indicate quite different places for Olympia inthe taxonomy of Woman ; and none of which she occupies.VIIA word on effectivt!ness, finally . t can see a way in which most ofwhat [ have said about Olympia could be reconciled with an enthusiasm,in Screen and else.where, for the 'dis-identificatory practices'of art, 'those practices wbich displace the agent from his orher position of subjective cenrrality', and , in general, with 'anemphasis on the body and the impossibility of its exhaustion inits representations'Y It \vould be phiHsrine not to take thatenthusiasm seriously, but there are aU kinds of nagging doubts- abo\'e all, about whether 'dis-identificatory practices' matter.The question is adumbrated by MacCabe when he writes:13 C MacCabe. 'OnDiscourse',Economy andSociety vol 8 no 3.pp 307. 308. 303.

38 It is through an emphasis on the body and the impossibility ofthis locale. In fact, as we have seen, the signs of social identity3914 C MacCabe.its exhaustion in its representations that one can understand theare as unstable as all the rest. Olympia has a maid, which seem~Economy and material basis with which the unconscious of a discursive forma ­[Q situate her somewhere on the social scale; but the maid is black,Society. op cit. tion disrupts the smooth functioning of the dominant ideologiesconvenient sign, stock property of any harlot's progress, derealised,P 303.and that this disruption is not simply the chance movement of thetelling us little or nothing of social class. She receives elaboratesignifier but the specific positioning of the body in the economic,bouquets of flowers , hut they are folded up in old newspaper; shepolitical and ideological practices,Uis faubourienne. Ravenel is right, in her face and her disabusedstare, but cQurtisane in her stately pose, her delicate shawl, herThis seems to address the quest jon which preoccupies me, andprecious slippers.which I would rephrase as follow s: Is there a differe nce - aLet me make what I am saying perfectly clear. Olympia refusesdifference with immediate. tactical implications - between anto signify - to be read according to the established codings for theallowed, arbitrary and harmless play of the signifier and a kind ofplay which contributes to a disruption of the smooth functioningnude, and take her place in the Imaginary. But if the picture wereto do anything more than that, it (she) would have to be given,of the dominant ideologies? If so - I am aware that I probablymuch more clearly, a place in another classed code - a place inexceed MacCabe's meaning at this point - artistic practice willhave to address itself to ·the specific positioning of the body inthe economic, political and ideological practices'; it cannot takeits own disruptions of the various signifying conventions as somehowrooted. autornaticaiJy, in the struggle to control and positionthe body in political and ideological terms; it has to articulate therelations between its own minor acts of disobedience and tbemajor struggles - the class struggle - which define the bodyand dismantle and renew its representations. Otherwise its actswi ll be insignificant - as Manet's were. I believe, in 1865.There is a danger of sounding a hectoring, or even a falselyoptimistic. note at this poim . Only a sense that the burden ofmodernity in the arts is this insignificance will save us from theabsurdity of feeling that we are not involved in Manet's failure;it might lead us to make a distinction between tbose works. likeOlympia. which succumb to modernity as a fate they do not welcome,and those bland battalions which embrace emptiness anddiscontinuity as their life's blood, their excuse their 'medium'.Olympia is not like these. its progeny; its failure to mean much isa sign of a certai n obdurate strength. It is adntirable in 1'865 for a .picture not to situate Woman in the space - the dominated andderealised space - of male fantasy. But this refusal - to soundagain the demanding note - is compatible with situating Womansomewhere else: making her part of a fully coded, public andfamiHar world, to which fantasy has entry only in its real, uncomfortable,dominating and dominated form. One could imagine adifferent picture of a prostitute, in which there would be depictedthe production of the sexual subject (the subject 'subjected', sub·ject to and subject of fantasy). Even. perhaps, the production ofthe sexual Subject in a particular class formation. But CO do that- CO put it crudely - Manet would have had to put a far lessequivocal stress on the signs of social identity in this body andthe code of classes. She would have to be given a place in theworJd which manufactures the Imaginary. and reproduces therelations of dominator/dominated, fantisiser/ fantasised.The picture would have to construct itself a position - it wo uldbe necessarily a complex and elliprical position. but it would haveto be readable somehow - within the actual conflict of imagesand ideologies surrounding the practice of prosotution in 1865.What that conflict consisted in was indicated, darkly, by thecritics' own fumbling for words that year - the shift betweenpetite faubourienne and courtisane. In other words, between theprostitute as proletarian, recognised as such and recognising herselfas such, and the other, 'normal' Second Empire situation: theendless exchange of social and sexual meanings, in which theprostitute is alternately - fantastically - recognised as proletarian,as absolutely abject, shameless, seller of her own flesh,and then, in a flash. misrecognised as dominator, as femme fa tale,as imaginary ru ler. (This dance of recognition and misrecognitionis one in which the prostitute shares, to a certain degree. But sheis always able - indeed liable - to flip back to the simple assess·mem of herself as JUSt another seller of an ordinary form of labourpower. She has to be constantly re-engaged in the dance of ideology.and made to coll ude again in her double role.)I think I should have to say that in the end Olympia lends itspeculiar confirmation to the latter structure, the dance of ideology.It erodes the term s in which the normal recognitions are enacted,but it leaves the structure itself intact. The prostitute is stilldouble. abject and dominant, equivocal. unfixed. To escape thatstructure what would be needed would be. exactly, another set ofterms - terms which would be discovered, doubtless. in the actof unsen li ng the old codes and conventions, but which would havethemselves to be settled, consistent, forming a f"inj shed sentence.

40~ It may be that 1 am asking for too much. Certainly 1 am askingfor the difficult. and equally certainly for something Manet didnot do. 1 am pointing to the fact that there are always othermeanings in any given social space - counter-meanings, alternativeorders of meaning. produced by the culture itself. in theclash of classes. ideologies and forms of contro l.~d 1 suppose Iam saying. ultimately. that any critique of the esrablis~d. domi­~an[ systems 6f meaningW-iIl degenerate into a mere -refusal- tosignify unless it seeks to found its meanings - discover its contrarymeaning - not in some magic re-presentation, on the otherside of negation and refusal. but in signs which are already present,fighting for room _ meanings rooted in actual forms of life;repressed meanings. the meanings of the dominated.1How exactly that is to be done is another matter-. It will mostassuredly not be achieved in a single painting. (There is no hopefor 'Socialism in one Art-work', to borrow a phrase from Art­Language.) A clue to Manet's tactics in 1865. and their limitations.might come if we widened our focus for a moment and looked notjust at Olympia but its companion painting in the Salon, Jesusinsulted by the Soldiers (Figure 7) . This picture lVas also unpopularin 1865: some critics held it to be worse than Olympia. even; andmany agreed in seeing it as a deliberate caricature of religious art.But the operative word here is art: if the JeStls is paired with theOlympia. the effect of the pairing is to entrench both pictures inthe world of painting : they belong together only as contrastingartistic ca~g~ bizarre versions of the n~'!.nd tbealtarpie.ce~ T he contrasrWiili Courbet's procedure in 1853 isstriking: where the opposition of The Wrestlers" and The Batherundermined the possibility of instating either term in its normalplace in the canon. and reading it as pictures were meant to be~reaA. the conjunction oT'Oiympia and Jesus was meant to establishTitian (and perhaps even Baudelaire) all the more securely.Not that it did so. in fact; but this is the abiding paradox ofManer's art. In any case, Olympia and Jesus were far from beingManet's last word on the subject: the particular pairings and15 On The Wrestlers groupings of pictures in subsequent Salons. and the whole sequencein 1853 see of pictures displayed - or refused display - in the later 1860s. isK Herding. 'LesLutteurs "detestabIes":critique de Emperor Maximilian as the intended fo cus on the 1867 one-manmuch more open and erratic and rebarbative. (The Execution ofstyle, critique show ; The Balcony beside The Luncheon in the Studio in 1869; thesociale. Histoire etCritique des Arts, attempt to paint a big picture of a Bicycle Race in 1870.) But theno 4-5. May 1978. ambiguities of Manet's strategy are clear. What gives his workwhich again in the 1860s its peculiar force. and perhaps its continuing power ofexamines thecritical reaction example, is that at the same time as his art turns inward on itsin depth.own means and materials - clinging, with a kind of desperation.to the fragments of tradition left to it - it encounters and engagesa whole contrary iconography. Its subjects are vulgar; the fastidiousaction of paint upon tbem does not soften, but rather intensifies,their awk\ ....·ardness ; the painting's purpose seems to be to show usthe artifice of th is familiar repertoire of modern We. and . call inquestion the forms in which the city contrives its own appearance.Doing so. as we have seen, excluded Manet's are from the care andcomprehension of almost all his contemporaries; though whetherthat is mattcr for praise or blame depends, in the end. on our senseof the possible. now and then.41MANET Christ ins ult~par Ies soldats.Arc Institute of Chicago

42 Art I Theory I Criticism I PoliticsOCTOBERVICTOR BURGINPHOTOGRAPHY, FANTASY,FICTION 43October;s not only the mostOCTOBER II & 12 seriolls ofAmerican maga­FORTHCOMINzines CONTENTS but the most insolent. inthaI proper sense ofthe wordY\'I!-Alain Bois Eli LissilZky: Reading LeSSOIlSwhich is the converse ofobso­Pi~rrlete: Boulet. and A Conversation1 read it to enjoy thoseMic"~1 Farlopowers ofmind I hope toNoel Bluch Film's Institutional Mode ofRepresentation and the Soviet Responseacquire bY,doing so.Richard HowardPresident, P.E.N.Douglas CrimpRosalind KrlIu ssThe End of Museum PaintingStieglitzi £qui\'a/emsAnnette MichelsonOctoberAn open/orwn/or a iricalMichael Nytn(1fIand theoretical discussions ofCraig DIVensthe contemporary arts-cinema.dance . performance,P. Adams Simeypaiming, sculpture, music, I\'{wka SroianOl'l1 photography-in their social Alan Trachretlberg and political contexts.EdilOrsRosalind Krauss Annene Michelson 4.00 per copy, current issue8.00 per copy, back issues16.00 per year (individuals)30.00 per year (institutions)Published by The MIT Pressfor The Institute for Architectureand Urban StudiesOCTOBERThe MIT Press Journals 28 Car1elOn Slreet Cambridge. MA 02142 (617) 253-2889Dr. Crase and Mr. ClairTalking with Mikhail KaufmanIntellectual Complexity in MusicDance: Childs. Glass, LeWinImage and Title in Avant-Garde CinemaBQulez and Mallarme October 5 Summer 1978Photography: A Special IssueOctober 6 Fall 1978Reading Walker Evans's Message/rom the Interior October 7 Winter 1978Soviet Revolutionary Culture: A Special IssueOctober 8 Spring 1979October 9 Summer 1979October 10 Fall 1979texts byAlfred H. BaIT, Jr. , Roland Barthes, SamuelBeckett, Leo Bersani. Benjamin Boretz. JacquesDelTida , Hans Magnus Enzensberger, MichelFoucault , Hollis Frampton, Pete.r Handke,A . V. Lunacharsky, Robert Morris, Nadar, BorisPasternak, Yvonne Rainer, Ivanka Stoianova. Dziga Vefrov Iso M E 0 F TH E later numbers of Navy Lef carry an exchangebetween Aleksandr Rodchenko and Boris Kushner, the origin ofwhich was an attack on Rodcbenko in Sovetskoe Foto ;! what is atissue is, quire Jiterally. a point-of-view. In Novy Lef no 6, 1928,Rodchenko had written:In photography there are old po illts- of-view, the point of view ofa person who stands on the earth and looks straigh t ahea d, or, as1 call it, the 'navel photo', with the camera resting on the stomach.1 am fighting against this· pOint-of- view and will carry on figh tingfo r photography from all positions other thall the 'navel posirion',so long as they remai n unrecognised. The m ost in teresting anglesar present are rhose from 'top to bottom' lmd 'from bottom totop' and there is much work to be done in this fie ld.Kushner comments, in NOl'Y Lef no 8 : l::Perhaps it is my personal lack of photographic k.lOlVledge, but Icannot fin d any convi,lCing arguments fo r fixi ng tile angle at adefinite 90 degrees, on a vertical plane. The need to fight againstthe 'navel photo' ca n llever explain why you give preference (O ,Jlevertical direeeion in phowgraphy and reieee all ocher possibleperspective fore shortenings.Rodchenko. in Novy Le f no 9:If yu u ra ke rh e hisrory of art. you will fi nd that paintings, withfew exceptions. are painted eilfler from Ihe navel position or fr om1 The completetexts of theRodchenkolKushner exchangemay be found inRosalind Sartoriand HenningRogge. SOlVjelischeFotogra/ie 1928­1932, Carl Hanser.Munich, 1975.Substantialex tracts fronn thiscorrespondence,together withtranslations ofother wri tings byRodchenko. are inColin Osman,Jed).Camera International,Yearbook1978, GordonFraser. London_ Idraw upon both ofthese sources here.2 NOvy Lei No 8was subtitled'Photo-issue', itseditor wasTretiakov.

443 It is interestingto note. if only inpassing, that ithas been arguedthat icon paintingwas oriented tothe point-af-viewof an observerimagined to bewithin the picture,'facing out'; incontrast to theRenaissanceorientation fromoutside looking in.See. B A Uspensky,'''Left'' and" Right" in IconPainting',Semiotica. vol 13no 1, 1975.eye-level. It may appear that certain primitive pictures and icons'employ a bird's-eye viewpoint. but this is Otlly an impression. Thereis simply a raising of the horizon 50 that as many figures as arerequired may be got i'lto the picture _ they are placed one ontop of the other, as it were, and not one behind the other as inrealist painting. The same is true of Chinese painting.He concludes:The antedeluvian laws of visual thinking have conferred on photographya lower st.age of painting, etching or engraving with theirreactionary perspectives . ... We do not see what we look at. Wedo not see the wonderful perspect ive foreshortenings alld inclinesof the objects. We, who have learned to see what we are used toseeing and what is indoctrinated into us, should reveal the world.We should revolutionise our visual perception.AS criticism of him continues, Rodcbenko's response becomesmore politically detailed. In Novy Lef no II, he writes:Several comrades from Lef warn us about experimentation andformalism in photograph y, judging not the 'how' but the 'what' tobe the most important . ... Comrad es should note that a fetishismof facts is not only useless but detrimental to photography . ..The revolution does not consist in photographing workers' leadersinstead of generals while using the same photographic techniqueas under the old regime, or under the influence of Western art.The photographic revolution consists in the strong and tmJlOPedfor effect of the 'how' quality of the photographic fac t. . . . Aworker photographed like Christ, a woman worker photographedlike the Virgin Mary, is no revolution . we must find a newaesthetic . to represent the fa cts of socialism in terms ojphotograph y.In Novy LeI no 12, Kushner replies:Comrades oj Navy l ef have requested that I answer the warningof A Rodchenko published in no 11 of th is magazine . . . I do notunderstand anything about Rodchenko's confused aesthetic philosophy... But it is quite clear to me that Rodchenko is wrongto claim that the revolution do es not consist in photographingworkers' leaders inst ead of making portraits of (Czarist) generals.This is precisely where the revolution lies. ... There could nothave been any leaders before the revolution, inevitably th ere musthave been just generals. It is unthinkable that there are anygenerals after the revolution, but leader s are essential and doexist. " Accordi ng to every revolutionary-proletarian photographerthe essence of ehe pase revoltltion is based on chis change.In the same, final, issue of NOvy Lef, the editors of tbe maga­zine intervene: The editors see a basic fault in boch Rodchenko's warnings as wellas Kushner's answer. Both ignore a functional approach to photography.For the functionalist there exists a why, a wherefore, aswell as what and how. That is what makes a work into a 'cause',ie, an instrument of purposeful effect . .. Rodchenko interestshimself only in the aesthetic function and reduces the whole taskinto a re-education of taste according to some Ilew basic principles... Kushner's mistake is the opposite - for him the wholeproblem lies in representing new far;ts. Fo r him it is immaterialhow these facts are slzown. Rodchenko states that pllOtographingtile leaders of the revolution in the same or in a similar way tothe generals does not mean making a revolution: a photographicrevolution of course. Kushner replies: precisely in the fact that.before, it was a general and now it is a leader - just this showsthe essentials of the Revolution. But photography is not only torecord but to enlighten. The form of recording is sufficient toexteT11alise a leader; if however he is represented as a Red General,his character and social role is turned around and' fals ified. Eitherthe old, authoritarian, fetishistic psychology is thus quite mechanicallytransferred to the leader of the workers or it appearslike a malicious parody. In either case an anti-revolutionary resultis obtained.The editors' Comments received no known response. There wereto be no further issues of Novy Lef : with its demise the fie ld ofphotographic criticism was left to Sovetskoe Foto. In 1931Sovetskoe Foto cbanged its name to Proletarskoe Fo w ; never welldisposedtowards the artistic left in photography it now movedinto a position of unremitting hostility, having become in effect theunofficial organ of ROPF. In its initial manifesto of 1931, in ProletarskoeFoto no 2. the newly founded ROPF (Russian Society forthe Proletarian Photojournalist) took up the theme of the necessityfor unity in the photographic sec tOt (the CPSU itself, in thisperiod of the first Five-Year p lan, was increasingly corning to viewthe sectarianism of the artists' organisations as impeding theconstruction of SOCialism) : ROPF accompanied their call for unitywith the announcement of their initiation of a 'bitter struggle'against the leftists of the Oktyabr group to which Rodchenkobelonged .The Novy Lef exchange between Rod chenko and Kushner anticipatedthe essential details of the more general disagreementbetween the Oktyabr photography section and ROPF : the formercommitted to the development of new 'specifically photographic'formal structures, uncontaminated by 'bourgeois culture'; thelatter seeing {he need for swift and effective communication which45

46-----­4 Contemporarycommentaries inSartori and Rogge,op at, p 56ft,everyone could easUy understand. Neither the theories of the onenor the other were specifically post~revo l utionary: ROPF reviveda Proletkul! notion of 'emotional infection' which may in turn betraced to Tolstoy, this they allied to an assumed unptoblematicalphotographic realism; Rodchenko's notion of a 'revolution in perperception'would seem to be derived from early Futurist practice.and more specifically from Shklovsky's early work. Shklovskianrhemes are faithfully echoed in the writings of fellow Oktyabrphotographer Volkov-Lannit:47the history 0' the appearance of outstanding works of art is mainlya history 0' break-throughs in perspective and habitual com positionschemes. . that is) a history of the disruption of the auto~matism of visual perception . . . the manifestation of visual im pressionsis achieved through the use of 'new viewpoints' - theunusual process of alienation (my emphases)To Shklovsky. art is a set of 'techniques' for upsetting routineperceptions of the world, In left photography theory this notioncollapses in upon a single such 'device': prioritisarion of th e unfamiliarview point.Contemporary workers' commentaries on published work byOktyabr . photographers' criticise the photographs precisely forrheir deviation from established norms of the visually 'correct'.E Langman YouthConmlu11t' 0/ the'Dyn amo' FactoryL Smirnov Tennis>. ..,.. ... ~...."" "' ...''l-, ... .. H .I~ ·---...r , _ ~....~~.' -....', .-..."~... ;:''{'i .... ,..­....: ...... ~;A tilted frame brings the complaint, from a moulder in a c1ayworks,Why does L Smirnov photograph the tennis player as if he wereclimbing a hill!E Langman AheadwitII tile' 1040'

48 A low view point prompts a potash worker to ask.49How often do we see teacups that are bigger than a human head!Proletankoe Foco describes Langman's photograph 'Ahead with1040':A huge cornfield without fences and wich a combine harvester assmall as a flea. We see the strength of nature over the humanintellect and the human will which is expressed through controlover the machine. The Oktyabrists do not like the human wholeads the machine.By contrast, a photograph by ROPF member A Sajchet, 'He controlsfour workbenches', elicits this comment from a locksmith:In this photograph eJlerything is clear - no explanation isrequired. It is clear and sharp. one can recognise every screw andcog-wheel on the work bench.A Sajche[ He COPitroisFour WorkbenchesAgain, Sajchet's photograph 'Kindergarten on the New Life collectivefarm', described by ROPF colleague S Friedland:From the variety and multiplicity of collective life the author hastaken two elements: (1) The children's cribs and (2) the collectivewomen farme rs going to work. The generalisation of the two subjects,although different, is closely lin ked internally - the womengo to work and their children remain in reliable hands - and hasa convincing eff ect .Sajchet's photographs are indeed a model of expository clar ity (it isto be remembered that such photographs were being published ina context of a widespread illiteracy); elsewhere ROPF practiceconsisted most predominantly of conventionally 'straight', orequally conventionally 'artistic', depictions of the 'shock worker'as socialist hero - anticipating the principles of Socialist Realismoutlined by Zhdanov at the first congress of the Union of Soviet'Writers in 1934.A Sajche[ Kindergarten on the "NewLile' Collectil'e Farm-N MaksimovShockworker of the'Hammer and Sickle'FactoryClearly, the Oktyabr fraction photography programme was starklyirrelevant to the urgent propaganda needs of the first Five-YearPlan. In a statement of intent of 1930. the photographic sectjonof Oktyabr had rejected alike,the practice of AKh RR, tlleir demurely smiling pretty little faces,smoking chimneys, and the Kvass -sodden pat riot ism of workersuniformly shown with sickle and IWIn",er land! the bourgeois con-cept of 'new form ' and 'Leftist photography', which came to usfrom the West "the aesthetics of Mancel altd Moholy-Nagy'sabstract 'Leftist' photography,asserting that photography supersedes, 'the obsolete techniques ofold spa tial arts', Rodcheuko was nevertheless expelled fromOktyabr following the scandal caused by the publication of his

505 G Karginov,Rodchenko.Thames & Hudson.1979, p 258.6 Colin Osman (ed),Creative CameraInternationalYearbook 1978,Gordon Fraser,p 190.deforming' portrait of a Pioneer. 'for propagating a taste alien toto the proletariat'. and, 'for trying to djven proletarian art to theroad of \Vesrern-style advertising. formalism. and aesthetics'; in1931 the remaining members of the photography section ofOktyabr applied to be accepted into RAPKH (Russian Associationof P[Qierarian Artists). confessing in thejr petition:Oktyabr has abandoned the social struggle to strengthen the position of Productivist art and seeks to replace it by an abstracttheoretics, and leave the artists without support and guidance intheir practical work.1i51 In 1936, Rodchenko himself was dutifully to write, in SovetskoeFoto (its original title now reinstated):I wish to refute utterly the giving of (irst place to formal decisionsand second place to ideological decisions: and at the same time tosearch unceasingly new riches of photographic language - that,with its help, I might create works on a high political and artisticlevel, works in which the language of photography serves SocialistRealism to the full.'The debates were now ended . The theoretical issues they had raisedhowever remain unresolved. Only months after the editors ofNOvy' LeI had warned against the return of, 'the old authoritarian,fetishistic psychology', Stalin's first fu ll-page pottrait had appearedin Pravda. Rodchenko had condemned 'reactionary perspective',To assess the validity of the 'leftist' initiative in photogtaphy inits own terms we must begin by considering the claimed connection.in photography, between psychology and point-of-view.IISpatial metaphots abound in the everyday discourse of politics:'perspective', ·position'. 'line', and so on. For Rodchenko. however.ir is not a metaphor to speak of 'reactionary perspective'. nor dothe leftists' detractors differ from them in this: for example. whatProletarskoe Fow objects to in Langman's image of a combineharvesterdwarfed by a wheat-stalk is an error of 'proportion' inwh ich tbe political is inseparable from the scalar. The complaintagainst Langman may be seen as arising from a reading which hasits roots in tha t convention of Russian icon painting (and ofWestern 'primitive' traditions) according ro which the relative importanceof depicted figures is expressed in terms of their relati vesizes; tbe claims of the leftists however more particularly concernthat which they hold to be unprecedented in visual art: the lookgiven by the camera.In its essential detaHs the representa tional system of photographyis identical with that of classical patntlDg: both depend(the former directly, the latter indirectly) upon the camera obscura .Projecting ligbt teflected from a three-dimensional solid on to aplane surface, the camera obscura produces an image conformingCO geometric laws of the propagation of light - an image seeminglysanctioned by nature itself. indifferent to the subjectivedimensions of human affairs. In recent years, hov'lever, contestationof .the supposed neutrality of the camera has been pursued to thepoin[ 01. that very subjectivity which the apparatus itself constructs.In advance of any other mediation whatsoever. whatever the objectdepicted the manner of its depiction in the camera implies aunique point-of-vie,,,: it is this position, occupied in fact by thecamera, which the photograph bestows upon the individual lookingat the photograph. The perspectival system of representationre presents, before all else. a look.A Rodchenko YoungWoman Pi011etr 1930

527 5 Freud. 'ThreeEssays on theTheory ofSexuality' •Sta"dard Editionvo l VII.8 5 Freud, 'Jokesand their Relationto the Unconscious',SEvol VIll, p 98,9 ] Lacan. The FourFundamentalConcepts 0/Psychoanalys is.Hogarth, 1977,p 67ff.freud first identifies a psychological investment in looking('scopophilia) as an independent drive in the 1905 'Three Essayson the Theory of Sexuality',' where he refers to the voyeuristicactivities of children. Elsewhere in his publications of that sameyear he emphasises: 'The libido for looking ... is present in everyonein n.... o forms. active and passive . . . one form or the otherpredominates. ' S In their 'polymorphous perversity', children adoptactive and passive roles in easy alternation, exhibitionism andvoyeurism are bound in a form of exchange. The social world ofadults however is ordered according to a sort of 'division oflabour" in which the determinant look is that of men, and in whichit is women who predominantly are looked at. Lacan's readingsof Freud identify a double-inscription of psychic life in the look:the essentially auto-erotic. narcissistic, moment of the mir,rorphase- the moment of identification of and with the self; andthe look which is a component of the externally directed sexuaJdrive to objectify the other. These aspects of the look may be conflated: Freud remarks that the scopophilic instinct is at base autoerotic:

54the women 'surprised' in tbe act of masturbation is ubiquitousis that of the female). To observe a structural bomology between55in pornography; if such an image is in turn used as 3n aid to maletbe look at tbe pbotograph and the look of the fetishist is not to12 Bill Gaskins.15 Marie·FraDl;oiseinterview in masturbation. the imaged woman, certainly, becomes the objectclaim. excessively. that all those who find themselves captivated Hans. GillesCamerawork no 5, of an inquisitive and sadistic voyeurism, but she may also. simultaneously,become the locus of a narcissistic identification in whichnoted is that photographic representation accomplishes that graphie. l'~rotisme.by an image are therefore (pathologica l) fetishists. What is being Lapouge. Les1976. P 3.femmes, la porno·the man's enjoyment of his own body becomes conf]ated in phantasywith the previously quite distinct jouissance of the woman.is this pervasive structure of disavowal which links fetishism toseparation of knowledge from belief characteristic of fetishism. It Seuil. 1978. p 245 .13 S Freud.'Fetishism', SE As it is a matter of phantasy and therefore of the participation ofthe image and to phantasy. The motive of the disavowal is tovol XXI. P 152. the primary processes, the 'contradktion' between identificationmaintain the imaginary uniry of the subject at the cost ofand objectification is unacknowledged. We might further note thatUetishism)/ in the face of (phantasy) the subject's actual splitting;identification need not be with any overt depicted 'content' what·thus. this woman's report of her thoughts while watching14 0 Mannoni, 'Je soever: if we bear in mind the gestalt orientation of the mirror·Osbima's fUm. In the Realm of the Senses:sais bien. maisquand m@me·. in pbase - its emphasis on surface and boundary - we can admitClefs pour that a narcissistic investment may be made in respect of tJle very1 was there, curled up in my seat. very aroused. 1 would really havel'Imaginaire ou specular brilliance of the tightly delineated- pbotograpbic surfaceliked to have gone that far . I dream of extreme experiences. butl'Autre Scene,Seuil, Paris, 1969. itself; certainly, appreciation of the superficial beauty of the 'fineat the same time I know very well that I'm not capable of thernY:!p 12.print' is a centrepiece of photographic connoisseurship:Art photography. can be something you actually want to holdin your hand and actually press close CO you. You want to hold itnear to your face or body because there's some subconsciousreaction with it. 12Such fascination with the 'glossy' may recall the celebrated glanzfetishised by one of Freud's patients." and indeed. the photo·graphk look is ineluctably implicated in the structure of fetishism.The photograph. like the fetish. is the result of a look whichhas, instantaneously and forever, isolated, 'frozen', a fragment ofthe spatio·temporal continuum. In fetishism, something serves inplace of the penis with which the shocked male infant would'complete' the woman; the function of the fetish is to deny thevery perception it commemorates, a logical absurdity whichbetrays the operation of the primary processes. This structure of'disavowal' is not confined to cases of fetishism proper, it is sowidespread as to be almost inaccessible to critical attention.Mannoni observes that disavowal presents itself ubiquitously inthe analytic situation. in the typical formula: 'I know very well.but nevertheless.' For Mannoni it is.as if the Verleugnung of the maternal phallus sketched the firstmodel of all repudiations of reality, and constituted tlze origin ofall those beliefs which survive tlteir contradictio n in experience. HThe persistence of belief in the female penis is not confi ned to themale (although it seems that the consequence of pathologicalfetishism is - suggesting that perhaps the relation of the malelook to photographs may be much closer to fetishism proper thanDisavowal in respect of photographs shifts polarity to accom·mod ate the nature of the obstruction to desire: on the one hand,I know that the (pleasurable) reality offered in this pho tograph isonly an illusion, but nevertlzeless:on the other hand,1 know that this (u npleasurable) realit)' exists/existed, but neverthelesshere there is only the beauty 0/ the print.The (fetishistic) fascinat ion witb tbe photograph may be nuancedby implied imaginary relations with the viewed such as inferiority/superiority , culpability/moral·dstance, and so on; these being con·veyed by the framing, angle-of·view. focal·length of lens, etcetera.However, the imaginary relation may not be held for long. To lookat a photograph beyond a certain period of time is to becomefrustrated: the image which on first looking gave pleasure bydegrees becomes a veil behind which \ve now desire to see. Torema in too long with a single image is to lose the imaginary commandof the look. to relinquish it to that absent other to whomit belongs by right: the camera. The image now no longer receivesour look, reassuring us of our founding centrality, it rather, as itwere, avoids our gaze. confirming its allegiance to the other. Instill photography, one image does not succeed another in themanner of the cinema. As aHenation intr ud es into our captationby the still image we can only regain the imaginary, and reinvestour looki ng with authority, by averting our gaze, redirecting it toanother image elsewhere. It is therefore not an arbi trary fact that

56 photographs are deployed so that we need not look at them forWe rarely see a photograph in use which is not accompanied by57long, and so that, almost invariably, another photograph is alwaysalreadywriting: in newspapers the image is in most cases subordinate toin position to receive the displaced look.the text; in advertising. and illustrated magazines, there tends toThe awkwardness which accompanies the ove r~long contempla­be a more or less equal distribution of text and images; in art[jon of a photograph arises from a consciousness of the monocularand amateur photography the image predominates, although aperspective system of photography as a systematic deception. Thecaption or title is generally added. But the influence of languagelens arranges all information according to the laws of projectiongoes beyond the fact of the physical presence of writing as awhich place the subject as geometric point of origin of thedelibera te addition to the image, Even the uDcaptioned photograph,scene in an imaginary relationship with real space. but factsframed and isolated on a gaUery wall, is invaded by lan­intrude to deconstruct the initial response : the eye/I cannot moveguage when it is looked at; in memory. in association, snatches ofwithin the depicted scene (w hich offers itself in the imaginary towords. and images continually intermingle and exchange one forprecisely such movement). it can only move across it to the pointthe other; what significant elements the subject recognises 'in' thewhere it encounters the fram e, however the subject's inevitablephotograph are inescapably supplemented from elsewhere.recognition of the rule of the frame may be postponed by a variety16 lndoed, all ofthose attributes of(he still imagewe rend to id entifyas 'aesthetic' maybe brought withinthe purview ofsuture,17 C Men. 'NotesTowards a Phenomenologyof theNarrative', in FilmLa nguage, OxfordUniversity Press.New York, 1974,p ZOoof strategies - prominent amongst which are 'compositional'devices for moving the eye from the framing edge. 'Good' compositionis probably no more or less tha n a set of devices forprolonging our imaginary command of the point·of-view. our self·assertion : a device for rerarding recognition of the autonomy ofthe frame. and the authority of the other it signifies. Compositiontherefore is also to be seen as a means of suturing. a means ofprolonging 'the imaginary fmce, the real power to please. of thephotograph ; it may be in this that it has survived so long, withina variety of rationalisations, as a criterion of value in visual artsgenerally, It)The subject's recognition of the absent other causes a 'tear' inits imaginary relationship with the visual fie ld. In the cinema suchde vices as the reverse-shot close up this rent in the imaginary.The still has no reverse-shot (\ am of course talking about thesingle image) but it does have, as \ have observed, forms ofidentification, fetishistic fascination, multiplication/repetition, and'good composition', all of whkh exert suturing effects, In addition,and most im portantly, it has the ever-present caption, and otherforms of linguistic expression which traverse, surround. and sup·I?0rt the image, Unpleasure is thus further averted by recourse towriting, which reinvests the subject with an authority strippedfro m it by the absent other; for whereas as Metz has observed'one of the characteristics of the world is that it is uttered by noone',n thete is never any question but that the verbal addressemanates from a subject and for a subject, ir recognises the su b·ject. As alienation intrudes to evacuate the subject from the visualregister the subjeC[ can 'take place' again in the caption, andwhen it expires there it can find itself returned again to the image(what other purpose is served by those texts - short, pathetiC ­which imfaria bly accompany 'pin-up' photographs in newspapetsand magazines?)IIIIn a famiHar cinematic convention, subjective consciousnessreflection, introspection, memory - is rendered as a disem·bodied 'voice-over' accompo nyi ng an otherwise silent image-track.I am not suggesting that such an interior monologue similarlyaccompanies our looking at photographs, nor do J wjsh to cJaimthat in the process of looking at a photograph we mentaUy translatethe image in terms of a redundant \'erbal description, What I'have in mind' is better expressed in the image of transparentcoloured inks which have been poured onto the surface of \vaterin a glass container: as tbe inks spread and sink their boundariesand relations are in constant alternation, and areas which at onemoment are distinct from one another may, at the next, overlap,interpenetrate. Analogies are of course only analogies, I simplywish to stress the fluidity of the phenomenon by contrast with theunavoidable rigidity of some of the schematic descriptions whichwill fo llow_It is conventionally held that photography is a 'visual medium'(the contenders in the 19205 Soviet photography debate neverdoubted it). At a stricti), physiological level it is quite straightforwardwhat we mean by 'the visual': it is that aspect of our experiencewhich results from light being reflected from objects intoour eyes. \Ve do not however s,e Our retinal ' images: as is wellknown,although we see the world as right-way-up the image onour retina is im'erted: \'w'e have two slightly discrepant retinalimages, but see only one image; we make mental allm\'ances forrhe known relative sizes of objects which override the actual r e-Iativesizes of their images on our retina ; we also make allowancesfor perspectival effects such as foreshortening, tbe foundation ofthe erroneous popular judgment that such effects in photographyare 'distortions'; our eyes operate in scanning movements, and the

58----­18 Sec James JGibson, 'Constancyand Invariance inPerception'. inGyorgy Kepes (ed)The Nature andArt of Motion,studio Vista, 1967.19 Karl H Bribram.'The NeurophysiologyofRemembering',Scientific American.Jan uary 1969.body is itseU generally in motion, such stable objects as we seeare therefore abstracted from an ongoing phenomenal flux;l! moreover,attention to ,such objects 'out there' in the material world isconstantly subverted as wilful concentration dissolves Into involuntaryaSSoCl3tJOn, . . and so on. The detail of these and manyother factors as described in the literature of the psychology ofperception, cognitive psychology, and related disciplines, is complex.the broad conclusion to be drawn from this work may neverthelessbe simply expressed:What we see. . is not a pure and simple coding of the light patternsthat are focused on the retina. Somewhere between theretina and the visual cortex the inflowing signals are modified toprovide information that is already linked to a learned response . ..Evidently what reaches the visual cortex is evoked by the externalworld but is hardly a direct or simple replica of it."The fact that seeing is no simple matter has of course beenacknowledged in visual art ·for centuries. It is a fact which painting,facing the problem of representing real space in terms of onlytwo dimensions, could not avoid (for its part, sculpture particularlyemphasised the imbrication of the visual and the kinaesthetic,the extent to which seeing is a muscular and v"isceral activity). Attimes the aims of visual art became effectively identified with thoseof a sCience of seeing; Berenson complained of the Renaissancepreoccupation with problems of perspective:Our art has a fa tal tendency to become science, and we hardlypossess a masterpiece which does not bear the marks of havingbeen a battlefield for divided interests.Across the modern period, at .least in me West . it has been very",{idely assumed that an empirical science of perception can providenot only a necessary but a sufficient account of the materialfacts upon which visual art practices are based. Thus, in thispresent century. and particularly in the field of art education, thepsychology of perception has become the most readily accep tedart-tela ted 'scientific' discipline, the one in which 'visual artists'most readily identify their own concerns (correspondingly. wherephilosophical theories have been used they have generally had aphenomenological orienta tion). Certainly such studies in thepsychology of appearances are necessary, if only to provide acorrective to the naive idea of purely retioal vision. But if theexplanation of seeing is arrested at this poim it serves to supportan error of even greater consequence: that ubiquirous belief in'the visua l' as a realm of experience totally separated frorn, indeedantithetical to, 'the verbal'.Seeing is not an activity divorced from the rest at conSCIOusness:any account of visual art which is adequate to the facts of ouracrual experience must allow for the imbrication of tbe visual withother aspens of thought. In a 1970 overview of extant research,M J Horowitz has presented a te i-partite model of the dominantmodes of thought in terms of 'enactive', 'image', and 'Iexical'. 20Enactive thought is muscular and visceral, is prominent in infancyand childhood, and remains a more or less marked feature of adultthinking. For example: on entering my kitchen I found that I hadforgotten the purpose of my visit ; no word or image came to mind.but my gesture of pic king up something with a fork led me to theimplemem I was seeking. The enactive may be conjoined with thevisual. Albert Einstein reported that, for him: 'The physicalentities \-vhich seem to serve as elements in thought are certainsigns and more or less clear images [elements] of visual andsome of musc ular type.'21 The enactive also merges with theverbal: Horowirz supplies the example of a person who was temporarilyunable to find the phrase, 'be likes to pin people down',an expression called to mind only after the speaker's manualgesture of pinni ng something down. We should also note thefind ings of psychoanalysis concerning the type of neurotic symp·toms in which a repressed idea finds exp ression via the enactiverealisation of a ve rbal metaphor; an example from Freud's casehis tories - Dora's hysterical vomiting at the repressed recollecrionof Herr K's sexual advances, an idea which 'made her sick'.2:!Mental images are those psychic phenomena which we mayassimilate to a sensory order: visual. auditory, tactile. gustatory,olfactory, For the purposes of this article, however. J shall use thererm 'image' to refer to visual images alone. If I wish to describe.say, an apanment lance lived in, J will base my description onmental images of irs rooms and their contents. Such a use ofimagery is a familiar part of normal everyday thought. However.not all imaged thought is so orderly and controlled. We may findourselves making connections berween things. on the basis ofimages, which ta ke us unawares; we may not be conscious of anywilful process by which one image led to another, the connectionseems ro be made gratuitously and instantaneously. The result ofsuch a 'flash' may be a disturbing idea which we put instantly outof mind. at it may provide a witticism for which we can happilytake credi t; or more commonly it \-"ill seem simply inconsequential.Ar rimes, we may delibera tely seek the psychic ro utes which bringthese unsolicited interru ptions to ra tional th inking. In the 'daydream',for example, the basic scenario and its protagonists areconsciously chosen. but one's rhoughts ,are then abandoned ro anonly minimally conrrolled drift of more or less autonomous currentsof associations. The sense of being in control of our mental-----5920 M J Horowitz,Image Formationand Cognition.Meredith, 1970.21 Brewster Ghiselin.The CreativeProcess, Mentor1955. quoted inDan I Siobin.Psychoiinguistics.Scott, Foresman,1974, p 101.22 S Freud, 'Fragmentof anAnalysis of a Caseof Hysteria', SEvol VII.

60 imagery is of course most completely absent in the dream itself.from the thing, person, or situation which is in reality responsible61Dreams 'come to us' as if from another place, and the flow of theirfor the arousal of those feelings. It is thus possible for something 24 S Freud. IntroductoryLecturesimages obeys no rational logic. As is well-known, Freud's studyas inconsequential as, say, an ice-cube, to become in a dream theof dreams led him to identify a particu lar sort of 'dream logic'object of a strong feeling.on Psycho­Analysis. SEradically different from the logic of rational thought: the dream,Of considerations of representability, Freud writes:vol XV. p 175.work, the (il) logic of the primary processes of the unconscious.In a cerrain common misconception, the unconscious is conceivedlet us suppose that you had undertaken the task of replacing aof as a kind of bottomless pit to which has been consigned aUpolitical leading article in a newspaper by a series of illustratiorls. , , In so far as the article mentioned people and concretetbat is dark and mysterious in 'human nature'. On the contrary.unconscious processes operate 'in broad daylight'; although theyobject s you will replace them easily . . but your difficu lties willare structurally and qualitatively different from the processes ofbegin when you come to the representation of abstract words andrational thought and syrnbolisation enshrined in linguistics andof all those parts of speech which indicate relations. betweenphilosophical logic, they are nevertheless an integral part of normalth oughts. Ueveryday thoughr processes taken as a whole. The apparentillogicality which so obviously characterises the dream invadesand suffuses waking discourse in the form of slips of the tongue.and other involuntary acts, and in jokes. Additionally, and mosrimportantly to rhis present discussion, the intrusion of the primaryprocesses into rational thought (secondary processes) governs themechanisms of visual association; and ir may be lJ.seful therefore togive these a summary, aide memoire , exposition.Freud identifies four mechanisms in the dream-work: 'condensation';'displacement' ; 'considerations of representabiUty'; and'secondary revision'. In condensation, a process of 'packing into asmaller space' bas taken place:23 5 Freud, Thelmerpretarion 0/Dreams, SEvol lV.If a dream is writtell out it may perhaps fill half a page. Th earlalY5is setting out the dream-thoughts underly ing it may occupysix, eight or a dozen times as much space .1.3It is rhis process which provides tbe general feature of over-determ.i-nation,by which, for any manifest element, rhere can be aplurality of latent elements (dream-thoughts). By displacement,Freud means two related things. First. that process by which individualelements in the manifest dream stand in for elements inthe dream-thoughts by virtue of an association, or chain of asso·ciations. which link the rwo, (Thus displacement is implicated inthe work of condensa tion: displacements from two or mo reseparate latent elements, along separate associative paths, mayc\'entually reach a point at which rhe paths meet, forming a condensationat the point of intersection.) The second, related, meaningof the term 'displacement' is that process according to \\'hichthe manifest dream can have a different 'emotional centre' homth e latent though ts. Somcthing quite trivial may occupy centrestagein tbe dream, as it were 'receive tLIe emotional spotlight';what has occurred here is a displacement of feelings and attentionIn The Interpretation of Dreams Freud describes the various waysin which the dream deals, in visual terms, with such logical 'relationsas implicarion, disjunction, contradiction, etcetera, Weshould note a particular role of the verbal in the transition fromthe abstract to the pictorial: 'bridge words' are those \',hich, inmore readily lending themselves to visualisation, provide a meansof displacement from the abstract term to its visual representation.Thus, for example, the idea of 'reconciliation' might find visualexpression through the intermediary of the expression 'bury thehatchet'. which can be more easily _transcribed in visual terms.This representational stratcgy is widely to be found in advertising,which relies extensivcly on our ability to read images in terms ofunderlying verbal texts. It may be apprecia ted that such readingsread ily occur 'wild', that is to s'ay, wbere they were not intended.Secondary rellision is the act of ordering, revising. supplementingthe contents of the dream so as to make a more intelligiblewhole out of it. It comes ioro play primarily when the dreamer isnearing a waking state and/ or recounting the dream, but is neverrhelesspresent at each instant of the dream. Freud had somedoubrs as to whether this process should properly be consideredto belong ro rhe dream -work itself (in an article of 1922 hede fini tely excludes i(), However, it is not important to our purposeshere that this be decided: we should note that secondary revisionis a process of dramatisation, of narrativisation.Returning 1O Horowitz's schema of rypes of mental representarion.lexical thought is 'thinking in words'. Ir should be stressedhowever that this is not simply a matter of the silent mentalrehearsal of a potentially actualised speech. Lev Vygotsky hasidenrified an intler speech fundamentally different in its nature fromexternally directed communicative speech. Inner speech:appears discotUiected and incomplete,shows a tendency

62-____25 Lev Vygotsky,Thought andLanguage, MassachusettsInstituteof Technology,1977, p 139.26 Lev Vygotsky,ibid, p 148.27 J Horowitz, op cit,P 77.towards an altogether specific form of abbreviation: namely,omitting tile subject of a sentence and all words connected withit, while preserving the predicate. tfjInner speech in the adult develops out of tbe 'egocentric speech'(Piaget) of tbe small child. We should remark that Freud describesthe primary processes as preceding the secondary processes in themental de"elopment of the individual; (hey are pre-verbal in originand thus prefer to handle images rather than words, where wo rdsare handled [bey are treated as fa r as possible like images. Thus.when vygotsky observes that, in inner speech : 'A single word isso saturated with sense thar many words would be required toexplain it in external speech,' 2tl we may be confident that thereference is to that same centrally important aspect of the primaryprocesses that we encounter in Freud's work as 'condensation',Freud notes that. in dreams, words and phrases are just meaningfulelements among orhe!s, accorded no more or less status thanare images, and their meanings have no necessary relation to themeanings they would carry in waking speech. We here encounterthe question of the nalUre of enactive. image and lexicaJ presentationsin their unconscious transformation. I shall return to thisquestion in the next section.I prefaced my references to Horowitz's cornpartmentalisedmodel of thought by stressing the fluid iry of rhe acrual processesit describes. Horowitz himself writes:Normal slreams of thought will flo w sim ultaneously in many compartmentSwithout clear-cut divis ion between modes of presentationEnactions blur into imagery in the fo rm of kinesthetic, somesrherie and vestibular or visceral images. Image representationbl end~ with words in the form of faint auditory or visual imagesof words. Word s and enactive modes merge t!trough images ofspeaking."Inescapably. the sense of the things we see is constructed acrossa comple,: of exchanges between these various registers of repr~ ­sentation. Differing perceptual sit uations will however tend toelicit di ffering configurations and emphases of response: JUSt assculprure wjJl rend to priorilise the enactive and kinaesthetic suffusionof \lisual imagery, so phorographs predominantly tend toprompt a complex of exchanges between the visual and ve rbalregisters: as I began by observing. the greater part of photographicpractice is. de facto. 'scripta-visual' ; this fact is nowheremore apparent than in advertising, and it may help here to referto a particular example.IVThe particular conjuncture into which this advertisement waslaunched, in Britain in the early 1960s, included a best-sellingnovel by Alan Sillitoe, and a popularly success luI film based onthis novel - directed by Tony Richardson and featuring TomCourtney - which retained the title of tb'e original text: TheLoneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. The fact that TomCourtney was at that time a prominent emerging young 'star' (IfBritish theatre and cinema ensured that the institutional spacesof television. and newspapers and magazines. were also penetrated.During the particular months in which this ad appeared therefore,the expression 'the loneliness of the long-distance runner' wastransmitted across (he apparatuses of publishing. cinema. television,and journalism. to become inscribed in what we might callthe 'popular pre-conscious' - those ever-shifting contents whichwe may reasonably suppose can be called to mind by the majorityof individuals in a given society at a particular moment in itshistory ; that which is 'common-knowledge'. Two attributes thereforeare immediately entrained by this content-fragment of thepopular pre-consci ous which serves the ad as pre-texc success andcontemporaneity; additionally , the visual image across which thefragment is inscribed is clearly open to the implication of the63

6428 5 Freud. 'CreativeWriters and Day~Dreaming', SEvol IX. p 147.29 S Freud. 'The Ego and the Id', SE vol XIX, p 21. 30 S F

66----­35 Laplanch~ andLeclaire. op cit.pp 162-163.36 ) Laplanche and)-8 PODtatiS, TheLanguage 0/Psycho-Analysis,Hogartb, 1973 ,p 316.37 The image here isLacan's. but itsextension to unconscious,as we1las conscious.thought islaplanche's.Lacan himself hasre jected such animplication ofpassage betweenes o Pes and Ucssystems. preferringthe 'recto-verso'image of 'double-,inscription' ­corresponden cewithout joining.See AnikaLemai re. Jacqueslacan, Routledge.1977, pp 249-251.coa lesce into specific themes. LapJanche:As to the oncological status 0/ the u"cOHscious the 'Wlords '{hat compose it are elements drau'n from the realm of the imagin ­ary - notably from l1isual imaginatiOI1 - but promoted to theaignity of signifiers. The term imago. somewhat lallen into disuse .corresponds fairly well, if laken in a broad sense, to these elemelltaryterms of uncmrscious discourse .. The 'se1Hences' that arefound in this discourse are short sequences, most often fragmen ­tary, circular and repetitive. It is these tlrat we discover as unconsciousphantasies. 35Laplanche and Pontalis observe that when Freud speaks of 'unconsciousphantasy' :H e seems at times to be relering to a subliminal, preconsciousreverie imo which the subject falls and of wllich he mayor may notbecome reflexively aware,and they contin ue,It is possible to distinguish between several layers at which phantasyis dealt with in Freud's work: conscious, subliminal and un ­conscious. Freud was principally concerned however less withestablishing such a differentiation than with emphaSising the linksbetween these different aspects.:\u (my emphasis)The actual 'substance' of the contents of the unconscious mustby defin ition remain unknown. Freud speaks inconsistently on thematter; Lacan commits himself only to the observation that,although they may share identical formal properties, the consciousand unconscious signifiers are otherwise very djfferent. It doesseem to be the case however that (speaking now as if from theimaginary terrain of the first topography) the 'closer' we approachthe unconscious the less differentiated become the modaHties ofthought: gesture, image, and word become compacted into densemulti-layered and faceted units; and it is as if these, in their turn,were en route to destinations of ultimate compression: 'knots' inthe tangled associative skeins of the unconscious : point s-decaption3 ; in the incessant sliding of sense. It is these which arethe ultimate, if mythical. destinations of the bifurcating chains ofassociations which spread OUt from the manifest elements of aphotograph into the 'intricate network of our world of thought';consciollsness. subliminal reverie, pre-conscious thought. the unconscious- the way of phantasy : and it is by these same routesthat, subject to the transforming vicissiwdes of repression. contentsmay pass 'in the other direction', to invest the image. providingthe purport of its cathexis.To return, then. to tbis particuJar image. Ambition. erotidsm.contemporaneity - the tbeme of ambition is obviously central toadvertising, as is the erotic, which is anyhow latent in all acts ofjookin~ In this particular advenisement, the expression, 'Theloneliness of the long-distance runner' offers a phantasy identificadonwithin a syndrome of success, and with a successful figure- as a certain familiar style of promotional language otight haveput it: 'Tom Courtney is the long-distance runner', ahead of hiscompetitors, the ' leading man' both in the diagesis and in reality.This particular expression at that particular historical conjuncturebrings the phantasy satisfaction of the ambitious wish 'up-to-date',The conjunc tion of ambition and eroticism here is achieved, literaUy,through 'the agency of the letter' - the substitution of a'v' for an 'n', and a 't' for an 'c' , which tacks the manifest verbaltext to its pre-text in the pre-conscious. By this device, the verbalfragment faces on to both unconscious contents (i n the 'descriptive'sense; ie, Ucs-Pcs) and upon tbe manifest visual contents ofthe image.The text says that the tuner is lovely. what it simultaneouslymea". (through the anchorage by which it is related to tbe constellationof conventional associations around the figure of thewoman) is that the woman is lovely; th us the word 'loveliness'acts as a relay in an associative chain linking the radio to thewoman - a metonymic movement which facilitates a displacementof libidinal cathexis from the one to th e other. The woman is'lovely', she is also 'lonely' : the suppressed term in the pretexthere serving as the material absence which neverthelessanchors the meaning of the woman's posture and, beyond, theentire 'mood' of the picture. Apart from the configuration of thewoman's pose, the mood is given most predominantly by the waythe scene has been lit; it is the sort of lighting popularly referredto as 'intimate' - a word which also takes a sexual sense. Theterm 'intimate' here is not reached by totally 'free' association,the association is conventionally determined to the point that wemay consider this Iigbting eflect to belong to the complex of'considerations of representabiJi ty' in respect of this term. Thesuppressed term 'lonely', then, in conjunction with the connotationsof the lighting. anchors the particular sort of narrati\re implicationsof the momeD[ depicted in the image, implicationsreadily Hnked to the phantasy of seduction, widely encounteredacross ad vertising. This scenario is on the side of signification,there is however another h istory inscribed here on the side ofsign ificance. saAlong the axis \\loman/ radio we encounter a double oscilJationbetween revelation and concea lment. First, the visible marks whichdictate the reading 'woman' also suggesl the reading 'naked' ­there is not a single signifier of clothing. Howe\'er. from the point­38 There is noradical discontinuitybetweenthe primary andthe secondaryprocesses. both3re ever presentaspects oflanguage. Kristevahas coined ther~rm 5ignifjanceto indicate th~simultaneouspresence of thesetwo registers (ioher terminology.the 'semiotic' andthe 'symbolic') ­signifiance exceedsthe Significationwhich unitessignifier andsignified along thesy ntacticallyordered route ofconsciousdiscourse.67

68 of-view offered by the shot. this additional reading cannot beconfirmed: but it nevertheless insists even in the means of concealment:tbe veil of hair, a time-honoured convention for signifyingfeminine nudity without showing it (see, for example, conventionalpictorial representations of Eve, and the text of Tennyson's 'LadyGodiva'). Secondly, while the woman's body is hidden, averted, theradio is completely exposed - lit and positioned to offer itself inprecisely that 'full·frontal nudity' denied at the other terminal ofthe relay. (Through the agency of this osci llation then, driven byvoyeurism/exhibitionism, and set in motion by the ambigui ty ofthe woman, the cathexis of the product is fu rther overdetermined) .In spatial terms, the axis woman/ radio forms the base of atriangle which has as its apex the eye of the subject. Anothertriangle may be constructed from this same base but whose apexis now to be located at the position of the sculpted bust. If a lookwere to be directed from this position - a possibility aUudedto by the 'head' already present there - it would take in thatview of roe woman's body which is absent from the subject's visualfield while nevertheless available to its imaginary (or, as we mightsay, absent at one level of the imaginary but available at another) .Significantly, the sculptured gaze is in fact averted from thewoman, although its froz en fixa ted fi eld includes the radio.The elements of the image, resumed in their stnlcturation ofthe suhject of this scene, then, are these: the woman's body,represented as an ambiguity. a mystery, but finally as an absence;the radio, unambiguously fo regrounded as dominant positive termin both imaginary and symbolic spaces; tbe look of the spectatorfrom the camera position, a look which s\,'r'ings between \\'omanand radio from its suspension point in the \'{ord 'loveliness'; themirror identification of this look with the stone head in the background,from which position ir might solve the riddle posed by thewoman, but where instead it becomes literally petrified, fixated ­the gaze, and knowledge, both averted. There is thus a secondlevel of narrative to be read symptomatically across this particularimage, a history of fetishism, related to one of the 'primal phantasies'- phantasies of seduction, castration, the primal scene,and inter-uterine life - h"hich Freud held to be transindividual(to the pOint of suggesting that they are transmitted by heredity).The primal phantasies lie at the unconscious extremity of phantasylife in general. Phantasies may also be pre·conscious and, in theform of the day-dream, conscious; nevertheless all phantasies arerooted in an unconscious wish, they are essentially the mise-ensceneof desire as it seeks hallucinatory satisfaction.Thi.s sketch analysis of an ad v e rt isem~nt is to indicate howmanifest vi sual and ve.rbal el emcnts engage with each other andwith latent registers of phantasy, memory, and knowledge, muchas cogs engage gear·trains: transmitting, amplifying, transforming,the initial input. Most importantly, such effects are not erased,they become inscribed in memory: Horowitz:Perceptions are retained for a short time, in the form of images,which allows continued emotional response and conceptual appraisal.In time, retained images undergo two kinds of transformation:reduction of sensory vividness and translation of me imagesinto other forms of representations (such as words) .39 (myemphasis)It is he re that we encounter a general social effect of photographs.A major part of the politica l import of photographic significationis its constant confirmation and reduplication of subject-positionsfor the dominant social order through its imbrication within suchdo minant discursive formations as, for example, those which concernfamily- life, erotic encoumers, competitiveness, and so on. Therole of suc h scenarios in adverrising will be readily conceded, aswill the role of the verbal in achieving them - writing is physicallyintegrated into nearly all advertisements, But 'art' photographsare nOt exempt fro m such determinations of meaning,determinations which are ac hieved even 'where actual writing isabsent. I shall take my examples, again, from the period of the1960s.Throughout the 1960s in America, in th ~ setting of the growingescalation of and protest against the war in Vietnam. blacks andwomen organised aga inst their own oppression. In 1965 the Wattsriots effectively marked the exhaustion of t he pred ominantlySouthern hlack strategy of non-violent political struggle, and theemergence of the concept of black power. In 1967 the BlackPanthers went publicly armed and uniformed in Oakland, andcarried their weapons into the California State House in Sacramento.In this same year the national women's peace march inWashington marked the effective inauguration of the Women'sLiberation Movement. It is surely reasonable to suppose that theknowledge of events such as these suffused the collective Cs-Pcsd Ameri c.ans in the sixties. Let us no w consider some 'art' photographyof this period.The catalogue to a 19 76 exhibition of Garry Winogrand'.s photograpbs-iOcontains an image in which four women, talking andgesturing amongst themselves, advance towards the camera downa ciry streer. The group of women) who are of varying degrees ofmiddle-age, is the most prominent feature in the right-hand halfof the image; equally prominent in [he left half of the image,visually just 'touching' the women, is a group of huge plastic bagsstu ffed full of galbage. This photograph is also printed on the39 J Horowitz, op cit,P 78.40 Garry Winogrand,Crossmont CollegeGallery, II Cajon,Cal, 1976./'69

,~70Garry Winog randuntitledcover of the catalogue: the author of the introduction (0 thecatalogue tells us:there is no choice in this. What flexibility there is comes in theway in which these components are assembled (and even here wemay have less freedom than we like to believe). Such 'sexism' asmight be ascribed to this image or to others, is not 'jn' the photograpbitself. Such 'isms'. in the sphere of representation, are acomplex of texts. rhetorics, codes. woven into the fabric of thepopular pre-conscious. It is these which are the pre-text for the'eternal joke', it is these which pre-construct the photographer's'intuitive' response to these fragments of the flu.x of events in theworld, producing his or her recognition tbat there is something'there' to photograph. It is neither theoretically necessary nordesirable to make ps)'cllOlog~stic assumptions concerning the in·t(,lItions of tlte pllOtographer; it is the pre·constituted field of discoursewhich is the substantial 'author' here, photograph andphotographer ali ke are its products: and , in the act of seeing. so isthe viewer.71When fou r ageing women gossip their way past four ballooninggarbage bags, it earns power lor the eye that sees them. If thateye laughs and gloats it condemns the women to nothing morechan participation in an eternal joke.Concluding the montage of aphorisms which is Winogrand's ownwritten contribution to the catalogue. Winogrand states:I like to th ink of photographing as a two-way act of respect.Respect lor the mediu m, by letting it do what it does best, describe.And respecc fo r the subject, by describing it as it is.But, as the \\-'omen's movement so consistently argued. what theworld 'is' depends extensively upon how it is describ ed: in aculture where the expression 'old bag' is in circulation co describean ageing \.\'oman. that is precisely what she is in perpetual dangerof 'being'. Neither the photographer, nor the medium. nor thesubject, are basically responsible for the meaning of this photograph,the meaning is produced , in the act of looking at the image.by a way of talkin g (it is even likely that this 'purely visual' communicationcould not have been achieved in any other language butEnglish) .Regardless of how much we may strain [Q maintain a 'disinterested'aesthetic mode of apprehension, an appreciation of the'purely visual', when we look at an image it is instantly andirreversibly integrated and collated with the intricate psychic networkof Our knowledge. It is the component meanings of this networkthat an image mus t re- present', reactivate and reinforce,About a quarter of the way into Lee Friedlander's book SelfPorlrait l1 is a photograph captioned 'Madison, Wisconsin. 1966'0 Init. the shadow of the photographer's head falls across a framedportrait of a young black person. The portrait is set in an 0\ 1 31aperture cut in a light coloured mount, an oval now tightl)T can·tained within the shadow of the head. Placed in this context theoval is made to serve as the schematic outline of a face. theshadows of Friedlander's ears are stuck absurd ly one to each side.but the face wh ich looks out from between the ears is black. Item109 in the catalogue to the Museum of Modern Art exhibitionNew Ph otography USA" is an untitled photograph by Gary Winograndtaken in Central Park Zoo in 1967. It shows a young whitewoman close beside a you ng black ma n, each carries a live chim·panzee which is dressed in ch iJdren's clothing. In everyday socialLee Fried landerMadison, WiSCOtlS ill196641 Lee Friedlander,Sell Portrait,Haywire Press,1970.42 Szarkowski.Quintavallt.Mussini, NewPhotography USA,Universita' Di Parma/Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1971.

72 V73The first paragraph of John Szarkowski's introduction to the cataloguewhich contains Winogrand's Central Park Zoo picture tells43 Szarkowski.Quintavalle,Mussini, op cit.us:p 15 .New pictures derive first of all from old pictures. What an artistbriHgs to his work that is new - special to his own life and hisown eyes - is used to challenge and revise his tradition, as heknows it.u44 C Greenberg.'Modernist Painting',Arts YearBook, no 4, 1961.Garry Winogranduntitledlife it is the fac e which carries the burden of identity; in theseterms, to exchange one's face for that of another would be to takethe other's place in society. Friedlander's photograph suggeststhe idea of such an exchange of identities - if I am white itinvi tes me [Q imagine what it would be like if I we re black . InWinogrand's picture my identity and my social position are secure.Vile are all familiar with expressions of irrational fear of the'mixed marriage': from the comparatively anodyne punning of thejoke about the girl who married a Pole - and had a woodenbaby - to the cliche insults of the committed racist, according towhose rhetoric the union of white and black can give issue tomonkeys. In terms of these considerations therefore it shou ld beclear that Friedlander's photograph is open to readings couched interms of social cbange. to which Winogrand's image is not onlyclosed but hostile. 'It should be clear ... .' but it is empiricallyobvious that no such differences are in practice constructed orsanctioned in the dominant discourse of tbe art institution withinwhich th ese photographs are organically located. Friedlander andWinogrand in fact occupy virtually interchangeable positions inthe established pantheon of ph otographic auteurs, the work of bothhaving been assimilated equally to the discourse of art photography.Obviously, this discourse itself exercises its own massi\"edeterminations on the received sense of art photographs. The discoursein dominance in art photography is. de facto. that of'modernism'; there has however been a significant inconsistency jnthe application of a modernist programme to photography.There is a vivid similarity in this passage to the style and contentof Clement Greenberg's welting, indeed the criteria for evaluatingphotographs employed throughout Szarkowski's texts correspondsalmost identically to the programme for modernist art laid downby Greenberg. The 1961 essay 'Modernist Painting' is probablyGreenberg's most succinct statement of his view of modernism.and may therefore serve here as a convenient checklist. H In thisessay, Greenberg defines modernism as the tendency of an art practicetowards self-refereI\Ce by means of a foregrounding of: thetradition of the practice; tbe difference of the practice from other(visual art) practices: the 'cardinal norms' of the practice; thematerial substrate. or 'medium' of the practice.In reference to tradition, Greenberg states:Mo dern ist art continues the past without gap or break, andwherever it may end up it will never cease being intelligible intenns of the past.Szarkowski's endorsement of this pOSition is quoted above. Inrespect of difference. Greenberg writes:Each art had to determine th rough its own operatio ns and works,the effects exclusive to itself . .. it quickly emerged that the uniqueand proper area of competence of each art coincided with all thatwas unique in the nature of its medium .Szarkowski says. in an interview :1 think in photography the fo rmalist approach is concernedwit II trying to explore the intrinsic or prejudicial capacities 0/ themedium as it is understood at th at nlOmenC uGreenberg argues for the destruction of three-dimensional space inpainting. 'For natness alone was unique and exclusive to pictorialart.' He argues for a renewed emphasis on colour. 'in the name ofthe purely and literally optical . against optical experience asrevised or modified by tactile associations'. Flatness, the 'purely45 Maren Stange,'Szarkowski at theMode rn" inPhotography:Current Perspectives,ughtImpressions, 1978,p 74.

74 oprical', and orher such things as, 'norms of finish and po; tphotography, bur its spirit is 'photographic seeing'. Szarkowslti is75

117651 Cf 5 Fre ud , 'FausseReconnaissance(Deja. Raconte) inPsychoanalyticTreatment', SEvol XlII pp ZOl·Z07.ambivalence of his use of the term 'subject': subject of the photo·graph (the thing pictured) : subject of the story (that which it is'a tale of). As [ have observed, we may only resolve this ambivalencethrough the introduction of a tbitd term - the seeingsubject (the individual who looks) ; to introduce this subject is. inthe same movement, to introduce the social world which constructs,situates, 3..[ld supports it.To speak of the 'sense' and 'story' of a photograph is to acknowledgethat the reality· effect of a photograph is such that it in·escapably implicates a world of activity responsible for, and to, tbefragments circumscribed by the frame: a world of causes, of'before and after', of 'if. tben . :. a narrated world. The narrationof the wo rld that photography achieves is accomplished notin a linear manner but in a repetition of 'vertical' readings, instillness, in a·temporality. Freud remarks that time does notexist in the unconscious, the dream is not the illogical narrativeit may appear to be (this is the dramatic product of secondaryrevision). it is a rebus which must be examined element by element- from each element will unfold associative cbains leading to acoherent network of unconsc ious thoughts, thoughts which areextensive by comparison with the dream itself, which is 'laconic'.We encounter the everyday environment of photographs as if in awa king dream, a day-dream: raken collectively they seem to addup to no particular logical whole; taken individually their literalcontent is quickly exhausted - but the photograph too is laconic,its meaning goes beyond its manifest elements. The significanceof the photograph goes beyond its literal signification by way ofthe routes of the primary processes: ro use a filmic analogy, wemight say that the individual photograph becomes the point oforigin of a series of psychic 'pans' and 'dissolves', a succession ofmetonymies and metaphors which transpose the scene of thephotograph to the spaces of the 'other scene' of the unconscious,Much of the ideological power of photographs surely deri\'cs fromthis - we cannot see in the photographic image much other thanwe already know. albeit the kno\\:Jedge has been repressed or dis·avowed: it is this fact which must account for the sense of deja vuwhich many have reported in their experience of photography,'51Finally and most imporrantly, the scene of the popular pre·conscious:the scene of discourse inseparable from umguage.VIT began wi th a debate in photography which is now distant, theterms of the debate however have a mythic simplicity \ ...hich stillinspires our current controversies on the left of art and photo·graphy in the vVest; 'form' and 'content' Chovi and 'what') arestill the most visible marks in a terrain which. regardless of the 77number of times it has been ploughed. obstinately retains thesesalient features: an aesthetically conservative realism, in whichthe principle concern is who is to be represented and what theyare to be shown as doing; and a leftist formalism which assertsthat what people believe, and thus the way they will behave, canbe cbanged by the very form of the way in which they are represented.These allow a middle ground : an ecumenically pious wishfor a synthesis of the former and latter tendencies which will com·bine their strengths and eradicate their weaknesses, In their interventionin the Rodchenko/Kushner exchange the editors of NavyLet sought not to unite the opposing factions but tather to restructureand realign the very terms of the debate. They proposed a'functional' approach to photography; in the practical terms ofthat specific conjuncture we might judge ROPF practice (in effect.Kushner's words in action) to be the very model of the functionalin serving the urgent information/exhortation needs of the firstFive-Year Plan; in the context of that massive national struggletor production the capitulation of the leftists seems to have beeninevitable. NOvy Lej's editors however were as critical of Kushneras of Rodchenko ; they imply that the two opposed problema ticsare not necessarily mutually exclusive but that they rather occupydifferent registers. the possible imbrication of which has to be considered;moreover, they stipulate no particular sphere to wh5chthe co nsi deration of 'function' should apply, Their unelaboratedcomments thus open on [Q such unresolved problems of recenttheory as the artjculation of the social subject with the 'subjectin the text', and the specificity of political struggles on/fot particularinstitutional ground,I have observed that to take account of the 'function' of photography.in the literal sense of 'the mode of action by which it ful·fills its purpose', is unavoidably to face the complexities of theimbrication/transposition/ transformation of manifest visual ele·ments \vithin discourses which precede them: discourses of theunconscious: discourses of the popular pre·conscious; discoursesof the specific institutions within which the photographic prac·tice in question is situated. My discussion has ·been centred uponthe institution of art: I have already alluded to some historicaldifficulties which beset photography in quest for credentials fromestablished 'fine art' - these difficulties we re not tesolved; tathet,the deep-rooted contradictions which caused them maintain therehUon of photography to 'art' in a constant state of crisis. 'While,obviously, we should not underestimate the specific differencesbetween representational practices as advertising, cinema, journal·ism, television, etc, neither should \. .. e overestimate the degree ofdiscontinuity between them - together they form an integrated

---II '7852 P Wollen, 'PhotographyandAesthetics', Screen.vol 19, no 4,Winter 1978/9,p 28.53 B Rosenblum ,'Style as Socia lProcess', AmericanSocioiogicQ IReview.vol 43. 1978. p 435.54 See R Barthes.'The Grear Familyof Man',Myt hologies,Paladin. 1973.p 100ff.specular regime, contributing to a unitary 'popular imaginary', Theprogressive incursion of photography into the institutional spacespreviously reserved for painting and sculpture has served to upsetthe conventional disavowal of the relation of 3rt to such otherrepresentational practices, if only because photography is centralto so many of them. As Peter Wollen has wri tten:For photography to be an art involves reformulating notions of art,rejecting both ma ter ial and formal purism and also the separationof 'art' fr om 'commerce' as distinct semiotic practices wh ich neverinterlock . Photo graphy is not an 'art·in·itsel/' any more than film,but an option within an inter-semiotic and inter· textual ' a Te n a ' . ~2Clearly, the discursive formation which supports the term 'art'out-runs anyone site; the term is used in n:spect of a complex ofinstitutions. practices, and representations: art museums, artmagazines, art schools, . . painting, photography, sculpture,art history, art theory, art ·criticism. across to representationsof the artist in the popular medi a: Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh,Anthony Quinn's Ga uguin. Charl eton Heston's Michaelangelo,and so on. Not the least important determinant in t.his complex isart administration; in an essay on the institutional determinants ofphotographic imagery Barbara Rosenblum concludes that fine artsphotography 'does not have unlimited capacity to absorb all typesof imagery ', and that it diffe rs fr om news and advertising photographyin that determinants upon imagery 'are generated primarilythrough the distribution systems , rather than through the organisationof pro du c tio n ' . ~3 Modernist discourse rules the distributionsystems of art phorography aided extensively by John Szarkowski'sdirectorship of the Department of Photography at the Museum ofModern Art, New Yo rk - the institution wh.ich has served asprimary power centre and ideological anchor for the expansion of'art photography' e.\!en prior to, but certainly since, Szarkowski 'spredecessor Ed ward Steichen launched The Family of Man exhibitionthere in 1955. The Family of Man woul d appear to have foregrounded'content', history ; in facr its seamless totali ty collapsedin upon a single humanist myth .~" The lines of today's superficiallyquite different 'formalism' ultimately converge within the samehumanist perspectives.E H Go mbrich has traced the lineage of the belief in the ineffablepurity of the visual image. Plato puts into the mouth ofSocrates a doctrine of two world s: the world of murky impedectionto which our monal senses have access, and an 'upper v,orId'of perfection and light. Discursive speech is the tangled and ineptmedium to which we are cond emned in the former, while in thelatter all th.ings are communicated visually as a pure and unmediatedintelligibiHty which has no need for words. The idea thatthere are two quite distinct forms of communication, words andimages, and that the latter is the more direct, passed via theNeo-Platonists into the Christian tradition. There was now heldto be a divine language of things, richer than the language ofwords; those who apprehend the difficult but divine truths enshrinedin things do so in a flash, without tbe need of words andarguments. As Gombrich observes, such traditions, 'are of morethan antiquarian interest. They still affect the way we talk andthink about th'e art of our own time',oo Foucault has directed ourattention to the action of power in the truth-effect of 'the way wetalk and think' within and across our major institutions: Society isordered on the basis of what it holds to be true ; truth does notstand outside discourse, wa iting to be 'expressed' by it; a truthis produced by material fo rm s of discourse inscribed in concretepractices. The global 'truth' whose perpetual regeneration isguaranteed across the discursive formation of art is that of thetranscendent freedom of the sovereign individual - that 'freedomof the spirit' (a spirituality whose natural realm is [ha t of light,pure vision) which we are guaranteed in exchange for the subjectionof the body to extant structures of power.The 'an is t' discovers the truth in perplexed appearances onbehalf of those unable to see it fo r themselves. The calling of the'left' artist is no less eleva ted , it is that of Foucault's 'universal'left intellectual, who speaks as 'the consciousness/ consci enceof everyone'. ~6 Again, it is a matter of a discourse unered fr omone place on behalf of those who stand in another - the politicalis permanently displaced by a perpetual elsewhere, as if theactuality of dominance, repression, exploitation, subjection to aspecifi c order, did not insinuate itself throughout the very fibre ofart traditions and institutions themsehJes, (as if 'political' engagementwere a fixtu re wh ich can only be pla yed 'away'). There havebeen t\'iO main conseque nces of this left humanism: on the onehand, the total evacuation of considerations of the political fromart production itself, which becomes the receptacle of a ll that is'timeless', 'biological', in 'human nature'; on the other the completeabandoning of the dominant sectors of (he art institution.s(certainly, a difficult and hostile environm ent) in favour of a'popular' art of posters, banners, and mur a ls. ~ j To gain the groundconceded by these, the dominant tendencies, it is required thatthe familia r pronouncement 'everything is poli tical' be taken preciselyto the letter, rather than being used, as it is, as a segregationistgesture of laying aside (eg, 'art is poli tical - it's a bourgeoisweapon against the masses') . Thus Foucault:55 E H Gombrich.'leones Symbolicae'.inSymboliC Images,Phaidon, 1972.56 M Foucault, 'Thepolitical functionof the intellectual',Radical Philo·sop hy, no l7, 1977,P 12.57 Thus the casybecause-uncontradictaryalternarionin suchleft-Jeaning.pe riodicals asTime Out, NewSta tesman . andT he Village Voice,of occasionalpu ffs on 'radical'artists (accompanyingphotograph'rhe artistwith his/he rwo rk' mandato ry),\....ith orhcrwiseunb roken stringsof art re viewsindistinguishablefrom those in thet horoughlybourgeoispress.79

80----­58 M Foucault,'Interview withLucette Finas',Michel Foucault- Power. Truth.Strategy. Feral.Sydney, 1979,59 M Foucault. TheArchaeology 01Knowledge,Tavistock. 1974.p 194,60 W Benjamin. 'TheAuthor asProducer', inUnderstandingBrecht. NLB.1973, P 95 .61 A Rodchenko,'Ways in ContemporaryPhotography',NovyLei, no 9, 1928,in Sartori andRogge, op ci t,P 114.This articlecombines nyOpapers: onc givenat the CentreUniversitaireAmtricain duCinema a Par is.in May 1978; theother given at asymposiumpresented by theProgram inEuropean CulturalStudies, PrincetonUniversity,February. 1979.To say that 'everything is political' is to recognise this omnipresenceof relations of force and their immanence to a politicalfield; but it is to Set oneself the barely sketched task of unravellingthis indefinite ra'lgled skein the problem isn't so much todefine a political 'position' (which brings us back to making amove on a pre-constituted chessboard) but to imagine and bringinto existence new schemas of politicisation. To the great newtechniques of power (which correspond to multinational economiesor to bureaucratic States) must be opposed new forms oj politicisation. ~8Without necessarily abandoning those forms which alreadyexist, 'new forms of politicisation' within the institutions of art(and) photography must begin with the recognition that meaningis perpetually displaced fro m tbe image to the discursive formationswhich cross and contain it; that there can be no question ofeither 'progressive' contents or forms in themselves, nor any ideally'effective' synthesis of the two ; that there can be no genre of'political' art (and) photography given in advance of the specifi chistorical/institutional/discursive conjuncture; that there can beneither 'art for all' nor 'art for all time'. These and other unrequitedspectres of tbe left art imaginary are to be exorcised; theproblem here is not to answer the old questions, jt is to identifythe ne\v ones. Ir follows that such politicisation must be 'pandiscursive'with respect to the discursive formation in question.In the register of theory there is still a need for that 'archaeology'which, as Foucault envisaged:would not set aU[ to show that the painting is a way 0/ 'meaning'or 'saying' (hat is peculiar in that it dispenses with word s. It wouldtry to SIIOW that , at least in one of its dimensions, it is discursivepractice that is embodied in techniques and etJec l 5 .~8Moving towards the register of 'practice' . Benjamin saw the (inconvenient?) need for a pan-discursivity a s a de\·olution of establishedsubject positions, in which,we, as writers~ start takirlg photographs ourselves .. . techl1icalprogress is, fo r tile QUCilOr as producer. llle basis of his politicalprogress. 60"JOHN ELLISPHOTOGRAPHY/PORNOGRAPHY/ART/ PORNOGRAPHY Preface, P 0 R N 0 G RAP H Y' SEE M S Tome to be one 01 the urgentand unanswered questions that our culture presents to itself.The sense of urgency is provided by the constant activity in thisarea: police seizure of materiaL attacks by feminists on representations and those who market (hem; and the pornographyindustry's own attempts (Q get increased public acceptance. Now,(he Williams Committee 1 has produced a se ries of recomme ndationsfor replacing tbe existing unworka ble legislation in this area.My sense that the question remains unanswered is perhaps morecontentious: several definitions of pornography do exist which areperfectly adequate for their protagonists. Yet they are purely moraldefinitions, concerned with recruiting for particular ideas of 'whatshould be done' about pornography. They aU assume that 'pornography'is an inherent attribute of certain representations. Thisis an untenable assumprjon: 'pornography' is rather a designationgiven to a cl ass of representations which is defined by particularideological currents ac tive in our society. These ideological currentSare crys talised in to particular poli(icai gro upings which produce[heir own definitions of 'pornogra phy' and propagate them throughvarious kinds of actions against particular representations. Differentcriteria are used , so that [he definition of 'pornography', itssupposed effec ts, and methods of limiting them, are areas ofstruggle between differing positions.The combination of vagueness ar:td moralism in existing defini ­[ions of pornography has several effects. First. 'pornography' as alabel always threatens to engulf any sexual representation (hatachieves a certain level of explicitness. There is no way that anyrepresenration - especially if it involves photography - can1 Report of theCommittee onObscenity andFilm Censorship,November 1979,HMSO Cmnd 7772.(References are torhe numberedsections of thereport). TheReport docs notconsider Scottishlaw.81

82 insure itself against such labelling. Second, it produces a realblockage in the analysis and the production of representationsalike. A reticence about the portrayal of sexuality hovers overmuch British independent film production. I have felt a similarreticence in writing this ankle. Not only do definitions of pornographyhave an inhibiting moral force to them, but as a result oftheir blanket definitions. adequate means of writing and portrayalof sexuality have not been developed. Pornography is difficult todiscuss because there is no discourse which is analytic yet neverthelessengages the subjectivity of the individual uttering that discourse.We are caught between personal confessions and generaltheoretical systernatisations; mutually exclusive modes. each inadequateto the problems addressed.I have written this article to break through some of the problemsof 'pornography' by displacing the category itseU. Thisinvolves a double approach. There is a preliminary investigationof how 'pornography' is defined for us now. how a particular areaof signification is separated out across a wide range of media.Then, I have used a particular approach \,.,hich seems to be able todifferentiate between ki!lds of representations that are usuaUylumped togerber as 'pornographic-, and thus can offer a perspectivefor progressive work in this central and neglected area.Pornographic DefinitionsSexuality is never left unspoken in our culture: it is massivelypresent, but always subject to limirations. It is exhaustively definedacross a series of specialist discourses (medicine, psychiatry.criminology etc) but its more public manifestation is through allusionrather than description. Forms of humour, representations ofwomen, clothing and other diverse practices all invoke sexuality.But they cannot be said to describe or to define sexual practices:they indicate obsessively, pointing towards sexuality, but theynever differentiate, never show, never speak directly. Prohibitionsexist not upon speaking about sexuality. but an explicit descriptionsof sexual activities. Prohibitions exist upon representationswhich refer to sexual activity or display the human body in anovertly sexualised manner; on rhe public representation of sexualactivity and the circulation of such re presentations. The conjunc ­tion of sexual activity and representation. where the representationspecifies sexual activity rather than referring to it by inferenceor allusion, is the area of particular taboos and is the traditional area of pornography.An industry has developed to produce and market such proscribedrepresentations, ensuring their circulation outside thenorma l channels. This pornography industry is a reaction to thehistorically specific definitions of pornography, it is called intoexistence as a separate sector by campaigns and laws against 83pornography. Essentialist approaches to pornography as a particularkind of representation begin from the nature of the contemporatypornography industry and produce a definition of allthat industry's products. Such an approach ignores tbe conditionsof production of pornography as a proscribed area of signification.The various strong and specific definitions of pornographythemselves produce this area. and it is with them that investigationof the constitution of 'pornography' must begin if it is [Q beexamined in its specific existence at a particular historical moment.There will be no one unitary definition of 'pornography' butrather a struggle for predominance between several definitions.These definitions will work within a context defined by severalforces, the current form of the pornography industry and itsparticular attempts at legirimisarion; the partk ular form of thelaws relating to obscenity and censorship; and the general mobilisationof \'arious moral and philosophical positions and themesthat characterise a particular social moment. It is beyond thescope of this article to examine the articulation of such generalmoral and philosophical currents with the specific question ofpornography in the particular contemporary British attempts atdefiintion of the area. More immediate is the complex question ofthe legal forms which are currently in use in Britain. These areby no means easy to describe (the Williams report concludes that,here, in England and Wales at least, 'The law, in shan. is in amess' 2.29) , yet their effect s across various media are quitemarked . In addition, censorship is often undertaken by bodies ofno fo rmal legal standi ng like the British Board of Film Censors,wh ich exists as a convenient delegate and centraliser of localauthority film censorship powers. At every point, however. whetherin pre-censorship as with cinema, or prosecution after publicationas with printed material, both the law and its individual implementationsrely on contemporary morality and definitions of whatmight constitute permissible representations of sexual activity.The mid-nineteenth century test of whether 3 particular representationhas a tendency to 'deprave or corrupt' is used in most existinglegislation. This requires jurors to have a defi nite image ofwhat corruption and depravity might consist in their contemporaries:a definition which cannot but rely upon prevailing definitionsof 'pornography', its supposed erfects and its presumed socialrole.Legal action against representations of a sexual nature dependsupon the currem prevaiHng definition of pornography. Legalaction. or the possibility of it, in turn defines the nature of thepornography industry or institution. Representations becomeclandestine because they are threatened with prosecution; equally

84they confine themselves to particular ghertos to avoid the 'publicconcern' which can be produced by vocal interest groups espous·iog definitions of pornography tbat entail censorship. At everypoint 'pornography' appears to be an area of representationswhose limits and nature are the subject of a struggle betweendiffering definitions. Definitions with such powers 35 these are theproduct of wider and institutionalised political posi tions. In contemporaryBritain tbere seem to he three main positions whichhave emerged in relation to pornography : the right-wing "NationwideFestival of Light'; the feminist concern with representationof women; the li beral attitude exemplified by the Williams Report.Each bas a distinctive power base. The Festival of Light relies ontraditional Christian notions which are conceived as in decline andunder threat. It incorporates Mary Whitehouse's highly successfulcampaign to de-Iiberalise television output, as we ll as many othersuch pressure groups, and has powerful support in the right-wingsections of the police force like the present Chief Constable ofGreater Ma nchester (see Williams 4.23). The feminist campaignsagainst pornography have come particularly from those sections ofthe women's movement t ha t see society as constituted by ananragonism between the sexes. This position finds its power basein a series of concerted campaigns, demonstrations, pickets ofrerailers of 'pornography', sloganising of sexist adverrising material,etcetera. It is not primarily directed towards exploitation or changeof exi sting legislation; it aims rarher fo r a wholesaJe change inpublic attitudes by a redefinition of what constitutes an offensiverepresentation. The final major position articulated in Britain is aliberal posicion. seeing society as plu ralistic. comaining manypoints of view in uneasy co-existence. This has recently been articulatedby the \ViIliams Committee whkh was convened to producea report proposing and justifying rationalisation of English lawsrelating to obscenity. It regards the law as 'holding the ring',ensuring public safety and well-being, ra ther than as an interventionistinstrument enforcing particular points of view. Thus theWilliams Committee represems a particular and successful tacticby a liberal lobby: commissioned by a Labour Home Secretary, ithas been deUvered to a Conservative one. The choice which nowfaces the Home Secretary is one of maintaining the existing legalconfusion or implementing something approximating to the\Villiams Report's recommendations.Each of these positions define 'pornography' as a differentobject. They produce definitions which class certain forms ofrepresentation as 'porn ographic' ; they produce arguments aboutthe social place, function and influence of these representations;and they. advocate dif}erent forms of action towards rhese representationsby judiciary and publJc alike. Each bas a definite basis«....z'"o..-'-'.:,"" it- a1'1""aBBl1s. :;; .. ,.':: IIIIIIIii --=within particular organisations and institutions, and are thereforeabJe to make political interventions of a public and influentialnature. These interventions and the struggle for general publicacceptability between these definitions together bring about thecurrent form of tbe pornography industry.F E S T I V A L 0 F L 1 G H T An exposition of the NationwideFestival of Light's position can be found in the Longford Report.'This is a curious publication, taking the form of a report from acommission set up by Lord Longford to collect evidence about thepornography pheuomenon. It was published as a mass sale paperbackamid a blaze of publicity. aiming to capture the definition ofpornography for a semi-religious right-wing position. The reporthas the overall style of a government report, with a panel commissioningresearch and receiving submissions from anyone whocared to make them, yet it has none of the scrupulousness aboutits statements and their veracity that usually characrerises aGovernment report. The Longford Repon takes pornography as anobject which exists incontrovertibly in the world beyond its writings:its main aim is to define its influences. Pornography. it argues.is a representation which isolares one physical activity - sex orviolence - from the social context whic.lJ would justify it as anactivity or portray its consequences.Dr Claxton describes both 'hard' and 'soft' pornography as 'asymptom of preoccupation with sex which is unrelated to itspurpose' - which he sees, of course, not exclusively in terms ofthe physical orgasm, but a relationship which transcends themerely physical (p 205).Famtlgdon Road.London December1979, available as apostcard fromSistenvrite, 190Upper St. London N1 .2 Pornography : TheLongford Report,Coronct. London1972.85

86 Pornography has as its aim the excitation of the viewer rathertban, as Lord Clark argues. one of provoking thought and can.ternplation:To my mind art exists in the realm of contemplation and is boundby some sort of imaginative transposition. Tile moment aT[becomes an incentive to action it (oses its true character. Th is ismy objection to painting with a commun ist programme, and itwould also apply to pornography (p 100) .Pornography. it is argued, 'stimulates in the audience the kind ofbehaviour that may lead to violence· (p 45). Many of its representmionscause 'extreme offence to the great majority of people'(p 193), It is a type of representation that is at once a symptom ofa general decline of societal values (the 'permissive society'), anda cause of particular undesirable activities: perversions, rape,masturbation, dissatisfaction within marriages and so on. Themetaphor of 'health' hovers over the report : healthy sexualiry isa sexuality which is fu nctional within a relationship ; a healthyattitude towards representations is one of contemplation and uplift;a healthy society is one that contains no disruption of irstranquillity. Health defines the presumably normal: the reporrappeals to this sense of the average in order to promote it as theonly acceptable form of behaviour. It then defines as pornographyany representation that is capable of producing or suggestingbehaviour outside this norm. Pornography for me Festival of Lightis a class of representations which are concerned with sex orviolence without their social or moral context. The representationsaim to excite the viewer and have a concentration uponviolence. They stimulate anti-social behaviour where it might nothave existed before, and are a symptom as well as a cause of awholesale decline in social value. Pornography should be bannedwherever possible, and should certainly be kept away fromchildren. Rigorously enforced legis.lation is seen to be rhe means toachieve this aim.O NE F E MIN 1ST A P PR O A C H The most dominant feministposition finds itself confused with the Festjval of Light's positionat certain pOints, despite its different constituency and forms ofcampaigning. It produces a very similar definition of the object'pornography', but traces its roots back to very different causes.Such a feminist definition of pornography points to violence, lackof socia l context of sexuality, and the symptomat.ic social role ofpornography in the same way as the Longford Report. Pornographyis seen asviolent and mysogynistic, and nothing to do with the free expressionof 'healtlly' sex, but rather the truly 'perverted' desire totrample on another human being.3pornography is also described as a depiction of sexual acnvitydeprived of its social significance and offered to excite the viewer:pornography's principal and most humanly significant function isfhat of arousing sexual excitement. . It usually describes thes~xual act not in explicit . . but in pu rely inviting terms. Thefunct ion of plot in a pornographic narrative is always the same.It exists to provide as many opportunities as possible fo r thesexual act to take place. . Characterisation is necessarily limitedto the formal necessity for the actors to fuck as frequently and asingeniously as possible."Pornography is even seen as the symptom of wider social trends,and as having a potential link with forms of violence perpetratedby men on women:There is no evidence that. porn causes rape directly, and there maybe no causal link. But they are linked in spirit. Both are manifestationsof the same attitude towards women and sex - of a desireto avoid interaction with a woman as another human being(WalIsgrove. op cit).However, a feminist position would not base its norion of pornographyon any notion of a ·healthy· society and its attitude ofsex. Instead, many fem inists perceive pornography as the productof a general antagonism between the sexes. Men are the subjectsof pornography. it is produced for their gratification and pleasure;women are rhe objects of pornography, reduced to being sexualobjects, degraded and humiliated. Sexuality and its representationin our society are both profoundly marked by the interpellation ofmen as aggressors, women as their victims. This argument isca pable of designating a whole series of representations as 'pornographic'.re presentations which do not feature in more conventionalor righ t-wing defiintions. A feminist definition based on tbenotion of an antagonism between the sexes defines a continuumof representations of women defined according [Q their sexua lity.This continuum stretches from many form s of public advertisementdisplays to hard·core pornography in the usual sense. Eachrepresentation is designated pornographic because it defi nes wornenas sexual objects offered for male pleasure. The terms of this argumentare not fo und entirely in written arguments: it appearsequally and publically in propagandist activities such as writing orputting stickers on posters, particularly in the Underground in3 Ruth Wallsgrovc,'Pornography:Bem..een [he Deviland the True BlueWhitehouse',Spare Rib no 65.December 1977.-I Angela Carter,nlt~ Sadeia nWoman , Virago.London 1979.pp 12·13.87

88 London. One sucb sticker is 'KEEP MY BODY OFF YOUR ADS'89which condenses many of tbe problems with this position. It(polemically) confuses the real witb representation, but in doingso it reduces the representation to being that of '3 body', and theaim of the campaign to tbat of repression, the banning of representationsof bodies. Interestingly, it also has a central confusionabout address. T refers to the collectivity of women; 'you' is eitherthe collectivity of men who in an undifferentiated way 'portray::;women', or (as is more probable given tbe address of most posters)..the power elite of marketing personnel. In the first case, it is only'"to those who already have access to such feminist arguments that'" ~such a reading is possible: the sticker has no effect as propaganda,J,Jtowards those who do not. In second case, the (male) vieweris left in the same relationship to the poster plus sticker as he~ "zwas to the poster alone: he is the voyeur to women speaking to

90We take it tlza!, as almoS[ el'eryone understands tile term, a porno ­graphic representation is one thal combines two features : it has acertain function or intention, to arouse its audience sexually, andalso has a cer tain content, explicit represemarions of sexualmaterial (organs. postures. activity, etc). A work has to have boththis function and this collten, to be a piece of pornography (8.2) .91It reserves an aesthetic distance from the majority of such representations'certainly most pornography is also trash: ugly, shallowand obvious' (7.2). It differs from both the feminist and theFestival of Light characterisation of pornography because it makesa rigid separation between the realms of the public and the private.Both fem inist and right-wing characterisations are based on theassumption that the public and the private are inseparable: theysee attitudes as existing in a continuum between the twO realms.The Will iams Report maintains that the tWO are different becausethey entail di fferent conceptions of freed om. and impose dHferentduties upon the legislature. The private is seen as the area of thepurely personal, the area of fre~d om of choice and individualpredelicrion, into whkh others (,,,hether individuals, groups orstate) should make the least possible interventjon. There shouldbe no imposed morality, no attempt to legislate a prescri ptiveconception of the normal. Th e public is seen as the area of theuneasy co-existence of these plural private preferences. It is whereindjviduals encounter each other and have effects upon each other,where individual actjvities have to be curbed for the safety andcontinued well-being of others. So the report provides as its firstprinciple that there should be as little limitation upon the individualas possible, and that such limitation should be for theprotection of the generality of other indh1iduals. Pornography.however objectionable it might appear, should therefore be availablefor individuals unless it can be proved that its presence withinsociety affronts m her individuals going about their daily business,or indeed produces forms of anti-social behaviour such asaggression upon particular individuals. Therefore if it can beensured that adult individuals can onJy come across pornographyby thei r own conscious choice, and if no proof or strong evidenceexists of a causal link between pornographic representations andpanicular, anti-social acts, then pornography should be given alegal existence in society. For [his reason, the report devotes muchspace to refu ting the Festival of Light's empirical proofs of linksbetween pornography and particular acts of violence. Once thisdirect evide nce is demolished, then more general assertions ofindirect ha rmful effects upon society as a whole can be refused by"a sserting pornography's relative insignificance compared to 'themany other problems that face our society today' (6.80). and thedi ffic ulty of distinguishing whether a particular phenomenon is a2o'"z~~~:> "'

..... 92'II ~'.''''''' ••'I~ICI;UIMI:II:'~• .. ... "'-AI ..... _ ..I • ~ ~ _ ......z ~::a:~y TIL. 2",.." Cinema hoarding.7 Brewer St. LondonIV1. April 1980.currently available in ordinary newsagents would then be restrictedto these premises. Live entertainment would be prevented fromstaging actual sex acts as this 'carried some dangers of pubJicorder problems' (11 .9). which is why they are no longer permittedin Denmark. Video tapes and their proliferation receive no attentionin the report. for which it has been criticised. Film remains(he only medium to be subject to prior censorship, and [he reportenvisages that cerrain films could still be banned altogether. Therep ort'~ considered assessments rend to collapse beret under abelief in a realist aesthetic:Film. in our piew, is a uniquely powerful instrument: the close-up,fas t cutting, the sophistication of modern make-up and specialeflec ts techniques, the heightening effect of sound effects andmusic, all combine on the large screen to produce an impactwhich no other medium can crea te, ... We are more im pressed bythe consideration that rhe extreme vividness and immed iacy offilm may make it harder ra ther than easier for some who areattraaed to sadistic material to tell the di ffe rence between fantasyand re ality (12.10).The argumem is framed in terms of the possible consequences ofviolent ma terial : it is conceived as possibJe that it could lead toviolent ac ts in some way. Film censorship would be retained, ableto ban certain films on the grounds of excessi\'C cruelty, andallocating va rious certificates which '\-'ould ban children under aseries of specific ages from seeing particular film s. An appealagainst banning could be lodged on the grounds of we 'artisticmerit' of a particular film . The present self-financing and advisoryBritish Board of Film Censors would be abolished and replacedby an official state body allocating mandatory certificares, A newcategory of restricted film would be set up in add irian to thecurrent 'X' certificate banning children under 18. Such film s couldonly be shown in halls licensed for the purpose by local authorities,who wo uld thus retain their censorship powers only insofar asthey could refuse [Q licence any ci.nema in their area for theshowing of resuined fi lms, A cinema so designated would continue[Q be abl e [Q show 'Bambi in the school holidays if it wishes (0do so' (12.39).In practice (th ere will be] two SOrtS of designated cinemas, Onewill be a blue movie house, which rarely if ever shows anythingelse . The other will be, ['Q some degree, an 'art' house, which showsa variety of films with various certifica tes. usually oj minorityappeal (12.39).The o\'era ll effect of (he \"'illiams Committee recommendations, if

94 between classes of representation, depending upon an assessmentof the likelihood of judicial seizure. and their acceptability tothe potential advertisers of a wide range of consumer products.This distinction is usually designated 'hard-core'j'soft-core', termswhich originate in an American distinction as to whether real sexor simulated sex have been involved in the production of a representation,but no longer have such a particular meaning. Soft-corepornography. available currently in public cinemas, in magazineson open sale in newsagems, attracts advertisements; hardcorepornography does not. Along with these advertisements comes awhole series of journalistic practices, from circulation audits toparticular modes of address within written texts.Pornography can deSignate itself by various simple mechanisms.An institution that is defined largely from outside by the suspicionof many vocal pressure groups is able to signify itself by exploiting the connotations associated with that suspicion. Thus'Swedish', 'X', 'E mrn a n uel ~ e ' , 'Sins' are precise generic indicators:as are a certain size of magazine with a near-naked female bodyportrayed on the cover, even before the list of contents developsthe connotation, Similarly 'Books and Magazines', 'Adult' and'Private' indicate 'hard core' emporia. This activity of self-definitioncontinues within the texts themselves, with the intrusive 'we'('aren't we daring?') of editorial matter; the recurrence of models;and the habit in films of lIsing the institution of pornography itseU(eg photo sessions) as circ umstances fO[ sex. This process meansthat areas of representation constructed from outside as 'porno·graphic' never have to USe that term ro de fine themselves. Theground is never explicitly conceded.Pornography in Britain occurs across a diversity of practices,each with their own means of marketing and dissemination ,nevertheless unified by processes of self·designation into an institutionof signi fication. Each practice has its own particular emphasesand porentiali ties, both for marketing and for signification. Cinemais shatply divided into the kinds of soft-core fi lms " 'ailable inpublic cinemas, and the grades of sexually specific material to befound in 'clubs' of various sorts. The Briti sh Board of Film Censorsensures (hat public fi lms are extensively cut from the form theytake in other countries, red ucing them ro a traditional kind of'teasing' ; Tatler Cinema Clubs (associated with the ClassicCinema chain) show uncut American soft-core films; other clubsin City centres show fi lm of actu al sex acts of various kinds.Video tapes for home consumption are a fast developing industry,providing both ma terial developed for [he format (eg the videomagazineElectric Blue, de veloped on an analogy with soft-coremagazines). and fu l1 recordings of film s sometimes banned orcensor-cut for cinema. Magazines comprise a large and diversifiedz:>:zo'"z~'"'""'::E

96 market. with the half·dozen up·market soft·core monthlies (egMayfair. Club [PH"na'iona/) having sales between 150.000 and250.000 each. and 'he down·market publications (Fiesta. Knave)possibly around 150.000 each (source : Williams Ap pendix 6 byMichael Brown). Readership of each copy is conventionally calculatedat something like four times the number sold.Their editorial contents, both fictional and allegedly 'factual',extensively describe varieties of sexual experience but their illustrations,n1ajoring on high-definition female nudity. will not generallycover scenes of intercourse. Th e magazines . .. would treatauto-eroticism tully. touch on bondage, but shun more extremeperversio", (M Brown, Williams p 25 0).Magazines available only in specialised shops, for which no figuresarc available, provide what the ge nerally circulated ones do not.live performance in Britain takes advantage of the lack of censorshipof theatre to present revues of various kinds in both 'legit'theatres and cabarets, which stop short of anual sex on stage.Writing and the fine arts are vi rtually freed from the emphasisthat they used to have as major channels for pornography becausethey lack the immediacy of the 'pho tograph effect'. Prosecutionsoccur occasionally, however, but for some years have not involvedpleas fo r the material made on the grounds of its 'anistic merit'.The institution of pornography has been called inw existenceby the articulation of legal restraint and particular, contlicting,definitions of pornography. It produce s no real justification ofitself. no major articulation of 'pornography' as a class of repre·sentation no better and no wo rse than any other. To this extent,it accepts its own status as the pariah of representational prac·tices. Practitioners in tbe industry tend to prefer silence to developingany kind of public definition of their acdvities. \Vhen forcedinto pleading their case, their definitions tend to weave throughthe interstices of other definitions, speaking of 'social function','liberation', 'sublim ation' and other such gleanings from vulgarFreudianism or sociology. When a case is made fot the ending ofcensorship on the grounds of intellectual freedom, it is not thepornography industry which makes it. but groups of liberal incellecrualswho, like the Williams Committee, tega rd pornogtaphy asunappealing. but better permitted tha n banned.The institution of pornography is a reaction to the designationof certain classes of representation as in some way objectionable.Thjs designation is nowhere fixed, not even in law. but is the subjectof a constant activity of redefinition as a result of strugglesbetween definitions, particular initiatives on behalf of or againstspecific representations. and wider changes in moral attirudes.InterlaceThe next step for this analysis is to find a way of characterisingthe representations designated as 'pornography' so that tbey canbe- seen as contradic(Qry and open to change, even as undergoingcbange at tbe moment. This is the necessary other half of answer·ing the inevitable (correct yet vexing) question: 'What positionshould be taken up in relation to the struggle between definitions? 'In doing this I have employed a meta-linguistic approach like thatused in the previous passage. This approach is necessary as aninitial gesture that seeks to define a terrai n in which further work(and not solely analytic work) can take place. As writing. itdescribes and delimits other forms of utterance, and is contentto do so from a position of surveying those utterances from theoutside. As an expression of an author· figure, it tends to evacuatethe question of subjective response which pornography brings tothe fore through its compelling implication of a sexed observer.Such a meta·linguistic approach tends towards the impersonal,even the magisterial. It is not particularly able to produceaccounts of textual activity, of the process of enunciation; it tendstowards characterisation of the fa cts of the enoUtlCed. A meta·linguistic approach has to be used before it can be displaced bymore complex and supplc forms of analysis which can sense theopenness of specific [cxts. or by forms of fiIm·making that developalong the lines of conrradiction that meta-language can delineate.The passage that foll ows ,herefore uses a typology of regimesof visual representations to examine one particular manifestationof representations call ed 'pornography'. This is the smrtlingappeatance of female genitals in eaSily available photogtaphsand fi lms: even in magazines sol d in newsagents and films thatare widely shown. This phenomenon does not account for every·thing that appears in pornography. J have chosen to concentrateon one public fact of pornography that has particularly caught my3nendon, because I think it can be made to reveal a particularshift wi thin the area of representations that is designated ·porno·graphy'o It is therefore a question that may be able to reveal'pornography' as a contradictory area of signification, rather thanas a regime of signification with a strong internal coherence.FemaJe PleasureThe closest that a general typology of visual representationshas come to a perception of a particular regime of representationinvolving particular audience positioning which is open to changeis probably Laura Mulvey's highly influential article 'VisualPleasure and Narrative Cinema'.o This has been central to theexamination of the regimes of visual representation exploited in6 Sc reen Autu mn1975 . \/01 16 no 3,pp 6·18.97

98 'mainstream cinema', and particular1y the centrality of women tovoyeurism: it involves a fixation which impedes narrative.997 Griselda Pollock.centres on repetition of situations, the display of a star. Fetishism'What's Wrongwi th Images ofis a form of looking which disavows castration and hence sexualWomen', Screendifference, whereas voyeurism involves an acknowledgment ofEducation no 24.sexual difference in its attempts to demystify or punish woman a~Autumn 1977 p 30.object of tbe look. In both forms8 'Fetishism' (1927),Standa rd Edition.vol. XXI.9 Althoughaddressed t.ocinema, much ofMulvey's analysisis rclevanr [0still images.that cinema. Through an examination of the forms of looking andtheir pleasures (informed by psychoanalytic theory), Mulvey is ableto give an adequate characterisation of such diverse phenomenaas the star system. strip-tease and the narrative func tion of womenin 'dominant cinema', This characterisation indicates directionsfor film-making practice which try to undermine these forms.However. it seems to he unable to account for and analyse the\\'ays in which current visual pornography is obsessed with \\'omen'sgenitals.Th e directness [of vaginal imagery] radically questions the psychoanalyticallybased analyses of images of women undertaken byClaire Johnston and Laura Mulvey and the nOlions oj castrationfear and the phallic woman. TMulvey's typology includes a notion of fetishism that is basedon the letter of Freud's. text,S taking fetishism as necessarilyinvolving the disavowal of woman's lack of a penis. Hence currentpornography would seem to contradict Mulvey's analysis, althoughin other areas it has proved to be crucial.Mulvey describes cinema as an activity of 100king 9 in whichthree looks ate involved: that of the spectator to the screen; thatof rhe camera to the event; and that of the actors within the eventbetween each other. In classic cinema these are carefully arrangedso that they never coincide: the camera never looks at the space(hat the audience 'occupies' (lhe 180 0rule); the actors neve.r lookdown the axis of the camera . This regime allows the full exploitationof all the 'pre-existing patterns of fas cinarion already at workwithin the individual subject and the social formations that havemoulded him' (p 6). The first is the pleasure in looking itself, thescopophilic drive directed towards submitting others to a controllingand curious gaze. This drive is partly developed into anarcissistic form through which the viewer identifies him/ her selfwith figures perceived as exis ting outside the self of the viewer.Tht:se nNO SlTuctures of looking exist in tension with each other,and are crossed by a furt.her pair of contradictory structuresproduced within the caslration complex: voye urism and fetishism .Vo yeu rism is an active, moblle form, associated with change andnarrativisation. Itdemands a sto ry, depends on making something happen . forcinga c1lange in another person. a battle of will and strengt h, victor),/defeat, all occurring in a linear time u'!;th a beginning and anend (p 14).Fetishism according to Mulvey's account is in contradiction 'A.]thultimately, the mean ing of woman is sexual difference, th e absenceof a penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence ml whichis based the castration complex essential for the orga nisation ofentrance into the symbolic order and the la w of the father (p 13).Fetishism in Mulvey's account is a disavowal of woman's lack ofa penis. and therefore should always involve avoiding the directsight of the female genitals and finding a substitute penis inparticular fetish objects, or jn the whole figure of the womanmade-phallic.Current pornograpby would seem to refute thjscharacterisation. Yet in eve.ry other respect, current visual pornographymaintains the kind of textual structure that Mulveyassociates with fetishism. It presents the repetition of events ratherthan narrative develo pment towards tbe resolution of an enigma;it relies upon a concentration on the figure of the v,'oman whichlends to oust any other considerations; and 'the image [is] indirect erolic rappon with the spect.::.tor· (ibid p 14).The feri s li c representalion attempts to abolish the distancebetween spectator and representation. Voyeurism installs a separation·of seer and seen as the very principle of irs operation, allowingthe seer a secure posicion ove r and against a representation thatpermjts [he seen to change wi thout threatening the position of theseer. This permits the development of editing. scene dissectionand narrati ve in the cinema. Fetishism constantly anempts toreduce or annul this distance and separation. Hence it is onlycapable of producing an attenuared narnnion, a constant repetitionof scenarios of desire, where the repetition around certain neuralgicpoints outweighs any resolution of a narrative enigma, any discoveryor reordering of facts. At its most extreme, fetishisminvol ves a concemralion upon performance, explici tly posed forthe viewer (sometimes involving the performer looking directly 'at'the audience). or even upon the frame-edge, or rhe two-dimensionalreality of the realist photograph. A fetish ist regime attempts toannul the separation of image and spectator, lO reinsrall animmediate reb lion that promises (in vain) LO pro"ide satisfactionto desire itself.Thus Mulvey's use of the conceprs of "oyeurism and feti shismcontains much tha t is viral (Q a metapsycho)ogical characterisalionof the various modes of cinematic and photograph.ic representation.

10010 Sigmund Freud'Outline ofPsychoana lysis.Stand ard Ed it ion.vol XXIIl, p 203.It cannot be discarded simply because it is unable in its currentformulation to deal with the single (fairly ubiquitous) facr ofdirect depiction of female genitals. Rather, its Freudian basis sho',ldbe re-examined.F E T ] 5 H : P E N 1 S 0 R P ,"I A LL US? According to the text ofFreud's essay 'f etishism', the construction of a fetish representsa disavowal of the pllysical fact of sexual difference, occasionedby an acrual glimpse of female genitals. The structure thatFreud describes is one in which the knowledge of the woman'slack of a penis is retained. but the infant is saved from acknowledgmentof it by th e substitution of what is seen in the momenrbefore the sight of the genitals for that sight itself. The desirethat the woman should after all have a penis is transferred to aparticular part of tbe body. or to an objecr (eg shoes. fur. stock·ings) or to other sensations. This substitute object maintains thebelief that the woman has a penis whilst the knowledge of thisphysical lack is also maintained : in clinical fetishists 'the two factspersist side by side throughout their lives without influencing eachother' lO The structure of disavowal is thi s: 'I know (woman hasno penis). nevertheless (she has, through this fetish),. In clinicalfetishism the sight of the fetish is a necessary aid to sexualarousal, and Freud states that he has only encountered this state,in males. Fetishism as a strucnlte of (usually visual) perceptionhowever, can also be found in women : it is a matter of the. fascinarionresulting from hesitation of the knowledge of sexual differenceby a structure of disavowal. 'I know, but nevertheless'. For Freud'saccount of fetishism rhen, the penis, its presence or absence on thehuman bod)', is central.Yet the presence or absence of a penis on a human body isonly important insofar as it signifies, insofar as it already hasmeaning y.-ithin a particular cultural formation of sexual difference.Tbe penis, or its lack. stands as the inadequate physical stand-infor that signifier which institutes the play of signification anddifference : the phallus. In effect, Freud's essay is aware of thisdistinction, only formulated clearly thirty years later. The child isalready aware of sexual difference in Freud's account: what heseeks is confirmation that this suspicion might not be true afterall. The desire that the woman should have a phallus in spite ofeverything is wbat gives the strengrh to the fetish, and allows thepromotion of the momenr before the physical confirmation as asubstitute. Fetishjsm as a ctisavowal of sexual difference is thusa disavowal of the phallus by promoting in its . place somethingelse that the woman does possess. As a disavowal, it neverthelessmaintains the phallus and thus the possibility of difference andlanguage,ll The structure is therefore one of 'I know that womandoes not have the phallus, nevertheless she does have the phallusin this fetish ',The feti sh is a signifier which stands in for the phallus. Freud'sexample of the 'shine on the nose' can demonstrate how thissubstirution of signifiers takes place through a process of me taphoror metonymy. His patient could become sexually 3rous-ed onlythrough the sight (real or supposed) of a shine on the nose of hispartneL Freud's analysis of this fetish has twO components : a storyand a sliding of signifiets. The 'little story' is that of rhe childseeing female genitals, and looking up at the woman's face to gaina reassuring 'nevertheless' from the nose. Hence the story ''''hichlies hidden in the fetish is one of a glance that traverses thewoman's body. The noti on of the 'shine' comes from the condensationof this 'glance' and its story into the German 'Glanz' or'shine'. Yet the condensation holds anodter possibility within itself,that the 'shine' could stand for a realisation of being looked at":the 'shine' is that of the gaze of the woman returned to theinquiring child. It then becomes the woman's look in which thefetish is located. rather than the 'shine upon the nose' that Freudindicates did not necessarily have [ 0 exist to othet observers. Thewoman's gaze is where her phanus js located. If this is so, thenthe story of the child's gaze rna)' well itself be a substitute forthis complex (nose/glance/Glanz) around the phallic gaze of thewoman. It would then be a substitute that is prO\rided in analysisin the form of a narrative ; and narrative is always a suspicious orinadequate form for satisfactory analysis because of its insistenceupon the serial nature of events (narrative can be said to Jie behindthe notorious 'stages' interpretation of Freud's explanations), andits tendency to invite us into a literal scenario (narrative fiction' sconstant lure).Such an interpretation of Freud's celebrated example questionsthe centrality of the child's active gaze to the account. The 'littlestory' of the child's horror at the woman's lack of a penis canlegitimately be seen as a substitute for the central and powerfulgaze which constructs the fetish . The way is ~en open to examinefetishism as a parricular kind of substitution of signifiers whichdoes not necessarily depend upon a 'primal look'. Indeed fetishismdoes not necessarily involve looking: a fetish can equally be somethingthat is felt, heard or smelled. Fetishism can be concernedwith any or all of the in\locatory drives and not just with a particu ­lar one: scopophilia.What seems to be neces8ary for a particular object to becomea fetish is that it sbould be constituted as a sexual significationby its articulation in a discourse of ·sexuality. The parts of thebody, the objects and rhe sensarions that us ually become fetish es_____ 101II Freud presents hisclinical fetishistsas in no real waydiscommoded :'usually they arcquJte satisfiedwith it, or evenpraise the way inwhich it casestheir eroti c Jife'SE "01 XXI, P 152.12 A brighr point oflight concenttatedon the eyes of anactor is a standardindicator of anintense gaze in afilm .

10213 For an examinationof this processsee Rosali ndCoward. 'SexualLiberation and theFamily' in mitno 1. 1978.especiallypp 14·17.14 For a similardisc ussion ofreti shism, seeMetz's 'TheIma,ginarySignifier', Screer! ,Summer 1975,vol 16 no 2. csppp 67·75. Metz.however. is onlyconcerned withthe fetishism ofthe cinematicapparatus.15 A humanist notiondependent onconceivingsexuality aspcnnissible onlywhen involvingmore than oncperson.are those whicb are already delimited and sexualised by a wboleculture," Hence those objects prone to fetishisation are thosewhich are already sexualised: underwear. visible parts of the body.the sound of clothes rustling, the smell of sweat.This account of fetishism is able to avoid the problems thatare inherent in Mulvey's account. and equal1y in Freud's, wherehe is forced by his insistence upon the woman's literal physicallack of a penis and the child's actual understanding sight of thislack to stress the horror that would be involved in sucn a reaJjsation:'probably no male human being is spared the fright ofcastration at tbe sigh t of a fe male genital' (SE vol XXI P 154).This horror cannot be involved in the massive dissemination ofimages of female genitals that characterises particularly still photo·graphy in [he pornographic sector. It is rather one result (and notthe necessary result) of the quasi-identity thar is produced ben-veenthe phallus and the penis. between signifi er and physical stand-in.It also produces [he confusion bet\'t'een physical sexual differenceand the distinction masculine/feminine that Freud took such painsto avoid. HIF E T IS H: T HE W 0 MAN ' S SEX U AL P L EA SUR £ Mulvey'sacco unt of fetishistic modes of represenration shows muchthat can be fo und in current pornography: cycl ic narrativefo rms which re-enact scenarios of desire ; particular suess uponperformances addressed to the spectator of the representation andhaving only tenuous relation co any notion of verisimilirude withjnthe represem a rl on; the reduction of di egeti c space [Q the n\'odimensionalsurface of the screen; the woman posed as phallusrather than as lack. In addition, the usual voyeuristic di stance ofspectator to represemation is compromised such tha t the imageposes itself as pu re presence (as ful fi lment of desire) ratber thanas present absence (as something photographed in another place.at another time). Such structures of fetishism appear in cur rem\·isual pornography. but other phenomena also occur that cannotbe readil y accounted for in Mulvey's terms as they stand.Besides the massi\'e di ffusion of vaginal imagery alreadyremarked lIpon (imagery oftc n described as 'explicit' or 'aggressive'),there also appears a concemration on lesbian aC[ivi ties in bothfi lm and photography, and upon female masturbation, particularlyin still photography where it is often implied strongly by variousposes. Feminist cridcs usually co ndemn the re presentation ofma sturbation as rei nforcing the 'soli psism' of pornography,U butare much more equivocal about the re presentation of lesbianism.These diverse shif ts in pornographic representations have appeared,pa rticularly in the fairly publi c pornography of magazines availablein local newsagents shops, and in films available in public cinemas.The fetish offered by these representations is no longer afragment of clothing. or even the deceptively smooth body of thephallic woman, it is now the woman's sexual pleasure. The womannevertheless has the phallus in sexual pleasure; the woman's lackof a phallus is disavowed in her orgasm. Hence physical sexualdifference is no longer unmentionable within public representationsof women that are designated 'pornographic'. Physical sexualdifference can be promoted within these representations becausethe fetish has been shifted from compensating for woman's lackof a penis to the find ing of the woman's phallus in her sexualpleasure.In orgasm woman no longer is the phall us, she has the phallus.Films currently produced within the pornographic sector gaintheir impulsion from the repetition of instances of female sexualpleasure, and male pleasure is perfunctory in most cases. The film s(and photographs) are concerned with (he mise-en -scene of rh efema le orgasm. they constantly circl e around it, ttyi ng to find it,to abolish the spectator's separation fro m ic.Female sexual pleasure has been promoted to rhe status of afetis h in order to provide representations of sexuality which aremore 'explicit' for an audience conceived of as male. The pornographyindustry has regard ed the process as one of [he legi timateex pansion of the very restricted and clandestine 'hatd-core' representations in to the more public are na of 'soft·core'. Thus theprogress ive revelation of pubic hair in phorop-raphs, and of (li mp)pen ises in cinema have been regarded as the stealrhy emergenceof 'pieces' of the body imo tbe daylight of soft-core representations.Yer the industry's own characterisation of (he process. though tosome extent a determinant upon ir, is very far from being thewhole trurh. Female sexual pleasure has become perhaps thedominant fe tish within current publi c pornographic representationas a result of this 'stealthy extension' of the industry, but theconsequences are many and diffi cult LO assess.First. not every form of female sexual pleasure has an equalemphasis. Lesbian acti vity and female mas turbatio n, ,·;hen co n­tained within a narrative, are always shown as subSidiary forms ofpl easure. as surrogates for sex with a male. or as a fo rm ofex perience that the heroi ne gains on her odyssey towards sexualsatisfa cti on. Even within these pa ssages, the em phasis on dild osand other substitute pe ni ses is quite marked: a male presence ismaintai ned even within scenes of mas turbation or lesbiJnism .Sexual pleasure for women, rhen, is posited J s being depenJl..'ntupon a male. This provides a cl!rrai n sec urity to the enquiry iDl ofemale sexual pleasure: it is a ferish because it is in the orgasmthat Ihe woman's phallus is re- found. \Voman find s her phallus in------4103I'";­~WARNING :::PERSONS UND£R18 reof' of AGE ore ~HOT ~MnEDon THESE P!

104... rhe question ofmale sexualpleasure ... 6 BrewerSr, March 1980.the orgasm; woman is given that orgasm and hence that phallusby men. Both security and abolition of separation from therepresentation are provided for the spectator by this arrangement.The male's phallus is the condition for female sexual pleasure,the condition fo r ~he always-expected, never-found fulfilment ofdesire. The phallus for the woman in the representation is providedby the male in the audience: it is a 'gift' from a man or men thatprovides woman's orgasm.Angela Carter cal ls this process 'a gap left in the text of justthe right size for the reader to insert his prick into' (op cit. p 16) :the representation of female pleasure is addressed to an audienceconstructed as masculine, as possessing a phall us (usually but notexdusively a biological male), because it erects the pballus of theindividual in the audience as the condition of female pleasure.Female pleasute is the result, ultimately. of tbe gift of the pballusfrom members of the audience. Hence the current regime ofpornographic representation retains its security for a (male)audience: it completes the fetishistic regime by providing theviewer wi th a direct relation to the representa tion through thegift of the phallus as the ultimate condition of female pleasure.This rcgime is unquestionably an advance upon previous modesof representation o( women in association with sexuality: thepin.up, the star system, much advertising rhetoric. It is equally anadvance upon many forms of construction of 'woman' within otherregimes of representation. The question of female sexual pleasurehas remained unasked within public discourses for many decadesin our culture: in pornography it is now receivi ng attention on amassive scale. The availability of vaginal imagery can be said tohave a directly educative effect for both men and women. as weHas tending to dispel the aura of strangeness produced by thecenruries of concealment of the \'3gin3 in Western representations.>3:m~~~z~ozIt is therefore an important shift in the representation of the 105female, a shift that is still the subject of a series of bard-foughtbattles. wbether in Jegislation or in the streets. For it is aprofoundly equivocal shift : all is not sweetness and Ugbt in thisfield, tbe shift cannot be counted as a simple advance, let alonea victory for feminism. The educative effects, the effects of dis·pelling a particular and deep-rooted form of disgust at parr ofanother's body, these are little more than sid e-effffi~speciallygiven the current and probable future institutional connotationsgiven to the forms of circulation of these images. For the fetishisticregime is maintained by the reasserrion of the phalJus as thepossession of the male, and the fe male as dependent upon thephallus as access to pleasure. The male spectator is sutured intothe representation as the possessor of this pre-requisite; and thusconfirmed in 3 particular psycho-social construction of self.However, this regime of representation is profoundly unstable.It has asked the question 'whar is fema le pleasure? ', a questionthat cannot find its answer in representations. The tawdry Britishsex comedies (still produced by the likes of George HarrisonMarks) at least were based upon a question which could receivean answer: 'What does a nude woman look like?' Currenr pornographicfilms have gone further and asked the question tbat liesbehind that of nudity; the question of tbe nature of pleasure.Bli t all that can be sbown in a film or a pbotograph is the conditionsof pleasure. its circumscances and outward manifestations.These are never enougb: all tbar the viewer finds as the reply rothe question are the outward displays, what is ex pected. What/IQPP'" S, 'the fading of the subject', eludes the representation ifthe representation seeks to discover the elusive nature of theexperience of sexual pleasure. The pornographic film rext respondsby multiplying instances of possible pleasure by multiplying itslitue stories of sexual incidents. Either rhat, or, in its morehard core manifestations. it turns upon the object of the enquiry.the woman, and \'ents its (and the audience's) frustrations at theimpossibility of gaining an answer to the question by degradingand humiliating woman, by attacking her for her obstinate refusalro yield this impossible secret. Tbis aggression reaffirms the powerof the pballus in response to a terror at the possibilities of thewoman's escape from that power.The formulation of this question in terms of a fetishistic regimehas one further consequence: it leaves the question of malepleasure unasked. Attention is directed towa rds women and throughthem, to woman; male figurcs are attenuated in the sense rhartheir sexuaJjty is never really in question. The closesr that questioningcomes is in the often portrayed incidence of impotence ortimidi ty, always cured. Male pJeasure is assumed rather than

106 investigated; this provides the security of the male viewer. Yet inunjustly treated under the current regu1ation of film censorship.107the very perfunctory tteatment that it receives, the question beginsStephen Heath has traced the film's concern with the impossibiIity 17 Stephen Heath,to haunt the representation: a disparity between the pressure ofof seeing, its hesitation of narration. l1 What is important here is 'The QuestionOshima' in Ophuisdesire and the inadequacy of its satisfaction begins to open thethe way the film demonstrates the possibilities that pornograpbyPaul Willemencomplementary question, 'what is male pleasure?' A questionoffers for representations of sexuality and of women (and men). (ed), British Filmwhich, itself, has no real answer apart from the tautology of 'IThe instability of the current fetishistic regime, based on the Instirute 1978.know because I know it',question of female pleasure which is only partially answerable byAll this points to an instability in the current regime of pornographicrepresentation of sexuality, especially in the cinema. Itpractice. This would aim at a displacement of existing representa­over have beenthe 'gift' of the phallus, provides opportunities for film-making18 Fines of £100 andis in cinema that the most hysterical responses to this instabilitytions through foregrounding tbe aspects of the question which exacted forOCCUI. Two disparate manifestations of this hysteria: the extremestrouble the regime of representation that asks it. The institution 'creative' writingon Undergroundof brutality practised upon women within representations, andof pornography would then begin to ask the questions whose posters.the proposal from the Williams Committee that dnema shouldspace it occupies without being aware of it: 'What is sexuality?be the sole medium in which active censorship is retained. TheWhat is desire?'particular instability in this med um results from the cinema'sabili ty to narrativise a response to the question of female pleasure.however inadequate dle response might be. For the process ofPosdacenarrativisation produces significations. 'moves' the spectacor. andThis metapsychological approach has tried to characterisedefinitively imroduces a voyeuristic fo rm of viewing which threatens'pornography' as a shifting arena of representation in whichthe whole security of the fetishist regime of representation. Thisparticular kinds of aestbetic struggle may be possible, Theperpetual displacement/ replacement of signification and spectatoris beyond the scope of conventional pbotographic layouts usuallyemployed in magazines. Such layouts serve to enact the placementof the pballus os the condition of female pleasure, but do no morethan that. In cinema, the fetishistic regime only operates on thecondition that it is established across a variation of image. aperturbation of any stability. A form of voyeurism is al ways present.In dnematic representations there appears most acutely theinstabHity of the current regime of pornographic representationoriented around the question of female pleasure, initially posedas a fetish, The possibility exists, then, for some fi lm work to begin[0 displace this fetishistic regime by foregrounding and promotingas the organising principle of the text those questions which begin •16 See VerinaGlaessncr, MonthlyFilm Bu.lletinDecember 1977p 263 .to raise themselves behind the fetishistic posing of the questionof fe male pleasure. It is possible to throw into question the natureof male pleasure by examining and frustrating what constructionof the femini ne it demands in particular circumstances. This tosome extent is the effect of Nelly Kaplan's Nta (1976) whichappeared briefly in Bri tain within the institution of soft-corepornography as A Young Ernrnanuelle (in early 1978).'" It ispossible also to use the questioning of pleasure. both male andfemale. to promote the notion of desi re as the strucruring principleof the text: desire which is constantly pursued but always elusive.Such is the enterprise of Ai No Corrida (Empire d es Sens) suffidentlythreatening to be liabl e to Customs seizure, and sufficientlyenlightening for the \ViIJiams Committee to mention it as a fi lmboundaries of this arena are defined by the major positions over'pornography', the way that they articulate logether. and tbe waysthat they cross other definitions of morality, sexuality, representationand so on. If. because of its conception of representation as aprocess, this meta psychological approach has managed to moveaway from such defini tions, then it should aJso have a ratherdifferent notion of politics in relation to the pornography question.In particular, to regard pornography as an area of struggle withinrepresentations necessarily involves a different conception of therole of legislation.The major definitions of pornography all look to the law as acrudal power which can be recruited to enforce one conceptionof representation, one permissable 'pornography', or another. Whcnthe pornographic arena is regarded as rh e site of a particularstruggle over representations, [be law can be regarded only asproviding or securing certain condi tions for that snuggle. Thisby no means coincides with the recommendations of the WilliamsReport. In some ways this report does nor wckle the real problemsfaced by those ane mp tin~ to change representations, their usesand {heir potential in our society: in olher ways it actively blockscertain direc ti ons of work. The law as il slands provides certainobstacles for those trving 1O intervene actively (through stickers.graffiti for instance) in the area of public advertising. ReceO( caseshave resulted in punitive tines for feminists undertaking suchactivity. I , The Williams Report is unable to formulate any recom·mendations in this area , though recognising (hat 'many people,

108 as is d ear trom submissicns to us, dislike lie sexualised advertisements],109(9.9). Currently advertisements aIe regarded legally asprivate property (hence fines for defacing them), rather than asbeing in the public domain. on the grounds that their entirefunction is one of addressing all and sundry whether they choose[Q be so addressed or not. The implications of such an argumentfor legal reform are not considered by rhe Williams Report, andso in thjs sense j t can be seen as not baving tackled the problemsfor those attempting [Q change and challenge existing representations.Other recommendations of the Report may provide new obstacles.Its recommendations are based on a public disavowal of aTEX TU AL STUDIES IN CULTU R A L PR ODUCTIONrepresentational activity that is designa ted 'pornography' by generalFIRST DISCO URSE has as its aim to introduce into the dynami cs o f discourse.opinion. This will mean that the production of such representationsvoices that have been tradition~l1y underrepresented in philosophical . hisroric..I, and theoretical inquiry. We want to emphasize possibilities fo r d if­will be confirmed as a separa te indus try. difficult to move into.closely linked wi th organised crime. The construction of pornographyas 'J know it exists. nevertheless I choose to ignore it' willference within the repetition which constinues la nguage and cuhural practices,includi ng 61m and television. T herefore, FI RST DI SCOU RSE does notexcl ude la nguage. representation and sexual ity from the definiti on of thedeprive many practitioners of rhe flexibility to move in and outpolitical.of particular forms of signification which is implied by the notionof 'struggle within representations '. Some work will be public.some will be in plain wrappers. behind discreet dOOrs. SuchIssue No . T (ca lled DIS COU RSE ) contains an interv iew with French blmrheoretician Christian Metz, an in tertextual article dealing wHh femininediscourse in l aura Mulvey'S and Peter Wollen's Riddles of the Sphinx, Bertranddesignations will provide institutional determinants upon lheAugst on rhe noti on of disco urse in Michel Foucault. and an article examin ingmeanings that are being produced which will create se\'ererhe concept of di scou rse in the work of jlirgen Haberma s.problems. It may sui t the industry to exchange relaxation ofcontrols on representations for tighter controls on their disseminarion:The ropic of issue No . 2 is Sexual ity: Insights fro m the study of psychoanalnis,but this is bound to create further probl ems for disruptivefeminism, semi oti cs, and social theory are bro ught to the in V'eqigation of thiSd iscu rsive fIeld. Arrides on the fern in ist subiect : Freudi an gender theory; deS ire,representational work in the area of pornography.visua I iry, and power; fe tis hism and n~H Clss ism: spectator identification; plus anThe area of cinema is rhe only medium in which the \Villiamsannotated bibli ograph)' of reccn t lire ratl! re on psychoanalysi s ilnd sexualiry .Report advocates specific censorship mechanisms. It allows that theFuw re iss ues will be on Med ia. the Law. H istorJcal Narr.3t1\·e. Photo~r aphy. anddefence of 'artistic merit' may be applied to films against thethe Politics of Lirerary Production .An earlier version activities of the censor. If tbere is to be censorship of films by aof tillS article .....as Government body, men [his should be a public process, similargiven as a paper[0 [hat used in Weimar Germany. The censorshi p body would haveat the CommunistFor subscription send to : FJ RST D ISCOU RSE. Box I::' \6. 2 000 Center Sneer,Unive rsity ofto publish arguments for specific alterations to films or bans uponBerkeley, CA 94 704London in July fil ms. which \\'ould then be argued OUt with the producers/distributorsin public, if challenged. The potential would rhen be'5.00 institutions~ 14 .00 institutionsI issm::-$4.o0 individuals I ~'e aro r ~ I SS U(;S-~ll.OO indl\'iduals1979. My thanksto all thosepresent for the provided for censorshi p itself to become an area of struggle. rather$6.00 foreign ~ 1 !-i. OO fore i~nsuggestions which than a secre tive and unargued process as it is now.A\:aiIJ ble from SEFThave beenIt is too simple to support the Williams recommendations asNameincorporated here.as well as to they stand merely because they offer a possible liberalisation.InstirurionMaria Black, Ben Similady, it is toO simple co reject direct attacks upon publicBrewster and Film representations because [he form of the attack is often open toStreetC ItyStudies graduatestudents at the accusations of puritanjsm. A politics in relation to pornographyUniversity of must deve lop from a conception of 'pornography' as a particularSrareZ'PKent.artna of representation in which certain displacements, refiguralions,are or can be possible,This iournal is not to be confused with Di!>t.:ourse magazi ne.FIR ;rDIS~~0URSE

110 SCREEN BACK NUMBERS111SCREEN/SCREEN EDUCATION/ SEFTsubscription/membershipFrom Volume 21 Number 1 of Screen and Number 34 of ScreenEducation the following subscri ption rates will apply. Any of theseforms of subscription includes membership of SEFT. Both journal sare published quarterly.INDIVIDUALSScreen and Screen EducationScreenScree n EducationINSTITUTIONSScreen and Screen EducationScreenScreen EducationCorporate£10.50 inland; £13/ $26 overseas£7 inland; £10/ $20 overseas£5.50 inland; £7/$14 overseas£15 inland; £18/ $36 overseas£1 0 inland; £12/ $24 overseas£7 inland; £8.50/ $17 overseas£45 inland only(cotporate subscribers receive6 copies of each journal )All su bsc riptions to be prepaid, Prices include surface mail postage,Airmai l rates on request,SINGLE COPIES (including back numbers)ScreenScreen Education£1 .95 inland;£1 .50 inland;Ord ers for back numbers must be accompaniedremittance plus 50p/ $1.00 postage per copy.'7~ .....-1T (-1G!~r £3 / 56 overseas£2/54 overseasby 1he exac1Back issues still available £1 .95 inland; [3/$6 overseas. Please add 5Op/ Sl per copy.Vol 15 no 1. SPRING 1974 Fortini: TheWriters Mandate and the End of AntIfascism;Vaughan: The Space Betweenshots: Gardies: Structural Analysis of aTextual SystemVol 15 no 3, AUTUMN 1974 Eikhenbaum:Problems of Film Stylistics; Brik: SelectedWritings; Mulvey and W ollen: interview onPenthesileaVol 15 no 4. WINTER 1974/5: INNERSPEECH Willemen, Levaco on Eikhenbaumand internal speech: Bordwell on Eise nstein;Bellour: The Obvious and the Code. on TheBig Sleep: Hanel : The Narrative Text ofShock Corridor; Hoellering: interview onKuhle WampeVol 16 no 1. SPRING 1975 Heath: Film andSystem - on Touch of Evil ( 1st part): Ellis:on Ealing StudIosVol 16 no 2. SUMMER 1975: PS YCHO­ANALYS IS SPE CIAL ISSUE Metz: TheImaginary Signifier; Heath: Film and System(cant)VailS no 3, AUTUMN 1975 Mulvey: VisualPleasure and Narrative Cinema; Bellour: TheUnattainable Text ; Rose: on au to-visualisationand Peter Pan; Braniga n: The Point-of·V iew Shot; Buscombe: on Columbia 1926·42;Baxter: on film lighting: Kuhn, J ohnston: onfemin ist politics, criticismVol 16 no 4. WINTER 1975/ 6: BRECHTEV ENT EDIN BURGH FILM FESTIVAL 1975Heath: From Brecht to Film ; Brewster: Brecht(lnd the Film Industry; MacCabe: on 2 au 3Chases and Tout va Bien; Mathers: onBrecht's theatre in Britain; J ohnston andWdlemen: on the independen t political filmdebate on marxism and cultureVol 19 no 1, SPRING 1978 Branigan: 'Sub­Jectivity under Seige', on 8·l and The Seoryof a Man who Lefe his W ilf on Film; Willemen : Notes on Subjectivity; Crofts andEnzensberger, Walsh: on Medvedkin: Porter:on Film Copy rightVol 19 no 2, SUMMER 1978 Straub andilnd Nightcleaners; Penifer: on M utter K rau ­Huillet. Forrini-Can; script; Com olli: HistoricalFic tion: A Body T oo Much: Thompson:sens FiJhrr /Os GlUck and Kuhle Wampe;Lovell: on lindsay A nderson; M cA rthur; on Screen Ac ting and Commutation; Kuhn,Days of HopeBurch: on Documentary ; Brown: on SomeVol 17 no 1, SPRING' 976 Wollen: 'Ontol·ogy' and 'Materialism' in Film; Nowell· Smith:SIX A uthors in Pursuit o f The Searchers;Williilms: on metaphor an d metonomy inH iros/limo LInd Marienbad: Gomery: WarnersLInd Sound; Straub and Hujllet: HistoryLessons and Schoenberg scenarios: Mac­Cabe: response to M c A rthur on Days ofHopeVol 17 no 2. SUM ME R 1976: OZU ISSUEBordwell and Thompson: on s~ace andn Ll rrative in Ozu: Branigan: on t he space ofEquinox Flower; Silvers tone: on structuralanalysis and TV ; Neale : 'New HollywoodCinema'; Cook: 'Exploitation' Film s andFeminismVol 17 no 3, AUTUMN 1976 MacCabe:Pri nciples of Realism and Plea sure, onAmerican Graffiti and The Lump; Nash:Vamp yr and the Fan tastic: Heath: Narra tiveSpaceVol 17 no 4, WINTER 1976/ 7 Heath: AnaraMo, on the Lacanian concept of 'the realand Death by Hanging; Delmar and Nash: onrecent Chinese cinema; Ro se : Paranoia andthe Film System; Ellis: on t he BFt ProductionBoard; Williams: on Un Chien Andalou;Nichols: on Documentary; Nowell-Smith: onNeo· Rea lismVol 18 no 1, SPRING 1977 Crofts an dRose: Man with a Movie Camera ; Raymo ndWilliam s: on Realism: Coward : Class 'Cu l­ture' and the Social Fo rmation; Cu rling andMclean: on the IFA; Nowell-Smith on Eag letonVol 18 no 2, SUMMER 1977 Heath andSkirrow. TeleVision a World in Action;Mulvey an d Wollen: Riddles of rhe Sphinx- script; Dusinberre: on Peter Gidal"s rhetoricalstrategy; Rosen: on Seventh Heaven;Pollock, Nowell-Smi th on melodra ma; Kuh,,:on Camera Obscura Vol 18 no 3, AUTUM N 1977 Neale: Propa­ganda; Re es: Conditions of illUSIonism; Drummond: Textual space In Un Chien AndalouVol 18 no 4. WI NTER 1977/ 8 SUTUREISSUE A lain-Mille r, Heath, Dudan : o nSuture; Tribe: History and the PrOduction ofM emorie s; Nash and Neal e: on Edinburgh1977 and Fortini- Cam'; Caughie: on the EdinburghTelevision Fe stival; Chambers et al :Women 0; Marrake ch; Bran igan: reply toWillemenVol 19 no 3, AUTUMN 1978 Heath: onSe xual DIfference and Representation; Ellis: on art cinema in Britain: Pen ley and Berg­strom: on the avant-garde V ol 19 no 4, WINTER 1978/ 9 Wollen: Ph otography; Burch: on primItive cinema; MacCabe: on Discourse: Nowell-Smith: TV and the World Cu p; Eaton, S:tuation Comedy Vol 20 no 1. SPRING 1979 Foucault/ Clayton and Curling: on Authorship; Neale: on Triumph of the Will; Connell' on TV News; M arshall: on Video art: Garnham: on Screen Vol 20 no 2, SUMMER 1979 Abbott: Authority; Bellour: on Repetition; Gidal: The A nti-Narrative; Thompson on the A vant-Garde