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Show Chapter XI. Xenophobia and Moral Anomaly 464 consequences for others. An art object that confronts a higher-order political discriminator with the human repercussions of these consequences can help restore to the higher-order political discriminator a sense of reality, and a sense of cognitive responsibility for the human effects of his unreflective stereotyping of anomalous others. Moreover, a confrontational art object can draw the higher-order political discriminator's attention away from the abstract realm of theoretical obfuscation, and back to the reality of his actual circumstances at the moment. It can help resituate him in the indexical present of his immediate, one-to-one relation to the object and the issues it embodies. Finally, consider the strategy of naming: We have seen that pseudorationality for the higher-order discriminator consists in the construction of an elaborate edifice of euphemisms designed to obscure from herself and others the true meaning of her attitudes, actions, and policies toward others, and of the painful social realities to which her behavior in fact responds. This willed unconsciousness can be penetrated by concepts and symbols that speak plainly to the ugly realities these euphemisms conceal. An art object that draws the viewer's attention to these realities, and leaves no room for ambiguity in their identification, can be an assaultive and disturbing experience. It blocks escape into abstract speculation concerning the denotations and connotations of the terms or symbols deployed as referents, and may reinforce the vividness and objectivity of the realities brought forward through confrontation, with the legitimating imprimatur of linguistic or representational recognition. At the same time, through repetition and repeated viewing, it can help accustom the higher-order political discriminator to the existence of these realities, and conceptually defuse them to psychologically manageable proportions. Of course each of these strategies, as well as many others I have not mentioned, can be deployed outside the contemporary art context as well as within it: in psychotherapy, encounter groups, or organizational training sessions, for example. But one benefit of utilizing art objects in this role is that, unlike psychotherapists, group leaders, or other human subjects, an art object can elicit different reactions from different viewers, while maintaining exactly the same phenomenological presence to all of them. It does not itself react personally to any particular viewer, or differently to one viewer than it does to another, or alter its presentational aspect to suit the tastes or dispositions of particular viewers. Because the logic of its internal structure and external appearance depends on its personal history and interactive relationship with the artist rather than with the viewer, its final form is fixed and immutable relative to any particular viewer in a way other human subjects cannot be. Thus a viewer's relation to an art object can be both direct and individual on the one hand, and impersonal on the other. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
