No More Learning

ART ASA SOCIAL SYSTEM

MERIDIAN
Crossing Aesthetics
Werner Hamacher & David E. Wellbery
Editors
Translated by Eva M. Knock
Stanford University
Press
Stanford California 2000
ART AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM
Niklas Luhmann
Stanford University Press Stanford, California
(C) 2000 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Art as a Social System was originally published in German in 1995 under the title Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, (C) Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main.
Assistance for the translation was provided by Inter Nationes, Bonn. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Luhmann, Niklas.
[Kunst der Gesellschaft. English]
Art as a social system / Niklas Luhmann ; [translated by Eva M. Knodt]. p. cm. -- (Meridian, crossing aesthetics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8047-3906-4 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-8047-3907-2 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Aesthetics.
BH39 . L8313 2000 3o6. 4'7--dc2i
Original printing 2000
Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
Typeset by James P. Brommer
in 10. 9/13 Garamond with Lithos display
2. Art and society. I. Title. II. Meridian (Stanford, Calif. )
00-041050
? i
? 2
? 3 ? 4
? 5
? 6 ? 7
Preface i
Perception and Communication:
The Reproduction of Forms 5
Observation of the First and
of the Second Order 54 Medium and Form 102
The Function of Art and the
Differentiation of the Art System 133 Self-Organization: Coding and
Programming 185 Evolution 211 Self-Description 244
Notes 319 Index 4? 3
Contents

ART ASA SOCIAL SYSTEM

Preface
Art as a Social System continues a series that aims to elaborate a theory of society. Since the overall project focuses on theories that deal with indi- vidual functional systems, I have considered the elaboration of these sys- tems a priority. The theory of society itself requires two different ap- proaches, assuming (i) that the system as a whole is operatively closed on the basis of communication, and (2) that the functional systems emerging within society conform to, and embody, the principle of operative closure and, therefore, will exhibit comparable structures despitefactual differences
between them. Comparisons derive force when we recognize that the com-
pared realms differ in all other respects; we can then highlight what is
comparable and charge it with special significance. However, to illustrate
this point requires an analysis of individual functional systems. The intro-
1
duction to this series appeared as Soziale Systeme in 1984. Since then, the
following studies have appeared: Die Wirtschafi der Gesellschaft (1988; The Economy as a Social System); Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (1990; Sci- ence as a Social System); and Das Recht der Gesellschaft (1993; Law as a So- cial System). The volume presented here is the fourth in this series. Fur- ther studies are planned.
This project seeks to distance itself from prevailing social theories that attempt to describe their object in terms of normative, integrative, and unifying concepts. Such theories envision society as a system determined by stratification, that is, by a principle of unequal distribution. In the eigh- teenth century, a counterdiscourse insisted on the possibility that mankind could nonetheless attain happiness. This promise was replaced in the nine- teenth century by the demand for solidarity. In the twentieth century, pol-
2 Preface
itics was put in charge of establishing equal living conditions throughout the world--a demand frequendy made upon democratization or develop- mental and political modernization. As this century draws to a close, we are far from realizing universal happiness and satisfaction. Nor have we reached the goals of achieving solidarity and creating equal living condi- tions. One can continue to insist on these demands and call them "ethics," but it becomes difficult to ignore their increasingly apparent Utopian com- ponent. This is why we recommend rewriting the theory of society. To do so requires a shift, at the structural level, from stratification to functional differentiation. The unity of society is not to be sought in ethico-political demands, but rather in the emergence of comparable conditions in systems as diverse as religion or the monetary economy, science or art, intimate rela- tionships or politics--despite extreme differences between the functions and the operational modes of these systems. Our theoretical proposition offers the following: a clear demarcation of external system boundaries of different domains and comparability between different systems. Talcott Parsons launched a similar experiment, taking the comparability of all subsystems of the general action system for granted. He believed that each action system, even in the position of subsystem or subsubsystem, needed to fulfill four functions to be complete, that is, if it were to exist as a sys- tem capable of maintaining its boundaries and orienting itself in relation to temporal differences. This is not the place to argue with Parsons's posi- tion. What matters is that with Parsons, the comparability of subsystems began to occupy a pivotal theoretical position in sociology. In what fol- lows, we do not propose a theory as rigorously derived as Parsons's from an analysis of the concept of action. Instead, what interests us is another one of Parsons's ideas: that each evolutionary differentiation process must re-
construct the unity of the differentiated system. This does not presuppose central norms, no matter how generalized. In our modern (some would say postmodern) society, such norms are difficult to detect. It suffices that all subsystems employ the operational mode of the system as a whole, in this case communication, and that they are capable of fulfilling the condi- tions of system formation--namely, autopoiesis and operative closure-- no matter how complex the emerging structures turn out to be.
Carrying out this program in the realm of art requires theoretical mod- els that cannot be extracted from observing works of art and can be dem- onstrated in the communicative employment of these works. Here we use distinctions such as system/environment, medium/form, first- and second-
Preface
3
order observation, self-reference and external reference, and above all the distinction between psychic systems (systems of consciousness) and social systems (systems of communication); none is meant to assist in judging or creating works of art. We are not offering a helpful theory of art. This does not exclude the possibility that the art system, in its own operations, may profit from a theoretical endeavor intended to clarify the context and con- tingency of art from a sociotheoretical perspective. Whether such a trans- position of insights can be accomplished and what kind of misunder- standings may contribute to its success must be decided within the art system itself, for "to succeed" can mean only "to succeed as a work of art. " The issue is not to propose a theory that, if properly understood and ap- plied, would guarantee success or assist the art system in coping with its worries about the future. It follows from the general theory of functional social differentiation that functional systems are incapable of direcdy in- fluencing one another. At the same time, their coexistence increases their mutual irritability.
Science [Wissenscha. fi], here specifically sociological theory, must open itself to irritation through art. Science must be able to observe what is pre- sented as art. In this basic sense, sociological theory is an empirical science (according to its own self-description, at any rate). But the labor of trans- forming irritation into information that can be used within science is an entirely internal affair. The proof must be delivered within science. Art be- comes a topic in the first place, not because of a peculiar inclination of the author, but because of the assumption that a social theory claiming uni- versality cannot ignore the existence of art.
In view of how these intentions have been realized in this book, we ac- knowledge that it turned out to be difficult, if not impossible, to distin- guish the systematics of the system from the bare facts while bracketing historical analyses (as it would have been feasible with the economic sys- tem, the system of science, and the legal system). Aesthetic endeavors in- volving art have always separated themselves from a historical discourse oriented toward facts. This was the case in the poesialhistoria discussion of the sixteenth century with its emphasis on "beautiful appearance," and it holds for twentieth-century hermeneutics, which distinguishes historical documentation that may be useful in the sciences from an understanding of the expression and significance of individual artworks. From a sociolog- ical standpoint, this separation is untenable and breaks down to the extent that art orients itself historically. This is the case in Renaissance art, for ex-
4
Preface
ample. Art permits no simple repetition--except as the perpetual repeti- tion of its own history. Even for a theory of society, there is ultimately no history independent of the continual reactualization of that history.
This is why the text presented here can offer neither a structuralist de- scription of the system of modern art, nor a structured evolutionary his- tory of the differentiation of die art system. The reader will find both per- spectives interwoven. Each chapter is conceived in terms of its factual theme. We draw on historical retrospectives as we need them, especially in Chapter 4, in which we discuss the differentiation and self-description of the art system. Repetitions are inevitable. One should not expect a linear order, progressing from important to less important issues or from prior to subsequent events. I hope that the reader's understanding will benefit from the recognition that conceptual or historical materials reappear in different contexts. An extensive index should facilitate such a nonlinear reading.
N. L. Bielefeld, March 1995
? i Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms
I
We are still spellbound by a tradition that arranged psychological facul- ties hierarchically, relegating "sensuousness"--that is, perception--to a lower position in comparison to higher, reflective functions of reason and understanding. The most advanced versions of "conceptual art" still fol- low this tradition. By refusing to base themselves in sensuously percepti- ble distinctions between works of art and other objects, these works seek to avoid reducing art to the realm of sense perception.
In the old European tradition, this hierarchical valuation rested on the
1
idea that humans are distinct from animals, which suggests a devaluation
of the faculties humans share with animals, most notably sense perception. Furthermore, perception provides only factual/temporal distinctions, rather than units that persist across time (ideas). The mode of contact unique to
2 humans was accordingly believed to reside in (rational) thought. Con-
versely, one could argue that a comparison between humans and animals demonstrates the evolutionary, genetic, and functional priority of percep- tion over thought. A creature endowed with a central nervous system must succeed in externalizing and constructing an outside world before it can be- gin to articulate self-reference on the basis of its own bodily perceptions as a result of its problems with this world. How this happens--perhaps by a
3
sort of transcribing of the brain's "double closure" into an inside/outside
distinction within consciousness--has yet to be investigated in greater de- tail. Such clarification is beyond our present scope. It suffices to remain as- tonished that we see anything "outside" at all, even if our seeing happens
S
6 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
only "inside. " Granted this, self-perception becomes a copy of the form of
4
external perception
ject. All communication consequendy depends on perception; whether and in what ways perception is accompanied by thought is a question that, de- pending on the circumstances, permits a number of different and rather uncertain answers.
Whatever may have been written or thought about perception in liter-
ate cultures, it remains a special competency of consciousness, its essential
5
faculty. Day by day, minute by minute, consciousness is preoccupied widi
perception. Through perception it is captivated by an external world. Without perception it would have to terminate its autopoiesis, and even dreams can occur only by suggesting perceptions. Today we know that the external world is the brain's own construction, treated by consciousness as if it were a reality "out there. " The extent to which perception is prestruc- tured by language is equally well known. The perceived world is nothing
6
but the sum total of the "eigenvalues" of neurophysiological operations. But information attesting to this state of affairs does not pass from the brain to consciousness. It is filtered out, systematically and without leav- ing a trace. The brain represses, if you will, its own work in order to make the world appear as a world. Only by virtue of this repression is it possible to establish the difference between world and observing consciousness in the world.
We assume further that all psychic operations are conscious. Con- sciousness is the operative mode of psychic systems. But only a tiny frac- tion of conscious productions--and here we concur with Freud--can be controlled introspectively. In disposing over awareness, consciousness is not usually aware of itself. This applies particularly to what becomes con- scious in the form of perceptions. It means also that only within certain bounds is consciousness available to answer questions, and that it can be drawn upon by social communication only in very limited ways.
In the course of (mutually inaccessible) neurophysiological and con- scious operations, an operative certainty about the world is created (con- structed), which leaves room for self-generated uncertainties, peculiarities, and surprises. That perception continually goes on by no means precludes consciousness from fitting itself out with thoughts and employing them to observe what it perceives. The tradition ontologized the objects gener- ated by perception, in addition to what consciousness can be said to ac- complish. The world was assumed (errors excepted) to be as it reveals it-
and is processed analogously, as observation of an ob-
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 7
self in perception, so that it could then be prepared for communicative and technical purposes through language and conceptual analysis. The phenomenology of the world included an aesthetic conception of art that permitted art to represent the world, to make it perceptible in its ideal forms, and to furnish it with novel qualities of information that do not appear spontaneously. But suppose we venture from a phenomenon-cen- tered to an operative doctrine of perception, and from a representational to a constructivist epistemology--the scientific system seems to force such a move. Would not the theory of art have to follow this paradigm shift and be based on radically different foundations? If perception and, even more so, conceptual thought are already constructed by the brain, then shouldn't art fulfill entirely different functions in shaping and utilizing the realm of free play generated in the process? The functional concepts of im- itation and representation, now obsolete, would have to be rejected a sec- ond time--not because they unduly restrict the freedom of art, but be- cause they indulge in, rather than unmask, the illusionism of the world. It is conceivable that art, though it cannot undo the "externalization" of the world through consciousness (consciousness would be unable to follow such a move), offers forms for precisely this externalization, forms that demonstrate the possibility of order and the impossibility of arbitrariness in the face of unforeseen information, even under the factual conditions of operative closure that define neurophysiologies, conscious, and even- tually communicative systems.
To the extent that it concerns humans, the thesis of the primacy of per- ception in consciousness includes imagined perception, that is, the self- induced simulation of perception. In the following, we shall call this type of perception intuition [Anschauung]. Intuition is commonly defined by its utilization of such media as space and time. It implies a double move--and this distinguishes perception from intuition--a transcending of what is im- mediately given in perception toward the constitution of spatial and tempo- ral horizons and an erasure of information concerning its own spatial/temporal location? Only in the form of intuition does art acquire the possibility of constructing imaginary worlds within the life-world while remaining de- pendent on triggering perceptions (not least, the reading of texts).
What is at stake in actual perception, as well as in reactualized intuitive representation [Vorstellung], results from simultaneously processing a man- ifold of impressions that allows a focus for awareness to be selected with- out letting the surroundings slip from view. This holds primarily for visual
8 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
perception, but also for acoustic perception within a visual field that is pre- sented simultaneously (or has been artificially neutralized by closing one's eyes). The same is true when tactile impressions are accompanied by the visualization of what is being touched. We need not go into more detail here; what interests us is the limiting effect of the proposition that percep- tion is a special, if not the most crucial, competency of consciousness.
This proposition precludes the view that nervous systems can perceive. These systems must live and function if consciousness is to perceive at all, and the existence of structural couplings between the nervous system and consciousness can hardly be denied. To do so would be absurd and of no theoretical interest whatever. But any systems-theoretical analysis must ac- count for differences in the respective modes of operation pertaining to both kinds of systems and must consequendy assume two distinct systems.
This is why consciousness processes perceptions under the impression of their immediacy, while the brain is actually executing operations that are highly selective, quantitatively calculating, recursively operative, and hence always mediated. "Immediacy" is nothing primordial, but an im- pression resulting from the differentiation of the autopoietic systems of the brain and consciousness. In the experiential mode of immediacy, any explicit distinction (for example, between signifier and signified, or be- tween mediated and immediate experience) becomes an exceptional case, selected and varied by consciousness according to specific reasons. The discursive sequentiality of conscious operations is based on an immediate relationship to the world that is always retained and carried along, neither depending on nor allowing for the possibility of designating the world as a unity. This is true for perception in general and thus holds for the per- ception of artworks as well.
In order to demarcate the nervous system from consciousness, we should keep in mind that nervous systems are capable only of self-observation and cannot establish any contact with the environment from within the recur- sive realm of their own operations. Needless to say, they cannot operate outside of their own boundaries. They serve, one could argue, the organ- ism's self-observation with regard to its varying conditions, that is, with re- gard to a temporal modus that could perhaps already be called informa- tion. Most importantly, and in contradistinction to consciousness, nervous systems are incapable of combining self-reference and hetero-reference in
8
their ongoing operations.
thing is unknown. The ongoing activity, characteristic of the conscious sys-
The neuro-magic that would accomplish such a
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 9
tern's operational mode, of distinguishing between self-reference and het- ero-reference in all of its operations presupposes, if not "meaning" [Sinn], at least a signifying structure that enforces the simultaneous processing of signifier (signifiant) and signified {signifiS) in Saussure's sense. This activity rests on a capacity for "externalization," available even to animals but in-
9
sufficiendy accounted for in neurophysiological terms, which may be re-
lated to inconsistencies in the neurophysiological data processing that can be resolved via the regulation of awareness through consciousness. But only language forces consciousness to keep signifier and signified--and, in this sense, self-reference and hetero-reference--permanendy separate while nonetheless processing these distinctions simultaneously. Consciousness corrects, as it were, the operative closure of the nervous system by means of a distinction between inside and outside, or self-reference and hetero-ref- erence, which remains internal. The specificity of consciousness thus re- sides, to borrow a formulation of George Spencer Brown, in a "reentry" of
10
the distinction into the distinguished, or of the form into the form.
Nor can communication systems--that is to say, social systems--per- ceive. This proposition is hard for consciousness to accept, since con- sciousness takes for granted, literally and without thinking, a world of per- ception and makes whatever happens to it occur in this world. Of course, communication occurs in this world, too. But when theoretical reflection shifts from "what" questions to "how" questions, no longer concerning it- self with the object of communication but asking instead how communi- cation works, then complications abound. Communication can no longer be understood as a "transmission" of information from an (operatively
11
closed) living being or conscious system to any other such system. munication is an independent type of formation in the medium of mean- ing [Sinn], an emergent reality that presupposes living beings capable of consciousness but is irreducible to any one of these beings, not even to all of them taken together. Compared to consciousness, communication exe- cutes an extremely slow, time-consuming sequence of sign transformations (which means, among other things, that the participating consciousness gains time for its own perceptions, imaginations, and trains of thought). Communication recursively recalls and anticipates further communica- tions, and solely within the network of self-created communications can it produce communications as the operative elements of its own system. In so doing, communication generates a distinct autopoietic system in the strict (not just "metaphorical") sense of the term. And, given the form in
Com-
i o Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
which it organizes its own autopoiesis, communication cannot receive or produce perceptions. But it can certainly communicate about percep- tions--for example, when someone says, "I have seen t h a t . . . "
When thought to its conclusions, such a concept of communication precludes the assumption, unquestioned throughout the entire tradition, that communication can express perceptions, thus rendering the percep- tions of others accessible. To be sure, communication can indicate percep- tions, but what it indicates remains as operatively inaccessible to commu- nication as does the entire physical world. If "indication" is possible and functions as a kind of ersatz for access, then this means only that indica- tions can be processed internally. In linguistics and literary theory, this is
12
by now a well-known thesis.
it does so even more for nonverbal communication. In other words, there is no reality continuum that would allow states of affairs pertaining to the environment to be transferred more or less adequately into the system.
Aesthetics has always claimed that the mere perception of the "mater- ial" of art does not yet make for aesthetic pleasure. An additional, selective reworking of the material must endow it with significance and, in simul- taneously devalorizing and revalorizing it, transform it into the elements of an artwork. The "understanding" of this process was commonly inter- preted in terms of a "mental" [geistige] process, whereby the psychic sys- tem was left to participate, or not, in Spirit (for example, qua Bildung). Apart from communication, final concepts such as "Spirit" or "mind" ap-
13
pear to be indispensable even today.
phorical circumlocution for the mystery of communication? And if so, shouldn't we take the selective arrangement of the artwork to be a condi- tion for perceptible objects to become available to communication?
All of this follows from the insight that the feature of operative closure, already actualized in the nervous system and the conscious system, is pre- sent in social systems as well. Consciousness compensates for the operative closure of the nervous system, just as the social system compensates for the closure of consciousness. The world in which the system's unique reality is reproduced in the form of recursive connections between its operations is--as Husserl has demonstrated with regard to consciousness--a mean-
14
ing correlate of the system's own operations.
based on the experience of a resistance in the system against itself--for ex- ample, in perception against perception, or in language against language --and not on a comprehensive impression of the world. The being-in-the-
If it holds for verbal communication, then
But what is "Spirit" if not a meta-
Ascertaining a "reality" is
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 11
world of the communication system emerges from a continual coupling of self-reference and hetero-reference. As a result, the world becomes a me- dium for the successive formation of specific forms (including their gener- ation, forgetting, and remembering), an elusive "horizon" of changing
15
constructions which, as medium, outlives these constructions.
The way in which die process of communication combines self-reference and hetero-reference can be described more accurately. In contradistinction to consciousness, communication accomplishes this combination by con- tinually reproducing the distinction between utterance (self-reference) and information (hetero-reference) under conditions that generate the possibil- ity of understanding (that is, of further employing this distinction in the communication process). The concepts of "information," "utterance," and
16 "understanding" should be taken without direct psychic reference. They
refer exclusively to the components that constitute a communicative event as a unity.
And if so, shouldn't we take the selective arrangement of the artwork to be a condi- tion for perceptible objects to become available to communication?
All of this follows from the insight that the feature of operative closure, already actualized in the nervous system and the conscious system, is pre- sent in social systems as well. Consciousness compensates for the operative closure of the nervous system, just as the social system compensates for the closure of consciousness. The world in which the system's unique reality is reproduced in the form of recursive connections between its operations is--as Husserl has demonstrated with regard to consciousness--a mean-
14
ing correlate of the system's own operations.
based on the experience of a resistance in the system against itself--for ex- ample, in perception against perception, or in language against language --and not on a comprehensive impression of the world. The being-in-the-
If it holds for verbal communication, then
But what is "Spirit" if not a meta-
Ascertaining a "reality" is
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 11
world of the communication system emerges from a continual coupling of self-reference and hetero-reference. As a result, the world becomes a me- dium for the successive formation of specific forms (including their gener- ation, forgetting, and remembering), an elusive "horizon" of changing
15
constructions which, as medium, outlives these constructions.
The way in which die process of communication combines self-reference and hetero-reference can be described more accurately. In contradistinction to consciousness, communication accomplishes this combination by con- tinually reproducing the distinction between utterance (self-reference) and information (hetero-reference) under conditions that generate the possibil- ity of understanding (that is, of further employing this distinction in the communication process). The concepts of "information," "utterance," and
16 "understanding" should be taken without direct psychic reference. They
refer exclusively to the components that constitute a communicative event as a unity. This unity cannot be decomposed infinitely, since it must pro- vide a meaning tfiat can still be negated in the course of further communi- cation (for example, it cannot be the "c" in the word communication). It follows that information always expresses a hetero-reference within com- munication, even if it indicates the state of one of the participating con- scious systems--for example, when someone says, "I'd like to be able to write such nice poetry, too. "
Communication is a self-determining process and, in this sense, an au- topoietic system. Whatever is established as communication is established by communication. Factually, this takes place within the frame of the dis- tinction between self-reference and hetero-reference, temporally by means
17
of recursively recalling and anticipating further communications, socially by exposing communicated meaning to acceptance or rejection. This is sufficient. There is no need for external determination via percep- tions or other conscious events. Such determination is effectively excluded by the fact that communication consolidates itself within the framework of its own distinctions. This is why the selectional value of any particular determination cannot derive directly from the environment, although hetero-reference may help stabilize this value. Even the decision concern- ing the type of determination and the extent to which it is necessary is made within (and not outside of) communication. Communication can tolerate and even produce vagueness, incompletion, ambiguity, irony, and so forth, and it can place indeterminacies in ways that secure a certain us- age. Such deliberate indeterminacies play a significant role, particularly in
and
12 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
artistically mediated communication, to the point where we find ourselves confronted with the hopelessly unending interpretability of "finished"
18
works.
internal variable of the communication system and not a quality of the ex- ternal world.
If one takes the internal dynamics of communication into account, then a number of uncomfortable questions regarding consciousness are bound to arise. A theory of communication must be developed in the realm of abstraction. Given that physics has taken this step in the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, abstraction should not in itself be an objection. Physics, too, suggests that perception, imagination, and in- tuition are special qualities of consciousness, presenting a world that can be processed exclusively by consciousness. The point of this argument is to counter objections of the type to be expected especially from sociology. It implies nothing about the correctness of certain abstract theories.
II
Conscious systems are mutually inaccessible because of their operative closure: this explains why communication is necessary but does not say how communication is possible, given such an infrastructure. Human be- ings appear to live alongside one another as isolated monads. The desire to "communicate," in the sense of establishing a common ground, is cer- tainly there, but at the same time, we find ourselves in the position of in- dividuals who can neither perceive or think in the other, nor produce op- erations that could be recognized as those of another rather than our own.
The classical appeal to the idea of inference by analogy merely displaces the problem to the question of how to trust the reality of one's own con- structions. Belief in such externalizations comes easily because, like those of space and time, they resolve internal inconsistencies and because the task of clarifying remaining inconsistencies--whether successful or not-- can be left to communication. At least since romanticism, one no longer seems to trust the purifying power of communication, because commu- nication permits no access to the other's interiority, no possibility of in- termingling his or her operations with one's own. Besides, how is the other recognized as another to begin with, and how does one get from
simple contingency (in the sense of environmental dependency) to dou-
19
ble contingency?
The distinction between determinacy and indeterminacy is an
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 13
A reconstruction of this problem compatible with the idea of autopoiesis assumes that the operative closure of autopoietic systems produces a dif- ference, namely, the difference between system and environment. This dif-
ference can be seen. One can observe the surface of another organism, and the form of the inside/outside distinction motivates the inference of an un-
20
observable inferiority. While it is impossible to verify the "truth" of such
inferences, their consistency can be checked within the system, and they can activate a memory that employs the bifurcation of remembering and forgetting in order to establish connections between the past and the fu- ture. Because operative closure locks the door to the inner life, imagina- tion, and thoughts of others, the other holds us captive as an eternal rid- dle. This is why the experience of other human beings is richer than any experience of nature, why one feels tempted to test one's own assumptions in communication. And it explains why lovers are capable of talking end- lessly about themselves with no interest whatever in anything else.
These basic considerations concerning the familiar topic of subjectivity and intersubjectivity are phrased in such general terms that their ramifi- cations for a discussion of art are difficult to foresee. One thing is certain: if it is generally true that psychic operations, not to speak of those of the living system, can never be executed in another consciousness, which be- cause of its complexity and historically self-referential mode of operation remains opaque, then this holds also for the artist distanced by his work and for his admirers as well--no more and no less, for inaccessibility does not allow for augmentation. And yet, communication happens anyway, working with causal attributes and reproducing itself inevitably. This is why no general anthropological principles speak against the assumption that art is a kind of communication, which, in ways yet to be clarified, makes use of perception. There is, after all, a relationship of mutual en- hancement in the nexus between operatively closed organic, psychic, and social systems, which suggests that we should explore the ways in which art in particular contributes to this relationship.
Ill
Thanks to its neurophysiologies infrastructure, perception is intrinsi- cally restless. Whenever there is any conscious activity, perception goes along with it. This parallelism results in a unique combination of redun- dancy and information. We are always dealing with recognizable objects,
14 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
but always with different ones. Images succeed one another. Only mo-
mentarily and with great effort can we fix on a distinct object; if we close
our eyes and concentrate, we see darkness, interrupted by an irritating
play of colors. Perception (in contrast to thought and communication)
can decide quickly, whereas art aims to retardperception and render it re-
flexive--lingering upon the object in visual art (in striking contrast to
everyday perception) and slowing down reading in literature, particularly
21
in lyric poetry.
tion without requiring a special decision on our part to do so. It enables consciousness to adapt temporarily to passing situations. All subsequent information processing is prestructured by the distinction between self- reference and hetero-reference. Works of art, by contrast, employ percep- tions exclusively for the purpose of letting the observer participate in the communication of invented forms.
From the viewpoint of consciousness, all communication takes place in
a perceptible world. Processing and cognitively focusing perceptions is the
primary task of consciousness. Only when this is taken for granted can
consciousness participate in communicative events (and in communica-
tion as such). The ability to locate one's own body (and other bodies) pre-
sumes the work of perception. In thought, one can be anywhere, but one
can perceive only from the location where one's body is actually situated.
Our own body mustbe perceived alongside other objects if consciousness
is to distinguish between self-reference and hetero-reference. The body
must experience itself in a kind of sensuously perceptible self-awareness in
order to make this distinction or to determine, as Novalis puts it, "the seat
22
of the soul. "
Because it includes our own body, the world is given to perception as a
complete, compact, and impenetrable entity. Variations abound, whether
self-induced or triggered by external events. But variations are always per-
ceived within the world, as a form in relation to what is momentarily mo-
23
tionless or stable.
terms, the unmoved mover). The freedom perception imparts to con- sciousness is always restricted by the necessity of referring to something- in-the-perceptible-world. Consciousness can never entirely overcome this limitation, neither imaginatively--when intuition simulates perception in one way or another--nor when one actually participates in communica- tion or imagines oneself doing so.
From the perspective of consciousness, perception frames all commu-
Perception is ready to scan a familiar world for informa-
The world itself remains unalterable (in theological
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 15
nication. Without eyes one cannot read, without ears one cannot hear. Communication must be highly conspicuous in the perceptional field if it is to be perceived at all. It must captivate perception--by means of some striking noise, through bodily postures explicable only as expressive be- havior, or by employing special conventional signs in writing.
The distinction between perception and communication charts new ter- ritory for aesthetics as an academic discipline. To be sure, even before "aes- thetics" was introduced as a technical term, some authors considered art to be a special kind of communication, designed to supplement and extend verbal (oral and written) communication through more expeditious and
24
complex forms of transmission.
communicating ideas that would represent the natural world more accu- rately. A special kind of Enlightenment was at stake when the notion of a distinct, albeit inferior, sensuous knowledge burst onto the scene, a notion Baumgarten sought to elaborate in the form of an aesthetics.
After all, aesthetics was founded upon another distinction, one more
closely related to the idea of the subject: the distinction between aistheta
and noeta, sensuous and rational cognition, or aesthetics and logic. Cog-
nition (not communication) served as the master concept, and a great deal
of cognitive activity was believed to be going on in the realm of sensuous
25
cognition.
the distinction between perception and communication could not come into view. The term aesthetics fails to do justice to either side of this dis- tinction. We are not accustomed to the idea that communication is un- able to perceive. Nor are we inclined to ponder the sight of a mouse baked in bread as primarily an aesthetic problem. Once we switch over to the distinction between perception and communication, both cases present themselves as cognitive operations that develop distinct structures to pro- cess their information. The concept of observation designates what these cases have in common (or what is distinguished by the distinction be- tween perception and communication).
This suggests many different ways of comparing perception and com- munication. In each of the above-mentioned instances, we are dealing with distinctions (or "forms") actualized by an observer. In both cases, this form could be called an observer (= can be distinguished as an observer). In both cases, the recursive mode of operation acquires its own determi- nation only by referring to objects (= by calculating objects as "eigenval- ues" of the system's operations). Interdependences are readily apparent.
What mattered at the time, however, was
So long as the doctrine of the beautiful was called aesthetics,
16 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
Communication relies on the perception of signs, whereas perception ex- poses its distinctions to the influence of language. Finally, in both cases, cognition is a variable dependent on operations, which presupposes that each system continues its autopoiesis at the operative level of metabolism or the material reproduction of signs. It follows that in neither case is cog- nition capable of controlling the system's adaptation to the environment
26
or its own evolution.
Belaboring this point leads nowhere. Suffice it to say that we must dis-
tinguish between perception and communication without grounding one in the other (as was common in die tradition via the idea of thought). The distinction must be presupposed when dealing with the psychic system's participation in the communicative process--when, in other words, one of
27
the conditions of possibility of society is at stake. In what follows, we shall
restrict our focus to the question of how perceptible objects are tailored to
a process of communication that operates independently. We presuppose
28
language as given. Verbal communication is always already established in
the world of perception. Within the communication system of society, ver- bal communication manages its own operations together with the struc- tures created by these operations, as well as its own standards of precision and criteria for tolerating errors--all of which are oriented toward what can be understood, that is, toward what secures the autopoiesis of commu- nication. As indicated earlier, verbal communication operates in a very slow-moving and time-consuming manner. Whatever it communicates must be converted into a temporal sequence of information that amounts to a series of alternating system states. At any time, verbal communication may be arrested or reflexively turned back upon itself. When one doesn't understand, one follows up with a question. A piece of information is re- jected, and one asks, "Why? " Communicated meaning must be specific, that is, highly selective, in order for communication to continue, and only communication (not the external world) can satisfy this precondition. Like any other form, language assumes the form of a difference that is fore- grounded in consciousness against the background of simultaneous per- ceptions and that differentiates within communication between what is said and what is not said. In the meantime, the world is the way it is-- whether it remains what it is or tolerates that things happen, move, and change. Whatever takes place in consciousness or communication is possi- ble only on die condition that other things occur simultaneously.
One of the historically most important innovations in the realm of
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 17
communicative possibilities entails the evolution of writing and the in- vention of the printing press. The resulting evolutionary leaps have been dealt with extensively in the literature and will not be treated here. The re- lationship between writing and art, however, warrants some attention. Prior to the invention of the printing press, and before the public became accustomed to its products, writing and art were much closer together
29
than they are today.
dependence upon writing is widely recognized today) and the study of art [Kunstwissenschaft] is not universally valid. If it were, then the literary cul- ture of the Middle Ages would be incomprehensible. In those days, the distinction between the production of texts and of pictorial representa-
30
tions was much less pronounced.
Both types of representations were re-
The common distinction between linguistics (whose
plete with ornamental and tactile components--and both showed them
off. Like painting, scribal writing required both competency and form.
Medieval perception was engaged differently in the production and con-
templation--in the "reading"--of texts and images. Paintings such as the
mural mosaics in Monreale or the tessellated pavements in Oranto served
as encyclopedias for the people, but tlieir intelligibility depended on the
viewer's prior familiarity witli stories based on written narratives. In the
late Middle Ages, poetry continued to be composed--written--for oral
presentation in a setting charged with social immediacy, rather than for
31
solitary reading.
and thus on individual intellectual achievements that engage all the senses, especially hearing in conjunction with seeing. Accordingly, the concept of art (ars) was far more comprehensive than it is today, and it had to bridge fewer internal differentiations.
Once art differentiates itself along the lines of a systems-specific play with forms, the situation changes. While still working from within the framework established by the principle of imitation, early modern art moves away from merely copying what might as well be just perceived and toward imitating foundational (Platonic) ideas. Art renders accessible what is invisible without it. In the wake of this transformation, the social relationship between the artist and his audience becomes more problem- atic, provoking debates on the social status of an expert culture of con- noisseurs and art critics in the eighteenth century and eventually leading not only to the realization that conversing about Ait is different from con-
versing about other objects, but also to the possibility of communicating
32
through art.
Is it conceivable that art, as a kind of "writing," builds a
Cultural tradition relied heavily on oral communication
18 Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
bridge between perception and communication, that it compensates for the communication system's inability to perceive? Or could it be that art discovers in this very lack a yet unoccupied field of possibilities in which it can unfold?
These incidental observations illustrate that the relationship between perception and communication is not a prior natural (or "anthropologi- cal") constant divorced from all social and historical reality. Whatever counts as art is marked by an inevitable historical relativity, even at the most elemental level of operation. Historical reflection upon the difference between the achievements of consciousness and those of communication fluctuates accordingly. A certain kind of anthropological reductionism con- tinues to attribute both types of operation to human capacities, although the structural conditions of society have changed significandy since the in- vention of print.
In modern times, the interdependency between communication and consciousness was radicalized in the experience of a painful split between the two that prevents the communicative realization of imaginative possi- bilities. "Many things," writes Novalis, "are much too delicate to be ex-
33
pressed in thought, let alone, to be put into words. "
Siebenkas, the failure of communication destroys a marriage, and in his Flegeljahre, the relationship between two twin brothers breaks apart for similar reasons, despite their best intentions. One can talk about the vic- tims. This topic, discovered in the seventeenth century when writers be- gan to thematize the difficulties of communication, was later exploited by the romantics in a familiar, almost triumphant, sometimes profound,
34
sometimes garrulous manner.
linguistic forms and subject to their restrictions. Or is it?
The potential failure of communication raises the question of possible alternatives to verbal communication. After what has been said, such al- ternatives cannot be found in the products of consciousness, perceptions, imaginations, and so forth. These are autopoietic operations of a type other than communications. Instead, we must focus on types of nonver- bal communication that realize the same autopoietic structure as verbal communication--namely, a synthesis of information, utterance, and un- derstanding--but are not bound by the specific features of language and thus extend the realm of communication beyond what can be put into words (whatever consciousness may experience in the process).
Such alternatives are evident in forms of communication we tend to
But this sort of talk is still talk, bound by
In Jean Paul's novel
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 19
qualify as "indirect. " Standardized gestures, whether or not embedded in conversation, belong to this type of communication--such as shrugging one's shoulders while speaking with someone or honking one's horn in traffic to warn others or express anger. In any of these cases, communica- tion can distinguish between information and utterance; hence, it can un- derstand--that is, connect to--further communications. If understand- ing fails, tiien communication breaks down, which in turn can be clarified or simply glossed over in further communication. Communicating by means of standardized gestures is no different, in principle, from commu- nicating through words; it merely expands a given repertoire of signs.
Other types of indirect communication concern cases in which a com- municative intent cannot be inferred unambiguously from a given behav- ior. Such cases indicate border zones of communication that are sensitive to behavior devoid of communicative intent. Someone has violated the dress code--because of ignorance or lack of appropriate clothing, or merely out of a desire to provoke. Bourdieu has dealt with such phenom- ena by analyzing the signal effect of difference in die realm of cultural ar-
35
tifacts and verbal styles. When called upon to account for one's behav-
ior, one can insist that it was unintentional, and being aware of this option largely blocks communication about it, except in the form of provocation. It takes a Bourdieu enthusiast to speak, or perhaps only to
36
write about such matters.
Indirect communications of this sort are highly context bound and
make sense only situationally. Within given classifications, they can signal alliances. Within oral communication, they can serve a controlling func- tion--as threats or warnings--so long as communication is working well otherwise. It is difficult, however, to think of indirect communication as differentiating itself in the manner in which, for example, die use of money differentiates an economic system. The meaning of a price tag is immediately apparent, whereas an indirect communication could hardly be addressed in the same manner to an anonymous audience.
None of the types of indirect communication discussed above, however, exhausts our search for communicative alternatives to language. Art, in the modern sense of the word, belongs to this category as well. In fact, art pre- sents one such alternative, a functional equivalent to language even if, ten- tatively speaking, it employs texts as an artistic medium. Art functions as communication although--or precisely because--it cannot be adequately rendered through words (let alone through concepts).
%o Perception and Communication: The Reproduction ofForms
Like indirect communication but in different ways, art escapes the strict application of the yes/no code. Art cannot, nor does it mean to, preclude the possibility of conversing about it, of declaring a work of art a failure or success and thus exposing oneself to rejection or acceptance. But this is communication about art, not through art. The artwork itself engages the observer via the products of perceptions, and these are elusive enough to avoid the bifurcation of "yes" or "no. " We see what we see and hear what we hear, and when others observe us engaged in perception it would be silly to deny that we perceive. In this way, a type of sociability is generated that cannot be negated. In avoiding and circumventing language, art nonetheless establishes a structural coupling between the systems of con- sciousness and communication. Once established, the question is how, and to what purpose, this coupling is put to use.
IV
Before we continue, we need to remind ourselves that both the perceiv- ing consciousness and the communicating social system require time in order to establish themselves in a differential relationship to the environ- ment. Both systems consist of events--events that cannot occur in isola- tion because their coming into being and vanishing depend on the sys- tem. As an event, each actualized present articulates a self-relation, but it can do so only if the present is established simultaneously as a difference between past and future, that is to say, if the present determines itself by reaching out recursively toward the temporal horizons of a past and a fu-
37
ture that are momentarily not actualized.
topoiesis, and it should be clear from the above considerations that the re- productive modes of conscious and social systems differ radically from the (equally autopoietic) biochemical reproduction of life. We need to remind ourselves of this crucial insight, because it implies that communication
38
through art, too, must take time into account.
Not only must the artist produce the work before it can be perceived,
but any observing participation in artistic activity is a temporal process, a systematically ordered succession of events. The actions that produce the work must succeed one another in time and orient themselves recursively in relation to what has already been decided and to the possibilities opened up or eliminated by these decisions. Moreover, the perception of art gains access to its object in temporal terms as well by actualizing step by step the
This is what we mean by au-
Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms 2. 1
work's references within a context of distinctions that shift from moment to moment. The work does not reveal itself "at a glance"; at most, it effects some kind of stimulation or irritation that might trigger a deeper, more penetrating concern with the work. One needs indicators to recognize a work of art as an object, but these indicators offer no clue to understand- ing the artistic communication. Some experiences and habits may help identify works of art, but there is no such thing as an instantaneous, intu-
39
itive comprehension of harmony.
junction with the concept of form (Section VI below).
These observations apply to art in general, not only to the obvious cases of music, dance, or stage productions, in which the artwork exists only as a pure sequence of events. On the contrary, such cases are special in that they synchronize the sequence of performance and experience, thus creat- ing a heightened sense of simultaneity, as has often been described. Read- ing texts is also a process that takes time--whether in narrative one reads the sequence that unfolds in the succession of sentences, or whether, as in poetry, one misses what matters if one thinks reading must begin at the beginning and end at the ending, and one will then have understood it all. When reading, and even more so when looking at paintings or sculptures, the observer is relatively free to choose the sequence of observations, so long as observational operations are arranged sequentially.
When supplemented by writing, verbal communication opens up a cor- responding spectrum of disparate and yet coordinated ways of using time. Communication through art further extends these possibilities. Music, for example, intensifies the experience of simultaneity by blocking any mean- ingful hetero-reference, any kind of representation. At the other extreme, artistic communication leaves the observer of paintings or sculptures com- pletely free to choose a sequence of observation without relinquishing its objective control via the artworks play of forms. Thanks to composition, simultaneity is intensified or communication occurs even under condi- tions of complete de-synchronization. In both cases, communication con- trols the connectivity of observational events--increasingly so, the more improbable and exceptional the conditions under which this process takes place. Art is thus capable of intensifying the awareness of communication: consciousness becomes aware of being directed and captivated by com- munication, experiencing die discrepancy between an external control and
:its own, unrestricted operative possibilities. The self-awareness induced by ?