Dylan Sellars--Michel Coucault, This is Not a Pipe

Michel Foucault’s work, entitled This Is Not a Pipe, is a composition exuding a similar philosophical style and aura as that quite reminiscent of the content and the underlying themes present in the body of text comprising (namely) the introductory chapters of his, The Order of Things. In itself, his pursuit is one that substantiates its own philosophical worth and resourceful value for any who seek to mount investigative efforts into the nature of being so as to decipher the veiled disclosure of its possible meanings. The philosophical discussion and analyses presented therein, while indeed concise and to the point, are substantially insightful and informative. Particularly the concern deals with those paradoxical aspects of existence that come to be featured so prominently artworks. The work of art expressly exhibits our existential antimony, more so than just any random piece of use-equipment, as it can bring this enigma of reciprocal contrariety to the fore of individual attention by virtue of its transcendent meaning—this is done in its being as and for that meaning which it projects, and essentially is. Artists, whether via painting, writing, or through some other artfully poetic line of thinking, place center stage these innumerable relations of contradiction within Being and across beings, be these be immediately visible or not. Expression, here chiefly art and language, radiates a lucid pertinence as a light-source, by which at least some of our shadows of existential doubt, dancing silhouettes in the selfsame paradox of meaningful interaction, may be cast aside if illumined in a proper mirror of patient reflection.
It is to this end that Foucault consigns his purpose, commencing to dissect, compare, and contrast art and language so as to extract any possible similitude or distinctions between the two. Centering his focus of discussion with an orientation revolving around the artist Rene Magritte (for whom Foucault had a penchant), the core of the dialogue emanates from Magritte’s artistic creations. Though other works and artists are analyzed as well, it becomes clear that Foucault views Magritte and his works as exceptionally noteworthy instances of art which epitomize the paradox of painting—this of course, is surely paralleled in scope and nature by that of the being of language, as each is tied together in their existence as expressive activity. Through analysis of Magritte’s work, Foucault adumbrates the pressing fundamentality of that relationship of infinitum shared between painting (really, art) and language. The principal centerpiece, around which this text revolves, is the thought provocative work, Ceci n’est pas une pipe. As the translator comments at the introduction, regarding this focal point, it “ultimately both escapes from and yet returns to its ‘subject’ by a willful self-liberation from anything upon which it might be obliged slavishly to ‘comment’.”(12) While not a painter, per se, Foucault’s literal aim (since the livelihood of interpretation lies with the fact that this is our most essential, indeed only, asset) is nevertheless to also go beyond, to reach outside his ‘subject’ only to return to it and render its view afresh.
Digressing as such he interprets the “two pipes”, or the representations of both image and text, each of which come together as a single symbiotic representation which is indicative of the prime essentiality of the fact that neither aspect of this portrayal (and the same goes for any other) can ever truly do justice to the actuality of that which it represents—unless of course, the artwork represents the fact that it is not that of which it is representative. This oddity is interestingly described as a sort of mimetic “pipe dream”, if you will, of the actual. (16) Both the text and image point to a pipe that is physically tangible but yet not really there in truth. Moreover, both refer to an existence outside their own—a real pipe—this is a reality of which neither can have possession. Accordingly, the question is appropriately raised: who could reasonably “contend that the collection of intersecting lines above the text is a pipe?” (19) Foucault describes this central work as a “calligram”, a picture that is paired with words—it effectually “makes the text say what the drawing represents.” As such, “the calligram is thus tautological,” and its being is of an allegorical essence. (20-21) This is the sense of Foucault’s words in speaking of Magritte’s project, which he viewed as one concerned with “doing everything necessary [especially in the instance of our present topic] to reconstruct…the space common to language and the image.” (29) He explains this as a “common place” for these two forms. One should note the diction and pun employed here, taking into consideration the significance of what is suggested by this play of words—for it is this commonality, this essential foundation, which becomes “common-place” in the everydayness of our consciousness. The tact of Ceci n’est pas une pipe is to bring front and center, for all eyes who care to see, an outlook of this two-sided mystery of our intersubjectivity and its spiraling paradoxes of: Self and Other, subject and object, seer and seen. Self-contained within its own tautology, Magritte’s painting makes manifests that circulation of interpretation and expression, as well as concretely demonstrating the communal substratum of both the word and art. Via the window created by the open gaze of the artist, we too may experience a part of this vision, and thus view the image of which this work (like all true art) is a mirror—in its looking-glass, we confront our own selves, being brought face to face with the dialectical reality of intersubjective experience, to which we owe our existence, as well as all knowledge, let alone of that of the paradoxical. Through the mirror of art, as it is on all levels reflective of reflection, if we observe how art principally reflects the interactivity of our reflective expression, we may be granted a better understanding, of understanding itself.
Foucault moves to compare Magritte with artists Klee and Kandinsky; he mentions a worldview that effected the direction of art in the time periods spanning between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. Here there was a prevalent view that looked to separate the resemblance of images and the text that comments on those images. He describes certain “subordinations” between the two, explaining how, regardless of the direction of subjugation, “the meaning…multiplies, and reverses itself.” (32) It is this which Klee set out to do specifically; and, whereas Kandinsky was concerned with detaching the realm and act of painting from the “old equivalence” of resemblance and affirmation, Magritte’s intention is rather to set the two apart and “establish their inequality”—Foucault calls this an “art of the ‘Same’, liberated from the ‘as if.’” (43) Yet while Foucault says Magritte seems to be furthest from these two artists, his efforts are still ultimately in juxtaposed in alignment with theirs, as “his painting seems wedded to exact resemblances, to the point where they willingly multiply and assert themselves. It is not enough that the drawing of the pipe so closely resemble a pipe.” (35) At the close, Foucault draws a distinction which he thinks is apparent in Magritte’s art, one between resemblance and similitude—basically, this is a problematic concerning the issue of that which is the represented, and that doing the representing. (44) Here he makes use of his idea of a circular “simulacrum” of interacting similitudes, in discussing the rift of consciousness that is enfolded in meaningful expression which he says is “in a sense always reversible,” for between the space of its two poles it “ranges across the surface” of interstice. (45) Ceci n’est pas une pipe is thus, “the affirmation of the simulacrum, affirmation of the element within the network of the similar.” To quote Magritte, seeing as though it would seem to be most appropriate given his actual craft, he states of his art: “Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.” (46-47)
In short, each of these dilemmas are puzzle pieces belonging within the fold of an even greater quandary. Both painting and language appear to emanate from the timeless split of the universal and particular, a being that is for us that primal rift of consciousness which is evident for the existent Self in relations toward Others—this is a, if not the, primary locus for virtually all of those characteristics we like bundle into the phrase ‘human condition.’ Both Foucault and Magritte seemed to have an affinity for one another’s reflective endeavors—Magritte held a wide interest in philosophy and read much in the field of ideas in order to satisfy that curiosity; incidentally it is said that, instead of the term “artist”, his preference was “to be considered a thinker who communicated by means of paint.” (2) Each thinker undertook to explicate the anomalies of human expression, to include questioning the seemingly arbitrary nature of significations and the meanings to which they are assigned (such as the sign itself not appearing linked to the essence of the signified). It may indeed be that they were on opposite planes, but each recognized the ‘resemblance’ between their paths. As their friendship (and work) shows, both drew on such parallels of perspective as a means for broadening the authentic reality of their own interpretive vision. The relationship of correspondence and admiration shared by Foucault and Magritte resonates with the text—for just as it is with the case of circulation between two reciprocal elements of the “pipe”, Foucault’s words paint and re-interpret the visual critique Magritte offers of interpretation, thus personifying the curious, interwoven nature of interpretive activities, as they are in relation to their various outlets continually being rediscovered upon an ever-developing pallet of expression.
Works Cited
—Foucault, Michel. This Is Not A Pipe. Berkeley: University of California P, 1983. (TP)