Jay - Downcast eyes : the denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought

Downcast Eyes

THE DENIGRATION OF VISION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRENCH THOUGHT

A CENTENNIAL BOOK

One hundred books published between 1990 and 1995 bear this special imprint of the University of California Press. We have chosen each Centennial Book as an example of the Presss finest publishing and bookmaking traditions as we celebrate the beginning of our second century.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Founded in 1893

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

First Paperback Printing 1994

Copyright 1993 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jay, Martin, 1944

Downcast eyes : the denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought / Martin Jay.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-08885-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Vision. 2. Cognition and culture. 3. Philosophy, French20th century. 4. FranceCivilization20th century. 5. Franceintellectual life20th century. I. Title.

B2424.P45J39 1993

194dc20

93-347

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

12 11 10 09 08

14 13 12 11 10 9

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

For Beth

Registering the many acts of generosity that made this book possible is both a pleasant and melancholy activity. Its pleasure follows from the fond recollection of the people and institutions who were so supportive of the project from the beginning. It is difficult to imagine a warmer or more constructive response to a scholarly enterprise than was forthcoming in this instance. Because the scope of the book is so wide, I have had to rely on the expert knowledge of many people in a multitude of disciplines, all of whom were remarkably willing to share with me the fruits of their own research and learning. The melancholy flows no less inexorably from the fact that several of their number are no longer alive and able to know how deeply I benefited from and appreciated their help.

I would not have been in a position to solicit such aid without the support of the more anonymous benefactors who made the institutional decisions that allowed this project to prosper. Let me thank them first. I was given financial sustenance by the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the University of California Center for Germanic and European Studies, and the University of California Committee on Research. Clare Hall, Cambridge University kindly provided me a visiting membership while I was engaged in writing the manuscript. And three institutions allowed me to teach courses on its theme: the Collge international de philosophie of Paris in 1985, the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College in 1986, and Tulane University, where I was Mellon Professor in the summer of 1990. There can be no better preparation for writing a book of this kind than testing its ideas out in seminars comprising both faculty and advanced graduate student participants, who taught me far more than I taught them. Only they will know how much this book is a collaborative effort. Special thanks are due to Bernard Pulman, Geoffrey Hartman, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham for their respective invitations to conduct those seminars.

During the year I spent in Paris, I also was greatly abetted by the kindnesses of many French scholars, whose names will often be found in the pages that follow. Let me acknowledge them with genuine gratitude: Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Cornelius Castoriadis, the late Michel de Certeau, Daniel Defert, Luce Giard, Jean-Joseph Goux, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, Claude Lefort, Michel Lwy, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Gerard Raulet, Jacob Rogozinski, and Philippe Soulez. I have also deeply benefited from conversations with Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and the late Michel Foucault during their visits to America.

I also owe an enormous debt to the following friends and colleagues, who in a variety of ways left their mark on this book: Svetlana Alpers, Mitchell Ash, Ann Banfield, Susanna Barrows, William Bouwsma, Teresa Brennan, Carolyn Burke, Drucilla Cornell, Carolyn Dean, John Forrester, Hal Foster, Michael Fried, Amos Funkenstein, Claude Gandelman, Alexander Gelly, John Glenn, Joseph Graham, Richard Gringeri, Sabine Gross, Robert Harvey, Joan Hart, Frederike Hassauer, Eloise Knapp Hay, Denis Hollier, Michael Ann Holly, Axel Honneth, Karen Jacobs, Michael Janover, Dalia Judovitz, Anton Kaes, Kent Kraft, Rosalind Krauss, Dominick LaCapra, Thomas Laqueur, David Michael Levin, the late Eugene Lunn, Jane Malmo, Greil Marcus, Irving Massey, Jann Matlock, Franoise Meltzer, Stephen Melville, Juliet Mitchell, John Durham Peters, Mark Poster, Christopher Prendergast, Anson Rabinbach, Paul Rabinow, John Rajchman, Bill Readings, Eric Rentschler, Irit Rogoff, Michael Rosen, Michael Roth, Michael Schudsen, Joel Snyder, Kristine Stiles, Sidra Stich, Marx Wartofsky, John Welchman, J. M. in Thesis Eleven, 31 (1992).

James Clark and Edward Dimendberg of the University of California Press have supported the book with great vigor and generosity. The readings they provided by Rosalind Krauss and Allan Megill were invaluable. So too were the ones solicited by Harvard University Press from Walter Adamson and Paul Robinson; Aida Donalds efforts on behalf of the manuscript were in this sense not in vain, and I want to express my appreciation for her enthusiasm and understanding. I have also benefited from the computer assistance of Gail Phillips, the copyediting of Lisa Chisholm, and the indexing of Rita Chin.

As always, I am privileged to be able to acknowledge the relentless scrutiny of a pair of very special readers: my wife, Catherine Gallagher and the late Leo Lowenthal. Leos death at the age of ninety-two earlier this year ended a remarkable friendship, the like of which I will never enjoy again. Two more eagle-eyed critics are hard to imagine. Finally, no acknowledgment section would be complete without mentioning my daughters, Shana Gallagher and Rebecca Jay, who know how to roll their eyes when their father, like George Bush, bemoans yet again his problems with the vision thing.

Even a rapid glance at the language we commonly use will demonstrate the ubiquity of visual metaphors. If we actively focus our attention on them, vigilantly keeping an eye out for those deeply embedded as well as those on the surface, we can gain an illuminating insight into the complex mirroring of perception and language. Depending, of course, on ones outlook or point of view, the prevalence of such metaphors will be accounted an obstacle or an aid to our knowledge of reality. It is, however, no idle speculation or figment of imagination to claim that if blinded to their importance, we will damage our ability to inspect the world outside and introspect the world within. And our prospects for escaping their thrall, if indeed that is even a foreseeable goal, will be greatly dimmed. In lieu of an exhaustive survey of such metaphors, whose scope is far too broad to allow an easy synopsis, this opening paragraph should suggest how ineluctable the modality of the visual actually is, at least in our linguistic practice. I hope by now that you,