Another episode of This American Life came to mind when reading sections of chapter 7 in Art and Agency. The episode is titled “Reality Check” and is about a man whose favorite and famous pet bull Chance dies (after being cloned). Gell’s discussion of exuviae sorcery reminded me of the scene where Chances owner pulls the hide of the deceased animal out of the closet, announcing “Here he is...here’s Chance!” While the skin of their pet of 19 years can be viewed simply as a material memento of Chance’s life, it becomes clear that his owners in fact view it as much more than just an inanimate object, but rather as the actual “spirit” of Chance, or in fact as Chance himself. The hide has agency because it acts upon his owners by making them feel and act in a certain way. This observation becomes more interesting when we learn that Chance was cloned and, in his owner’s belief, now continues to live also in the form of the clone, cleverly named Second Chance. Gell references the Epicurian illustration of a shed snake skin or cicada shell as “prototypical simulacra or ‘idols’.” Chance’s hide then is the “exuviae produced by growth” and the representation of the fertility or immortality of Chance, who is able to live on in the form of Second Chance. Dissimilar to volt sorcery where the exuviae is acted upon in a negative way to injure its prototype, but similar to the example of the mauri fertility stone, the hide is adored in order to prolong the fertility of, and generate the immortality of Chance.
One could also try to view the actual clone as an index, modeled on the prototype of Chance One, who begets abduction if we know that he is in fact a clone. However, because in this case the index is not an inanimate object, but an animal, I found the web of social relationships between index, artist, prototype, recipient, agent, and patient to be much more confusing.
Gell's statement that "we approach art objects ... as if they had 'physiognomics' like people" (15) made me think at first that perhaps it is this humanizing of inanimate objects that is at the root of idolatry; perhaps it is not so much that we seek to view inanimate objects as having agency, but that we see inanimate objects as having human characteristics and therefore agency. However, Gell explains later that "if an effigy possessed every single thing-attribute of a human being, it could still be 'just an effigy' and be unworthy of worship; conversely, an effigy could possess no identifiable thing-attribute of a human being and be worthy of devotion nevertheless" (125). So what is it that makes us identify certain objects as idols while ignoring others? Or, what is it that makes spirits choose certain things to embody them over others?
I found Gell’s discussion of creation and the sympathy of the patient for the artist in chapter five to be somewhat sticky. While I agree with Gell that "any object that one encounters in the world invites the question 'how did this thing get to be here?'", I disagree with the implications of the statement that “mostly, the answers to such questions are so taken for granted as not to play any part in one’s conscious mental self.” It is true that I have not given much thought to the origin of the table at which I am writing this response, and Gell would probably use this as evidence that there are certain ‘familiar’ things which, although they may beg the question of their existence, we can safely ignore their pleading. I do agree that for most everyday items, most people do not actively consider the question of their origin. However, for these items, we KNOW, to some basic degree, how they got there even without asking. The question might not arise very often, but if it did we would know. For this table, I know that someone cut down a few trees, someone drove the wood to a factory, someone cut the wood, someone put the table together, and someone brought the table to Avery. The details are simply not important. It is not that the question of the origin of the table doesn’t occur to me, it is just not interesting because I know that wooden tables exist and are fairly common on college campuses, and, essentially, how tables are made. The reason that only children ask how tables are made is not because children’s minds are inherently different than adults’, but because adults are already familiar with the answer, while children are not. There are certainly situations where I would ask about the origin of a table. If this table was carved into a large rock coming out of the ground, or if it was in the middle of the jungle, for example, I would not be able to fall back on my accepted explanation for the origin of tables and I would be compelled to ask about its origin.
The importance of the question of origin to all things, not just ‘artefacts’, is apparent when you consider that if we don’t know the origin of something, we make it up. We speculate long before we admit that we don’t actually know. It is certainly not true that “only geologists, who are trained to do so, ask when they see a mountain range, how that came into being.” Perhaps ‘only geologists’ (or laypeople particularly interested in geology) seek to learn the details and specifics, but everyone asks where the mountains came from. Every origin story ever written, including the scientific one, is testament to this.
Our need to write origin stories forces us to consider the origin of everything, not just artifacts. The mountains exist, so, if we do not already have an explanation for their origin that satisfies us, we ask where they came from. Since, as Gell says, “our natural point of vantage is that of the originating person, the artist,” we seek an artist for the mountains. We see agency where none exists because it is the explanation with which we are most comfortable. A deity or a giant or an alien conspiracy created the mountains, and the details become, as with the table, unimportant. While thinking through this, I began to wonder whether this tendency to see agency behind the origin of things is the cause of our tendency to see the agency of things themselves. Both tendencies are, at least, symptomatic of the same phenomenon.
In Chapter 7, Gell explains that he has found, through his work, “The symbolic language developed in earlier sections of this essay can be applied to the kind of casualty which is involved in Frazer’s prime example of sympathetic (imitative) magic,…that form of sorcery in which an image of the victim is made (often of wax or some vulnerable material), subjected to injury or destruction, with the result that the victim of the sorcery suffers the same injuries or is done away with entirely. This kind of sorcery is practiced in innumerable forms, all over the world” (Gell 102). In essence, he believes that representational imagery acts as a mediator of social agency due to the representation bestowing power over the representative unit (even though it may only be imaginary power). By taking bits and pieces of the actual entity one desires to control, the creator of the representational item is endowed with a sort of magical power over the living object that is depicted by the representational item. One of the most interesting examples found in his essay of such a phenomenon is from his description of South Asian and Pacific idol worship. More specifically, the way spiritual beings are symbolized beings through the contrast between interior and exterior bodily components. His evidence is quite extensive on this topic, as his texts take up much of this section of the reading. It should be noted that, when looking to the West and their outlook and viewpoints on art, he does not really have much evidence to support his argument regarding Westerners going to galleries and museums. In particular, the idea of much cultural value placed on art in the West and the enjoyment received from gallery and museum outings being explained in the same way as idolatry lacks evidentiary support. Additionally, there is little to no mention of the non-representational imagery in Western art, which makes up much of the art of the West. This raises many questions in my mind: Does the West not need as much proof because the actions described (i.e. going to a museum) is occurring today? Also, why is it that the West is so different regarding its idol worship? Should we split up the “East” and “West” when discussing idolatry, or does it matter moreso the time period discussed (i.e. objects thought of as idols from the past versus idols that we look to today), because many objects, especially religious ones, are idolized from the same viewpoint from people across the globe.
Going off of what Gina said, I understand the comparison Gell makes between idol-worship and Western art gallery viewing and I agree with it to a point. However, it seems to me that Gell ignored certain aspects of the art gallery in his attempts to demonstrate how gallery-viewing is akin to idol worship. For example, one of the main functions of the art gallery is to display pieces that are meant to be critiqued and judged for both their aesthetic and conceptual value, while judging and critiquing idols in this way does not seem to be important in the idol-person relationship. It seems to me that a distinction must be made between art-viewing and idol-worship because art is generally critiqued, analyzed etc while idols are not examined in the same way by those who engage with them. However, I do think that it is fair to say that art may sometimes be treated as an idol and that peoples’ interactions and relationships with pieces of art may become similar to or the same as the interactions and relationships between people and idols, as Gell points out.
As I was writing this, another question came to mind: am I, and likely much of the ‘west’, perhaps reluctant to relate art galleries to idol worship because we do not see ourselves as ‘primitive’ enough to engage in idol-worship? Is it because we regard idols as things of the past or non-Western cultures?
In response to gloria’s question, what makes us identify certain objects as idols while ignoring others? I, like Gloria, struggled through Gell’s theory of idols and agency in chapter seven. He reaches the conclusion that anthropomorphizing the index (or idol) can provide us an inroad to the idols spirituality, but placing it in a box can serve the same purpose (19). Either way, “the homunculus effect” can be achieved. I must admit Gel lost me there a bit, in his discussion of Dennett’s philosophy of mind. I follow that we can recognize the idol as a social “other”, and put aside the importance of human/inhuman qualities. He proves that human agency is nearly impossible to define and it is more useful to think about social agency. In these terms, artifacts and idols are parts of the network which express this agency. Still he admits he has no answer for why we view certain objects as having an internal will or “intentional psychology” as he calls it. I am failing to understand Dennett’s homoncului. Is he suggesting that we interpret all social beings and objects by duplicating that person’s inner person within ourselves and lodging this idea into that person? Does he suggest that this is the process by which we endow certain objects with life? Did I completely butcher this argument? Gell concedes that he does not know “why by means of mimesis is the artifact endowed with intentional psychology” (19), but I still fail to understand the application (or perhaps the appeal) of Dennet’s theory.
What I took from Gell's discussion of Dennett's idea of a homunclus was that an idol cannot be an idol without an idolizer. A wooden statue, for example, could be standing in the middle of a forest for centuries, but until someone sees it and attributes meaning to it, it will mean nothing. I agree with Dennett's idea that we must place meaning, or psychology onto our idols. In Gell's discussion of Darshan we can further see this theory. Darshan is given to the recipient through the eyes of a god (or even another person). It would be impossible, however, for a god or idol to give Darshan if there was no one there to receive it. Just as a recipient is necessary to receive Darshan, so is an idolizer necessary to make any type of object into an idol.
After reading Gell speak of Frazer and sympathteic magic, stating, "This kind of sorcery is practiced in innumerable forms, all over the world." and reading an article on the power of suggestion. I couldn't help but wonder what Gell's take would be on placebos. Would he see this as a form of sympathetic magic and thus would he describe the pill as a type of idol or merely a synecdoche of our trust in medicine? Does the pill have the same agency as some of the examples discussed in the book? If this is so, is it only the doctor practicing in this magic, since he or she believes it works and at the same time doesn't work while the patient only believes it will work?
One of the aspects of Chapter 7 that I found particularly interesting was Gell's treatment of religion. First, I thought it was strange that he would choose to include a sort of side note in the text that he is not religious. The point that religious observance is the most obvious form of idolatry was a statement that I found a little relieving, since that has been the first connection that I have been making with the word idol throughout the class. One statement, though, that I have to disagree with Gell on is his point about the connection between writing about art and religion. He states, "First of all, I cannot tell between religious and aesthetic exaltation; art-lovers, it seems to me, actually do worship images in most of the relevant senses, and explain away their de facto idolatry by rationalizing it as aesthetic awe" (97). Ok fine ... seems like a good point. But the statement that follows leaves me a little confused, "Thus, to write about art at all, in fact, to write about either religion, or the substitute for religion which whose who have abandoned the outward forms of received religions content themselves with" (97). The connection between art and religion is not one that always occurs, so I find it difficult to accept Gell's quick comparison between these two complicated subjects.
I loved all the imagery of binding and wrapping an idol in this section. Again, and I'm not sure exactly why I keep coming back to this (last week I spoke of the embodiment of the Byzantine Christ- its materiality), but there is something so interesting and intimate when speaking of the physicality of an image or the physicality of a god. Maybe its because I'm a dancer that I gravitate towards the concept of the physical or the tangible? I loved the section on receiving Darshan, the phenomena experienced by the Hindu image-worshiper who is in the presence of the image of a god. An intersubjective gaze is held, where the worshiper is conscious of the god looking back at him or her; this returned gaze is seen as a gift. This intersubjectivity is absolutely key in understanding the power of the image before the devotee. Gell discusses the philosopher Caraka, who argued that "indeed we have only one sense, the sense of touch, of which sight, hearing, etc. are just more subtle froms." (Gell 117) This is a beautiful way to think of what it means to make contact with something, whether the relationship occurs through sight, hearing, physical contact. We must recall Gell's earlier engagement with the Epicurean theory, that all forms of sight and visual contact are actually physical ones, where thin membranes are being released from the body and flying through the air. In this way, "'appearances' of things are material parts of things." (Gell 105) This is particularly interesting to think of in regards to Frazers discussion of sympathetic magic, of how magic occurs across a physical, spatial gap, in this case- about as far as a gaze can be held and the intersubjectivity can be experienced. I can't help but be reminded of all of the recent political celebrity sightings on Columbia and Barnard campus. Last week it was Obama and McCain. Just today, Hillary Clinton was sighted at BC. Do we receive some sort of darshan when we see a political figure on the stage of Roone Arledge? What sort of sympathetic magic passes through the big screen to us as a student audience when we sit on the steps of Low Library- across the physical, spatial distance that is the walls of Lerner and the lawns of Butler?
On page 18 Gell says that "It just happens to be patently the case that persons form what are evidently social relations with 'things.'" He goes on to cite examples of a girl with her doll and his attachment to his car. This discussion seems in part to discuss "idolatry" as something will all do and not something relegated to primitive cultures or "the other." However, I found in his explanation of the examples that he continued to make idolatry something that other people do. In terms of the girl with her doll, this is an attachment only made by young children. Gell tries to use Michelangelo's "David" as a similar example for grown-ups but his argument does not seem to completely align them. He then discusses his relationship with his car. He talks about naming it, applying an ethnic personality to it, and even commenting that he would consider the car treacherous if it were to break down far from home in the middle of the night. Gell goes as far as calling this "vehicular animism," but he then dismisses the entire attachment as acceptable because it is part of "car culture." Of course he may have these irrational thoughts about his car but so does everyone else, about their car. This invocation of "car culture" as an excuse of his attachment almost seems to, possibly unintentionally, say that his form of idolatry isn't idolatry, it's just part of "car culture," once again applying idolatry only to "the other."
I was intrigued by Gell’s point in ch. 7 about how the very word “idolatry” has acquired a pejorative sense in Western culture and I have been thinking about whether the term should or should not have such a sense to it. I wonder if our eagerness to deny that we engage in any sort of idol-worship is simply from living in a culture that is so rooted in Jewish/Christian/Muslim beliefs that teach that idolatry is a sin or if there is some other reason that we are so uncomfortable with the idea – what I am curious about here is not the tendency to think of idolatry as something primitive or silly that other people do, but the possibility that it is something almost dangerous to social relationships. For example in chapter two, when he is talking about children and dolls, Gell says of a little girl, “Would she toss her doll overboard from a lifeboat in order to save her bossy elder brother from drowning? No way.” (18) We take the attachment of children to dolls as something perfectly innocuous and even sweet, but when thinking further about this particular example it started to strike me as very strange that we accept this – that a child will happily claim that an inanimate object is her “best friend” or would be more concerned with saving a doll than another person, indicating that the inanimate object is just as valuable to her as another person. Parents try hard to teach their children that people are more important than things, but lots of adults seem never to have learned this lesson either, since as we have discussed, so many people have an attachment to cars or money or other possessions that is bordering on idol-worship. So while, as Gell notes, we don’t want to think of idol-worship in the anthropological sense as something “primitive” that we are too advanced to engage in, since this is clearly not the case, I am not sure it is completely out of line that people are so wary of the word “idolatry” and the concept in general.
In both Gell and Mitchell we see discussion of idols in regards to both the contemporary West and various incarnations of the anthropological other, and to the extent that similar processes are supposed to be described among both, it is important to consider how comparable these forms of idolatry are. As Anastasia questioned above, are idols really comparable to art in the Western gallery, are they “examined” in the same way? I think that within Gell's outline of art objects there is room for this kind of evaluation by the recipient, but that it does not necessarily take the overt form that is prescribed by the context of an art gallery. His model of agent-patient relations, founded on abductions, essentially accounts for this process in both types of situations. In judging art within a gallery, the recipients are inferring the agency involved in its creation, whether of the artist or the prototype or any other agent, in order to imagine what the image “means,” or what it should mean. I think that Gell would argue that a critique of a piece of art infers this agency, even if the abduction is implicit and the aesthetic and other judgments that follow are more prominent. In other words, the art object of the Western gallery can be discussed differently because it falls within the discourse of an institutionalized art world, whereas the anthropological objects discussed might be integrated in a different way—but the underlying inferences about agency are what make them comparable as idols, as images or icons that somehow embody that intentionality.
While I'm still absorbing the implications of treating objects as social actors, I was definitely taken by Gell's insistence on the distinct differences between the material world and language (p 25 and elsewhere). It's interesting in part because people, even when not framing an anthropological theory, (for example within a gallery) still talk about the meaning of images. Thus I suppose Gell is suggesting that while people believe or act as if images have meaning (recalling Mitchell with that phrasing), they are actually going through this abduction process to reach that “meaning state.” Mostly I just appreciate how precisely he tries to define the actual relationship of people to these objects (ie not one that parallels the use of language), and how it really requires language to get that point across.
I partly agree with Gell in Chapter 5, regarding the captivation of artifacts, in that we are certainly captivated by an index with technical complexity. When we see Chinese stone balls in museums which are carved from outside and have many layers of elaborately decorated ball inside without breaking the outer layers, we agree that the stone ball indexes the wealth and glory of the owner and captivate the viewers. However, do the artworks which is not technically complex really have nothing to do with captivation? Then, why are so many people enthusiastic about Roy Lichtenstein’s work of painting which is merely a copy of a cut of cartoon? Can Gell’s argument be applied in contemporary society? In my opinion, his argument about the relationship between captivation and technical complexity has to be within the scope of anthropology of art, not within contemporary works of art. In contemporary art, people are captivated by the complex thought of artworks, not by the technical complexity. I’m just wondering if he really didn’t think about this issue or I missed his point of view, and I have to go back to the book and find out.
What really struck me about Chapter 7 is the theme of eyes. Gell continuously references such usage on idols with regards to the reflection of oneself, mimesis, power, consecration, and sympathetic magic. Some idols cannot even be looked upon due to reverence or until it is brought into the world (Oro). Throughout history and prehistory, we see examples of idols and magical objects whose main attributes were eyes: Sumerian prayer figures, early Christian painting and mosaic, the 'evil eye', the Hindu third eye, etc. The eye seems an important part of religion and idols in general. Lucretius even states that flying simulacra enter our eyes and we can feel them, as well as other optical phenomena (105). However, what Gell fails to mention is an alternative to worship by sight (eyedol worship, would be accurate). Gell does not indicate what occurs when a blind person enters the presence of an idol or those with poor vision. Does this person replicate a feeling of awe? Can he not feel the idols vision upon him? Do these religions have alternatives and does it invoke the same feelings? Without a reflection of self, is it possible to imitate a soul in the idol? Do these put Gell's theories on eyes into doubt then?
"The projection of human physical features (onto gods, spirits, etc.), in general results in a projection...of intentional psychology, but a projection of intentional psychology does not genereally entail a projection of any other human quality" (pg 122). I find this statement to be interesting and true in today's society. If we really think about it we do this everyday of our lives without even knowing it. "A worshipper who addresses prayers to a stone must believe, somehow, that the stone in question, though not a living thing, sees and hears as does the worshipper, thinks and reacts as he does, and moreover, has the power to plan and execute actions" (pg 122). For example, when we pray to a statue or painting of Christ, we believe that He hears our prays and feels for us. We project human qualities onto inanimate objects. I liked the example that he gave about car culture. Every person who owns a car projects some sort of personality/humaness onto their car; I feel that I can relate since I do this to my car all of the time. When believing that the car, idol, statue, painting, etc., is alive, we feel that it will answer to our needs. This sort of behavior has been occuring for thousands of years.
As we have been discussing what idols are exactly and how objects have a secondary agency (according to Gell in chapter 2), I thought his discussion of volt sorcery in chapter 7 was interesting to relate to the phenomenon of online networking. So far in class, I have come to my personal conclusion that perhaps idols may be any image or object that one wishes to revere as an idol. If a photo of my grandmother became a representation of her (object as a person), where I considered it equivalent to being with her even though she is not physically here, then I think I could describe it as an idol. The thinking that an image/idol may be created and then manipulated through the sympathetic magic in volt sorcery also assumes that photo is "comparable ... to the leverage which can be obtained by having access to some physical part of them" (105). Gell's feeling of vulnerability that someone could take a picture of his "naked behind" and circulate it as a representation of himself is humorous to me in a time when the circulation of photographs, both good and bad, is easier than it ever has been with the advent of on-line friend networking sites, such as facebook and myspace. This may be a far stretch of a comparison, but I know teenage girls who start to idolize photos of their crushes, and I could see volt sorcery performed on those photos after a middle school breakup...
While many cultures throughout history have denounced material culture, it seems that objects are an integral part of human existence, and that people cannot do without their material objects. In multitudes of cases people become very attached to particular things, be it their favorite coffee mug, a book, or any other inanimate object that can take on layers of meaning for its owner based on the experiences associated with the object. The way in which people become attached to their possessions seems to be because, in general, people do not like change. One way in which to control change is to make sure that one is surrounded with the same objects all the time, and in this way people forge deep and psychological bonds with inanimate objects. Perhaps it is the fear of change that makes people create idols for themselves, in order to feel in control of their lives and to give them a feeling of safety. The way in which people use objects, or indices, to comfort themselves fits in nicely with Gell?s complex webs detailing the interactions between the artist, index, prototype and recipient. In this particular case, the indices have direct influence over the recipients, who are essentially putting themselves at the mercies of inanimate objects. To use Gell?s terms, the index in this situation exerts agency over the recipient by mediating their feelings. In the case of everyday objects, the agency of an ?artist? is removed by modern technology since one inanimate object (a machine) excerpts agency through another inanimate object (a mundane index) over people. The term ?index? can be used on art objects as well as ?mundane? objects, because the definition of art is impossible to pin down. A prime and often-cited example of the variability in the definition of art is the ?ready-made? pieces of Marcel Duchamp. His ready-mades take this idea of the mundane, machine-manufactured object and attempt to elevate these objects to the status of ?high art.? While the objects idolized by people in their everyday lives are often not viewed as art per se, Duchamp pushes the question of what can be idolized as art, and brings to mind the way in which these everyday objects are indeed idolized because of their proximity to the average person.
She discussed the making of the vase as a kind of performative action. That is, by making the vase the artist was performing his "magic", whether the vase was ever seen by anyone. She was arguing against the interpretation of the imagery as strictly representational (i.e. as a statement reinforcing the priest-king hierarchy of Uruk), and this struck me as key territory for Gell and Frazer.
I think Frazer would describe the carving of a ritual on a sacred vessel as imitative magic, comparable to wax figures (at least by the logic Gell uses with the tiki idols). Viewing the vase in Gell's framework (haven't got to chapter 9 yet, so not the through-the-rabbit-hole stuff) the vase is really ambiguous. I am reminded of hieroglyphic art, which I was told by an Egyptologist could be seen as a living creation, endlessly performing the ritual depicted as long as the stone would last. This is an interesting kind of agency, one intended to be independent from (mortal) viewers, but extending the agency of the index through time towards a divine audience.
The vase (and many hieroglyphics) would have probably had limited access, so if it was intended as "representational" art it had a small audience, and would only be a reminder of a ritual that any viewer undoubtedly knew by heart . However, when viewed as an agent in its own right, endowed by its artist, the vase could be a festival in and of itself, endlessly worshiping the gods depicted.
Todd
(also, if you view this within courseworks, it hides the password verification picture. That may be screwing people up. You need to open a new tab or browser window to post your comments.)
While reading Gell’s discussion on agency and intention (Chapter 2), the biggest block I hit in trying to understand his theory was putting in the “God” (or the ambiguity) factor.
So if the words ‘social’ and ‘agent’ help to discriminate between ‘happenings (caused by physical laws) and ‘actions’ (caused by prior intentions), then where does the ambiguous will of God come in? (Gell 1998: 16, 17) Since deities still exist in a sort of gray area in general society’s minds, in which people (atheists, agnostics, devoted fanatics…) don’t fully agree on whether the deities exist or possess free will, then under what category do they fall? I guess the bigger point is – there are a lot of gray areas (i.e. subhumans, superhumans) that can be found using Gell’s “discrimination” method; not everything falls so neatly under persons and objects; so what happens to the exceptions and the ambiguities? I think another thing that I’m trying to get at is, since when did the categories become “persons” and “objects” and nothing else?
After having some analytical issues with our brief introduction to Mitchell’s study of art and agency—mostly due to the fact his postulations have no real material foundation to support his mind-exercises—it was a great relief to read Gell’s Art and Agency, where almost too many archaeological and ethnographic evidence abounds, as well as a direct connection of this notion of “thing agency” to our material world. Beyond the speculative suggestion that objects, as idols, intrinsically intend some physical event to happen, there is a very basic conception of how a thing can internally define and affect our own agency—agency I can relate to and truly envision because I experience it everyday (even now I intend my hands to physical affect [press] the keys on my laptop, therefore communicating an internal idea to some external source [our blog], and in effect initiate causal sequences; for example, generating responses to my thoughts or completing a task for a required assignment, hence receiving a grade for the work accomplished). Things outwardly define who we are; how we view the material world through exploitation; how the world inversely views us; how “personhood” is constructed and constantly restructured. Our biological shell could be considered a “thing” outside of “ourselves” (that internal cognitive “spirit” that science as of yet hasn’t truly identified—“personhood” beyond just neurological connections), as well as our external possessions.
Gell really hooked me in after the second chapter, during his discussion of the Pol Pot mines and their inter-relational relationship with the soldiers’ identity and agency. Before we can manipulate and mold an object into an “idol,” before we pick up that stone and hollow out its core to house some sacred “exuviae” inside and thus animate and “sanctify” the object, there has to be something inherently within the structure or existence of “things” that allows the animation of any object to be successful. I think Gell’s Pol Pot example perfectly elucidates this point. Without the mines and their destructive effect on the material world, Pol Pot’s soldiers’ intentions, to destroy their enemy, couldn’t have been fully realized. To use Gell’s own words, “Pol Pot’s men were capable of being the kind of (very malign) agents that they were only because of the artefacts they had at their disposal, which…turned them from mere men into devils with extraordinary powers.” (Gell 21) The clothes I wear, the” I Love Dogs” mug I’m currently drinking out of, and the trowel I sleep beside every night define who I am, what I believe in, how others might view me, and how I (as a agent with intentions) have changed over the course of my life. The question is, did this change occur internally, and in consequence, I externally manipulated my material world to adapt to this change, or have my possessions influenced me in such a way to cause change and shape my “personhood” from the outside? I would argue a little bit of both transpires. This might just be the theoretical “agency of things” I’ve been looking for to really begin understanding idolatry.
In reading this week’s assignment, I particularly found interesting Gell’s point that not only do objects have the capacity to be social agents, but people have the capacity for thingness as well. While reading this passage of the book, I kept thinking about Maximón, a Mayan saint in the highlands of Guatemala that I had the opportunity to visit a couple of years ago. As an offering, we were encouraged to put glasses of rum in his arms and burning cigarettes in his mouth because the effigy was alive and I had a hard time wrapping my head around all of this at the time. Gell’s point really hit home for me- we cannot tell whether a human is acting out of intention and as an empowered agent, or simply from material/mechanical causation. “…if pressed, we are not really very sure about ‘just how’ an idol is not a person—even though we are perfectly certain it isn’t” (p124). There is no material test to determine agency. Although I know Maximon is a wooden effigy, I cannot prove that he is not human or like the statue of Shiva Gell refers to, has a mind, intends to be still and does so from a prior intention (thus exercising agency).
From now on, whenever I see my roommates taking a nap on the couch, I will imagine them as things, which as an aside, makes me wonder where the line is drawn between ‘actions’ and ‘happenings’ as far as biological processes are concerned.
In the first chapter of Gell’s Art and Agency he introduces his overarching theory of an anthropological theory of art. Firstly, I would like to see that I absolutely love a lot of his ideas and when i read chapter 2 first it didn’t make as much sense but reading chapter 1 really put his following chapters into clearer focus. I think his inclusion of the ideas of Sally Price were very interesting. Although he does disagree with some of her ideas I think her idea that even “the ‘eye’ of the most naturally gifted connoisseur is not naked, but views through the lense of Western cultural education” is extremely important and often forgotten by western intellectuals. Even our most gifted anthropologists etc. cannot entirely remove themselves from their own educational lense no matter how hard they honestly try to. It is I believe the biggest failure of intellectuals to believe themselves above their criticism of “most” or “past” intellectuals. I also found his distinction as anthropology as a social science really interesting. This positioning really helps clarify his idea of what an anthropological theory of art would be. This idea of studying art as a social agent taking part in social relations similar to those studied in other “branches” of anthropology is so interesting. I do disagree with Gell on one point, although it may come from a sentimental love of interpreting art on its own. He disregards art as having meaning because it is the language that we use in interacting with art that has meaning. He believes that only language has this innate meaning. Haven’t most people looked at a piece of art, any kind of “art object” and been at a loss of words but were still deeply affected by it. Maybe I misunderstood him but I do definitely think that art has some innate meaning, an idea which I have deeply studied in my past class Philosophy of Art. He says that the “art object” “has no intrinsic nature independent of the relational context.” I agree that yes for every different relational context a work of art can have different interpretations of meaning by the individual viewer. However, I do not think that this means that the art object has no intrinsic meaning or nature. I believe that the fact that art is commonly considered to affect, to act, or as we have read to “want” all imply that the art has some intrinsic meaning. That despite differences in the social relationship between a viewer and the object an art object does have some innate meaning. I may have misinterpreted his argument but nonetheless I think this idea of his is definitely deserving of further study.
Sometime I wonder about the limitations on the use of theory and philosophy. Gell truly pushed this limit in my mind. So many questions were raised that there are no answers to. For instance, why is it that a group of humans ascribe meaning to certain objects but not others? There is no real way to figure out an answer to this question, yet it must be a central theme to this class. At least Gell deals with the issue of the difference between objects that gain meaning or humanity, and objects that do not. Mitchell was very unclear on this subject. I liked Gell’s comparison of religion and art. Art lovers idolize the works of art, but justify it by the art’s “aesthetic awe”. This seems just right to me.
We in the western world idolize so much, but justify it as deserving of our awe. In an example entirely aberrant from this class, I just read a paper discussing the idolization of D-Day and World War II artifacts. We can get an interesting view on this idolization since many veterans are living. In one interview with a veteran, the interviewer mentions that some of the man’s possessions that he carried with him on D-Day are on display at a museum. He explains that it is one of the most popular exhibits, constantly being surrounded by viewers. The veteran was surprised that people cared so much about the silly trinkets he had with him. Here, people ascribed meaning to what was considered junk by the person who actually was at the important event. People must think, “wow, that pen was in someone’s backpack on D-Day,” and that pen then represents more than just a pen. It represents D-Day. I think as archaeologists we can sometimes fall into that trap. On my first dig, when we found a glass bead from the 18th Century, all I could think of was who wore it, what purpose it had, and what history it had seen. Here, I was guilty of placing too much meaning in objects.
The comparison of idol or icon worship to the modern practice of gallery viewings and museum showcases was enlightening. There is indeed a ritual that we Westerners follow in these practices. We feel the art speaks to us, communes with us on some other level; it is this very otherworldly (dare I say: humanistic) quality of art that draws us inevitably to art gatherings. We conflate the art with the artist, the feelings we have with the piece, ourselves with the canvas. Sometimes it feels as though the artwork tugs at you, "forcing" you to take note of it. These ARE the things that make an icon truly powerful.
25 comments:
Another episode of This American Life came to mind when reading sections of chapter 7 in Art and Agency. The episode is titled “Reality Check” and is about a man whose favorite and famous pet bull Chance dies (after being cloned). Gell’s discussion of exuviae sorcery reminded me of the scene where Chances owner pulls the hide of the deceased animal out of the closet, announcing “Here he is...here’s Chance!” While the skin of their pet of 19 years can be viewed simply as a material memento of Chance’s life, it becomes clear that his owners in fact view it as much more than just an inanimate object, but rather as the actual “spirit” of Chance, or in fact as Chance himself. The hide has agency because it acts upon his owners by making them feel and act in a certain way. This observation becomes more interesting when we learn that Chance was cloned and, in his owner’s belief, now continues to live also in the form of the clone, cleverly named Second Chance. Gell references the Epicurian illustration of a shed snake skin or cicada shell as “prototypical simulacra or ‘idols’.” Chance’s hide then is the “exuviae produced by growth” and the representation of the fertility or immortality of Chance, who is able to live on in the form of Second Chance. Dissimilar to volt sorcery where the exuviae is acted upon in a negative way to injure its prototype, but similar to the example of the mauri fertility stone, the hide is adored in order to prolong the fertility of, and generate the immortality of Chance.
One could also try to view the actual clone as an index, modeled on the prototype of Chance One, who begets abduction if we know that he is in fact a clone. However, because in this case the index is not an inanimate object, but an animal, I found the web of social relationships between index, artist, prototype, recipient, agent, and patient to be much more confusing.
Gell's statement that "we approach art objects ... as if they had 'physiognomics' like people" (15) made me think at first that perhaps it is this humanizing of inanimate objects that is at the root of idolatry; perhaps it is not so much that we seek to view inanimate objects as having agency, but that we see inanimate objects as having human characteristics and therefore agency. However, Gell explains later that "if an effigy possessed every single thing-attribute of a human being, it could still be 'just an effigy' and be unworthy of worship; conversely, an effigy could possess no identifiable thing-attribute of a human being and be worthy of devotion nevertheless" (125). So what is it that makes us identify certain objects as idols while ignoring others? Or, what is it that makes spirits choose certain things to embody them over others?
I found Gell’s discussion of creation and the sympathy of the patient for the artist in chapter five to be somewhat sticky. While I agree with Gell that "any object that one encounters in the world invites the question 'how did this thing get to be here?'", I disagree with the implications of the statement that “mostly, the answers to such questions are so taken for granted as not to play any part in one’s conscious mental self.” It is true that I have not given much thought to the origin of the table at which I am writing this response, and Gell would probably use this as evidence that there are certain ‘familiar’ things which, although they may beg the question of their existence, we can safely ignore their pleading. I do agree that for most everyday items, most people do not actively consider the question of their origin. However, for these items, we KNOW, to some basic degree, how they got there even without asking. The question might not arise very often, but if it did we would know. For this table, I know that someone cut down a few trees, someone drove the wood to a factory, someone cut the wood, someone put the table together, and someone brought the table to Avery. The details are simply not important. It is not that the question of the origin of the table doesn’t occur to me, it is just not interesting because I know that wooden tables exist and are fairly common on college campuses, and, essentially, how tables are made. The reason that only children ask how tables are made is not because children’s minds are inherently different than adults’, but because adults are already familiar with the answer, while children are not. There are certainly situations where I would ask about the origin of a table. If this table was carved into a large rock coming out of the ground, or if it was in the middle of the jungle, for example, I would not be able to fall back on my accepted explanation for the origin of tables and I would be compelled to ask about its origin.
The importance of the question of origin to all things, not just ‘artefacts’, is apparent when you consider that if we don’t know the origin of something, we make it up. We speculate long before we admit that we don’t actually know. It is certainly not true that “only geologists, who are trained to do so, ask when they see a mountain range, how that came into being.” Perhaps ‘only geologists’ (or laypeople particularly interested in geology) seek to learn the details and specifics, but everyone asks where the mountains came from. Every origin story ever written, including the scientific one, is testament to this.
Our need to write origin stories forces us to consider the origin of everything, not just artifacts. The mountains exist, so, if we do not already have an explanation for their origin that satisfies us, we ask where they came from. Since, as Gell says, “our natural point of vantage is that of the originating person, the artist,” we seek an artist for the mountains. We see agency where none exists because it is the explanation with which we are most comfortable. A deity or a giant or an alien conspiracy created the mountains, and the details become, as with the table, unimportant. While thinking through this, I began to wonder whether this tendency to see agency behind the origin of things is the cause of our tendency to see the agency of things themselves. Both tendencies are, at least, symptomatic of the same phenomenon.
In Chapter 7, Gell explains that he has found, through his work, “The symbolic language developed in earlier sections of this essay can be applied to the kind of casualty which is involved in Frazer’s prime example of sympathetic (imitative) magic,…that form of sorcery in which an image of the victim is made (often of wax or some vulnerable material), subjected to injury or destruction, with the result that the victim of the sorcery suffers the same injuries or is done away with entirely. This kind of sorcery is practiced in innumerable forms, all over the world” (Gell 102). In essence, he believes that representational imagery acts as a mediator of social agency due to the representation bestowing power over the representative unit (even though it may only be imaginary power). By taking bits and pieces of the actual entity one desires to control, the creator of the representational item is endowed with a sort of magical power over the living object that is depicted by the representational item. One of the most interesting examples found in his essay of such a phenomenon is from his description of South Asian and Pacific idol worship. More specifically, the way spiritual beings are symbolized beings through the contrast between interior and exterior bodily components. His evidence is quite extensive on this topic, as his texts take up much of this section of the reading. It should be noted that, when looking to the West and their outlook and viewpoints on art, he does not really have much evidence to support his argument regarding Westerners going to galleries and museums. In particular, the idea of much cultural value placed on art in the West and the enjoyment received from gallery and museum outings being explained in the same way as idolatry lacks evidentiary support. Additionally, there is little to no mention of the non-representational imagery in Western art, which makes up much of the art of the West. This raises many questions in my mind: Does the West not need as much proof because the actions described (i.e. going to a museum) is occurring today? Also, why is it that the West is so different regarding its idol worship? Should we split up the “East” and “West” when discussing idolatry, or does it matter moreso the time period discussed (i.e. objects thought of as idols from the past versus idols that we look to today), because many objects, especially religious ones, are idolized from the same viewpoint from people across the globe.
Going off of what Gina said, I understand the comparison Gell makes between idol-worship and Western art gallery viewing and I agree with it to a point. However, it seems to me that Gell ignored certain aspects of the art gallery in his attempts to demonstrate how gallery-viewing is akin to idol worship. For example, one of the main functions of the art gallery is to display pieces that are meant to be critiqued and judged for both their aesthetic and conceptual value, while judging and critiquing idols in this way does not seem to be important in the idol-person relationship. It seems to me that a distinction must be made between art-viewing and idol-worship because art is generally critiqued, analyzed etc while idols are not examined in the same way by those who engage with them. However, I do think that it is fair to say that art may sometimes be treated as an idol and that peoples’ interactions and relationships with pieces of art may become similar to or the same as the interactions and relationships between people and idols, as Gell points out.
As I was writing this, another question came to mind: am I, and likely much of the ‘west’, perhaps reluctant to relate art galleries to idol worship because we do not see ourselves as ‘primitive’ enough to engage in idol-worship? Is it because we regard idols as things of the past or non-Western cultures?
In response to gloria’s question, what makes us identify certain objects as idols while ignoring others?
I, like Gloria, struggled through Gell’s theory of idols and agency in chapter seven. He reaches the conclusion that anthropomorphizing the index (or idol) can provide us an inroad to the idols spirituality, but placing it in a box can serve the same purpose (19). Either way, “the homunculus effect” can be achieved. I must admit Gel lost me there a bit, in his discussion of Dennett’s philosophy of mind. I follow that we can recognize the idol as a social “other”, and put aside the importance of human/inhuman qualities. He proves that human agency is nearly impossible to define and it is more useful to think about social agency. In these terms, artifacts and idols are parts of the network which express this agency. Still he admits he has no answer for why we view certain objects as having an internal will or “intentional psychology” as he calls it. I am failing to understand Dennett’s homoncului. Is he suggesting that we interpret all social beings and objects by duplicating that person’s inner person within ourselves and lodging this idea into that person? Does he suggest that this is the process by which we endow certain objects with life? Did I completely butcher this argument? Gell concedes that he does not know “why by means of mimesis is the artifact endowed with intentional psychology” (19), but I still fail to understand the application (or perhaps the appeal) of Dennet’s theory.
What I took from Gell's discussion of Dennett's idea of a homunclus was that an idol cannot be an idol without an idolizer. A wooden statue, for example, could be standing in the middle of a forest for centuries, but until someone sees it and attributes meaning to it, it will mean nothing. I agree with Dennett's idea that we must place meaning, or psychology onto our idols. In Gell's discussion of Darshan we can further see this theory. Darshan is given to the recipient through the eyes of a god (or even another person). It would be impossible, however, for a god or idol to give Darshan if there was no one there to receive it. Just as a recipient is necessary to receive Darshan, so is an idolizer necessary to make any type of object into an idol.
After reading Gell speak of Frazer and sympathteic magic, stating, "This kind of sorcery is practiced in innumerable forms, all over the world." and reading an article on the power of suggestion. I couldn't help but wonder what Gell's take would be on placebos. Would he see this as a form of sympathetic magic and thus would he describe the pill as a type of idol or merely a synecdoche of our trust in medicine? Does the pill have the same agency as some of the examples discussed in the book? If this is so, is it only the doctor practicing in this magic, since he or she believes it works and at the same time doesn't work while the patient only believes it will work?
One of the aspects of Chapter 7 that I found particularly interesting was Gell's treatment of religion. First, I thought it was strange that he would choose to include a sort of side note in the text that he is not religious. The point that religious observance is the most obvious form of idolatry was a statement that I found a little relieving, since that has been the first connection that I have been making with the word idol throughout the class. One statement, though, that I have to disagree with Gell on is his point about the connection between writing about art and religion. He states, "First of all, I cannot tell between religious and aesthetic exaltation; art-lovers, it seems to me, actually do worship images in most of the relevant senses, and explain away their de facto idolatry by rationalizing it as aesthetic awe" (97). Ok fine ... seems like a good point. But the statement that follows leaves me a little confused, "Thus, to write about art at all, in fact, to write about either religion, or the substitute for religion which whose who have abandoned the outward forms of received religions content themselves with" (97). The connection between art and religion is not one that always occurs, so I find it difficult to accept Gell's quick comparison between these two complicated subjects.
I loved all the imagery of binding and wrapping an idol in this section. Again, and I'm not sure exactly why I keep coming back to this (last week I spoke of the embodiment of the Byzantine Christ- its materiality), but there is something so interesting and intimate when speaking of the physicality of an image or the physicality of a god. Maybe its because I'm a dancer that I gravitate towards the concept of the physical or the tangible?
I loved the section on receiving Darshan, the phenomena experienced by the Hindu image-worshiper who is in the presence of the image of a god. An intersubjective gaze is held, where the worshiper is conscious of the god looking back at him or her; this returned gaze is seen as a gift. This intersubjectivity is absolutely key in understanding the power of the image before the devotee. Gell discusses the philosopher Caraka, who argued that "indeed we have only one sense, the sense of touch, of which sight, hearing, etc. are just more subtle froms." (Gell 117) This is a beautiful way to think of what it means to make contact with something, whether the relationship occurs through sight, hearing, physical contact. We must recall Gell's earlier engagement with the Epicurean theory, that all forms of sight and visual contact are actually physical ones, where thin membranes are being released from the body and flying through the air. In this way, "'appearances' of things are material parts of things." (Gell 105)
This is particularly interesting to think of in regards to Frazers discussion of sympathetic magic, of how magic occurs across a physical, spatial gap, in this case- about as far as a gaze can be held and the intersubjectivity can be experienced.
I can't help but be reminded of all of the recent political celebrity sightings on Columbia and Barnard campus. Last week it was Obama and McCain. Just today, Hillary Clinton was sighted at BC. Do we receive some sort of darshan when we see a political figure on the stage of Roone Arledge? What sort of sympathetic magic passes through the big screen to us as a student audience when we sit on the steps of Low Library- across the physical, spatial distance that is the walls of Lerner and the lawns of Butler?
Megan Holland
On page 18 Gell says that "It just happens to be patently the case that persons form what are evidently social relations with 'things.'" He goes on to cite examples of a girl with her doll and his attachment to his car. This discussion seems in part to discuss "idolatry" as something will all do and not something relegated to primitive cultures or "the other." However, I found in his explanation of the examples that he continued to make idolatry something that other people do. In terms of the girl with her doll, this is an attachment only made by young children. Gell tries to use Michelangelo's "David" as a similar example for grown-ups but his argument does not seem to completely align them. He then discusses his relationship with his car. He talks about naming it, applying an ethnic personality to it, and even commenting that he would consider the car treacherous if it were to break down far from home in the middle of the night. Gell goes as far as calling this "vehicular animism," but he then dismisses the entire attachment as acceptable because it is part of "car culture." Of course he may have these irrational thoughts about his car but so does everyone else, about their car. This invocation of "car culture" as an excuse of his attachment almost seems to, possibly unintentionally, say that his form of idolatry isn't idolatry, it's just part of "car culture," once again applying idolatry only to "the other."
I was intrigued by Gell’s point in ch. 7 about how the very word “idolatry” has acquired a pejorative sense in Western culture and I have been thinking about whether the term should or should not have such a sense to it. I wonder if our eagerness to deny that we engage in any sort of idol-worship is simply from living in a culture that is so rooted in Jewish/Christian/Muslim beliefs that teach that idolatry is a sin or if there is some other reason that we are so uncomfortable with the idea – what I am curious about here is not the tendency to think of idolatry as something primitive or silly that other people do, but the possibility that it is something almost dangerous to social relationships. For example in chapter two, when he is talking about children and dolls, Gell says of a little girl, “Would she toss her doll overboard from a lifeboat in order to save her bossy elder brother from drowning? No way.” (18) We take the attachment of children to dolls as something perfectly innocuous and even sweet, but when thinking further about this particular example it started to strike me as very strange that we accept this – that a child will happily claim that an inanimate object is her “best friend” or would be more concerned with saving a doll than another person, indicating that the inanimate object is just as valuable to her as another person. Parents try hard to teach their children that people are more important than things, but lots of adults seem never to have learned this lesson either, since as we have discussed, so many people have an attachment to cars or money or other possessions that is bordering on idol-worship. So while, as Gell notes, we don’t want to think of idol-worship in the anthropological sense as something “primitive” that we are too advanced to engage in, since this is clearly not the case, I am not sure it is completely out of line that people are so wary of the word “idolatry” and the concept in general.
In both Gell and Mitchell we see discussion of idols in regards to both the contemporary West and various incarnations of the anthropological other, and to the extent that similar processes are supposed to be described among both, it is important to consider how comparable these forms of idolatry are. As Anastasia questioned above, are idols really comparable to art in the Western gallery, are they “examined” in the same way? I think that within Gell's outline of art objects there is room for this kind of evaluation by the recipient, but that it does not necessarily take the overt form that is prescribed by the context of an art gallery. His model of agent-patient relations, founded on abductions, essentially accounts for this process in both types of situations. In judging art within a gallery, the recipients are inferring the agency involved in its creation, whether of the artist or the prototype or any other agent, in order to imagine what the image “means,” or what it should mean. I think that Gell would argue that a critique of a piece of art infers this agency, even if the abduction is implicit and the aesthetic and other judgments that follow are more prominent. In other words, the art object of the Western gallery can be discussed differently because it falls within the discourse of an institutionalized art world, whereas the anthropological objects discussed might be integrated in a different way—but the underlying inferences about agency are what make them comparable as idols, as images or icons that somehow embody that intentionality.
While I'm still absorbing the implications of treating objects as social actors, I was definitely taken by Gell's insistence on the distinct differences between the material world and language (p 25 and elsewhere). It's interesting in part because people, even when not framing an anthropological theory, (for example within a gallery) still talk about the meaning of images. Thus I suppose Gell is suggesting that while people believe or act as if images have meaning (recalling Mitchell with that phrasing), they are actually going through this abduction process to reach that “meaning state.” Mostly I just appreciate how precisely he tries to define the actual relationship of people to these objects (ie not one that parallels the use of language), and how it really requires language to get that point across.
I partly agree with Gell in Chapter 5, regarding the captivation of artifacts, in that we are certainly captivated by an index with technical complexity. When we see Chinese stone balls in museums which are carved from outside and have many layers of elaborately decorated ball inside without breaking the outer layers, we agree that the stone ball indexes the wealth and glory of the owner and captivate the viewers.
However, do the artworks which is not technically complex really have nothing to do with captivation? Then, why are so many people enthusiastic about Roy Lichtenstein’s work of painting which is merely a copy of a cut of cartoon? Can Gell’s argument be applied in contemporary society?
In my opinion, his argument about the relationship between captivation and technical complexity has to be within the scope of anthropology of art, not within contemporary works of art. In contemporary art, people are captivated by the complex thought of artworks, not by the technical complexity. I’m just wondering if he really didn’t think about this issue or I missed his point of view, and I have to go back to the book and find out.
What really struck me about Chapter 7 is the theme of eyes. Gell continuously references such usage on idols with regards to the reflection of oneself, mimesis, power, consecration, and sympathetic magic. Some idols cannot even be looked upon due to reverence or until it is brought into the world (Oro). Throughout history and prehistory, we see examples of idols and magical objects whose main attributes were eyes: Sumerian prayer figures, early Christian painting and mosaic, the 'evil eye', the Hindu third eye, etc. The eye seems an important part of religion and idols in general. Lucretius even states that flying simulacra enter our eyes and we can feel them, as well as other optical phenomena (105). However, what Gell fails to mention is an alternative to worship by sight (eyedol worship, would be accurate). Gell does not indicate what occurs when a blind person enters the presence of an idol or those with poor vision. Does this person replicate a feeling of awe? Can he not feel the idols vision upon him? Do these religions have alternatives and does it invoke the same feelings? Without a reflection of self, is it possible to imitate a soul in the idol? Do these put Gell's theories on eyes into doubt then?
The following was contributed by Cathy Schultz:
"The projection of human physical features (onto gods, spirits, etc.), in general results in a projection...of intentional psychology, but a projection of intentional psychology does not genereally entail a projection of any other human quality" (pg 122). I find this statement to be interesting and true in today's society. If we really think about it we do this everyday of our lives without even knowing it. "A worshipper who addresses prayers to a stone must believe, somehow, that the stone in question, though not a living thing, sees and hears as does the worshipper, thinks and reacts as he does, and moreover, has the power to plan and execute actions" (pg 122). For example, when we pray to a statue or painting of Christ, we believe that He hears our prays and feels for us. We project human qualities onto inanimate objects. I liked the example that he gave about car culture. Every person who owns a car projects some sort of personality/humaness onto their car; I feel that I can relate since I do this to my car all of the time. When believing that the car, idol, statue, painting, etc., is alive, we feel that it will answer to our needs. This sort of behavior has been occuring for thousands of years.
The following was contributed by Fran Ritchie:
As we have been discussing what idols are exactly and how objects have a secondary agency (according to Gell in chapter 2), I thought his discussion of volt sorcery in chapter 7 was interesting to relate to the phenomenon of online networking. So far in class, I have come to my personal conclusion that perhaps idols may be any image or object that one wishes to revere as an idol. If a photo of my grandmother became a representation of her (object as a person), where I considered it equivalent to being with her even though she is not physically here, then I think I could describe it as an idol. The thinking that an image/idol may be created and then manipulated through the sympathetic magic in volt sorcery also assumes that photo is "comparable ... to the leverage which can be obtained by having access to some physical part of them" (105). Gell's feeling of vulnerability that someone could take a picture of his "naked behind" and circulate it as a representation of himself is humorous to me in a time when the circulation of photographs, both good and bad, is easier than it ever has been with the advent of on-line friend networking sites, such as facebook and myspace. This may be a far stretch of a comparison, but I know teenage girls who start to idolize photos of their crushes, and I could see volt sorcery performed on those photos after a middle school breakup...
The following was contributed by Hannah Kligman:
While many cultures throughout history have denounced material culture, it seems that objects are an integral part of human existence, and that people cannot do without their material objects. In multitudes of cases people become very attached to particular things, be it their favorite coffee mug, a book, or any other inanimate object that can take on layers of meaning for its owner based on the experiences associated with the object. The way in which people become attached to their possessions seems to be because, in general, people do not like change. One way in which to control change is to make sure that one is surrounded with the same objects all the time, and in this way people forge deep and psychological bonds with inanimate objects. Perhaps it is the fear of change that makes people create idols for themselves, in order to feel in control of their lives and to give them a feeling of safety.
The way in which people use objects, or indices, to comfort themselves fits in nicely with Gell?s complex webs detailing the interactions between the artist, index, prototype and recipient. In this particular case, the indices have direct influence over the recipients, who are essentially putting themselves at the mercies of inanimate objects. To use Gell?s terms, the index in this situation exerts agency over the recipient by mediating their feelings. In the case of everyday objects, the agency of an ?artist? is removed by modern technology since one inanimate object (a machine) excerpts agency through another inanimate object (a mundane index) over people. The term ?index? can be used on art objects as well as ?mundane? objects, because the definition of art is impossible to pin down. A prime and often-cited example of the variability in the definition of art is the ?ready-made? pieces of Marcel Duchamp. His ready-mades take this idea of the mundane, machine-manufactured object and attempt to elevate these objects to the status of ?high art.? While the objects idolized by people in their everyday lives are often not viewed as art per se, Duchamp pushes the question of what can be idolized as art, and brings to mind the way in which these everyday objects are indeed idolized because of their proximity to the average person.
I was sitting through a lecture on ancient Uruk art, when our instructor digressed in her description of the Uruk Vase.
http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/ltrupe/art%20history%20web/final/chap2NearEast/Ur-Carved%20Vase.jpg
She discussed the making of the vase as a kind of performative action. That is, by making the vase the artist was performing his "magic", whether the vase was ever seen by anyone. She was arguing against the interpretation of the imagery as strictly representational (i.e. as a statement reinforcing the priest-king hierarchy of Uruk), and this struck me as key territory for Gell and Frazer.
I think Frazer would describe the carving of a ritual on a sacred vessel as imitative magic, comparable to wax figures (at least by the logic Gell uses with the tiki idols). Viewing the vase in Gell's framework (haven't got to chapter 9 yet, so not the through-the-rabbit-hole stuff) the vase is really ambiguous. I am reminded of hieroglyphic art, which I was told by an Egyptologist could be seen as a living creation, endlessly performing the ritual depicted as long as the stone would last. This is an interesting kind of agency, one intended to be independent from (mortal) viewers, but extending the agency of the index through time towards a divine audience.
The vase (and many hieroglyphics) would have probably had limited access, so if it was intended as "representational" art it had a small audience, and would only be a reminder of a ritual that any viewer undoubtedly knew by heart . However, when viewed as an agent in its own right, endowed by its artist, the vase could be a festival in and of itself, endlessly worshiping the gods depicted.
Todd
(also, if you view this within courseworks, it hides the password verification picture. That may be screwing people up. You need to open a new tab or browser window to post your comments.)
While reading Gell’s discussion on agency and intention (Chapter 2), the biggest block I hit in trying to understand his theory was putting in the “God” (or the ambiguity) factor.
So if the words ‘social’ and ‘agent’ help to discriminate between ‘happenings (caused by physical laws) and ‘actions’ (caused by prior intentions), then where does the ambiguous will of God come in? (Gell 1998: 16, 17) Since deities still exist in a sort of gray area in general society’s minds, in which people (atheists, agnostics, devoted fanatics…) don’t fully agree on whether the deities exist or possess free will, then under what category do they fall? I guess the bigger point is – there are a lot of gray areas (i.e. subhumans, superhumans) that can be found using Gell’s “discrimination” method; not everything falls so neatly under persons and objects; so what happens to the exceptions and the ambiguities? I think another thing that I’m trying to get at is, since when did the categories become “persons” and “objects” and nothing else?
After having some analytical issues with our brief introduction to Mitchell’s study of art and agency—mostly due to the fact his postulations have no real material foundation to support his mind-exercises—it was a great relief to read Gell’s Art and Agency, where almost too many archaeological and ethnographic evidence abounds, as well as a direct connection of this notion of “thing agency” to our material world. Beyond the speculative suggestion that objects, as idols, intrinsically intend some physical event to happen, there is a very basic conception of how a thing can internally define and affect our own agency—agency I can relate to and truly envision because I experience it everyday (even now I intend my hands to physical affect [press] the keys on my laptop, therefore communicating an internal idea to some external source [our blog], and in effect initiate causal sequences; for example, generating responses to my thoughts or completing a task for a required assignment, hence receiving a grade for the work accomplished). Things outwardly define who we are; how we view the material world through exploitation; how the world inversely views us; how “personhood” is constructed and constantly restructured. Our biological shell could be considered a “thing” outside of “ourselves” (that internal cognitive “spirit” that science as of yet hasn’t truly identified—“personhood” beyond just neurological connections), as well as our external possessions.
Gell really hooked me in after the second chapter, during his discussion of the Pol Pot mines and their inter-relational relationship with the soldiers’ identity and agency. Before we can manipulate and mold an object into an “idol,” before we pick up that stone and hollow out its core to house some sacred “exuviae” inside and thus animate and “sanctify” the object, there has to be something inherently within the structure or existence of “things” that allows the animation of any object to be successful. I think Gell’s Pol Pot example perfectly elucidates this point. Without the mines and their destructive effect on the material world, Pol Pot’s soldiers’ intentions, to destroy their enemy, couldn’t have been fully realized. To use Gell’s own words, “Pol Pot’s men were capable of being the kind of (very malign) agents that they were only because of the artefacts they had at their disposal, which…turned them from mere men into devils with extraordinary powers.” (Gell 21) The clothes I wear, the” I Love Dogs” mug I’m currently drinking out of, and the trowel I sleep beside every night define who I am, what I believe in, how others might view me, and how I (as a agent with intentions) have changed over the course of my life. The question is, did this change occur internally, and in consequence, I externally manipulated my material world to adapt to this change, or have my possessions influenced me in such a way to cause change and shape my “personhood” from the outside? I would argue a little bit of both transpires. This might just be the theoretical “agency of things” I’ve been looking for to really begin understanding idolatry.
In reading this week’s assignment, I particularly found interesting Gell’s point that not only do objects have the capacity to be social agents, but people have the capacity for thingness as well. While reading this passage of the book, I kept thinking about Maximón, a Mayan saint in the highlands of Guatemala that I had the opportunity to visit a couple of years ago. As an offering, we were encouraged to put glasses of rum in his arms and burning cigarettes in his mouth because the effigy was alive and I had a hard time wrapping my head around all of this at the time. Gell’s point really hit home for me- we cannot tell whether a human is acting out of intention and as an empowered agent, or simply from material/mechanical causation. “…if pressed, we are not really very sure about ‘just how’ an idol is not a person—even though we are perfectly certain it isn’t” (p124). There is no material test to determine agency. Although I know Maximon is a wooden effigy, I cannot prove that he is not human or like the statue of Shiva Gell refers to, has a mind, intends to be still and does so from a prior intention (thus exercising agency).
From now on, whenever I see my roommates taking a nap on the couch, I will imagine them as things, which as an aside, makes me wonder where the line is drawn between ‘actions’ and ‘happenings’ as far as biological processes are concerned.
becky laughner
In the first chapter of Gell’s Art and Agency he introduces his overarching theory of an anthropological theory of art. Firstly, I would like to see that I absolutely love a lot of his ideas and when i read chapter 2 first it didn’t make as much sense but reading chapter 1 really put his following chapters into clearer focus. I think his inclusion of the ideas of Sally Price were very interesting. Although he does disagree with some of her ideas I think her idea that even “the ‘eye’ of the most naturally gifted connoisseur is not naked, but views through the lense of Western cultural education” is extremely important and often forgotten by western intellectuals. Even our most gifted anthropologists etc. cannot entirely remove themselves from their own educational lense no matter how hard they honestly try to. It is I believe the biggest failure of intellectuals to believe themselves above their criticism of “most” or “past” intellectuals.
I also found his distinction as anthropology as a social science really interesting. This positioning really helps clarify his idea of what an anthropological theory of art would be. This idea of studying art as a social agent taking part in social relations similar to those studied in other “branches” of anthropology is so interesting.
I do disagree with Gell on one point, although it may come from a sentimental love of interpreting art on its own. He disregards art as having meaning because it is the language that we use in interacting with art that has meaning. He believes that only language has this innate meaning. Haven’t most people looked at a piece of art, any kind of “art object” and been at a loss of words but were still deeply affected by it. Maybe I misunderstood him but I do definitely think that art has some innate meaning, an idea which I have deeply studied in my past class Philosophy of Art. He says that the “art object” “has no intrinsic nature independent of the relational context.” I agree that yes for every different relational context a work of art can have different interpretations of meaning by the individual viewer. However, I do not think that this means that the art object has no intrinsic meaning or nature. I believe that the fact that art is commonly considered to affect, to act, or as we have read to “want” all imply that the art has some intrinsic meaning. That despite differences in the social relationship between a viewer and the object an art object does have some innate meaning. I may have misinterpreted his argument but nonetheless I think this idea of his is definitely deserving of further study.
Sometime I wonder about the limitations on the use of theory and philosophy. Gell truly pushed this limit in my mind. So many questions were raised that there are no answers to. For instance, why is it that a group of humans ascribe meaning to certain objects but not others? There is no real way to figure out an answer to this question, yet it must be a central theme to this class. At least Gell deals with the issue of the difference between objects that gain meaning or humanity, and objects that do not. Mitchell was very unclear on this subject.
I liked Gell’s comparison of religion and art. Art lovers idolize the works of art, but justify it by the art’s “aesthetic awe”. This seems just right to me.
We in the western world idolize so much, but justify it as deserving of our awe. In an example entirely aberrant from this class, I just read a paper discussing the idolization of D-Day and World War II artifacts. We can get an interesting view on this idolization since many veterans are living. In one interview with a veteran, the interviewer mentions that some of the man’s possessions that he carried with him on D-Day are on display at a museum. He explains that it is one of the most popular exhibits, constantly being surrounded by viewers. The veteran was surprised that people cared so much about the silly trinkets he had with him. Here, people ascribed meaning to what was considered junk by the person who actually was at the important event. People must think, “wow, that pen was in someone’s backpack on D-Day,” and that pen then represents more than just a pen. It represents D-Day. I think as archaeologists we can sometimes fall into that trap. On my first dig, when we found a glass bead from the 18th Century, all I could think of was who wore it, what purpose it had, and what history it had seen. Here, I was guilty of placing too much meaning in objects.
The comparison of idol or icon worship to the modern practice of gallery viewings and museum showcases was enlightening. There is indeed a ritual that we Westerners follow in these practices. We feel the art speaks to us, communes with us on some other level; it is this very otherworldly (dare I say: humanistic) quality of art that draws us inevitably to art gatherings. We conflate the art with the artist, the feelings we have with the piece, ourselves with the canvas. Sometimes it feels as though the artwork tugs at you, "forcing" you to take note of it. These ARE the things that make an icon truly powerful.
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