Think of the word ‘Concept’. Refer to the
word ‘Conceptual’. Think of the word ‘Performance’. Refer to the word
‘Performativity’. We live in a reality that requires certain definitions in
order for us to identify with things on a symbolic level. However, such
definitions have this effect of closing up situations in which we can think
about things. Identify the problems involving language and exhibitions.
Introduction
This paper will identify the “problems involving language and exhibitions” by first addressing how we define reality on a symbolic level, and then demonstrate how this has ”an effect of closing up situations in which we can think about things”. This essay will do this by examining [concept/conceptual] and [performance/performativity], which I see as two different exhibition strategies. For the purposes of this essay, it is imperative to understand how we derive meaning from ideas and objects through language. According to the Structuralist school of thought, “things cannot be understood in isolation” and that they have to be seen “in the context of the larger structures that they are a part of”. There is no inherent meaning within an object or an idea; meaning arises from the way that the human mind attributes sense and significance on them. Meaning is created and assigned through attribution, not contained within the object or idea.[1]
I.
Structuralism to Post-structuralism: The
‘linguistic turn’
Ferdinand de
Saussure, considered the father of modern linguistics, claimed that words themselves
are ‘unmotivated signs’, which means that there is no inherent connection
between a word and what it signifies, and that a word is attributed to mean
something based on established linguistic conventions.[2]
For instance, the word violet is not reflective of the colour violet – it is a
way to name the colour. Now think of that popular mind game where you are asked
to say the COLOUR, not the word that you read: RED
GREEN BLUE YELLOW. It is easy to mix
them up and say the word instead of the colour of the word because established
conventions are thrown out of the window. This shows that as a system of signs,
language is arbitrary and random. It is governed by conventions that assigned
definitions on an object or an idea. Viewed this way, language does not provide
a reflection of the world as it experienced (we experience the colour, not the
word), but functions as a means to identify an object or idea.[3]
However, Saussure
contends that “meanings are relational”,
which means that a word can be defined in
relation to other words surrounding it – that is, that the only thing that
gives the word its “meaning” is its position and difference from other words
surrounding and/or contrasting it.[4]
When we say “violets are blue”, the
verb are indicates that violets
(plural noun) is described as blue, which does not make logical sense if they
are both taken to mean colours. In this case, determining the meaning of the
noun violets will have to take its
cues from the fact that it will not make logical sense for the noun to mean the
colour. Jacques Derrida expounds upon Saussure’s claim that meanings are
relational: “The signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate
presence that would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and
eventually described in a chain or a system, within which is refers to another
and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences. Such a play, then—différance—is no longer simply a
concept, but the possibility of conceptuality (emphasis mine)”.[5]
II.
Defining the terms “concept” and “performance”
A definition of the term “concept” is first necessary
to understand this shift from “simply [being] a concept” towards “the
possibility of conceptuality”. A concept may be defined as a “mental
representation”.[6] Language
is a means to compose the mental
representation of our world, not simply to label or record it (although it
functions that way too). An example of this is how the calendar year has been
categorised based on four seasons. This is even though in reality there is no
real division or rupture indicating the switch, for instance, from winter to
spring. In other words, the seasons are our way
of seeing, “rather than an objective fact of nature”.[7]
On the other hand, our “conceptual ability”
enables us to interpret and attribute meaning to our world: for instance, we
have associated flowers with spring, which is an objective fact of nature and
has come to symbolize the season through our linking and attribution of
meaning between them.
One of the
problems with this way of defining “concept” is that language is viewed as “the
tool of thought (i.e. that thinking happens in language)”.[8]
Derrida has problematized that although language—through writing—enables us to
be cognizant of the fact that meaning is relational, it also has the tendency
to “over-determine the signs and prevents any coherent single chain of meanings
from developing” (that is, has an effect of closing up the way we think about
things). He believes that “iterability makes possible idealization—and thus a
certain identity in repetition that is independent of the multiplicity of
factual events—while at the same time limiting the idealization it makes
possible”.[9]
The seasons are conventionally “written over” the months in the calendars
because of the repetitive pattern in nature that made it possible to identify
each season in relation to their
corresponding months. According to Derrida, this way of repetition “leaves us
no choice other than to mean (to say) something that is (already, always,
also)”, such that “discourse continually produces meanings which never
fertilize reproduction but invite further dispersal in ultimately narcissistic
acts”.[10]
Writing,
therefore, not only enables the composition and creation of concepts, it can
also render a concept a convention through repetition since re-writing or “iterability
makes possible idealization”. This is how a concept can be repeatedly performed as something that becomes a
recognizable pattern until it eventually becomes an established paradigm. Once
it has become an ideal, Derrida claims that the concept would not allow for different
ways of interpretation and instead “invite further dispersal in ultimately
narcissistic acts”—that is, that it continuously performs itself to define
itself as “reality”. We could then be locked in the paradigm of looking to the
calendar as the authority (a
conventional/customary way of seeing)
in determining seasons. But what if spring does not arrive in March as the
calendar system has determined? The snow has yet to thaw and flowers are nowhere
to be seen (objective fact of nature). We would be more inclined towards
believing the “objective fact of nature” and may become sceptical of the
calendar system.
III.
Linguistic Representation ≠ Conceptual Representation
This
disconnect not only proves that language is not necessarily reflective of reality,
but also shows the problems of viewing it as “the tool of thought (i.e. that
thinking happens in language)” as the linguistic expression of thought “is
often necessarily general, non-specific, even imprecise”.[11]
Linguistic representation should therefore be seen as distinct from the
corresponding conceptual representation. The philosopher John Searle’s Principle of Expressability, which
states that ‘whatever can be meant can be said’, cannot hold true. As shown
from the calendar example, “the more explicit I try to be (in idealizing and
establishing ways of seeing), the
more unintended implicatures I generate”, and these implicatures are often due
to contingencies and alternative possibilities.[12]
For Derrida, the alternatives and the possibilities surrounding a concept are
paramount, as they are inextricably linked to it to ensure that “the
purportedly ‘ideal’ structure must necessarily be such that [its] corruption
will be ‘always possible’”. The ‘normalizing’ effect of speech acts (previously described in this essay as the
establishment of conventions through repetition) fails to account for “the
complexities of experience” and the way that forms of power “covertly establishes
hierarchies of relevance” in interpretations.[13]
In other
words, the performativity of ‘ideals’
could in fact simplify reality by failing to take into account that these established
ideals are not necessarily immutable since—for Derrida—these ideals are always
surrounded by possibilities. Ludwig Wittgenstein provides “hope for a possible
cure” to this problem raised by Derrida. He suggested that “it is the grammatical competence which education
in a culture
produces that enables us to establish ideas for appropriateness and then to
rely on practical considerations for defining degrees of probable relevance in
hypotheses about meanings”. Rather than “rooting essences in nature”,
Wittgenstein posits that “Essence is expressed by grammar” and that “Grammar tells
us what kind of an object anything is.” We are able to eliminate objects as
“irrelevant” not by forgoing the need for “forms of secure knowledge” but
rather by altering “the grounds for determining what we know and can trust as secure and meaningful”.[14]
I believe that what he is referring to is the need for context and knowledge classifications.
Recall the
previous example: violets are blue. As mentioned, the verb are indicates that the noun (violets)
to be blue, but it does not make logical sense if they are both taken to mean
colours. How do we determine the meaning of violets?
It is the human mind—our “conceptual ability” (i.e.
through a system of categorization and contextualization)—that enables us to figure out that
it would be better to interpret violets as a type of flower rather than a type
of colour. Therefore, concepts can perhaps be better understood as “themselves connected to our larger knowledge of
structures” and as “a kind of mental glue [that] tie our past
experiences to our present interactions with the world”.[15] Moreover, we can see that
human agency/human rationalization is possible when negotiating with concepts,
particularly concepts that (through their iterability) have been deemed as
established paradigms or way of seeing.
Concluding Remarks:
Derrida’s method of deconstruction states that ‘the centre cannot
hold’ (decentralisation) and that the surrounding texts/contexts are more
important in the search for meaning than focusing on the ‘centre’ or the
concept itself. As such, this is how a concept becomes conceptual rather than simply being a concept. From this
conclusion, I believe that a “conceptual exhibition” is one that relies not on
its concept in itself, but rather the relation of the texts that surrounds and
informs the viewer of the concept. The focus is not so much the concept itself,
but rather the way it negotiates with the texts it has employed and engages
with. The conceptual exhibition defines itself from the interpretation of the viewer—i.e. the exhibition’s meaning
is not expressed directly or perceived immediately, but rather interpreted through the linking and
attribution of meaning to the texts that constitutes it, through the texts that
the exhibition attempts to compose.
I would like to bring this back to my assessment piece on Camping and Tramping... which I have
attached in this essay (click here to read my assessment piece) and I think is related to
whatever I endeavoured to reflect upon in this essay. For instance, the
opposition between arbitrariness and conceptual in relation to language can
be paralleled to the bricoleur and
the engineer. The arbitrary vs
conceptual dichotomy is analogous to the methods of inquiry espoused by
Mohammad Din Mohammad and Dr Polunin, and the “gap” between them is ensured by the
lack of grammatical congruence in
the way they communicate to each other, if not the insistence to maintain their
respective identities through the process of “othering” or performativity through the play of différance, according to Derrida.
One of the reasons why I liked this exhibition a lot was its ability
to “speak against” the Westernized concept of the museum by deconstructing and
exposing the way museums (as expressions of Western power) have conceptualized
Malaya. Through mimicry (i.e. conscious iteration/performativity), the exhibition is able to speak about and against
Westernized modes of exhibition-making using the same tools (grammar and
language) used by “established conventions” of exhibition-making. This way, the
curators themselves followed the same vein of Wittgenstein’s “hope for a cure”
to Derrida’s gripe against idealization—that is, the curators acquired the grammatical competence to “talk back”
and re-negotiate the way Malaya has been represented. The re-writing
(performance) of established conventions is done such that the focus is no
longer on the ‘ideal’, but rather on the context composed by the curators.
I guess one of the main problems (for me, personally) when it comes to language and exhibition is the question of authorship and the necessary ‘open-endedness’ of exhibitions. Roland Barthes’ proclamation of the ‘Death of the Author’ posits that the authorial intent is no longer relevant as soon as interpretation is given up to the viewer. The arbitrariness of language and the deconstruction method makes ‘representation’ multi-faceted, fractured and intricate, more so since the viewer is invited to be participant to the “meaning-making” process of the exhibition (intertextuality). But what if the viewer does not have the necessary context to even grasp the surface of the meaning/concept that the exhibition was trying to convey? From Derrida’s point of view, the re-presentations and even (mis)representations are invited if only so as to refute even the notion of an ‘ideal representation’, to make it open to “corruptions” and to prevent the privileging of one interpretation over others. (I personally believe some interpretations are better than others.)
As such, grammatical competence on the part of the viewer is also necessary if he/she could purposefully partake in the “meaning-making” process of an exhibition. I believe this is also the main reason why art (especially conceptual/abstract or those that reference other established works) is sometimes deemed inaccessible to those who lack grammatical competence (context) to understand it. I remember Jim Supangkat saying that a viable way for Asian contemporary art to remain relevant is if it can be understood by Western audience—that is, not by aping Western art-making techniques but rather using it in such a way that warrants Asian contemporary art to be understood by the Western audience because the artwork could speak in the language/grammar that is familiar and immediately recognizable to the Western audience for a dialogue to ensue.
[1] Peter
Barry, Beginning Theory (2002: Manchester University Press, Manchester), p. 41
[2] Ibid., p. 41-43
[3] This already hints on potential problems that could
arise with regards to language and exhibitions: because language is arbitrary
and distanced from reality, certain linguistic conventions have to be adhered
to if an exhibition’s concept is to be communicated beyond the exhibition
itself. As already expressed in the module, this has an effect of closing up
the way we think about things.
[4] Barry, p. 42
[5] Charles
Altieri, Act and Quality: A
Theory of Literary Meaning and Humanistic Understanding, (1981: The University
of Massachusetts Press, Amherst), p. 32
[6] Gregory
L. Murphy, The Big Book of Concepts, (2004: The MIT Press, Cambridge
and London), p. 1-2
[7] Barry, p. 43
[8] Jan
Nuyts and Eric Pederson (editors), Language and Conceptualization, (1997: Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge), p. 4
[9] Altieri, p. 36
[10] Ibid., p. 34-37
[11] Stephen
C. Levinson, “From outer to inner space: linguistic categories and
non-linguistic thinking”, in Nuyts and Pederson (ed.), Language and
Conceptualization,
p. 17
[12] Ibid., p. 18
[13] Altieri, p. 30-31
[14] Ibid., p. 47
[15] Murphy,
p. 1-2
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