POST
The Portrait of Jacques Derrida
Wednesday February 23rd, 2011
It was great to see 1000 Words Photography Magazine posting a video of Jacques Derrida the other day, as he discusses the philosophical problem of being photographed. This is not, I might add, a matter of model releases.
Derrida was a staggeringly influential French philosopher whose “discovery” can be somewhat brutally summarized like this: even though philosophy is supposed to be about pure ideas, it can only express itself with words, and words never end up meaning just one thing—in fact, they can often end up meaning the exact opposite of the apparent intention. He took great pains to point out, however, that the towering figures of the classical philosophical tradition (Plato, Rousseau) actually already recognized this, even when they were trying to argue for the transparent clarity of words and ideas. (Take a look at the documentary the above clip comes from if you’re interested in learning more.)
What does this have to do with photography? Well, we’ve discussed the tricky relationship between photography and language before, and it’s a point any photographer or art director will understand as a matter of reflex: a photo is not the same as the “reality” it “represents.” Even photos that seem to be caught up in total realism have gaps and absences, they contradict the natural reality they claim to capture in two dimensions.
Don't like your portrait taken? There are options. (Photo by Andy Reynolds/Seattle)
This kind of understanding makes it possible to ask much more interesting questions about photography. To explain why he does not like his portrait taken, Derrida makes two highly contemporary points. The first is the question of authorship, which we touched upon in the post about the documentary Press Pause Play. Digital media and the culture of amateur collaboration have often made it hard to associate individual authors with individual works—but what if that’s not actually new? What if any piece of writing—writing here representing all forms of communication—is actually a collection of quotations, in a figurative sense, of all the interlocutors of the text? This would mean the attempt to impose a particular author was a way of denying the underlying collaboration.
For this reason Derrida was politically opposed to the idea of authors, including his own authorship—and forbade photographs of himself. His works were networks of words, not the pure expressions of his inner ideas. (I will leave it to someone else to reconcile this thinking with the major intellectual celebrity Derrida would enjoy later in his life.)
The second point is equally interesting, and equally crazy. Much like the oft-mythologized tribal peoples convinced that the camera would steal their souls, Derrida maintains that a photograph of a person does not represent that person, but rather his death—mortality is embedded in the photograph. The portrait is a representation of a person, but has liberated itself completely; it captures the image but will outlive the individual—it renders the individual obsolete. After the individual’s death the photograph passes over into the realm of the zombie—it is the perpetual return of the dead.
Portraits often have a feeling of death about them. (Photo by David Sacks/New York)
Now we open the floor. Is this a sensible way to talk about portraiture, or is it pompous blather? Share your thoughts in the comments. (Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure it says “Pompous Blather” on my degree.)
-Asad
First of all, I don’t think we should say much about Derrida and photography, or even just Derrida, without acknowledging the wonderful portrait of him by Steve Pyke: http://bit.ly/fmp7xB
The quote that accompanies this photo helps to remind us that while language is an important element of Derrida’s philosophical position, what he is really onto is a deep inquiry into the nature of writing, in a more general way than we usually conceive it. That is to say, he deals with the means and practices by which ideas become material, the means by which they become inscribed. Among his early findings was that speaking is a kind of inscription, a kind of writing. As the quote suggests, perhaps photography is also.
Asad, I think that I would put a finer point on the claim that Derrida stood for the inevitability of multiple interpretations. My reading of Derrida suggests that it is not so much that a claim can also mean its opposite, but more that any claim carries with it an element of its opposite and diverse meanings. When we seek to deny the author, for example, that claim depends in its essence on the necessity of the author. One consequence of Derrida’s philosophy is the subversion of dualistic thinking.
In the case of photography, a question that we want to ask of photographs is this: does an image represent reality, or is it a fabrication? I think Derrida would sidestep that question. We might even suspect that his commentary on it would demonstrate the workings of deconstruction, and would undermine our attempt to force the labels of “real” or “fabricated” on any photograph, or on photography itself.
Regarding Derrida’s take on photography and death, I don’t get that from this video clip, or from my other reading of Derrida; it actually sounds more like Barthes to me. Perhaps you could point me (and the two other people in the world who care about this post!) in the right direction?
Yours in photography, philosophy & commerce,
ep
Erik,
As far as I know some of Derrida’s major commentary on photography can be found in The Work of Mourning or The Right of Inspection. But who knows, he wrote far too many books. You are right that he relies heavily on Barthes–but the theme of death is, in its own way, already there as far back as de Saussure, when he advances the simple claim that the sign represents the absence of the referent. At any rate, on a blog that usually talks about the latest trend in stock photography, I thought that the remark that seeing one’s photograph reminds one of death demanded some explanation, whoever came up with it first.
You are certainly right that the most fundamental feature of Derrida’s thought is to point not just to a “free play” of infinite meanings but also the fact that this play is systematic with the act of limiting. But for our blog readers who may be exposed to this for the first time, I hope that the above puts the point across: “…words never end up meaning just one thing—in fact, they can often end up meaning the exact opposite of the apparent intention. He took great pains to point out, however, that the towering figures of the classical philosophical tradition (Plato, Rousseau) actually already recognized this…” That is to say, words mean more than one thing, including (but not limited to) their opposite; and the transcendental claims of classical philosophy are always already systematic with plurality that undermines them.
I think a good summary was provided by the Polish literary critic Jan Kott, after Derrida presented his groundbreaking paper “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” at Johns Hopkins, way back in 1966. He recalled that Mallarmé said, “a throw of the dice will never abolish chance“; now, Derrida has added, “chance will never abolish the throw of the dice.” Derrida replied, “I say yes immediately to Mr. Kott.”
There’s a fun philosophy riddle to share with your friends…
Asad