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Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Inhaltsverzeichnis Artikel: Hartmut Stöckl The language-image-text - Theoretical and analytical inroads into semiotic complexity . . . . . . . 203 Barbara Korte From White Teeth to Britz: Multi-Ethnic Britain on British Primetime Television in the 2000s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger und Gudrun Rottensteiner Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz: Ein erster Schritt zum ‘danse à deux’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Stefan Brandt “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage”: Family and Nationhood in Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches and Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Ulf Schulenberg Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives: Pragmatism and Romanticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Anne-Julia Zwierlein Standing out like a Quartz Dyke’: Self-Formation, ‘Energy’ and the Material Environment in John Ruskin and Charles Dickens . . . . 315 Rezensionen: Gerold Sedlmayr Christoph Bode, Selbst-Begründungen: Diskursive Konstruktion von Identität in der britischen Romantik, Band 1: Subjektive Identität . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Stipe Grgas Christina Meyer, War & Trauma. Images in Vietnam War Representations . . . . . 337 Daniel J. Leab Werner Kremp und Wolfgang Toennesmann, Hgg., Lexikon der populären Amerikabilder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Der gesamte Inhalt der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 1, 1976 - Band 33, 2008 ist nach Autoren alphabetisch geordnet abrufbar unter http: / / www-gewi.uni-graz.at/ staff/ kettemann This journal is abstracted in: ESSE (Norwich), MLA Bibliography (New York, NY), C doc du CNRS (Paris), CCL (Frankfurt), NCELL (Göttingen), JSJ (Philadelphia, PA), ERIC Clearinghouse on Lang and Ling (Washington, DC), LLBA (San Diego), ABELL (London). Gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung in Wien, der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung und der Stadt Graz Anfragen, Kommentare, Kritik, Mitteilungen und Manuskripte werden an den Herausgeber erbeten (Adresse siehe Umschlaginnenseite). Erscheint halbjährlich. 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Printed in Germany ISSN 0171-5410 AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen The language-image-text - Theoretical and analytical inroads into semiotic complexity Hartmut Stöckl The present contribution sketches out a social semiotic and text linguistic view of the language-image-link. I start out by placing this specific kind of bi-modal link in the wider context of multimodal text theory explaining what multimodality is and how it is motivated historically and cognitively (chs. 1, 2). I then propose a model of how pictures are understood in context and in combination with language (ch. 3). Chapter 4 briefly illustrates the social semiotic view of a pictorial grammar. At the heart of my contribution is a methodology for the multi-level analysis of the language-image-link and a typological approach to the link (ch. 5). Finally, I extend the scope of my enquiry to include special types of links which are created through the pictoriality of language (ch. 6). Either figurative expressions evoke mental imagery or writing, layout and typography produce what could be called “typopictoriality” (Weidemann 1997). A conclusion looks at some requirements and directions for further research (ch. 7). 1 Intro: Why do linguists go multimodal? It would seem to be a contradiction in terms for a linguist to deal with pictures, music, noise and other non-verbal sign systems. And, indeed, even though the acceptance of multimodal approaches to text, which seek to integrate various semiotic modes, is on the rise (cf. Kaltenbacher 2004 for a concise overview of multimodality research), linguistics is still under quite some pressure to legitimize the pictorial or multi-semiotic turn. Let me, therefore, start out with a few reasons why a consideration of pictures as semiotic artefacts seems inevitable in linguistic accounts of textual objects. Whether printed or running across the screen, writing itself possesses a visual dimension, which the German term Schriftbild aptly captures. Layout, typography and the materiality of the page come as indispensable con- Hartmut Stöckl 204 comitants of language use (Stöckl 2005, 2004c, van Leeuwen 2005b, 2006), just as speech cannot be separated from its natural setting and communicative situation, which integrates all kinds of nonand para-verbal elements, such as gestures, gaze, body language and, perhaps most importantly a shared visual and tactile experience. Add to this the fact that language is full of frozen images in the form of idioms and you arrive at a notion of language which is far more pictorially grounded than commonly assumed. Ultimately, language, communication and text are essentially multimodal, rather than exclusively verbal. Historically, it has been a long way from the odd illustrated medieval manuscript to the full-scale visualisation of contents in nearly all sorts of documents today. The development of human mediated symbolic expression seems to have proceeded from pictorial forms (early cave paintings, pictographic writing systems, biblia paupera) to verbal forms. Some sceptics have misinterpreted the technologically conditioned flood of today’s images as a return to early pictorial representations (cf. Ross 2001: 382). However, on closer inspection it seems that ideally, communication always involves a division of labour between language and image. So the history of text types is - from the very outset - a history of the types of language-image-texts. Interestingly, many modern types of ‘mixed’ texts mirror practices that have been around for very long: the Bayeux tapestry anticipates the comic and Da Vinci already commanded all the techniques of linking language and image that are now the stock repertoire of technical illustration. For diachronic textlinguists there would seem to be ample scope for research on how exactly multimodality crept into the making of texts and to chart the dynamics of the development of language-image-links (cf. Eckkrammer 2005). The prime reason for linguists to get involved with pictures, though, is textual reality. If it is true that images convey meaning over and above ornament and embellishment, then this meaning needs to be linked to the linguistic parts of text. As communication is a patterned activity, we would expect a whole set of text-type-sensitive devices and techniques to be in action for linking pictorial and verbal content. It is the task of a textual, multimodal semiotics to uncover those patterns and to model how picture and language co-operate to form a coherent whole. Cognitively, the two major semiotic modes go hand in hand anyway as understanding language often means to mentally picture things whereas understanding pictures often necessitates a knowledge of language, communicative routines and set phrases (Stöckl 2004b: 18f.). As Androutsopoulos (2000) put it, the majority of text-types are “constituted verbally but structured and organized visually”. I will now just briefly turn towards a rough account of what we mean when we say texts are multimodal and can be studied in a social semiotic framework. The language-image-text 205 2 What is multimodality? - Transcribing content The linguist’s pride in language often obscures the fact that communication is ultimately and always multimodal. The mono-modal text, therefore, seems as much of a fiction as is the idea, advanced in early Chomskyan days, that language is a separate mental system cut loose from other kinds of cognitive faculties. There are two obvious facts which promote multimodality as the natural mode of communication. Firstly, as humans are equipped with more than one sense, it seems fair to address all of them, if possible, in mediated communication. Secondly, what sign-users generally want from texts is the possibly perfect simulation of reality: semiotic objects are supposed to convey information in a true-to-life fashion, which reduces the discrepancy between the world depicted and the medium used. It would seem that the more senses and signing modes are employed in communicative tasks the more effectively meaning can be conveyed and negotiated. A third, even more essential, argument for multimodality as the conditio sine qua non comes from modern media philosophy. Jäger (2002: 37) argues that we can never access the surrounding world immediately, but only indirectly through the use of communicative media, a phenomenon he labels “media immanence”. When we use media and the concomitant semiotic modes employed in them we seem to be permanently “transcribing” meaning from one medium/ mode to another. These “transcriptions” characterize the communicative and textual repertoire of a culture. Pictures and films are commented on in language, verbal texts (mainly literary ones) are converted into pictures or music. Music again is scripted, performed, talked about and analyzed. But “transcriptions” also work within one medium: a difficult verbal text may thus be annotated and heavily discussed, a piece of music can quote or re-work well-known tunes, and a picture might take up a famous motif or style. The reason why we engage in those “transcriptions” is the limited potential of each and every mode taken in isolation. Historically, this may mean that new media and modes came into existence as a reaction to a gap or need in the communicative landscape. Jäger (2002: 39) claims that the prime function of these “transcriptions” is to make texts “legible” and comprehensible in the first place and to extract meaning from semiotic artefacts. We can obviously only make sense of the world around us by commenting, paraphrasing and explicating one mode with the help of another. Every semiotic mode, then, is unique and makes resources available that other modes cannot. It commands its own “autochthonic” (Holly 2007: 392) semantics, which is shaped both by potentials and assets as well as by weaknesses and shortcomings. Cultural or social semantics - seen as the multiple senses and readings that can be gained from the total sets of texts circulating in a semiotic community - only comes about through interrelating Hartmut Stöckl 206 and integrating various semiotic modes. For a variety of reasons language is seen as central in those processes of transcription. It therefore is often regarded as the archetypal medium (cf. Archimedium in Jäger 2002: 34), mainly thanks to its semiotic qualities. In conclusion, it would seem that there are at least three perspectives on multimodality, which may be insightful and beneficial for those interested in text linguistics. 1. Multimodality is the co-presence of various semiotic modes in a given overall text (compare the German term Gesamttext used by Doelker 1997, 2007). Among the major modes are: language, picture and sound (music/ noise). It seems difficult to neatly distinguish modes as they frequently overlap, intermingle and combine (cf. Stöckl 2004b: 11-18). The essence of multimodality seems to be that the various modes are integrated and interrelated on a number of levels (syntactically and semantically). 2. Multimodality, more generally, relates to an all-pervasive semiotic and cognitive activity of transcribing one mode/ medium/ text into another for the sake of getting at meaning and making sense of a culture’s discourses. Multimodal texts become “legible” only when transcribed. A given “pre-text” (source-text) is converted into a “script” by means of transcriptions (Jäger 2002: 35). In this light, multimodality is a cultural technique, a competence which guarantees communication and mutual intelligibility. Both the production and reception of texts build upon this “transcriptive intelligence” (Jäger 2002: 35). 3. Most importantly, multimodality is necessitated and shaped by the semiotic strengths and weaknesses of the individual modes. Linking modes in complex texts as well as paraphrasing, re-‘writing’ content from one text/ medium to another draws upon techniques and conventions. So, ultimately, multimodality is a patterned semiotic activity, in both producing or understanding texts. Text linguists may reasonably expect to uncover the patterns used to link one mode to another. In what follows I hope to be able to shed some light on the methodology and underlying semiotics of one specific multimodal link, namely that of language and image. 3 How does meaning enter the image? - Understanding pictures There are two opposing views concerning the semiotics of pictures (cf. Stöckl 2004a: 11-20, 47-86 for an overview of pictorial semiotics). Calling pictures “messages without a code”, Roland Barthes (1977: 43, 45) empha- The language-image-text 207 sized that we apparently understand pictures intuitively because they look like the real world-objects they depict. This view - based on the iconicity of pictorial signs - is still going strong in cognitive accounts of semiotics. Its merit is that looking at pictures is somehow seen as corresponding to realworld processes of vision. So, in perceiving pictures we access the same kind of knowledge, the same kind of ‘mental models’ as we do in other visual processes. And indeed, it seems that knowledge and experience greatly facilitate pictorial understanding. The opposite view, based on the metaphor of visual ‘grammar’, claims that - just as language - the visual image is a coded semiotic object which follows rules that connect form to meaning. Most notably, Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) have developed a highly praised (cf. Kaltenbacher 2007) functional account of how we ‘read images’ which is reminiscent of linguistic grammar. The bottom line of the theory models a picture on a sentence, saying that in any one picture there are participants or actors which relate to one another spatially so as to express specific actions, processes or states. Beyond depicting ( representation/ ideation) pictures also address the viewer by establishing a certain interactional relationship, and they form a graphic composition, which makes additional textual meanings available (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996: 40ff.). In many ways, Kress and van Leeuwen’s account is functional grammar revisited and adapted to the visual image. Both views have their merits and pictorial meaning probably emerges from a whole series of perceptual and cognitive operations. Understanding images involves both checking pictorial content against stored knowledge as well as following some coded rules of graphic design. In what follows, I will give my own, slightly broader account of how recipients make meaning of images in context. It has been emphasized in Social Semiotics (van Leeuwen 2005a, Kress & van Leeuwen 2001) that every semiotic resource, every mode has an inherent meaning potential of its own which does not easily compare to that of another mode. What does it mean to tackle textual artefacts from a social semiotic perspective? 1. Social Semiotics looks at how signs (semiotics resources) are used in certain social practices. So it always involves singling out some discourse segment or genre and applying relevant theoretical conceptions to it. 2. Social Semiotics seeks to integrate various semiotic modes. It emphasizes the common principles underlying complex communicative artefacts/ events. Hartmut Stöckl 208 3. Social Semiotics asks how semiotic practices are driven by social conditions and psychological needs and how they are embedded in them and emerge from them. (van Leeuwen 2005a: 1, xi) I am now going to apply this rationale to an account of how recipients make meaning from pictures in context. The social practice I chose is advertising (Stöckl 2004d), so my sample text is an advert integrating picture and language (cf. fig. 1). Socio-psychologically, advertising is remarkable for its strong reliance on pictures to effectively communicate minimalist commercial messages in a context of recipients’ fleeting attention or downright ignorance of the medium. The advertising genre is known to feature a rich variety of language-image-links, which mainly stems from the creative desire to break with established norms (cf. Gaede 2002) and get the audience’s attention through suspense (cf. Fill 2007: 61f., 135-149), shock, novelty, hyperbole, paradox, etc. The model I have devised emphasizes two points. First, it conceives of visual understanding as a succession of stages at which the recipient engages in a number of essential perceptual and cognitive tasks. Although these stages are organized sequentially, no claim to a fixed ordering is intended. It is best to think of the model as an individually flexible process, a cycle which can be repeated and which can be accessed at various points. Second, every cognitive operation involves, most importantly, an act of identifying distinctive pictorial features. So at every stage in the process of understanding recipients categorize what they see and allocate it to a certain type of picture or visual pattern. My account of meaning-making in languageimage-texts is as follows (cf. Stöckl 2004a: 115-129): 1. Even before viewers become aware of pictorial content, they make educated guesses as to what FUNCTION or PURPOSE the picture in question fulfils. They can do this easily as they are familiar with genre conventions, the look of an ad (“external text-type markers”, cf. Gieszinger 2000, 2001) and its location in various media. Advertising images seek to impress, to arrest the gaze, to help develop an argument or to envelop the viewer in a certain aura and mood. 2. Understanding an image presupposes seeing visual shapes (gestalts) and integrating them to form meaningful signs (of objects/ entities). At this stage viewers register the QUALITY of the picture: they notice whether it is simple or complex in design, whether it can easily be read or not and whether it comes up to their or any standards of aesthetics. In our example (cf. fig. 1) only one shape emerges (simple), which turns out to pose a problem of ‘legibility’ (curvy, bulging object/ car? ) to be sorted out in The language-image-text 209 Fig. 1: VOLKSWAGEN New Beetle, Ogilvy & Mather Rightford Searle-Tripp & Markin, South Africa 2000 (Wiedemann 2006: 597) Hartmut Stöckl 210 context. Colour and shape seem optically extravagant and are pleasing to the eye. 3. At a next stage viewers will try and form an idea of pictorial content. This involves two things: working out what is depicted and in which context or situation. Viewers construe how the graphic configuration depicts the world and how it relates to reality ( PRACTICE OF DEPICTING ). They also notice the TECHNICAL / MATERIAL NATURE of the image. Being a photograph the picture denotes a real-world object. It has been manipulated, however, so as to present a view of the object (car), which we do not normally get in real-world experience ( PERSPECTIVE , VISIBILITY ). 4. Finally, the two semiotic modes need to be integrated to produce an overall message ( SEMIOTIC COUPLING ). Due date February 28 th is a predication which calls for a nomination and two objects seem likely candidates: the new car advertised (cf. VW logo and picture tilted by 90° to the left) and - evoked by the set phrase and the curvy, bulging object (pregnant belly) - a baby to be born. The visual design (oscillation between two objects) suggests a metaphor, which ultimately provides the commercially relevant message: the launch of the new ‘Beetle’ is like the birth of a human with all the ramifying connotations that this analogy may spin off. What I have outlined here is a likely reading of the advert in question. It highlights a few underlying cognitive-semantic principles as well as the socio-semiotic nature of present-day advertising (cf. Stöckl 2008). Recipients need to integrate pictorial and verbal content in context. They manage this by oscillating between the signs provided and messages suggested. The sense is generated in a quest for a likely commercial message, a process driven by working out likely nominations and predications to form a simple statement relevant in the context of announcing a new car. The semiotic modes taken separately do not produce any stable meaning - they merely offer vague meaning potentials to be activated and shaped in reciprocal integration. More specifically, in order for a coherent, homogenous textual whole to emerge, language and image will have to be integrated in perception and cognition on at least three levels of text: thematic conceptual (content), speech events and pragmatic functions, rhetorical-logical (cf. chapter 5 and Stöckl 2009). So language and image cooperate as they comanage and interrelate concepts, functions and rhetorical-logical operations. Rather than make any banal product claims, advertisers try and connect their goods to experiences, realities and values capable of positively affecting the commodity. The sample discussed illustrates the kind of semiotically minimalist advertising now in fashion, which some call “no-copy ads” The language-image-text 211 (Dzamic 2001). Here, a limited number of signs are presented to activate the recipient’s cognitive involvement (cf. “sympraxis” in Kloepfer 1987) in what is a highly indirect, connotative and metaphoric text. This technique is a brake on cognition as it slows down the path from the signs presented to the senses intended (Stöckl 2008: 193f.). More often than not, such messages are also supposed to socially provoke - is it ethically acceptable to compare giving birth to car manufacturing? 4 Are pictures coded? - A functional ‘grammar’ of the image So far I have made no attempt to discuss the view that pictures follow the rules of a code. Instead, I concentrated on how meaning may derive from vision, cognition and context. These priorities may indicate that I am somewhat sceptical of a visual grammar. Yet, the view has its merits, which I ought not miss to explain. I will do this as briefly as possible dispensing with details (for a concise account of visual grammar, cf. Jewitt and Oyama 2001). The core idea of functional grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 40-42) has it that every semiotic artefact (semiotic system) operates on three levels. First, it represents ‘reality’, that is, it denotes objects, situations, actions, etc. ( ideational). Second, it establishes a certain kind of social contact and interaction with the recipient ( inter-personal). Third, it builds a textual structure whose parts cohere formally and content-wise ( textual). Any rule will operate on one of those levels, which are also called “meta-functions” of semiotic objects or events. The essence of a visual grammar is the belief that there are formal configurations or patterns (i.e. spatial arrangements of signs) in pictures, which come equipped with certain, more or less stable social meanings. On the ideational level, viewers work out which fragment of the world is represented in the picture in which fashion. If “participants” (i.e. recognizable objects in pictures) are connected to one another by “vectors” (real or imaginary diagonal lines), the picture denotes some kind of action, process or event. In contrast to those “narrative representations”, an absence of such a vector would make any image a “conceptual representation” (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996: 56ff.). Conceptual pictures show objects “in terms of their (…) stable and timeless essence, in terms of class, or structure, or meaning” (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996: 79). A conceptual picture demonstrates properties of objects, explains their parts and functioning or compares objects to one another. Ideational meaning may be enhanced by those visual objects that show context, setting or accompanying elements ( circumstances) of the actions or concepts depicted. Similarly, the main participants are characterized by their looks, their gestures, body language and clothes. Hartmut Stöckl 212 On the interpersonal level (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996: 121ff.), viewers are positioned in a number of ways relative to what is depicted. First, in terms of a general speech act orientation (“image act”) pictures can either offer information to be studied and taken on board or they can demand some action from the viewer and function as an expressive appeal. Second, depending on the size of the frame, viewers are positioned at a certain distance or closeness to what is depicted. The functional meanings range from intimacy or focus on details (close) over social distance (medium) to impersonal detachment (long). Third, the angle of the shot may create certain attitudes towards pictorial content in the viewer. The options here are dominance/ superiority (high) vs. fear/ inferiority (low) and involvement (frontal). Fourth, pictures have a coding orientation (ibid. 168ff.), which determines how viewers interpret the relationship between pictorial content and reality. Coding orientations may be e.g. “naturalistic” (photograph), “abstract” (x-ray), “sensory” (fashion photography), and “technological” (floor plan). They are signalled through whole clusters of form and design features. On the textual level (ibid. 181ff.), the attention of the viewer is organized and guided during visual understanding. First, depending on where objects are positioned in the picture plane and what the overall structure of the composition is, various elements obtain different “information values”. A centre/ margin structure, for instance, will position the super-ordinate concept or the main subject in the centre and all the subsidiary elements around it on the margins. Second, it is crucial for visual understanding to work out which shapes belong together and which ones do not. Spatial closeness and graphic linking are two devices that signal semantic unity. Third, certain elements may be made salient through a number of visual devices like colour, lighting, contrast, shape, size or others. Like intonation in speech, salience gives prominence to those elements that are deemed semantically central to the overall message. I feel ambivalent as to how to assess this view of a visual grammar. What is commendable, of course, is the structure this approach provides for explaining how pictures make meanings. All categories introduced seem plausible and create an ordered system. However, we have to acknowledge that the grammar proposed is weak in the sense that there are no hard-andfast rules and no clear-cut distinctions between the types of visual configurations delineated. More importantly, what makes me somewhat wary is that without a detailed knowledge of the objects depicted in images and without a consideration of the relevant contexts, this kind of grammar cannot really explain the whole story of understanding pictures. So, it seems the meaning of images resides, after all, not primarily in the categories suggested here, but more so in our ability to relate pictorial content to real-word vision and to the full scope of our experience. The language-image-text 213 5 Is linking a patterned activity? - Types of language-image-links Graphic design - even if limited to one genre like advertising - seems to come up with a bewildering variety of linkage between picture and language. The sample ad discussed above picked out just one way of combining the two modes. But, hopefully, the interpretation supported the assumption that quite some cognitive work goes into reading language-image-texts. It surely demonstrated the need to study the language-image-link on the basis of a multi-layered methodology. Of course, one may suspect that, given the huge scope of human creativity both in making and reading texts, no system can ever be gleaned behind the mechanics of language-image-links. Gross (1994), for instance, has argued that “semiosis” (i.e. meaning-making) tends to be “wild” invariably, in the sense that multiple readings are available and connections can be made at random. Notwithstanding these familiar arguments, I should like to claim here that types or patterns of language-image-links can be identified. Just like the potential for semantically linking propositions is limited (e.g. causal, temporal, consecutive, conditional, etc.), the number of logical patterns underlying the linking of picture and text will not be infinite. These patterns are the result of what might be seen as a drive towards cognitive standardization and a desire for easy orientation. To make this quite clear: I am not saying here that there is a limit to what can be expressed, thought or designed on the graphic surface. Rather, my claim is that textual interpretation and production are facilitated by recurring underlying patterns, which still leave ample scope for variation and modification on the designable surface. If there is a system to designing language-image-links, one should be able to describe it. My suggestion earlier on was that the linking happens on a number of levels. Therefore, a typology of links ought to proceed in a multi-layered fashion, too. I propose three levels here, which may come in useful in a typological description: spatial syntax, info-content, and rhetorical logic. Any specific instance of a language-image-link may then be analysed and categorized on those three levels, which I am now going to outline briefly. The emerging typology pursues a simple objective: it makes transparent cognitive operations and design decisions in the crafting of languageimage-texts. 5.1 Spatial-syntactic patterns On a formal level it is first of all relevant how the two modes are positioned in the space of the page or layout. This criterion may metaphorically be called syntactic because it evaluates the sequence or distribution of elements. Semantically, the topographic relation of picture and text is important as their sequencing or configuration along a likely reading path determines Hartmut Stöckl 214 Fig. 2: TRIUMPH Lingerie, Wirz Werbeagentur, Zurich, Switzerland 1996 (Berger 2001: 106) how sense and message are construed. It is generally assumed that scanning a layout works quite similar to reading, that is, it proceeds from left to right and top to bottom. However, access to a layout might be influenced by elements that attract visual attention by virtue of content in context, size, shape, colour, etc. Generally, two broad syntactic linking types may be distinguished at first, namely linear vs. simultaneous. Either one mode follows the other in a sequence (linear) so they are more or less neatly delineated in space, or picture and language are spatially integrated so as to be perceived and understood as one visual and graphic entity (simultaneous). These syntactic patterns have immediate repercussions on how meaning is produced from the combination of picture and language. In a linear sequence either picture or language become the starting point, the access to an argument or a statement. Usually, picture-first linkages utilize the visual to introduce the viewer to a scene or constellation of objects, whose meaning potential is then verbally anchored, channelled and pinned down in the advertising context (cf. fig. 1). This often works out as a communicative game of guesswork, semantic manipulation, punning, humour and metaphor. Conversely, language-first linkages mainly employ pictures for illustration. As the recipient has first been confronted with a claim or a product description, the image is easily understood and related to the verbal message. A third syntactic pattern emerges when picture and language take turns in the delivery of the message. In fact, this alternating pattern is perhaps most frequent in advertising. Oscillating back and forth between the two has its own attractions, which spring from the code differences and the revealing discovery that effective messages can be produced with astoundingly small means. In the ‘Triumph’ advertisement (cf. fig. 2), alteration between language and image also involves turning the page. The simplicity of the idea is impressive, its impact probably mildly humorous and euphemistic. The language-image-text 215 Fig. 3: AESTHETIS CLINIC, Leo Burnett Paris, France 2005 (Wiedemann 2006: 316) Simultaneity of picture and language means both modes are so close that they are perceived as a graphic and perceptual unity. A sequence is not implied here. The simultaneous syntactic pattern rather aims at flexibly integrating verbal and visual content. Two major types are possible with this linkage pattern. Either language and image are configured so that the writing is in the picture space or - and this is the really conspicuous case - writing transmutes into picture or vice versa, so that the boundaries between the two modes become hard to draw. The example in fig. 3 illustrates this transmuting type of syntactic linkage: in an appropriate (verbal) context letter shapes (or whole words and blocks of text) may make simple pictorial signs available. 5.2 Content-related patterns On a semantic level we are looking at how informational content of picture and language link to form an overall message. Analysis and typology of the linkage are harder here for two reasons. First, as we have seen, pictorial meaning tends to be vague and comes to us rather as something like a potential to be activated and not as a stable given. Second, the linkage works like a reciprocal unity in perception, which can be approached either Hartmut Stöckl 216 Fig. 4: VICK Vaporub, Publicis Salles Norton, Brazil 2004 (Wiedemann 2006: 173) way: from image to text or vice versa. So, one may judge the function of the image in relation to the verbal message or the other way round. In order to keep things simple, I should like to introduce two broad types of content-related linkage, elaboration and extension (cf. van Leeuwen 2005a: 222ff., Martinec and Salway 2005: 349ff.). Whereas in elaboration one mode is used to explain, illustrate or specify the other, in extension new information is added in one mode, which is not co-present in the other. This distinction can, I believe, never be a hard-and-fast one, but it has played a crucial role in the study of image-text-relations since Barthes’ seminal paper (1977). In the ‘Vick Vaporub’ ad (cf. fig. 4) picture and text elaborate one another. The open box is depicted so as to create the shape of a crescent moon against the dark background thus evoking connotations of ‘quietude’, ‘peacefulness’ and ‘rest’, not to mention the more denotative meanings of ‘night’. The verbal description adds product features and the claim good night explicates what the picture merely suggests. It is - as so often in good advertising - left to the recipient to work out the causal logics: ‘Vick Vaporub’ secures a good night when you have a cold. The image-language-link in the ad for a restaurant/ bar called ‘Sopranos’ (cf. fig. 5) works noticeably differently and can rightly be termed extension. Here the baseball bat depicted against the shape of a spotlighted shoeprint is overtly at odds with the verbal message: We strongly recommend the risotto. The picture clearly extends the text or vice versa. A seemingly The language-image-text 217 Fig. 5: SOPRANOS Restaurant & Bar, McClaren Canada, Canada 2004 (Wiedemann 2006: 73) paradoxical semantic clash (semantic frames: restaurant/ eating - sports (? )/ beating) can, however, be resolved by tapping into cultural context knowledge. Media consumers will be familiar with the television series “The Sopranos”, which is set in a social context of mafia petty-thievery and is rife with black humour. The same kind of humour results from the incompatibility of a recommendation and an implied threat (cf. Brock 1996 for a pragma-semantic theory of humour). Where the ‘Vick’ ad (cf. fig. 4) networks associations from parallelized text and image to marshal a redundant message, the ‘Sopranos’ ad (cf. fig. 5) combines different and unrelated information in text and image. Elaboration can be further subdivided according to which mode elaborates which. So a picture may illustrate a verbal text or language may explain a picture. Here is an implication of direction, which must perhaps be seen as more of a theoretical fiction than a perceptual or cognitive fact. Extension, on the other hand, can be further differentiated according to how the information added relates to the other information present. The emerging inter-modal relationship can be one of similarity, opposition or complementarity. However, as I see it, there seems to be a cline going from elaboration to extension with no neat borderline, so there is an element of extension in elaboration and vice versa. 5.3 Rhetorical-logical patterns Both levels of analysis discussed so far provide essential information on the kind of linkage. Yet it is only on the third level that we are asking the ques- Hartmut Stöckl 218 Fig. 6: AUDI Multitronic Transmission, Ogilvy & Mather Rightford Searle-Tripp & Markin, Johannesburg, South Africa 2002 (Wiedemann 2006: 593) tion most crucial to understanding combinations of picture and language: Which logical operation or rhetorical pattern underlies the linkage of the modes? So, whereas syntax and content answer relatively general questions, rhetoric and logic are supposed to uncover what exactly motivates the link cognitively and functionally. Again, I have opted for relative simplicity and suggest three broad types of linkage. The first co-ordinates language and image so that both enter into relatively straightforward semantic relations, which are based on likeness, contrast and spatial or temporal contiguity. The preferred cognitive operation with the co-ordinated linkage would be comparing, aligning in space and time and associating meaning from picture and language. In an ‘Audi’ ad (cf. fig. 6), a line of buttons and a zip are depicted alongside one another in a de-contextualized fashion. The text underneath the buttons reads Conventional automatic and manual gearboxes, the one underneath the zip The multitronic ® transmission. Both mundane objects act as visual analogies in a co-ordinated language-image-link, designed to demonstrate the advantages of the multitronic gearing. By associating pictorial content and technical term the recipient can work out properties of the technical features advertised without special knowledge. Conventional gearboxes are step-bystep, slow and cumbersome whereas multitronic is direct, smooth and swift. In this example, analogy and contrast go hand-in-hand. The language-image-text 219 Fig. 7: WMF Knives, KNSK Werbeagentur, Germany 2005 (Wiedemann 2006: 60) In the second type, both modes are put into a hierarchical order with one mode governing, leading or organizing the other. Here, a more complex logic emerges, which calls on the recipient to work out mode interdependencies on the basis of cause-effect, condition-consequence, part-whole or superordinate-subordinate. In an ad for knives by ‘WMF’ (cf. fig. 7), the claim in the verbal text is unsurpassably sharp - the picture shows a delicate little figurine apparently carved from a beetroot. The logic the recipient is supposed to establish features both a causal and a conditional element. If you use the knives advertised, you can cut things with great precision (a visual hyperbole) and because the knives are so sharp, fine cuts can be made using them. Finally, a third type can be called playful or humorous. It does not subject the relation of image and language to any rigorous logic - co-ordinated or hierarchical - but simply uses the potential for coincidental, allusive and meta-communicative connections between the two modes. Another ‘Audi’ ad promotes the Audi A4 with free leather interior. To this end it uses the headline 130 horses and three cows on a painting of a wide prairie reminiscent of the Wild West. The composition features many horses grazing peacefully with three cows interspersed in the centre. What seems astounding at first sight is the semantic parallelism between picture and headline. The irrelevance of the literal message, however, leads to an interpretation on a metaphorical/ metonymic level. Horses, of course, are short for horsepower and Hartmut Stöckl 220 cows have a metonymic relation to the leather interior advertised. So here the picture literalizes the verbal message and the language-image-link provides a little humorous semiotic game. In addition, the picture can be read to symbolize freedom and space on a connotational level. Typologies are always fraught with difficulties and none can ever be entirely clear and exhaustive. Yet, the one presented here and similar attempts at categorization (e.g. Bonsiepe 1968, Gaede 1981, Spillner 1982, Geiger/ Henn-Memmesheimer 1998, Nöth 2000, Fix 2001, Martinec and Salway 2005, Doelker 2007) make for a good deal of order. The more they do so, the more they help to model what in reality is quite a complex and intricate interaction of semiotic modalities. What we can glean best from typological work is the dimensions, criteria and parameters useful to describe the linking of various codes. It also sensitizes us to the rich variety this linking can generate. 6 What other links are there? - Alternative views At least two issues are still missing from my account of the language-imagelink, which I am going to briefly address now. Both have to do with the fact that pictures cannot really be restricted to the material image itself. Language, too, is essentially pictorial and has the powers to evoke mental images. In natural languages, there is a large repertoire of expressions, often called figurative (cf. Cacciari and Tabossi 1993, Glucksberg 2001 for accounts of figurative language and its processing). Those idioms are, of course, usually used in their non-literal meanings; the original image, responsible for the creation of the idiom has mostly been obscured by time (‘demotivation’). So, take the lid off is such a set phrase whose idiomatic meaning ‘to tell somebody about something that was a secret’ coincides with a possible literal meaning (e.g. in cooking). Adverts like the one in fig. 8 for the ‘Volkswagen Sharan’ exploit the potential availability of both meanings thus linking a visual picture with a linguistically evoked one. The charm in this particular example is that the visual image recalls the set phrase, so it can be seen to take the phrase literally, although the expression is not materialized in the ad. At the same time, the idiomatic meaning will also be activated as this is the standard and fits the text: Launching the new car is revealing a secret. A special case of language-image-link, then, would be texts that combine a visual image with verbal text containing figurative expressions. This is particularly interesting when a text networks a whole series of phrases geared towards stimulating the imagination. A ‘Nissan Primera’ ad shows a prototypical scene from a car race. The text that goes with the picture accumulates figurative expressions which all hinge around the image of dogs and The language-image-text 221 Fig. 9: HÄAGEN-DAZS, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London, Great Britain 1991 (Berger 2001: 226) Fig. 8: VOLKSWAGEN Sharan, BMP DDB, United Kingdom 1997 (Myerson & Vickers 2002: 343) eating: it’s dog eat dog, like a rottweiler holds a bone, it inspires Pavlovian responses, makes you drool, gets you licking your lips, other cars are nothing more than a dog’s breakfast, whet your appetite. The semantic link between this idiomatic network and pictorial content may be established through metaphor and experiential association. The car race is an illustration Hartmut Stöckl 222 Fig. 10: LORENZINI Men’s shirts, Claus A. Froh, Germany 1960ies (Wiedemann 1994: 151) of the dog-eat-dog principle and the joys of driving a powerful car may be seen as analogous to the joys of eating. Language does not achieve pictorial effects through figurative expressions only. Writing may by virtue of its visual materiality also help to boost The language-image-text 223 Fig. 11: SCHLAFLY Beer, Core, St. Louis, Missouri, USA 1995 (Berger 2001: 173) the pictoriality of a text. So over and above encoding linguistic messages, print and typography convey additional meanings, which inter-relate with pictorial or textual content (cf. Stöckl 2005). I should like to point out four ways in which writing and the materiality of texts may generate subtle and effective meaning. First, specific graphic properties of the typography used in a text can spin off independent meanings. So in the ‘Häagen-Dazs’ ice cream ad (cf. fig. 9), colour, size and font type of the headline communicate the kind of irregularity, spontaneity and individuality that go together well with the claim lose control. Second, text can be arranged in the layout so as to be portioned neatly into separate chunks. Also, headlines, margin notes or footnotes may help to organize it graphically. All this facilitates legibility and access to selected points. An example would be the older ‘Lorenzini’ ad (cf. fig. 10). Third, text - i.e. individual letters, lines of print, text bodies - may transmute to form or represent pictorial shapes (cf. fig. 3). There is great variety here and the ‘typopictorial’ subtleties possible on the graphic continuum from text to image are beyond imagination. Finally, it is the very material of a text, that is, its graphic substance and the techniques used in its production that can have semantic effects. So, the look of the ‘Schlafly’ beer ad (cf. fig. 11) suggests that pictures and text have been glued onto an old wall. This connotes tradition and well-worn publicity. The text looks as if written with an old typewriter - here again the same connotations are fostered. Add to this the provisional, make-shift character, which stems from the patchwork technique underlying the montage of the ad, and you get an idea of how powerful and subtle those meanings generated by medium and material may be. Hartmut Stöckl 224 7 Conclusion The theoretical reflections and practical, text analytical suggestions presented above are a study in the making. Although no longer academic virgin territory, research into the semiotics of the language-image-link is still in its infancy. What I hope to have demonstrated is that linguists have a lot to contribute to this line of enquiry, provided they take a multimodal view of text and embrace ideas evolved in semiotics, cognitive psychology and other disciplines. In future work the following guidelines may turn out to be valuable. 1. Text corpora need to be built up in order to conduct truly empirical and systematic research into the workings of the language-image-link. The more diverse the material accumulated, the more reliable and sensible the modelling of underlying processes will be (cf. Baldry and Thibault 2006, Bateman 2008). 2. The relevant terminology for describing visual phenomena and graphic design must be revised and unified. We need a suitable language to speak about multimodal texts, their structures and styles. 3. In all this research it is important to be aware of the fact that both verbal text and pictures come in types. So, instead of unduly generalizing, it will be useful to inspect various communicative practices and their genres separately, e.g. advertising, journalism, science and technology, the arts, etc. Abstraction must then follow from those empirical facts. A potentially wide perspective integrating text, picture, graphics, layout, typography, materiality and the like must also be advocated as helpful in the enterprise. 8 Bibliography Androutsopoulos, J. 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Wo der Buchstabe das Wort führt: Ansichten über Schrift und Typographie. Ostfildern: Cantz. Wiedemann, J. (2006). Advertising now: Print. Köln: Taschen. Hartmut Stöckl Institut für Anglistik Universität Salzburg 1 See the “circuit of culture” in du Gay et al. (1997: 3). AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen From White Teeth to Britz: Multi-Ethnic Britain on British Primetime Television in the 2000s Barbara Korte This article takes a look at the UK’s politics of ethnicity and its repercussions in television culture after the year 2000. It focuses on fictional programmes aired by the major national channels. What can be observed in such mainstream productions is a significant shift in the representation of multi-ethnic Britain over the course of less than a decade. White Teeth (2002), the adaptation of Zadie Smith’s bestselling novel, was offered as a deliberately popular product and seems to have been unaffected by growing resentment against Muslim Asians, even though it was produced and broadcast after 9/ 11 and the Midlands ‘riots’ of 2001. The spirit in which White Teeth was made and presented to its original audience contrasts with the more critical and differentiating stance towards multi-ethnic Britain discernible in primetime productions of subsequent years, such as Second Generation (2003) and Britz (2007). 1 Multi-Ethnic Britain: Shifts in Representation The interrelationship between representation, its regulation and the formation of identities 1 has long been an issue of black and Asian British culture and its study. In the course of the 1980s, the struggle against racist misrepresentation and marginalisation, above all in the visible discursive space of film and television, was followed by a new wave of oppositional (self-)representation. It included ‘art’ films of an alternative black and Asian workshop scene as well as more commercially oriented (though still subversive) productions such as Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1987). In the television sector, Channel 4 (launched in 1982) showed a special commitment to ‘multiculturalism’, financing and providing Barbara Korte 228 2 For a more detailed survey of these developments see Korte/ Sternberg (2004). 3 Although numbers have dropped, BBC 1 and 2, ITV and Channel 4 still have a higher percentage of viewers than other broadcasters according to the “Viewing Summaries” published by BARB (Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board): Taken together, their “Annual % Shares of Viewing (Individuals)” for 2000 were 77.8 per cent; they had dropped to 58.8 percent by 2007. See http: / / www.barb.co.uk/ tvfacts [accessed 25 February 2008]. an outlet for many of the new representations; with a certain delay, the BBC made comparable efforts. 2 In light of such developments, Stuart Hall’s seminal essay “New Ethnicities” (1987) identified a significant “new phase” in the representation of Britain’s migrant communities: “The shift is best thought of in terms of a change from a struggle over the relations of representation to a politics of representation itself.” (Hall 1996: 163) To Hall, films like My Beautiful Laundrette made it “perfectly clear that this shift has been engaged, and that the question of the black subject cannot be represented without reference to the dimensions of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.” (ibid.: 167) New conceptions of ethnicity and their representation would eventually, as Hall suggested, change the notion of Englishness itself: We are all […] ethnically located and our ethnic identities are crucial to our subjective sense of who we are. But this is also a recognition that this is not an ethnicity which is doomed to survive, as Englishness was, only by marginalizing, dispossessing, displacing, and forgetting other ethnicities. This precisely is the politics of ethnicity predicated on difference and diversity. (ibid.: 170) The following pages take a look at the most recent phase in the UK’s politics of ethnicity and its repercussions in television culture after the year 2000 - a year in which Britain proudly displayed its ethnic and cultural diversity in the Millennium Dome, but also a year soon to be followed by the sobering experiences of 9/ 11 and related subsequent events. The discussion will focus on fictional programmes aired at prime viewing time (around 9 or 10 pm) by the major national channels, 3 i.e. productions geared at a wide spectrum of television viewers in terms of age, gender, class and ethnicity. What can be observed in such mainstream productions is another significant shift in the representation of multi-ethnic Britain over the course of less than a decade. After a more general look at multi-ethnicity in the British television landscape, a case study of White Teeth, the 2002 adaptation of Zadie Smith’s bestseller of the year 2K, will reveal how this four-part series was offered as a deliberately popular product suited to promote a then still optimistic agenda of multi-ethnicity. The television White Teeth seems to have been quite unaffected by growing resentment against Muslim Asians, even though it was produced and broadcast after 9/ 11 and the ‘riots’ that had taken place in Bradford and other Midland cities earlier in 2001. The spirit in which White Teeth was made and presented to its original audience con- From White Teeth to Britz 229 4 In “The Centrality of Culture” (1997), Stuart Hall mentions “the relationship of minority cultures to ‘mainstream’” as a manifestation of “the regulation and governance of culture” (Hall 1997: 227). The notion of mainstream in this context implies the integration of cultural diversity within the cultural assumptions and tastes of a majority population, which is, as a result of this infusion, transformed itself. 5 See Pines (1992) and Malik (2002). 6 The current UK statistics are based on the census in 2001; in their article on “Ethnicity and Identity” (published on 8 January 2004), the national statistics cite 92.1 per cent of the United Kingdom’s population as ‘white’, 1.2 per cent as ‘mixed’, 4.0 percent as ‘All Asian or Asian British’, and 2.0 per cent as ‘All Black or Black British’. See http: / / www.statistics. gov.uk/ , accessed 4 February 2008. This is not a very high percentage for non-white ethnic groups overall, but black and Asian populations concentrate in, and thus leave a considertrasts with the more critical and differentiating stance towards multi-ethnic Britain discernible in primetime productions of subsequent years. 2 Multi-Ethnic Britain and the Television Mainstream Even in the age of channel proliferation and the Internet, television remains the most significant medium for reaching a wide cross-section of the public and hence for affecting public opinion. Of course, as Jack Williams (2004: 4) points out in his social history of British television, the actual impact of the medium on people’s opinion is hard to assess: “Within the past three decades, the preponderant view among those working in the growing field of cultural studies has been that not all viewers draw the same meaning from a television programme or television genre.” Nevertheless, in order to interact with each other the great majority have to draw approximately the same meanings from the same messages. Large numbers may more or less agree on what a television programme means. The fact that over twelve million viewers watch the most popular programmes on most evenings suggests, though certainly does not prove, that many may be deriving the same satisfactions from these programmes and may therefore be understanding them in the same manner. (ibid: 5) In this light one may claim that television representation - at least in the most popular and mainstream programmes - is also a powerful factor in the cultural regulation of ethnicity and national identity. 4 Williams devotes an entire chapter to the issue of “Television, Race and Ethnicity”, observing that “[t]he rise of a multi-ethnic Britain has coincided with the expansion of television” (ibid.: 150). The history of British television’s engagement with ethnic minorities includes many examples of (in most cases implicit rather than explicit) racism, 5 but television has also contributed to a more diversified notion of ethnicity. For the general British audience, which is addressed by mainstream television and which is still predominantly white, 6 the representation Barbara Korte 230 able imprint on, Britain’s city spaces, especially London and the urban centres in the Midlands and the North. 7 See for instance documentaries and drama documentaries about the Stephen Lawrence case (a black youth murdered by whites): Hoping for a Miracle (Channel 4, 1999) and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (Granada TV, 1999). The Trouble with Black Men: A Polemic (BBC 2004) was a three-part series picking up the prejudices which Afro-Caribbean men face in Britain in the areas of work and education, crime and sexuality. 8 “[T]he types of programmes with the highest number of viewers varied very little. In each month the most popular programmes provided entertainment. By the mid-1960s these were overwhelmingly soaps, drama series, quiz shows, variety shows and comedy. News bulletins, current affair programmes, documentaries and art programmes were rarely among the twenty programmes with most viewers.” (Williams 2004: 25) 9 Bhrigupati Singh ((2006: 139f.) has emphasised the authority which Stuart Hall and his position in “New Ethnicities” had acquired among decision-makers in the British media by the early 1990s. of black and Asian Britons on the TV screen changed to a considerable extent in the course of the 1990s. Ethnic-minority communities then emerged from ‘special-interest’ programmes and stereotyped appearances in a handful of soaps to become protagonists in quality television produce of the major national broadcasters. Their various channels continued to address past and ongoing frictions in British race relations in current affairs programmes and documentaries, 7 and one of these documentaries, the Windrush series (1998) about Caribbean migration and its long-term consequences, actually became a major success for the BBC. But most of the programmes that became audience-favourites took a humorous approach to the multi-ethnic society. An entertainment factor had long been the mark of Britain’s most popular television produce, 8 and in the 1990s it began to be used as a manner of engaging positively with Britain’s various ethnicities. Indeed, the first major television event to bring the idea of ‘diverse’ and ‘post-ethnic’ Englishness 9 into British living-rooms featured a conspicuous amount of entertaining elements. The Buddha of Suburbia (broadcast by the BBC in 1993) was a costly four-part drama series based on Hanif Kureishi’s bestselling novel of the same title, which had appeared in 1990. The series received considerable critical attention and several awards, and it also attracted the audience thanks to its comedic approach and despite the fact that it retained much of the subversive ideology, sexual explicitness and meta-representational content of Kureishi’s book. After the spread of cable and satellite TV in the course of the 1990s, it seems that only soaps and drama series that have “much in common with soaps” still have the capacity to reach big audiences (Williams 2004: 25). This trend was reflected in the representation of ethnic-minority Britain around the year 2000: Asian comedy programmes included Goodness Gracious Me, an award-winning sketch show (BBC 1998), and The Kumars at No. 42 (BBC 2001), a satire focussing on an Indian family that sets up a television studio in their garden to host their own chat-show. In an article From White Teeth to Britz 231 10 Lewisohn’s article was published on the BBC website for Goodness Gracious Me: http: / / www.bbc.co.uk/ comedy/ guide/ articles/ goodnessgracious_66601650.shtml [accessed 15 November 2004]. 11 http: / / www.bbc.co.uk/ comedy/ guide/ articles/ kumarsatno42the_66602080.shtml [accessed 15 November 2004]. 12 “British Asians are very often regarded as a single community, providing curry, electrical goods and a late-night pint of milk, always available as doctors, lawyers and accountants, playing bangra and playing cricket, and yet increasingly - just maybe - rioting, acting as a dangerous terrorist fifth column in the country’s midst.” http: / / www.in4mer.com/ programming_c4 [accessed 15 November 2004]. on Goodness Gracious Me, Mark Lewisohn emphasises its mainstream appeal: Although the subjects were inspired by the writers’ Anglo-Asian experiences the humour was broad enough to for the comedy to break out from the target area and make waves in the mainstream. There had been precious few previous attempts at Asian comedy, Tandoori Nights […] being about the only dedicated example. Goodness Gracious Me was exceptional, however, in crossing over to a non-Asian audience. 10 For The Kumars, the BBC website likewise highlighted the comedy of the successful show (then in its fifth season): “This was a weird idea from the team behind Goodness Gracious Me but it certainly works, delivering constant laughs and a treasure trove of memorable moments.” 11 Babyfather (BBC 2001/ 2) was a soap about three black men and their attitude toward relationships and family life. The Crouches (BBC 2003), another soap, depicted three generations of a black family living under one roof. Entertainment even infiltrated the documentary mode: Channel 4’s The Great British Asian Invasion, a documentary aired at 9 pm in October 2004, set out to depict the contribution of Asian communities to British society. It was directed specifically at non-Asian segments of the audience in order to counter misconceptions about a monolithically Asian identity. Channel 4’s official programme description did not gloss over the frictions that marked British- Asian relations at the time of the documentary’s first release, 12 but it mainly emphasised the programme’s intentionally ‘light’ touch, which goes hand in hand with ascertaining that Asians have become a part of British society: This film explodes these popular generalisations to tell you everything you wanted to know about your Asian neighbours, but were afraid to ask. It’s an entertaining and irreverent user’s guide to Britain’s Asian communities that reveals how the professions and businesses that are lumped together as Asian are the preserve of a different community, each with a strange tale to tell. With the aid of archive and personal reminiscences, the film explains the diversity of Britain’s Asians. It reveals how different groups came from different countries at different times, settling in different areas and occupying Barbara Korte 232 13 Examples include East Is East (1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha), which were successful at the box office, not only in Britain, but also abroad. Anita and Me (2002, dir. Metin Hüseyin) was marketed in their wake as “an hilarious British comedy in the tradition of East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham” (cover of the British DVD release, 2003). Bride and Prejudice (2004, dir. Gurinder Chadha) unashamedly capitalises on, and blends, two popular vogues: the one for Jane Austen as English heritage film material, the other for Bollywood spectacle. At the time of release, the film’s promotional material predicted that it was “sure to reach massive crossover appeal with its multi-national casting.” 14 BBC (2004: 16). Apart from the examples already named, one could also cite the updated version of a national classic, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (BBC 2003), which made a special point to integrate ethnic-minority characters, as was specifically emphasised in the BBC’s annual report. 15 White Teeth was directed by Julian Jerrold and written by Simon Burke. different parts of British life, forging new lives and irrevocably changing British society (ibid.). Although Asians are objectified and exoticised here to a certain extent, this description also still echoes the political rhetoric and cultural regulation that had become fashionable during the early phase of Tony Blair’s government. In 2000, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain published the Parekh Report (Parekh 2000), which called for a radical change in the definition of British identity and the relations between different population groups. A year before, the necessity to redefine Britain’s heritage in terms of ethnic plurality had been acknowledged, during a conference held by the Arts Council of England, by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, who also pointed to the special responsibility of the media in this process: “By recording their contribution and place in British history, we give people their roots, and give their cultures proper recognition and an appropriate stature within and beside the traditional Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures.” (Arts Council 1999: 8) A view of Britain as a dynamic, multi-ethnic nation became a trademark of Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’, and its representation became the vogue in feature film 13 as well as on television. 14 3 White Teeth on Television This is the dominant political and media climate in which White Teeth was commissioned by Channel 4 and broadcast in the autumn season of 2002, once more a piece of expensive multi-part television drama. 15 The majority of reviews for the novel were enthusiastic about this serio-comic family saga by a young Cambridge graduate with a Jamaican mother and white English father: Smith had allegedly written the book for Blair’s Britannia, ingeniously polyvocal and culturally diverse. The novel sold so well that it enjoyed an astonishingly quick television tie-in. The adaptation strove to retain the From White Teeth to Britz 233 16 Rupp (2006) discusses the novel in terms of a “memorial culture in transformation” and thus with special attention to its rendering of history. novel’s success formula and followed its main plot closely, although it reduced its important historical and meta-historical dimensions 16 to a few short flashbacks. Like the novel, the television White Teeth covers the most significant phases and attitudes in Britain’s development toward a multiethnic society since the 1970s: overt and covert racism as well as naive political correctness, romantic Western misconceptions about the East, the impact of black culture on British youth culture, or the fatwa against Rushdie and other manifestations of Islamic fundamentalism. Above all, however, it conveys an impression of Britain’s diverse society that comes fairly close to the vision expressed in Hall’s “New Ethnicities”: In White Teeth, the positive white characters are just as ‘ethnic’ as their black and Asian peers, and only the more doubtful characters still cling to notions of hegemonic Englishness. As projected in White Teeth, Britain’s diversity eventually eludes all categorisation, so that notions of ethnic or national identity become blurred and, finally, obsolete. In episode 1, the action starts in the 1970s, with a focus on Archie Jones, an archetypical Londoner who represents white English ethnicity and, at the same time, may help a predominantly white audience to find their way into the story. On the first day of the year 1975, Archie tries to commit suicide but is saved because his car blocks the way of a halal butcher’s van - a first indication that Archie’s world will soon become transethnic. At a party he meets Clara, his future wife, who came to Britain from Jamaica at the age of seventeen. Around the same time, Archie’s friendship with a Muslim Asian is revived when Samad Iqbal, with whom he fought in World War II, comes to the “bosom of the mother country” from recently independent Bangladesh. Samad intends to start a “whole new life” in Britain, together with his wife Alsana. The Jones’ and the Iqbals later live as close neighbours in the London suburb of Willesden, which is noted for a high percentage of nonwhite population. The Jones’ mixed-race daughter is named Irie, the Iqbals’ have twin boys, Millat and Magid. Once the children reach their teens, the adaptation lays a strong emphasis on the experiences of this British-born generation of blacks and Asians and how they define their identity between various ethnicities and in a conflict between generations. In episode 2, during the 1980s, Samad has still not advanced in society, becomes disillusioned with Britain and re-identifies with Islam. To Samad at this stage of his life, England has become a “godless wasteland”, a space he now regards as diasporic because he perceives himself as a second-class citizen, a migrant who has not been allowed to make his dreams come true. His sons, by contrast, seem well-adapted to life in Britain and untroubled by any sense of “contesting identities” (cf. Brah 1988). Samad, however, de- Barbara Korte 234 17 On original homelands as myth see Safran (1991). 18 Their name was actually changed from the novel’s original Chalfen, possibly to give it a more English ring. cides that he has to save them from corruption by sending them ‘back’ to Bangladesh. He intends to ‘re’-connect them with a cultural space which, to them, is a homeland not even in the imaginary sense and which to Samad, who has never been ‘back’ himself, is also only a myth. 17 Eventually, Samad can only raise money to ‘save’ one of his sons, Magid. In episode 3, by the early 1990s, Irie has fallen in love with Millat, who has become a school rebel, speaks with the Jamaican accent trendy in British youth culture and traffics in drugs. When Millat, Irie and their white schoolmate Joshua Malfen are found with Millat’s marihuana, their punishment consists in A-level revisions in the household of Joshua’s parents. With the Malfens, the story begins to foreground issues of heredity and of ‘Englishness’; the latter is, however, shown to be completely disconnected from any notion of inherited ethnicity or race. Marcus Malfen is a renowned geneticist, his wife Joyce a horticulturalist, gardening being a stereotypically English concern as well as an activity in which the foundations of modern genetics were laid when Gregor Mendel conducted his experiments with peas in a monastery garden. The Malfens are in love with their culturedness and understand themselves as essentially English. 18 But ironically Marcus Malfen stems from an earlier group of immigrants to Britain: His roots are Eastern-European Jewish - i.e. he originates from the archetypically diasporic community - and his Englishness is merely nurtured, a cultural acquisition. Despite their own family history, the white Malfens treat non-white Irie and Millat as children “from the colonies” for whom they wish to fulfil a mission of education. Joyce also uses Millat as an object for her sexual desires, and Marcus is a sexist who entrusts Irie with secretarial work only, while he shares his scientific interests with men. One of these men is Magid, whom his stay in the East has failed to easternise and who, to his father’s dismay, has returned to his English “home” more English than the English. Meanwhile, Magid’s genetically identical brother has developed in quite the opposite way. From a bad boy comfortable in British youth culture, Millat turns into a Muslim fundamentalist after having been recruited by a Muslim brotherhood. This organisation is caricatured both in the novel and the adaptation, but fundamentalism is taken seriously in so far as it is shown as a reaction to white racism. The caricature, then, is not to be taken as an anti- Muslim statement but one against fundamentalism. Like the novel, the adaptation lampoons all groups with fundamentalist beliefs and aims, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Irie’s grandmother and a militant animal rights group for whom Marcus Malfen, who conducts experiments with mice, From White Teeth to Britz 235 is “public enemy number one” but which is joined by his son when the latter falls in love with one of the activists. Even Irie, White Teeth’s most sympathetic character, turns essentialist when she develops a desire to seek for her African-Caribbean roots. Such parallels in behaviour between characters that are white, black and brown suggest that being attracted by fundamentalisms is not a Muslim phenomenon, but one to which all kinds of Britons are likely to succumb. The fourth and final episode brings the climax of the various complications and radicalisms: It unites all protagonists around Marcus Malfen in support of, or resistance against, his FutureMouse project. This is a genetically engineered laboratory mouse devised as a completely pre-determined life form. In revenge for Malfen’s arrogance, Irie provides all organisations with whose principles his project collides with tickets for the public launch of FutureMouse. The plot ends in a hilarious tour de force of surprise discoveries and frantic, unplanned action in the course of which FutureMouse manages to escape and subvert all plans for its future existence. And natural engendering, too, is shown to be indeterminable: Before the launch, Irie has slept with both Millat and Magid and will give birth to another pair of twins with indeterminate fatherhood since the two potential fathers have identical genes. This third generation, with genes that are white, black and Asian, will take the ethnic hybridisation of Britain even further. What made this story so suitable for becoming mainstream television material? Its potential for entertainment is obvious, in terms both of story and of eccentric but likable characters. The material is visually attractive because it provides an opportunity to revive various fashions of the 1970s to 1990s. It is stylistically vivid because it renders voices of different ethnic and generational groups. And ideologically, White Teeth rejects every form of restrictive essentialism and intolerance. Although it is aware of ongoing racism and reasons for young Muslims’ turn to fundamentalist Islam, White Teeth suggests a preferred reading that is post-ethnic: It presents a society in which categorisations of ethnicity and race can overlap, blend, be deconstructed - and will eventually cease to matter. White Teeth develops an attractive utopian vision about the outcome of “the century of the great immigrant experiment” (Smith 2001: 326), where no one is of pure origin, as Zadie Smith’s character Alsana Iqbal observes, also in the adaptation: “it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a fairy tale.” In interviews, Smith herself has rejected notions of identity that are determined by distinct ‘roots’ or distinct places of ‘origin’. To Smith, virtual spaces like global television culture and cyberspace build the new communities and identities, and they do so beyond traditional locations and demarcations: Barbara Korte 236 It seems to me the allegiance you once had to your country or to a state or to a town you lived in or even the borough you lived in is now transferred to things like being a Star Trek fan or visiting a certain site on the ‘Net. Those communities seem just as strong as the old binding ones - the religious communities or whatever. (O’Grady 2002: 109) Smith was hailed as a prophet of hybrid Britishness to such an extent that even her own body was read as a post-ethnic statement. Dominic Head notes that the author’s photo on the paperback edition of her debut novel seems to suggest a vague Asianness rather than emphasising her African- Caribbean background, and he thinks that this is a deliberate self-fashioning rather than a marketing strategy: Smith now has an Asian look, and this demonstrates an indeterminate ethnicity. For the author of a book that purports to speak authoritatively to a wide range of ethnic experience - including Caribbean British and Asian British experience - the ability to adopt different guises suggests a substantive hybridized identity that goes beyond the more cynical marketing objectives. And what this implies about the author is certainly true of her novel’s scheme: White Teeth […] is artfully constructed as the definitive representation of twentieth-century multiculturalism. (Head 2003: 106) White Teeth explores, also in its television version, how life cannot be contained in or determined by race, ethnicity, cultural affiliation or history. Archie Jones programmatically defies determination; life happens to him; he throws a coin whenever he has to make decisions. He is thus the counterpart to those characters who try to actively determine fate, like Samad, who sends one of his sons to Bangladesh, the various activist groups, or Marcus Malfen, who manipulates the basic element of life itself. Malfen is the character who most radically tries to eliminate accident from life when he creates FutureMouse, but, like all other determinists and essentialists, he fails. White Teeth promotes an open, permissive position towards life, and one that leaves much scope for identification on the part of a general television audience. On top of that, the adaptation makes an effort to make a popular novel even more popular. This is particularly obvious in the way it exploits its material’s potential for nostalgia and a fashionable retro appeal, through the clothes, hairstyle and make-up of the characters, a matching style of interiors and exteriors, and especially its use of vintage pop music. In his review in the Guardian, Mark Lawson (2002) specifically noted “the use of Top 40 time markers - T. Rex, Cockney Rebel, Slade and so on” and felt that this occasionally made “the project feel like a soundtrack album that has had a drama based on it.” The visual and music styles of the television White Teeth are those of a British cultural ‘mainstream’ and thus help to establish its ‘ethnic’ characters From White Teeth to Britz 237 19 See MediaGuardian for 18 September 2002, which judged the first night audience share as “solid but unspectacular” (http: / / www.guardian.co./ uk/ media/ 2002/ sep/ 18/ overnights), and BARB’s “Weekly Viewing Summary” for w/ e 22/ 09/ 2002 (http: / / www.barb.co.uk. viewingsummary/ weekreports). 20 For the wider context of this change, see also the contributions on literature, film and visual art in Eckstein et al. (2008). as part of Britain. At the same time, this Britain - or at least its capital - is presented as visibly multi-ethnic from the 1970s onwards, with a white character, Archie, deeply embedded within the ethnic transformation of his country. Archie is the prime vehicle through which multiculturalism is depicted as something not exotic but a natural context at least of a North Londoner’s life. Conflicts between and within the various ethnicities are certainly also shown. However, what influences the characters’ lives to a far greater extent are the factors with which a mainstream audience, whose preferred television fare are soaps and related drama, will be able to empathise: generational and family conflicts, i.e. problems which everybody will have experienced in some form or other, quite independently of their cultural background. The space White Teeth portrays on primetime television is an urban, transcultural Britain of the kind politically favoured around the year 2000, and it presents this agenda in a guise of entertainment which attracted a “solid” audience in the 10 pm slot, from 2.2 million for the first episode to 2.42 million for the last episode. 19 A few years later, the White Teeth phenomenon is seen with greater caution. 20 An article in the Sunday Times of 7 February 2008, for instance, cites a critique that finds Smith’s novel far too optimistic: “White Teeth, the novel that made Britain feel good about the state of its race relations, has been accused of whitewashing the truth by the real-life model for one of its characters.” (Chittenden 2008) As sketched above, a ‘feel-good’ element is even stronger in the television adaptation. It would be wrong, however, to accuse national primetime television in general of whitewashing Britain’s race relations and cheerleading multi-ethnic Britain. There was more critical television drama in the early 2000s, and for very recent years, one may even diagnose another shift in representation. 4 Post-Multiethnic Television? Only one year after White Teeth, Channel 4 broadcast a two-part drama about Asians in London, Second Generation (2003). Its plot is inspired by a King Lear constellation of fathers on the one, and daughters and sons on the other hand. It presents the conflicts of two elderly Asian men (migrants who have built up a food factory) and their second-generation offspring. Although the young people, who are affluent middle-class, seem to be well-integrated Barbara Korte 238 21 Kosminsky’s work includes, among others, a critical documentary on The Falklands War: The True Story (1987). in a London where transculturality has become fashionable and ethnicities appear to mix easily, the film ends with one of the daughters rejecting her white fiancé, falling in love again with her former Asian boyfriend and taking her disturbed father back to India in order to live there with him. This is the stuff of tragedy, where Britain emerges as a diasporic space even for (some of) those Asians who have a birthright to be there. Second Generation anticipated a new problem narrative around (Muslim) Asians on primetime television in the later 2000s, which suggests that the attacks of 7/ 7 and an increased fear of Islamist terror have not left the regulation of television unaffected. A report commissioned by the Greater London Authority in late 2007 indicates the degree to which the representation of British Muslims has tended to become ‘negative’ over the past few years. Referring to the print media, it states that “[o]f the 352 articles that referred to Islam and Muslims 91 per cent were judged to be negative in their associations.” (GLA 2007) In her column in the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai Brown accused the BBC of a similar shift in representation, as part of a more general turn to the right and a discontinuation of established quality programmes: This act of vandalism was followed by an announcement of a season of programmes on the ‘besieged’ white working classes. Nick Griffin of the BNP could well be their consultant. Are migrants going to get their series ‘Scapegoats’? […] Public-service broadcasters must make uncomfortable programmes on any group or on immigration - and there are excellent examples of responsible, critical journalism. But a whole series propagandising against multiracial Briton [sic]? To validate the race hate that sloshes all over our isles, from playgrounds to football pitches? Some researcher rang to discuss one programme ‘re-appraising’ Enoch Powell. What’s to reappraise? My money is being used to reassure people who hate people like me. This is much worse than mere dumbing down. Belligerence is sought - bring on the alpha right wingers. […] The rabidly anti-immigration Andrew Green of Migrationwatch (mysteriously funded) is their prophet […]. Fashion moves on, the culture is now noisy and intolerant and the Beeb follows, too feeble to stand up for its own integrity. […] And complaints by black and Asian Britons are heeded less than the sounds of birds in the city. (Alibhai Brown 2007) A tendency toward a more disillusioned and ambivalent assessment of multiethnic Britain has also reached Channel 4. Its television drama Britz (2007) was directed by Peter Kosminsky, a filmmaker above suspicion of favouring right ideology. 21 Nevertheless, the drama’s plot helps to strengthen the From White Teeth to Britz 239 perception of British Muslims as a potentially dangerous social problem, even though one of its Muslim protagonists explicitly joins the fight against terror: Britz is about a brother and sister who are drawn apart by their reactions to the treatment of Muslims in British society. She decides to become a suicide bomber, while he joins MI5 and has to fight his own sibling’s planned act of terrorism. Such trends in the depiction of Asians in Britain should not be taken as a complete landslide in representational agendas. However, they constitute a significant shift if compared to primetime television in the late 1990s - and in comparison to the dominant manner in which black Britons were represented on mainstream television during 2007. In the context of the Abolition Anniversary, British television joined a popular celebratory note in the presentation of Black Britain and its past, with numerous documentary and dramatic productions focussing on the slave trade and its abolition, including biopics on William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano. Such developments suggest a new constellation in the mainstream television regulation of multiethnic Britain: Light entertainment no longer seems to be the keynote, at least with regard to British (Muslim) Asians, and celebration has been narrowed to ethnicities dissociated from the terror threat. It remains to be seen how this most recent shift - and split - in representation will develop further, and to which counter-representations it may give rise. Bibliography Alibhai Brown, Yasmin (2007). “How Did the BBC Fall Into the Hands of Right-Wingers? ” The Independent (26 November 2007). 25. The Arts Council of England (1999). Whose Heritage? The Impact of Cultural Diversity on Britain’s Living Heritage. London: The Arts Council of England. BBC (2004). “Governor’s Review of Objectives.” Annual Report. 12-23. Brah, Avtar (2008). Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Chittenden, Maurice (2008). “Zadie Didn’t Tell the Real Race Story.” The Sunday Times (7 February 2008). http: / / www.timesonline.co.uk [accessed 8 February 2008]. du Gay, Paul et al. (1997). Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Milton Keynes: The Open University/ London: Sage. Eckstein, Lars / Barbara Korte / Ulrike Pirker / Christoph Reinfandt (2008). Multiethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives on Literature, Film and the Arts. Amsterdam: Rodopi. GLA (2007). “The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media (November 2007).” http: / / www.london.gov.uk/ mayor/ euqlities/ docs/ commonground_ summary.pdf [accessed February 2008]. Hall, Stuart (1996). “New Ethnicities.” In: Houston A. Baker et al. (eds.). Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Chicago: U of Chicago P. 163-172. Hall, Stuart (1997). “The Centrality of Culture: Notes on the Cultural Revolutions of Our Time.” In: Kenneth Thompson (ed.). Media and Cultural Regulation. Milton Keynes: Open University/ London: Sage. 208-238. Barbara Korte 240 Head, Dominic (2003). “Zadie Smith’s White Teeth: Multiculturalism for the Millennium.” In: Richard Lane et al. (eds.). Contemporary British Fiction. Cambridge: Polity Press. 106-119. Korte, Barbara / Claudia Sternberg (2004). Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lawson, Mark (2002). “Review of White Teeth.” The Guardian (16 September 2002). Malik, Sarita (2002). Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television. London: Sage. O’Grady, Kathleen (2002). “White Teeth: A Conversation with Author Zadie Smith.” Atlantis, 27: 1 (Fall/ Winter). 105-111. Parekh, Bhikhu (2000). The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: Report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. London: Profile. Pines, Jim (ed.) (1992). Black and White in Colour: Black People in British Television since 1936. London: British Film Institute. Rupp, Jan (2006). “Memorial Culture in Transformation: The Postcolonial Tradition and Second-Generation ‘Hy-Brits’ in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.” In: Ansgar Nünning et al. (eds.). Literature and Memory: Theoretical Paradigms, Genres, Functions. Tübingen: Francke. 293-303. Safran, William (1991). “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1. 83-99. Singh, Bhrigupati (2006). “Narrating Injustice: British Cultural Studies and Its Media.” Television and New Media 7: 2. 135-153. Smith, Zadie (2001). White Teeth. London: Penguin. Sommer, Roy (2001). Fictions of Migration: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Gattungstypologie des zeitgenössischen interkulturellen Romans in Großbritannien. Trier: WVT. Williams, Jack (2004). Entertaining the Nation: A Social History of British Television. Phoenix Mill: Sutton. Barbara Korte Englisches Seminar Universität Freiburg 1 Für eine systematische Einführung in die Intermedialitätsdebatte s. Rajewsky 2004; Wolf 2005; Huber/ Keitel/ Süß (Hrsgg.) 2007; zu einem Vergleich einzelner Medien s. auch die Rodopi-Reihen Word and Music Studies (2001 ff.), Studies in Intermediality (2006 ff.) u.a.m. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz: Ein erster Schritt zum ‘danse à deux’ Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner Ein Medium, das in der noch jungen Disziplin der Intermedialitätsforschung bisher noch kaum Beachtung gefunden hat, ist Tanz. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, einen intermedialen Dialog zwischen der Sprache (als dem wohl am besten erforschten Kommunikationsmittel) und dem Tanz zu etablieren und in einer wechselseitigen Beleuchtung struktureller Analogien zwischen den unterschiedlichen semiotischen Systemen von Sprache und Tanz aufzuzeigen, dass Tanz als Kombination von symbolischen, ikonischen und indexikalischen Zeichen über eine eigene ‘Sprache’ verfügt, deren Einheiten sich über Prozesse der Selektion und Kombination zu immer größeren Einheiten zusammenfügen lassen (Bewegung, Schritt, Figur, Choreographie). Am Beispiel des Menuetts als der wichtigsten Tanzform an den europäischen Fürstenhöfen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts wird illustriert, wie und auf welche Weise Tanz ‘bedeutet’ und welche politischen, sozialen und ästhetischen Botschaften durch nicht-sprachliche Mittel transportiert werden können. 1 Einleitung - Aufforderung zum Tanz Zu den neueren Entwicklungen in den Geisteswissenschaften zählt ein zunehmendes Interesse an der Erforschung der Wechselwirkung und gegenseitigen Beeinflussung der verschiedenen Künste und Medien im Rahmen der neu begründeten Intermedialitätsforschung. So finden sich inzwischen zahlreiche Studien zu den Unterschieden und Ähnlichkeiten in Literatur, Film, Musik und den bildenden Künsten. 1 Eine Form des künst- Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 242 2 Zur politischen Funktion des Tanzes als Herrschaftslegitimierung im Lauf der Jahrhunderte s. Braun/ Gugerli 1993. 3 Ein prominentes Beispiel dafür im englischsprachigen Raum ist die Masque der Stuart-Zeit, in welcher die Bühnengestaltung dem bekanntesten Architekten der Zeit, Inigo Jones, oblag. Für die Masques von Ben Jonson sind z.B. Skizzen für den oft mythologisch beeinflussten Aufbau der Bühne erhalten (vgl. Meagher 1966). 4 Dadurch wird die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tanz auch zu einem wichtigen Teil der Performance Studies (s. dazu Richard Schechners umfassende Darstellung dieses neuen Forschungszweiges, 2006). 5 Vgl. zur ‘Absolutheit’ des Dramas Pfister 1994, bes. 19f.; zur Einmaligkeit historischer Aufführungen, insbesondere im Tanz, s. Franko/ Richard (Hrsgg.) 2000. 6 Davon zeugt nicht nur das Drama von Shakespeare bis zur Gegenwart, sondern auch Gattungen wie die Oper, die Operette und das Musical. 7 Bigand und Poulin-Charronnat (2006: 121f.) bezeichnen den Tanz als “musical creation performed without any instrument”. Auch historisch betrachtet wurden Tanz und Musik lange Zeit in einer Berufsgruppe vereint. Erst im Jahr 1661 kam es zunächst in Frankreich mit der Gründung der Académie Royale de la Danse unter Ludwig XIV zur Trennung der Musiker von den Tanzmeistern. lerischen Ausdrucks, die bisher noch so gut wie keine Beachtung gefunden hat, ist der Tanz (s. Pfandl-Buchegger/ Rottensteiner 2008). Das ist umso erstaunlicher, als dem Tanz über Jahrhunderte nicht nur eine wichtige kulturelle und soziale Funktion zukam, sondern er oft auch eine eminent politische Rolle spielte. 2 Außerdem hat gerade der Tanz eine große Affinität zu einer Reihe der oben erwähnten künstlerischen Medien, sowohl zur Musik wie auch zu Drama und Film. Denn Tanz ist eine Kombination von verschiedenen medialen Formen, eine Verbindung von Bewegung im Raum (oft mit Gestik und Mimik) mit Musik und Sprache, die in der theatralischen Form sogar die Architektur mit einschließen kann. 3 Einige der Gemeinsamkeiten des Tanzes mit den genannten Künsten sind dabei offensichtlich. Wie Musik und Lyrik spricht Tanz direkt die Gefühle an. Die Bildhaftigkeit der Darstellung und die Vermittlung von Bedeutung nicht in sequentieller, linearer Verarbeitung, sondern in ‘Gestalt’-Form ist eine weitere Eigenschaft, die der Tanz mit der Lyrik, aber auch der Malerei teilt. Parallelen weist der Tanz aufgrund des Aufführungsaspekts speziell mit dem Theater auf. 4 Für tänzerische Aufführungen gilt, ebenso wie für Theaterstücke, die Absolutheit und Einmaligkeit der Präsentation. 5 Wie das Drama ist Tanz ein inhärent plurimediales Medium, weshalb sich Tanz auch problemlos in die dramatische Darstellung einbinden lässt und zu einem integrativen Bestandteil von Bühnenaufführungen werden kann. 6 Ob der intensiven Verbindung zwischen Tanz und Musik wird der Tanz gelegentlich als eine Ausdrucksform von Musik gesehen 7 , denn Tanz ist selbst ohne musikalische Begleitung immer rhythmisierte Bewegung, die gewissen ‘harmonischen’ Mustern folgt. Umgekehrt verfügt Musik über ein großes Potential an inhärenter ‘Bewegung’, die allein durch das Anhören von musikalischen Strukturen in der Zuhörerschaft ausgelöst werden und sich in bestimmten Formen von körperlicher Bewegung manifestieren kann. Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 243 Im Gegensatz zur Musik kann Tanz allerdings nicht nur abstrakt, sondern auch konkret darstellen, weil sein Darstellungsrepertoire auch abbildende Zeichen umfasst. Tanz kann in manchen Formen (am offensichtlichsten im Ballett) ganze Geschichten ‘erzählen’, indem die Inhalte in einer zeitlichen und kausalen Abfolge ‘nachgestellt’ werden, wobei sich der Tanz dazu allerdings einer anderen ‘Sprache’ als etwa die Literatur bedient. In diesem Aufsatz soll eine solche ‘Sprache des Tanzes’, seine Ausdrucks- und Darstellungsformen, genauer untersucht werden. Denn der offensichtliche Unterschied zwischen dem Tanz und anderen Medien wie Sprache, Literatur, Musik oder Malerei besteht zunächst in der Verwendung eines unterschiedlichen semiotischen Systems: Tanz vermittelt seine Botschaft nicht durch sprachliche oder musikalische, bzw. akustische und rein visuelle Zeichen, sondern durch eine Kombination von visuellen und haptischen Zeichen, in Form von Bewegung, Gestik und Körpersprache. Um zu zeigen, wie im Tanz Inhalte transportiert werden, welche medienspezifischen Mittel dabei zur Verwendung kommen, welche Zeichen eingesetzt und wie diese miteinander kombiniert werden, wird es zunächst erforderlich sein, eine solche ‘Sprache’ des Tanzes überhaupt erst zu definieren, sowie im Vergleich mit der menschlichen Sprache die tänzerischen Mittel des Ausdruckes näher zu beleuchten. Die Erstellung eines semiotischen Systems, auf dem Tanz basiert - wie und wodurch Tanz ‘bedeutet’ -, ist eine der ersten Aufgaben, zu deren Lösung auch die Erkenntnisse beitragen können, die sich aus den verschiedenen Notationsformen des Tanzes gewinnen lassen. Einen weiteren Schritt wird daher eine Darstellung der Geschichte des Tanzes und seiner Notationen bilden. Schließlich soll anhand der Analyse einer speziellen Form des Tanzes, des Menuetts, gezeigt werden, auf welche Weise der Tanz - im Vergleich zur menschlichen Sprache - Botschaften übermittelt und welche Botschaften dies sind. Eine Beschränkung auf den Vergleich mit der sprachlichen Vermittlung erscheint in einer ersten Bestandsaufnahme angesagt, da eine Einbeziehung weiterer Medien den Rahmen dieses Aufsatzes sprengen würde. Außerdem ist die Sprache das wohl am besten erforschte Kommunikationsmittel und sprachliche Zeichen eignen sich besonders gut, um gleichsam als Folie für den Tanz ein adäquates semiotisches Instrumentarium erstellen zu helfen. Die wechselseitige Erhellung des sprachlichen und tänzerischen Mediums verspricht einen doppelten Nutzen. Für die Sprache und die Sprachkunst besteht die Möglichkeit, durch die Anwendung ihrer Analysekriterien auf ein anderes Medium ihr eigenes Instrumentarium zu erproben und größere Klarheit bezüglich eines möglichen Definitionsrahmens zu gewinnen. Für den Tanz und die Tanzforschung bietet sich die Gelegenheit, im Vergleich mit anderen Medien deutlicher als in einer mono-medialen Analyse die Besonderheiten und charakteristischen Merkmale des eigenen Mediums zu erkennen. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 244 8 Wie so oft ist es der soziale und kulturelle Kontext, der darüber entscheidet, ob es sich um Tanz oder eine pragmatischere Form eines regelmäßigen, komplexen Bewegungsverhaltens handelt (wie etwa Laufen, das Mähen eines Schnitters etc.). 2 Tanz: Definition, Geschichte und Notation 2.1 Was ist Tanz? Sucht man in einschlägigen Nachschlagewerken nach einer Definition für den Tanz, so trifft man auf ähnliche Schwierigkeiten wie bei dem Versuch, etwa den Begriff ‘Literatur’ zu definieren. Aufgrund seiner historischen und generischen Vielfalt und der Tatsache, dass Tanz ein in vielen unterschiedlichen Gesellschaftsformen verbreitetes Medium ist, ist es kaum möglich, sich einer Bestimmung des Begriffs in mehr als allgemeiner Manier zu nähern. In einer der umfassendsten neueren Schriften zum Tanz (Dahms 2001: 1 u. 3) wird dazu Folgendes vermerkt: Eine allgemein gültige Definition für Tanz erscheint angesichts der vielfältigen kulturellen und historischen Erscheinungsformen nahezu unmöglich, differieren doch Bewegungsmuster und Funktionen innerhalb verschiedener Gesellschaften und Zeiten ebenso wie der den diversen Phänomenen jeweils zuerkannte Status oder die ihnen zugeordneten Bezeichnungen. […] Am ehesten noch ist Tanz als geordnete Bewegung eines Körpers in Raum und Zeit zu begreifen. Jeder Tanz repräsentiert eine spezifische Formung von Körper, Raum und Zeit. Die konkrete Gestaltung dieser Parameter ist jeweils abhängig vom kulturellen und historischen Kontext […]. In ihrem Versuch, Tanz anhand seiner wichtigsten ‘Bestandteile’ zu beschreiben, liefert Dahms jene Parameter, die es in der Folge zu untersuchen gilt, wobei anzumerken ist, dass Tanz in diesem Zusammenhang als gestalthafte Bewegung mit kommunikativer Funktion gesehen wird, also keine funktionale Ausrichtung hat 8 : Bewegung, Raum, Zeit und die Verankerung im jeweiligen kulturellen Kontext. Bewegung bezieht sich dabei auf die Schritte und Körperbewegungen als jene Einzelelemente, welche entlang eines Raumweges entsprechend einem bestimmten Rhythmus (der die zeitliche Abfolge angibt und damit das Ordnungsprinzip darstellt) aneinandergereiht werden und eine Struktur, ein Ganzes ergeben, dem je nach kulturellem und historischem Kontext eine bestimmte Aussage zugeschrieben wird. Bevor diese Parameter jedoch genauer analysiert werden, soll ein Überblick über die Geschichte des Tanzes und seiner Notation zunächst noch klären, welche Erkenntnisse sich diesbezüglich aus einer historischen Betrachtung ableiten lassen. Da der Tanz im 19. Jahrhundert von der Notation und den Inhalten her eine Neuorientierung erfährt, die einer gesonderten Betrachtung bedarf, und Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 245 9 Aus Ben Jonsons Masque Pleasure reconciled to Virtue (Jonson 1970: 489). 10 Ludwig XIV z.B., der ein hervorragender Tänzer war und dessen Beiname ‘roi soleil’ aus einer Tanzchoreographie - dem Ballet de la nuit - stammt, in der Ludwig 1653 die Rolle der aufgehenden Sonne verkörperte, erhielt ab dem 8. Lebensjahr täglich (über 20 Jahre lang) Tanzunterricht (vgl. Hilton 1981: 7). 11 Arbeau verweist in seiner Orchésographie (1588) auf die gesundheitsfördernde Wirkung für alle Altersklassen. Besonders für Mädchen und Frauen, denen männliche Formen der Leibesübungen (wie Fechten oder Ballspiele) nicht zugänglich waren, wird der Tanz als Körperertüchtigung empfohlen (s. 2v und 6v). für unsere Zwecke v.a. die Entwicklung bis in die Barockzeit von Interesse ist, wird das Hauptaugenmerk in der Folge der Geschichte des Tanzes bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts gelten. 2.2 Die Geschichte der Tanzkunst For Dauncing is an exercise not only shews y e mouers wit, but maketh y e beholder wise, as he hath powre to rise to it. 9 Die historische Überlieferung europäischer Tanzschriften setzt im 15. Jahrhundert mit den ersten erhalten gebliebenen Tanztraktaten ein. Diese in Italien und Frankreich entstandenen Tanzschriften enthalten neben den Schrittbeschreibungen vollständige Choreographien und die Musik der Tänze - also bereits alle jene Elemente einer Sprache des Tanzes, die auch Dahms anspricht: Schritte, Choreographie (i.e. die Raumwege) und Musik (i.e. Zeit). Vor allem in Italien erheben die Autoren dieser Traktate den Anspruch, dass Tanzen nicht nur eine Kunst, sondern auch eine Wissenschaft sei, welche die physischen und intellektuellen Kräfte des Menschen in gleicher Weise beanspruche. Die Tanztheorien der Renaissance verstanden das Tanzen als ars saltandi, als ernstzunehmende Kunst und Wissenschaft, und stilisierten es zu einer der artes liberales, die zu erlernen eines geordneten Unterrichts bedurfte. Dass dem Tanz im Ausbildungskanon der höfischen Gesellschaft bis weit ins 18. Jahrhundert sogar eine ganz zentrale Rolle zuerkannt wurde, erklärt die Ernsthaftigkeit, mit der tänzerische Fertigkeiten mit der Unterstützung eines Tanzmeisters im täglichen (! ) Unterricht kultiviert und diskutiert wurden. 10 Nicht das Vergnügen am Tanz stand an erster Stelle, vorrangig war vielmehr, dass das Tanzen die Moral hob, gesellschaftlich nutzbringend und der Gesundheit zuträglich war, sowie den Geist trainierte. 11 Tanz wurde als Ausdrucksform von Harmonie und Ordnung, als lebendiges Abbild menschlicher Handlungen und stilisierter Ausdruck geheimer Gedanken gesehen und übertraf, laut Einschätzung der zeitgenössischen Tanztheoretiker, durch Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 246 12 Guillaume Colletet spricht in seinem Kommentar zum ballet de cour von 1623 die Verbindung des Tanzes zur bekannten ‘ut pictura poesis Tradition’ der Antike an (vgl. McGowan 1963: Kapitel 9). 13 Arbeau etwa schreibt in seiner Orchésographie 1588 (fol. 5r, v): “Ie vous ay ia dit, quelle [la danse] depend de la musique & modulations d’icelle: car sans la vertu rithmique, la dance seroit obscure & confuse: daultant qu’il fault que les gestes des membres accompaignent les cadances des instruments musicaulx, & ne fault pas que le pied parle d’un, & l’instrument daultre. Mais principallement tous les doctes tiennent que la dance est une espece de Rhetorique muette, par laquelle l’Orateur peult par ses mouvements, sans parler un seul mot, se faire entendre, & persuader aux spectateurs, quil est gaillard digne d’estre loué, aymé, & chery.” [Ich habe Euch schon gesagt, dass der Tanz von der Musik und ihren Modulationen abhängt, denn ohne das rhythmische Element wäre der Tanz unklar und ungeordnet: umso mehr ist es notwendig, dass die Bewegungen der Gliedmaßen die Kadenzen der Musikinstrumente begleiten, und es darf nicht der Fuß das eine ausdrückt, und das Instrument etwas Anderes. Aber in der Hauptsache sind sich alle Gelehrten einig, dass der Tanz eine Art stumme Rhetorik sei, durch welche der ‘Sprecher’ sich mithilfe seiner Bewegungen, ohne ein Wort zu sagen, für die Zuschauer hörbar machen und sie davon überzeugen kann, dass er frei und froh es verdient, gelobt, geliebt und liebkost zu werden.] Bereits Lukian stellt Tanz und Rhetorik als parallele Künste dar (1788/ 89: 401 und 426). 14 Wie beeindruckend diese Leistungen waren, wird auch für heutige Leser ermessbar, wenn man bedenkt, dass die Galliarde ein sehr anspruchsvoller gesprungener Tanz war, der eine große Körperbeherrschung und ‘Fitness’ erforderte. das ihm innewohnende Imitationspotential, alle anderen Künste. 12 Seine Expressivität rückte ihn in die Nähe der Rhetorik. In den Tanztraktaten vom 15. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert wird diese Analogie zur Rhetorik, im Sinne einer rhétorique muette, einer stummen Rhetorik, bei welcher die ‘Sprecher’ sich nur durch Bewegungen verständlich machen, wiederholt angesprochen. 13 Darüber hinaus wurde das Tanzen speziell im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert stark instrumentalisiert. So wurde beispielsweise am englischen Hof besonders unter Elisabeth I. der Tanz als Machtwerkzeug eingesetzt und für Propagandazwecke genutzt, wie etwa um Botschaften über den ausgezeichneten Gesundheitszustand der Königin ins Ausland zu tragen (z.B. auch an ihren potentiellen Nachfolger in Schottland, James VI). Im Jahr 1598, als Elisabeth bereits 56 Jahre alt war, schrieb Sir John Stanhope, ein Höfling, noch voll Bewunderung über seine Königin: “The Q. is so well as I assure you VI or VII gallyards in a mornynge, besides musycke & syngynge, is her ordinary exercyse.” (Chamberlin 1922: 109) Sogar 1602, ein Jahr vor dem Tod Elisabeths, berichtete der französische Gesandte de Beaumont, dass die Königin “with a disposition admirable for her age” mit dem Herzog von Nevers eine Galliarde getanzt habe (ebd. 111). 14 Tanz war außerdem einer der entscheidenden Regulatoren für den Hofzugang. Um die Gunst einer versierten und leidenschaftlichen Tänzerin wie Elisabeth zu erringen, musste man, wie sie selbst, vor den kritischen Augen des versammelten Hofes in der Galliarde brillieren können, - und so mancher Höfling soll seine Stellung bei Hof der Exzellenz seiner Tanzkünste Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 247 15 Das Tanzrepertoire eines englischen Höflings zur damaligen Zeit umfasste eine ganze Reihe unterschiedlicher Tänze, einige mit virtuosem Charakter: Pavane, Measure, Passamezzo, Almain, Galliarde, Coranto, Volta, Duret, Canario, Spagnoletto, Branle. 16 Brissenden unterscheidet in seiner Untersuchung des Tanzes und von Tanzmetaphern in Shakespeares Stücken verschiedene Funktionen des Tanzes: z.B. sieht er Tanz als Symbol für Ordnung und Harmonie in den Komödien, in den Tragödien dagegen in Verbindung mit Tod und Sterben, wie z.B. in Romeo and Juliet (vgl. 1981: 63ff.). 17 John Davies verfasste “Orchestra” 1594 als Student am Middle Temple. Das Gedicht, ein Dialog zwischen Penelope und Antonius, umfasst 131 Strophen. Davies legt hier zwei grundlegende metaphorische Interpretationen des Tanzbegriffes vor - Tanz als Verkörperung der Liebe und Tanz als universales Ordnungsprinzip. Die Ordnung der Schöpfung und der Gesellschaft spiegeln sich in der Ordnung des Tanzes. Damit legt Davies als zentrale Idee des Textes die Übereinstimmung zwischen dem Mikro- und dem Makrokosmos fest (vgl. Thesiger 1973: 277-304). verdankt haben. 15 Dass gerade die Beherrschung der Galliarde mit Vitalität und v.a. auch Virilität gleichgesetzt wurde, lässt sich nicht nur aus Briefen der Zeit, sondern auch den Stücken des größten elisabethanischen Dramatikers entnehmen. Shakespeare bezieht sich wiederholt auf die “nimble galliard” (z.B. in Henry V, I.i.252), die aufgrund der Tatsache, dass fünf Schritte auf sechs Noten verteilt werden mussten, auch als cinque-pace bezeichnet wurde. In Much Ado About Nothing etwa vergleicht Beatrice die drei Stadien der Liebe (das Werben, das Heiraten und die lange Reue danach) mit drei Tänzen - Jig (einem lebhaften Sprungtanz), Measure (einem getragenen, ruhigen Schreittanz ) und der Galliarde (einem Tanz aus Stoßschritten und komplizierten Sprüngen, der eine beständige Steigerung an Virtuosität erforderte, in der sich die Tänzer mehrfach selbst überboten): Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sinks into his grave. (II.i.77-84) Tanz ist bei Shakespeare so eng an die dramatische Struktur des Theaterstückes gebunden, dass in seinen Komödien und Tragödien der Tanz mitunter Teil der Handlung wird. So orientieren sich sogar die Dialoge manchmal an Tanzformen, oder es werden mit dem Schritt bestimmte Gefühle und Vorstellungen assoziiert, wodurch der Tanz zum integrativen Bestandteil der Aussage des Theaterstückes wird. 16 Auf eine ganz besondere, einzigartige Weise wird die Bedeutsamkeit des Tanzens für den Höfling der Spätrenaissance im Jahr 1594 von Sir John Davies in seinem Gedicht “Orchestra or a Poem of Dauncing” formuliert. 17 In seiner vom Neoplatonismus geprägten poetischen Darstellung scheint der Tanz als Ausdrucksform von Harmonie und Ordnung wie geschaffen, die Ordnung des Kosmos nachzubilden. Entsprechend den in den etablierten Schriften der Zeit über die Harmonie der Sphären, der Gesellschaftsord- Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 248 nung, der Proportionen und dem Maß aller Dinge festgelegten Ansichten werden die Bewegungen der Tänzer als Abbild der Bewegung der Sterne gesehen, die unmittelbaren Einfluss auf die Menschen nehmen können, indem sie die dargestellte Harmonie der Gestirne auf die Zuseher übertragen. Die Bedeutung des Tanzens ist auch aus den zahlreichen Diskussionen zu seiner Rechtfertigung ersichtlich. Bis ins späte 18. Jahrhundert herrschte eine vorwiegend apologetische Betrachtungsweise des Tanzes vor, die sich auf Lukians antike Schrift vom Tanz stützte. So lieferte beispielsweise Thomas Elyot in seiner 1531 erschienenen Abhandlung zur Erziehung The Govenour eine moralische Interpretation der Bassedanse - aus ihren Schritten lasse sich Lebensklugheit lernen, weshalb er Tanz für einen notwendigen Unterrichtsgegenstand und einen noblen und tugendhaften Zeitvertreib (“as well a necessary studie as a noble and vertuouse pastyme”) hielt (1907: 107). Zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts war es der englische Philosoph John Locke, der für den Tanz als Unterrichtsgegenstand, und zwar vom frühesten Alter an, plädierte. Für ihn lag die positive Wirkung des Tanzes in der Bewegungsschulung, die nicht nur die Grazie der Bewegung verbessere, sondern vor allen Dingen - für moderne Leser vielleicht unerwartet - ‘Männlichkeit’ verleihe: “Dancing being that which gives graceful Motions all the life, and above all things Manliness, and a becoming Confidence to young Children, I think it cannot be learn’t too early […].” (1968: 310) Die Wertigkeit des Tanzes als wesentlicher Bestandteil des täglichen Lebens lässt sich an vielen kontroversiellen Diskussionen, speziell an der Zahl der verschriftlichten Auseinandersetzungen, ablesen (vgl. Howard 1996). Umso erstaunlicher erscheint es, dass es nie zur Ausbildung einer einheitlichen Tanzschrift kam. 2.3 Notation Long was the Dancing Art unfix’d and free; Hence lost in Error and Uncertainty: No Precepts did it mind, or Rules obey, But ev’ry master taught a different way: Hence, e’re each new-born Dance was fully try’d, The lovely Product, ev’n in blooming dy’d: […] Till Fuillet at length, Great Name! arose, And did the Danse in Characters compose: Each lovely Grace by certain Marks he taught, And ev’ry Step in lasting Volumes wrote. (Jenyns 1729: 25f.) Eines der großen Desiderate des Tanzes über die Jahrhunderte hinweg ist demnach eine einheitliche, verbindliche Notation, die eine schriftliche Aufzeichnung der einzelnen Elemente und Bewegungsabläufe ermöglicht. Wie Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 249 Abb. 1: Arbeau, Orchésographie (1589: 66v). Claudia Jeschke in ihrem Buch Tanzschriften. Ihre Geschichte und Methode (1983: 17) mit Bedauern vermerkt, hat sich die Art der Notationszeichen und die Systematik der Methode, mit der Tänze aufgezeichnet wurden, im Laufe der Geschichte ständig verändert. Im Gegensatz zur Musik und zur Literatur ist es also ein schwieriges Unterfangen, einen Kodex der technischen Ausführungen der tänzerischen Formen im Lauf der Geschichte zu erstellen. Tanz besteht aus Bewegungskonventionen, auf welche die verschiedenen Tanzschriften mit jeweils entsprechenden Schriftkonzeptionen und Schriftzeichen reagierten. Bis ins 19. Jahrhundert stand die “reproduktionsorientierte Dokumentation” (Jeschke 2001: 15) von Tanzbewegungen mit Hilfe von formal-ästhetischen Kriterien im Vordergrund. Wortkürzel- und Bodenwegsnotationen waren die vorherrschenden Systeme, mit denen Schritte und Raumbewegungen als Gedächtnishilfe aufgezeichnet wurden. Eine erste bedeutende Quelle im 16. Jahrhundert, die Orchésographie von Thoinot Arbeau, beschreibt die einzelnen Schritte und Choreographien mit Worten, die Beziehung zwischen Bewegung und Musik ist in einer sog. ‘Tabulatur’ festgehalten. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 250 18 Wie Saftien (1994: 168f.) vermerkt, wiesen diese bisweilen, wie auch im obigen Beispiel ersichtlich, eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit mit der Gartenarchitektur der Zeit auf. Bei diesem Beispiel (Abb. 1) handelt es sich um eine Courante. Die Musik ist hier senkrecht angeordnet. Neben den Notenköpfen ist in kleinerer Schrift die Bewegung der Füße angegeben. Daneben sind in größerer Schrift die Schritte bezeichnet. Die Bewegungsangabe ‘pas de gaulche’ (= Schritt nach links) und ‘pieds ioncts’ (= Füße schließen bzw. Füße geschlossen) ergibt den sog. ‘Schritt’ - ‘simple gaulche’ (= Simple links, also einfacher Schritt nach links), darauf folgend einen einfachen Schritt nach rechts und daran anschließend einen Doppelschritt nach links (‘double a gaulche’). Wie aus den Noten ersichtlich wird, umfasst der Schritt nach links zwei Notenwerte und das Schließen der Füße danach wiederum zwei Notenwerte. Die italienischen Renaissancetanzmeister wie Fabritio Caroso (1581) und Cesare Negri (1602) verwenden in ihren Traktaten ebenfalls Wortbezeichnungen für die einzelnen Schritte. In der Beschreibung der Choreographien ihrer Balli benützen sie hingegen Wortkürzel für die einzelnen Schritte. Die Musik ist in Form von Lautentabulaturen hintangestellt. Die wohl einflussreichste Tanznotation stammt von Raoul-Auger Feuillet, der in seiner Chorégraphie 1700 ein ausgeklügeltes System von Schrittsymbolen und Bodenwegsaufzeichnungen entwickelte, die bis ins 19. Jahrhundert für die Fixierung von Tanzchoreographien verbindlich blieben. Feuillet verwendet zur Beschreibung der Schritte nicht mehr Worte, sondern Zeichen, mit denen sämtliche choreographischen Angaben genau dargestellt werden können. Seine Notation enthält neben den Noten, die über der Choreographie angegeben sind, auch den genauen Bodenweg der Tänzer. Er benützt dabei, wie in der Abbildung gekennzeichnet, je ein Symbol für die Dame bzw. den Herrn. Die Schrittsymbole sind entlang der Bodenwege angeordnet und geben genaue Auskunft über die Bewegung der Füße. Die Querstriche auf den Bodenwegslinien markieren je einen musikalischen Takt des über der Choreographie angeführten Musikbeispiels (Abb. 2). Ein Einzelschritt ist folgendermaßen aufgebaut: Anfang, Weg und Ende des Schrittes sind entlang einer Linie in Strichform nachgezeichnet. Diese Strichsymbole enthalten weiters Angaben bezüglich der Ausführung (Beugen, Strecken, Springen, Drehen etc.); aus ihrer Anordnung ist außerdem die Richtung (vorwärts, rückwärts, seitwärts) abzulesen (Abb. 3). Durch diese Einführung von graphischen Zeichen (anstelle der sprachlichen Zeichen) zur Beschreibung für alle Tanzschritte wurde es möglich, nicht mehr nur statische Zustände, sondern dynamische Abläufe darzustellen und damit ganze Choreographien aufzuzeichnen. 18 Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 251 19 Eine genauere Darstellung s. Jeschke 1983; zur Entwicklung von Symbolsystemen in einzelnen Kunstformen s.a. Nelson Goodman, The Languages of Art (1968: 211ff.). oben: Abb. 3: Einzelschritt Fleuret (Feuillet 1700a: 36). links: Abb. 2: Feuillet. Recueil de dance (1700a: 1). Ab dem 19. Jahrhundert wurde in verschiedenen Schriftkategorien ver sucht, die Gesamtheit der Bewegungsmöglichkeiten des menschlichen Körpers darzustellen, und es entwickelten sich eine Reihe von verschiedenen Notationsformen (Strichfigurenschrift, Laban-Notation, Benesh-Notation etc.). 19 3 Die tänzerische Kommunikation Tanz ist aufgrund seiner starken Expressivität eine Form von Kommunikation, in welcher auf kinästhetische Weise mithilfe von rhythmisierten Körperbewegungen und Gestik eine ‘Botschaft’ vermittelt wird. Die wichtigsten Kennzeichen ihrer ‘Vertextung’ sind Rhythmisierung und starke Musterbildung. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 252 20 Vgl. Danesi/ Perron 1999: 134f. Ein interessanter Befund der Evolutionspsychologie erklärt das menschliche Bedürfnis nach Bewegung als Schutzmechanismus aus der Frühzeit der Menschheit, der darauf zurückzuführen ist, dass ein ruhendes Ziel leichter anzugreifen war als ein bewegliches. 21 Jakobsons Modell (1964: 353ff.), das auf der Basis von Karl Bühlers Organonmodell aus den 1930iger Jahren entwickelt wurde, eignet sich (aufgrund seiner sechs konstitutiven Faktoren) auch für die Beschreibung von non-verbalen Kommunikationsprozessen. Grundsätzlich lassen sich für die tänzerische Kommunikation drei Funktionen unterscheiden: Einerseits handelt es sich um eine Form der ästhetischen Kommunikation, eine zweite wichtige Funktion hat der Tanz als Ritual für religiöse und kultische Zwecke. Eine dritte Funktion, die vor allem in unserer Zeit sehr stark im Vordergrund steht, ist die tänzerische Bewegung als Form der Erholung, als soziale Kommunikation und als therapeutisches Mittel in der Psychologie. 20 Wie die Sprache ist auch der Tanz eine Interaktion zwischen zwei Polen, einem Sender und einem Empfänger. Der Sender enkodiert, mithilfe eines speziellen Zeichen-Kodes, eine Botschaft an einen Empfänger, der diese Botschaft aufnimmt und wiederum dekodiert. Ausgehend von einem inzwischen weithin akzeptierten Modell 21 sind die Träger der Kommunikation also Sender und Empfänger, die mithilfe eines Kodes in einem bestimmten Kontext über ein bestimmtes Medium Botschaften austauschen. Kontext Sender Botschaft Empfänger Kode Kontakt(medium) Dieser Kontext ist ein Rahmen von institutionalisierten Regeln und kollektiven Erfahrungen: Im Falle des Menuetts etwa handelt es sich um das Leben und die Unterhaltungsgewohnheiten an den europäischen Höfen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, die als Bezugssystem für die verwendeten semiotischen Systeme dienen. Sender und Empfänger sind in diesem Fall Mitglieder der Aristokratie, es tanzen der König und seine Höflinge für eine geschlossene höfische Gesellschaft, die ein gemeinsames, den Mitgliedern dieser Gruppe verständliches Zeichensystem benützt, mit dem die zu vermittelnde Botschaft enkodiert ist - eine ‘Sprache’ des Tanzes. Im speziellen Fall des Menuetts würde sich demnach folgende Kommunikationssituation ergeben: europäischer Hof des 17. und 18. Jhs Höflinge Menuett Höflinge Sprache des Tanzes visuelles (bzw. kinesisches) Kontaktmedium Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 253 22 Vgl. dazu die Klassifikation von C.S. Peirce (1978, Bd. 2: Elements of Logic, § 228 und 275). In einem Makro-Rahmen kommunizieren also zunächst auf einer allgemeinen Ebenen über einen visuellen Kanal Tänzer mithilfe einer als Tanz enkodierten Botschaft mit den Zusehern, während auf einer zweiten Ebene innerhalb des Tanzes im Rahmen der vorgeschriebenen Choreographie eine kinesische Kommunikation zwischen den Tanzenden stattfindet: der Tänzerin und dem Tänzer des Menuetts, die sich (in einem genau vorgegebenen Muster) einander annähern und von einander entfernen und - in diesem Fall - mithilfe von Handbewegungen kommunizieren. Mit welchen Mitteln diese Kommunikation stattfinden kann, was also die Elemente einer ‘Sprache’ des Tanzes sind bzw. wie sie kombiniert werden und welche zusätzliche Bedeutung sich durch ihre Ausführung ergibt, soll im Folgenden in einem Vergleich mit der menschlichen Sprache näher beleuchtet werden, um die Besonderheiten der tänzerischen Vermittlung sichtbar zu machen. 4 Tanz als semiotisches System 4.1 Tanz als Kombination von ikonischen und symbolischen Zeichen und als Index 22 Tanz benützt zur Kommunikation zwei Arten von Zeichen - einerseits sind dies ikonische Zeichen: Nachahmung bzw. abbildender Nachvollzug von Bewegungen und Handlung. Andererseits basieren die verwendeten Zeichen ebenso wie in der Sprache auf einer Konvention, einer Übereinkunft der jeweiligen Kulturgemeinschaft, die Zeichen sind also auch symbolischer Natur, d.h. das Verstehen dieser Zeichen beruht auf dem Wissen der Zuschauer um die jeweilige Bedeutung der abbildenden Signifikanten, was impliziert, dass diese Übereinkunft und damit die Bedeutung der Zeichen stark vom Weltbild und den Normen und Wertsystemen der Zeit geprägt sind. Je nach Funktion können tänzerische Zeichen sowohl ikonische wie auch symbolische Darstellungen sein. Zu den ikonischen Zeichen gehören Raumwege, die geometrische Formen nachstellen, z.B. die Buchstaben des Alphabets, welche die Tänzer in den theatralischen Tänzen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts formierten, um Initialen oder ganze Namenszüge zu ehrender Personen abzubilden (wie im ballet de cour oder in der Masque der Stuartzeit). Als symbolische Zeichen im Tanz sind Kreis- und Kettenformationen zu werten, die Ewigkeit und Harmonie signalisieren. Komplexere symbolische Zeichen finden sich z.B. im “Ballet de M. Vendosme” von 1610, in welchem Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 254 Abb. 4: Heureux Destin (McGowan 1963: 37). die Tänzer Figuren austanzten, die einem alten Druidenalphabet folgten und damit Begriffe wie Amour Puissant, Vertueux Dessein, Renom Immortel oder, wie die folgende Illustration zeigt, Heureux Destin repräsentierten. Tanz kann aber auch insgesamt als Index fungieren, als ein Anzeichen bzw. als ein sozialer und politischer Indikator, wie anhand des Menuetts noch zu zeigen sein wird. 4.2 Tanz als Selektion und Kombination von Zeichen Ähnlich wie in der menschlichen Sprache sind auch für die Entstehung von tänzerischen Botschaften die zwei wichtigsten Prozesse die Selektion und die Kombination der verwendeten Elemente (vgl. Jakobson 1964: 358): es gibt einerseits ein Repertoire an Schritten, ein Schritt-‘Vokabular’, und andererseits ein Regelsystem für die Kombination dieses Schrittvokabulars, also eine ‘Grammatik’ des Tanzes, wie etwa die regole und avvertimenti der italienischen Tanztraktate des 16. Jahrhunderts oder die règles der französischen Tanzmeister. Dass die Sprache schon früh als Strukturmodell für den Tanz Vorbildcharakter hatte, zeigt sich an den Analogien, die bereits von den ersten Tanztheoretikern zwischen Sprache und Tanz hergestellt wurden. Schon Arbeau (1588: 43v) spricht davon, dass es gilt, wie in der Grammatik zunächst Wortklassen zu unterscheiden und sie sodann kongruent miteinander zu verbinden. Auch Feuillet orientiert sich an einem ‘grammatikalischen’ Schema bei der Definition von ‘Schritteinheiten’ und der Festlegung der Regeln für ihre Verbindung (Feuillet/ Dezais 1713: 1ff.). Ihre Bedeutung wurde von den allgemeinen ästhetischen Normen der Zeit und der ‘Gattung’, also der Art des Tanzes, bestimmt, welche wiederum die jeweilige Art der Ausführung der Schritte festlegte. Auch hier kann man also eine Unterscheidung von allgemein tänzerischen und tanzspezifischen Zeichen vornehmen, die in der Sprache der Unterscheidung zwischen Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 255 23 Eine Bassedanse ist aus mehreren so genannten mesures (= choreographischen Einheiten) aufgebaut. allgemein sprachlichen und sprachspezifischen Erscheinungen entspricht. So haben etwa bestimmte Bewegungen in verschiedenen Tänzen und zu verschiedenen Zeiten unterschiedliche Funktionen. In der mesure-Lehre der burgundisch-französischen Bassedanse des 15. Jahrhunderts beispielsweise werden Gesetzmäßigkeiten von Schrittkombinationen für Schrittmuster entwickelt, in denen die Reihenfolge und Anzahl der Schritte simple, double, reprise und branle festgelegt ist und diese für jede Bassedanse anders klassifiziert werden. 23 4.3 Die Einheiten der ‘Sprache’ des Tanzes Tanz setzt sich aus verschiedenen Bewegungen bzw. Bewegungsabläufen zusammen, die den ganzen Körper mit einschließen. Als kleinste Einheit kann man zunächst die Bewegung bezeichnen (mouvement, movimento), mehrere solcher Bewegungen bilden die nächstgrößere Einheit, den Schritt (pas), die Zusammensetzung der Schritte ergibt die Bewegung im Raum (Raumweg). Vergleicht man also die Sprache und den Tanz, könnte man folgende Entsprechungen feststellen: Sprache Tanz Laut/ Phonem Bewegung Lexem Schritt (pas) Syntagma Raumweg Text Choreographie Eine Bewegung hat, wie ein Phonem, eine distinktive (also eine bedeutungsunterscheidende) Funktion. Sie kann sich auf verschiedene Körperteile beziehen. Wie oben angesprochen, wurden diese Bewegungen bereits in der Tanztheorie der Barockzeit analysiert und in der Notation festgehalten: “Es heisset und bedeutet zwar das Wörtlein Mouvement eigentlich eine Bewegung, und wird in der wahren Tanz-Kunst so wolbey der Führ und Bewegung derer Arme, als auch derer Beine gebrauchet […].” (Taubert 1717: 509). Bereits 1717 findet sich in den Schriften des deutschen Tanzmeisters Gottfried Taubert eine Klassifizierung dieser Bewegung der Beine, in welcher ebenfalls Analogien zur Sprache gebildet werden: “So ist demnach zu wissen, dass die Schritte in der ganzen Tanzkunst überhaupt in V. Classen und Abschnitte, als I. die gerade, 2. die geöffnete, 3. runde, 4. gekrümmte und 5. geschlagene Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 256 24 Feuillet (ebd.) beschreibt Figur folgendermaßen: “Figure, est de suivre un chemin tracé avec art”. Schritte abgetheilet werden, welche so universal, als die Vocales in der Literatur oder Sprachkunst seyn.” (ebd.: 501). Diese Kombination von Fußbewegungen ergibt als nächstgrößere Einheit den Schritt. Feuillet (1700: 1) definiert den Schritt als “ce qui marche d’un lieu en un autre”, also die Bewegung eines Fußes von einer der fünf festgelegten Fußpositionen in eine andere. Der Schritt hat bereits selbst eine Bedeutung, insofern als er einem bestimmten System (= einem bestimmten Tanz) zugeordnet werden kann. Analog zur Sprache und ihren Lexemen gibt es verschiedene Arten von Schritten, die sich durch eine unterschiedliche Ausführung voneinander unterscheiden. Die Klassifikation erfolgt anhand einer Reihe von Kriterien: Art der Ausführung, Richtung, Art der Schrittfolge, Stellung der Tänzer etc. Aus der Kombination von Schritten ergeben sich unterschiedliche Raumwege (auch ‘Figuren’ 24 ), und je nach Tanzform und Zeit gibt es aufgrund der jeweiligen Konventionen verschiedene Aneinanderreihungen von Figuren zu einer Choreographie. Das Endergebnis ist eine ‘Gestalt’, eine Gesamtaussage, in welcher, in Anlehnung an Max Wertheimers Worte (1925: 39), die einzelnen Elemente als Teile des gesamten Systems von Relationen und Funktionen zur Gesamtbedeutung beitragen, aber auch jedes Einzelelement von den inneren Strukturgesetzen des Ganzen bestimmt wird. Diese inneren Strukturgesetze sind im Tanz, wie oben erwähnt, wesentlich von der zeitlich-rhythmischen Organisation und der Gestaltung des Raumes mitbedingt. Wie Raum und Zeit erlebt und wahrgenommen werden, ist allerdings stark von den historischen und kulturellen Wahrnehmungsmustern einer Gesellschaft abhängig und war daher im Laufe der Zeit immer wieder einem Wandel unterworfen. Welche Kriterien für die Wahrnehmung des 18. Jahrhunderts Gültigkeit hatten und in welchem Zusammenhang sie mit der Ästhetik der Zeit standen, auf welche Weise also eine komplexe Gesamtaussage eines Tanzes zustande kam, soll am Beispiel des Menuetts illustriert werden. Im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Tanztypen der Zeit hat das Menuett einen standardisierten Bodenweg und einen genau festgelegten Grundschritt, womit sein Strukturprinzip in jedem einzelnen seiner Bestandteile nachgezeichnet werden kann. 5 Das Menuett als Beispiel 5.1 Das Menuett Das Menuett war im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert der vorrangige Tanz an den europäischen Fürstenhöfen und galt sowohl als Indikator für die soziale Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 257 25 Zu Erklärungen für die Entstehung dieser Figur, die auf ein bereits in der Renaissance getanztes S als Möglichkeit des Platzwechsels der Tanzpartner zurückgeführt wird, s. Saftien 1994: 348f. 26 Auf diesen Umstand - des pas menus - wird manchmal auch der Name Menuett zurückgeführt. Ordnung der höfischen Gesellschaft, wie auch als Gradmesser für höchste Tanzkunst. ‘Tanzenkönnen’ wurde gleichgesetzt mit der Fähigkeit, das Menuett perfekt zu beherrschen. Daher finden sich auch in allen Tanzschriften des 18. Jahrhunderts ausführliche Beschreibungen für das Menuett. Ein Kennzeichen des Menuetts ist sein Schrittvokabular, das aus einem komplexen sog. ‘Pas de menuet’ besteht. Es handelt sich um einen perfekt stilisierten Grundschritt, zusammengesetzt aus einer Folge von Beugeschritten und steifen Schritten: “Der Pas de Menuet bestehet aus einer halben Coupé, zwei steiffen pas, und wieder einer halben Coupé”, wie Taubert (1717: 622) schreibt. Davon gab es allerdings mehrere, oft sehr komplizierte Varianten. Der charakteristische Bodenweg hatte für das zeremonielle Menuett die Form eines Z, 25 in das Handtouren, also Drehungen im Kreis mit der Fassung einer oder beider Hände der Partner, integriert wurden. Das folgende Bild aus der Tanzschrift von Gottfried Taubert illustriert die Hauptfigur des Menuetts, wie es im 18. Jahrhundert an allen europäischen Höfen getanzt wurde (Abb. 5). Auch Taubert verwendet die oben beschriebene Feuillet’sche Tanznotation. Die Zeit wird durch die Musik vorgegeben, die in Notenform beigefügt ist. Die Zuordnung der Schritte erfolgt taktweise. Der Bodenweg besteht hier, für den Herrn und die Dame, aus zwei Seitwärtsschritten nach links, zwei Schritten vorwärts auf der Diagonale mit einer halben Drehung und schließlich zwei Schritten nach rechts, von Dame und Herrn gegengleich ausgeführt. Die Tanzenden nehmen an den gegenüberliegenden Ecken der Tanzfläche Aufstellung und führen den Menuettschritt entlang der imaginären Z-Linie aus. Diese Z-Figur wurde mehrmals wiederholt, bevor sich die Tänzer in der Mitte der Diagonale zu einer Handtour die rechte Hand reichten, einen Kreis beschritten und danach ihren Weg getrennt weiter fortsetzten. Darauf konnte bei einer weiteren Begegnung eine zweite Handtour (diesmal mit der linken Hand) erfolgen. Nach mehreren weiteren Z-Figuren reichten sich die Tänzer bei ihrer Begegnung beide Hände und vollführten eine oder mehrere Kreisbewegungen im Uhrzeigersinn, danach beendeten sie mit einer Reverenz zueinander und zu den Zuschauern den Tanz. Eines der Hauptkriterien war die Ausführung der Tanzbewegungen. Das Menuett war ein lebhafter Tanz im schnellen Zeitmaß, wodurch die Schritte klein getanzt werden mussten. 26 Der Menuettschritt stellte hohe Anfor- Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 258 Abb. 5: Der Menuett-Grundschritt (Taubert 1717: 658). derungen an die Tänzer, weil nicht nur die Bewegung der Beine und der Füße, sondern auch die Haltung des Körpers, des Kopfes, der Arme und sogar der Finger genauestens vorgeschrieben war. Dabei durfte in keinem Moment der Bewegungsfluss und schon gar nicht die Balance (es wurde hauptsächlich auf dem Ballen getanzt) außer Kontrolle geraten. Trotz dieser rigorosen Reglementierung der Bewegungsabfolge und der Körperhaltung sollte die Ausführung möglichst leicht und elegant und scheinbar ohne Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 259 27 Diesen Unterschied im Körpergefühl und in der Körperhaltung der Barockzeit spricht auch Saftien an, wenn er der Steifheit der beschriebenen Bewegungen die Anmut ihrer Ausführung gegenüberstellt. Denn Steifheit bezog sich nur darauf, dass die Knie durchgestreckt sein mussten, es bedeutete nicht eine steife Körperhaltung insgesamt (vgl. Saftien 1994: 370f.). 28 Erst durch den Walzer kam es zu einer gänzlichen Veränderung des Tanzverhaltens - es gab nur mehr einen einfachen Grundschritt, der durch die ständigen Wiederholungen und Drehungen eine Art Bewegungsrausch und dadurch ein Gefühl der Befreiung erzeugte. Auch die große Gedächtnisleistung, die frühere Tänze mit ihrer komplizierten Abfolge von verschiedensten Figuren erforderten, war nicht mehr vonnöten (vgl. ebd.: 372f.). Anstrengung erfolgen. 27 Gerade im Menuett kam es auf die fließende Abfolge von plié und élevé, den schnellen Wechsel von gebeugten Schritten und auf dem Ballen getanzten Schritten, an. Die Ausrichtung des Körpers in die Höhe, die in der ersten Schrittbewegung des Menuett besonders deutlich sichtbar wird, führte bei geübten Tänzern zu einem Eindruck der Schwerelosigkeit und kunstvollen Leichtigkeit der Bewegung. Das Körpergefühl des Barock entsprach einer Mechanisierung des menschlichen Körpers, der als komplizierte Maschine gesehen wurde: Die Tanzbewegung wurde mechanisch präzise ausgeführt, von einer genauestens vorgegebenen Fußbewegung in die nächste. 28 Die Raumwege der barocken Choreographien waren rigoros nach geometrischen Prinzipien ausgerichtet, die Tanzfiguren waren symmetrisch angeordnet, die tanzenden Körper bildeten streng organisierte Figuren. Die Präzision der Form wird auch im Z des Raumwegs sichtbar, das sich als exakte Figur in die Totalität der geometrisch geordneten räumlichen Umgebung einschreibt und damit im perfekten Einklang mit ihrer Architektur steht. Der Raum wird zur Extension des rational denkenden Menschen. Ein wichtiges Kriterium für die Beurteilung der Harmonie des Gesamtbildes war dabei die Übereinstimmung von Bewegung und Musik, die Cadence. Neben der räumlichen Ordnung unterliegt der Tanz auch einer präzisen rhythmischen Ordnung in Form der beigegebenen Musik, die ab dem 18. Jahrhundert mithilfe von mechanischen Mitteln (mit Pendeln und Uhren) gemessen wurde. Trotz dieser genauen Festlegung ermöglichte das Wechselspiel von plié und élevé geübten Tänzern eine gewisse Flexibilität im spielerischen Umgang mit Spannung und Entspannung, wodurch sich eine - für unsere Zeit fast paradox erscheinende - Balance von Ordnung und Freiheit ergab: “Im Raster präziser mathematischer Zeiterfahrung kann die Seele sich entfalten. Kein anderer Tanz veranschaulicht das besser als das Menuett, bei dem ein vorgegebener choreographischer Rahmen den Ausdruck von Gefühl nicht nur zulässt, sondern geradezu verlangt”. (Saftien 1994: 382). Betrachtet man den kulturellen und historischen Kontext, wird augenscheinlich, dass das Menuett neben der Demonstration der Beherrschung und Disziplinierung des eigenen Körpers und seiner Bewegungsabläufe auf Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 260 der Mikroebene der inneren Gesetzmäßigkeit des menschlichen Organismus auf der Makroebene des Staates der öffentlichen Demonstration der höfischen Hierarchie und Ordnung diente, somit also auch eine indexikalische Funktion hatte. Bei Hof wurde das Menuett von einzelnen Paaren vor versammelter Hofgesellschaft getanzt. Wie alles am Menuett (Schritt, Raumweg und Körperhaltung) war auch die Abfolge der Paare in einem Zeremoniell genauestens festgelegt. Der französische Tanzmeisters Pierre Rameau beschreibt in Le Maître à danser (1725: 49-52) das Ballzeremoniell eines “grand Bal du Roy”, wie es am Hof der französischen Könige Ludwig XIV und Ludwig XV verpflichtend war. Nach der Absolvierung der Eröffnungstänze, welche die höfische Tanzgesellschaft in streng hierarchisch geordneter Formation hinter dem König und der Königin absolvierte, wurde mit den sukzessiven danses à deux, den Vorführungen der Einzelpaare, begonnen. Den Anfang machte selbstverständlich der König, wobei die Hofgesellschaft stehend zusah, wie der König mit der Königin oder der ranghöchsten Prinzessin das erste Menuett tanzte: C’est pourquoi après que le Roy a dansé le premier menuet, il va se placer, & tout le monde pour lors s’asseoit, d’autant que lorsque Sa Majesté danse tout le monde est debout: après quoy le Prince qui doit danser lorsque Sa Majesté est placée, il lui fait une très-profonde reverence, ensuite il vient à l’endroit où est la Reine, ou premier Princesse, & font ensemble les reverences que l’on fait avant de danser, & de suite ils dansent le menuet, & après le menuet on fait de pareilles reverences que celles que l’on a fait devant. Ensuite ce Seigneur fait une reverence très-profonde à cette Princesse en la quittant, parce que l’on ne va pas reconduire chez le Roy. Du même instant il fait deux ou trois pas en avant, pour adresser une autre reverence à la Princesse ou Dame qui doit danser à son tour, afin de la convier de venir danser, & là il l’attend, afin de faire tous les deux une reverence très-profonde au Roy, de même qu’il est réprésenté par ces deux Figures 1.2. ensuite ils descendent un peu plus bas, comme ces deux autres Figures 3.4. le réprésentent, & sont ensemble les reverences que l’on fait ordinairement avant de danser, & dansent le menuet, ils font à la fin du menuet les reverences que l’on fait ordinairement; ensuite il fait une reverence en arriere en quittant la Dame, & se va mettre à sa place; mais la Dame observe le même cérémonial pour convier un autre Prince, ce qui se pratique successivement jusqu’à la fin. (“Du Cérémonial que l’on observe au grand Bal du Roy”, 52f.) Nachdem sich also der König (und mit ihm die Zuseher) gesetzt hatten, um den weiteren Tanzvorführungen zu folgen, forderte der ranghöchste Prinz, nach einer tiefen Verbeugung zum König, die Tanzpartnerin des Königs zum Solopaartanz, nach einer gegenseitigen Reverenz absolvierten die beiden ein Menuett und verabschiedeten sich wieder mit einer Verbeugung zueinander und zum Monarchen voneinander, wonach der Prinz die nächst- Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 261 Abb. 6: “Le grand Bal du Roy” (Rameau 1725: 52). höchste Dame der Gesellschaft zum Tanz bat. Am Ende dieses Tanzes war es nun an der Dame, den nächsthöchsten Herren aufzufordern usw. Zweck dieser höfischen Selbstzelebrierung war eine Demonstration der sozialen Rangordnung und eine Exemplifizierung der strengen Etikett und Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 262 29 Links und rechts von ihm sitzen Mitglieder der königlichen Familie, sowie in weiterer Folge hochrangige Damen, und am anderen Ende des Saales befinden sich die wartenden Tänzer. Dahinter stehen, entlang den Wänden verteilt, die restlichen Gäste. Ordnung am Hof durch die Reihenfolge der Eröffnung und die Choreographie des Tanzes. Wer an der Spitze dieser Rangordnung stand, wird auch aus der Raumperspektive ersichtlich, die mit ihrer Orientierung auf einen Punkt hin genau der barocken Raumwahrnehmung entsprach. Diese klare Perspektivierung diente als Grundlage für die Orientierung der Tänzer: Die Choreographierung der Tänze war auf das Kopfende der rechteckigen Tanzfläche hin ausgerichtet, an der sich die sogenannte présence, der ranghöchste Zuschauer, befand (vgl. Saftien 1994: 335). Wie anhand einer Illustration des “grand Bal du Roy” ersichtlich wird, ist die eindeutige Zentrierung auf den Monarchen nicht nur aus der Sitzordnung abzulesen, die gesamte Gestaltung des Raumes, die Innendekoration (Wände, Deckenmalerei, Mobiliar) und die Anordnung der Gäste und Tänzer ist auf den Thron des Königs am Kopfende der Tanzfläche fokussiert. 29 Wie genau diese öffentlichen Auftritte als Inszenierung einer höfischen Rangordnung geplant waren, lässt sich auch daraus ersehen, dass Einladungen zu großen Bällen gedruckte Sitzpläne mit genauen Angaben für den angewiesenen Sitz- oder Stehplatz der Eingeladenen enthalten konnten (vgl. Braun/ Gugerli 1993: 146f.). Von seiner zentralen erhöhten Position überblickte der König das ganze Geschehen. Das Menuett begann und endete am Fußende der Tanzfläche, sodass die Tänzer sich auf einer Achse in Richtung auf den Monarchen zu und von ihm weg bewegten und durch die Ausrichtung des Körpers und der Blickrichtung zur présence gleichsam wie auf einer Bühne die absolutistische Rangordnung des Hofes bestätigten. 5.2 Auf welche Art und Weise übermittelt das Menuett seine Botschaft? Wie andere semiotische Systeme vermittelt auch das Menuett seine Botschaft durch ein eigenes Zeichensystem, dessen Bestandteile - ähnlich wie in der Sprache - sich von kleinsten Einheiten auf der untersten Ebene ausgehend, zu immer größer werdenden Einheiten zusammensetzen lassen und damit einen tänzerischen Code ergeben. Wie es für einen solchen Code charakteristisch ist, handelt es sich dabei um konkrete Einheiten, die sich wiederum zu größeren konkreten Einheiten zusammensetzen lassen. Sie sind weiters distinktiv (als Teile eines Systems) und innerhalb dieses Systems klar gegeneinander abgegrenzt und durch ihre Stellung im System definiert: ein Schrittvokabular, aus dem einzelne Einheiten (Schritte) ausge- Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 263 30 In dieser Form der strukturellen Ähnlichkeit zwischen der Form/ dem Zeichen und dem bezeichneten Objekt (der sozialen Rangordnung) liegt eine diagrammatische Ikonizität vor. Zu den verschiedenen Formen von Ikonizität s.a. Fischer/ Nänny 1999: xv-xxxvi. wählt werden, die auf einer syntagmatischen Ebene zu linearen Abfolgen zusammengesetzt werden (Choreographie). Neben dieser Linearität ist der tänzerische Code, wie die Sprache, auch durch Kohärenz ausgewiesen (die einzelnen Elemente sind aufeinander bezogen und systematisch mit einander verbunden). Er bildet ein geschlossenes System, mit genau festgelegten Regeln, die von der Kulturgemeinschaft, die diese Zeichen benützt, so internalisiert sind, dass sie ‘natürlich’ erscheinen und ihre Konventionalität nicht mehr wahrgenommen wird. Wie andere Zeichensystemen ist auch das semiotische System des Tanzes auf Tradition und Kontinuität angelegt, was nur schrittweise Veränderungen zulässt. Es bietet den Benützern des Systems Eindeutigkeit und Sicherheit in der Vermittlung von Botschaften und gewährleistet damit eine funktionierende Kommunikation (s. dazu auch Berger 1999: 207ff.). Wie die vorangegangene Analyse gezeigt hat, lassen sich im Menuett alle Elemente eines Zeichensystems beobachten. Aus konkreten, genau definierten Einzelbewegungen wird als distinktive Einheit ein Grundschritt gebildet, der über den Raumweg zu einem System, einer festgelegten Choreographie, zusammengesetzt wird. Dadurch kann das Menuett von anderen Tänzen abgegrenzt werden. Das Menuett als tänzerischer Sub-Code läuft durch die vom Bodenweg diktierte Reihenfolge in seiner Form (Z) kohärent und linear ab. Es bildet ein geschlossenes System, mit genau festgelegten Regeln, die von der sie benützenden höfischen Kulturgemeinschaft soweit internalisiert sind, dass diese Regelhaftigkeit im Menuett ‘natürlich’ erscheint und seine Konventionalität nicht mehr wahrgenommen wird. Dadurch erscheinen diese Regeln als unveränderlich und stellen ihr Fortbestehen und ihre Kontinuität sicher. Wie jeder Code dient auch das Menuett der Kommunikation, die auf mehreren Ebenen stattfindet: als Kommunikation der Tänzer miteinander; als Kommunikation der höfischen Gesellschaft unter sich (als Interaktion zwischen Zusehern und Tänzern), und als Repräsentation (des Hofes) nach außen. Pragmatischer Zweck dieser tänzerischen Kommunikation ist die barocke Selbstinszenierung des (französischen) Hofes und die Darstellung seiner streng hierarchisch geordneten Gesellschaftsform - jener des Absolutismus - in ihrer vertikalen Hierarchie, die sich an einer Reihe von Parametern ablesen lässt: an der streng geregelten Abfolge der Tanzenden (in Form einer diagrammatischen Ikonizität 30 ), an der Ausrichtung der Tanzpaare zur présence und an der gesamten Raumgestaltung. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 264 31 An anderer Stelle (ebd.: 117) führt er aus: “Jede Bedrohung der privilegierten Stellung eines einzelnen Hauses wie des Systems der abgestuften Privilegien überhaupt bedeutete Bedrohung dessen, was Menschen in dieser Gesellschaft mit ihren eigenen Augen und in denen der Menschen, mit denen sie verkehrten und an deren Meinung ihnen lag, Wert, Sinn und Bedeutung gab.” 32 Selbst Nicht-Tänzer mussten die Reverenz-Regeln befolgen, um die Reihenfolge des Tanzes, und somit der öffentlichen Demonstration ihrer Position am Hof, nicht zu stören, also eine Reverenz zur Begrüßung auszuführen, eine weitere ‘Abschiedsreverenz’ vorzunehmen und die Dame zurück zu ihrem Platz zu geleiten, sowie die Aufforderung der nächsthöheren Dame mit dem selben Ritual der Begrüßung und Verabschiedung zu absolvieren. Vor großen Bällen am französischen Hof wurden Listen der Tanzenden im Mercure galant veröffentlicht und besprochen (vgl. Braun/ Gugerli 1993: 146). Wie Norbert Elias in seiner soziologischen Untersuchung der höfischen Aristokratie zeigt, war diese “Repräsentation des Ranges durch die Form” charakteristisch für die höfische Lebensgestaltung insgesamt. Elias nennt sie ein “unentbehrliches Instrument der sozialen Selbstbehauptung” (1969: 98f.) in einem andauernden unerbittlichen Konkurrenzkampf um Status, Macht und Anerkennung. Die Demonstration des gesellschaftlichen Ranges durch das standesgemäße Auftreten in der Öffentlichkeit war eine notwendige Maßnahme für die Erhaltung der bestehenden Ordnung und vor allem des eigenen Ranges in dieser Ordnung. Sie war gleichzeitig Zwang und Sicherheit - der Zwang zur ständigen Repräsentation des eigenen Ranges (‘noblesse oblige’) zur Behauptung seiner Stellung in der Stände-Gesellschaft, aber gleichzeitig auch ein Schutz für das einzelne Mitglied durch die Sicherung dieses Ranges und des damit verbundenen Prestiges durch die Zugehörigkeit zu dieser elitären Gruppe und die Festschreibung der bestehenden Ordnung. So war jede Verschiebung in der Etiquette (etwa in der Aufforderungshierarchie des Menuetts) das deutlich sichtbare Anzeichen für eine Verschiebung in der Rangordnung, und jede Nuance im Verhalten des Königs ein Indiz für eine Verschiebung der Position im Gefüge der höfischen Gesellschaft (mit Auswirkungen auf das Verhalten der Mitglieder zueinander). Jede Veränderung barg die Gefahr einer Destabilisierung dieser Ordnung und damit einer Bedrohung nicht nur der sozialen Position, sondern vor allem auch der Identität des Einzelnen: Nur in dieser einen höfischen Gesellschaft konnten die zugehörigen Menschen das, was ihrem Leben in ihren eigenen Augen Sinn und Richtung gab, ihre soziale Existenz als höfische Menschen, die Distanz zu allem übrigen, ihr Prestige und damit das Zentrum ihres Selbstbildes, ihre persönliche Identität aufrecht erhalten. (Elias 1969: 152) 31 Das Menuett und seine Choreographie stellten mit ihrem rigiden Regelsystem einen Spiegel der strengen Ordnung und der sie abbildenden starren Etiquette dieser Gesellschaft dar. 32 Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 265 33 Saftien (1994: 388) verweist in einer Fußnote auf einen unbekannten Vizekanzler der Universität Marburg, dem dieser Ausspruch aus dem Jahr 1758 zugeschrieben wird. Die Botschaft, die das Menuett vermittelt, ist aber nicht nur auf dieser politischen und sozialen Ebene, als “symbolisches Spiel des Körpers als Medium öffentlicher Zurschaustellung von Macht, Status und Identität” (Assmann 2006: 118), als selbstbewusste Inszenierung des eigenen Körpers vor einem höfischen Publikum - wie Stephen Greenblatt (1980/ 2005) es bereits als zentrales Konzept der Identitätsschaffung in der höfischen Kultur der Renaissance nachweist - ablesbar. Für den zeitgenössischen Betrachter enthält das Menuett darüber hinaus auch eine künstlerische und ästhetische Aussage. Als die wichtigste Tanzform des Barock ist das Menuett die künstlerisch vollendete Darstellung der ästhetischen Prinzipien des 18. Jahrhunderts, der Inbegriff der barocken Ästhetik mit ihrer Vorliebe für Ordnung und Symmetrie der Formen: die ihm immanente Ordnung wird von der kleinsten, wohl abgestimmten und kontrollierten Bewegung, der Symmetrie der Figuren, bis hin zur exakten geometrischen Form des Raumwegs und der Choreographie sichtbar. Das kollektive Erlebnis, innerhalb des gemeinsamen gesellschaftlichen Rahmens, der Perfektion von Form und Ausführung und der vollendeten Einpassung der Tanzenden in eine geometrisch durchkonzipierte Welt war für ein barockes Publikum vor allem auch ein ästhetisches Vergnügen. 6 Ausblick “[…] eine Universität kann ohne Tanzmeister länger nicht bestehen.” (1758) 33 Wie diese Zusammenschau zeigt, ist Tanz ein Phänomen, das auf viele verschiedene Arten bedeuten kann. Im Falle des Menuetts lässt sich eine Gesamtaussage, und damit eine Bedeutung, aus einer Beschreibung des Zusammenwirkens der vier Parameter Bewegung, Raum, Zeit und kultureller und historischer Kontext für den zeitgenössischen Beobachter rekonstruieren - eine Botschaft, die den Tanz in den Rahmen anderer kultureller Phänomene der Zeit, insbesondere der Kunst des Barock und der barocken Ästhetik, einordnet. Ähnlich wie die Sprache und andere Zeichensysteme vermittelt auch der Tanz seine Aussage mithilfe eines eigenen semiotischen Systems, das allerdings einer anderen Kodifizierung unterliegt als die sprachlichen Medien. Durch seine sprachübergreifende Wirkung bietet Tanz - wie auch die Musik - ein wichtiges Gegengewicht zu den verbalen Medien, denn Tanz Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 266 34 Jackendoff und Lerdahl sprechen von “dancing […] as externalizing empathic affect - converting it into posture and gesture” (2006: 66). bringt seine Botschaft auf nonverbale, körperliche Weise zum Ausdruck: im Unterschied zur Literatur und anderen sprachlichen Medien kommt es im Tanz zu einer ‘Externalisierung’ der emotionalen Wirkung 34 , die Emotionen werden sichtbar dargestellt. Tanz ermöglicht so einen direkteren Zugang zum Lebensgefühl einer anderen Epoche als andere künstlerische und kulturelle Phänomene. Historischer Tanz als ‘Geschichte der Körperdiskurse’ vermittelt den Betrachtern ein anschauliches und lebendiges Bild der sozialen und politischen Hierarchien früherer Jahrhunderte und der sozialen Interaktion in einer vergangenen Kultur, durch welches Geschichte ähnlich gegenwärtig und intensiv miterlebt werden kann wie z.B. in der literarischen Darstellung: Wie in dieser Gesellschaft Menschen miteinander in Beziehung traten (innerhalb ihrer eigenen sozialen Schicht, aber auch nach außen), wie sie Raum und Zeit erlebten, was für ein Körperbewusstsein sie hatten, innerhalb welchen sozialen Rahmens sie ihre Identität definierten, nach welchen Mustern sie die sie umgebende Realität wahrnahmen. Wie andere Zeichensysteme fügt sich der Tanz in den allgemeinen historischen und ästhetischen Diskurs ein, er ist aber nicht nur Ausdruck des Lebensgefühls der Menschen, sondern auch Teil des kulturellen Gedächtnisses und trägt so dazu bei, Sozialgeschichte und Kulturgeschichte erfassbar und interpretierbar zu machen. Durch den Vergleich mit anderen Formen kultureller und künstlerischer Äußerungen entsteht gleichzeitig auch ein größeres Verständnis für historische Zusammenhänge und Ähnlichkeiten auf verschiedenen Ebenen der kulturellen Entwicklung. Weitere Vergleiche mit anderen Medien könnten andererseits auch der wissenschaftlichen Beschäftigung mit dem Tanz neue Impulse geben und dazu beitragen, dass die Leistung der Tanzforschung als Spiegel des Wandels in Kultur und Gesellschaft wieder deutlicher erkennbar wird, indem sie durch die “körperliche Begegnung mit dem Fremden […] Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des geschichtlichen Verstehens” (Saftien 1994: 391) aufzeigen hilft und Geschichte ‘körperlich’ erfahrbar macht. Bibliographie / Verzeichnis der verwendeten Literatur Arbeau, Thoinot (1588). Orchésographie. Et traicte en forme de dialogue, par lequel toutes personnes peuvent facilement apprendre & pratiquer l’honneste exercice des dances. Lengre. Faksimile Hildesheim 1989. Assmann, Aleida (2006). Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft: Grundbegriffe, Themen, Fragestellungen. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Intermedialitätsforschung und Tanz 267 Berger, Arthur Asa (1999). Signs in Contemporary Culture: an introduction to semiotics. Saleem, WI: Sheffield Publ. Bigand, Emmanuel / Bénédicte Poulin-Charronnat (2006). “Are we ‘experienced listeners’? A review of the musical capacities that do not depend on formal musical training”. Cognition 100. 100-130. Braun, Rudolf / David Gugerli (1993). Macht des Tanzes - Tanz der Mächtigen: Hoffeste und Herrschaftszeremoniell; 1550-1914. München: Beck. Brissenden, Alan (1981). Shakespeare and the Dance. London & Basingstoke: Macmillan. Caroso, Fabritio (1581). Il ballarino. Venedig. Chamberlin, Frederick (1922). The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth. London: Lane. Dahms, Sibylle (Hrsg.) (2001). Tanz. Kassel: Bärenreiter. Danesi, Marcel / Paul Perron (1999). Analyzing Culture. An Introduction and Handbook. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP. Elias, Norbert (1969). Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp. Elyot, Thomas (1907). The Boke Named the Governour [1531]. London: Dent. Feuillet, Raoul-Auger (1700). Chorégraphie ou L’art de décrire la dance, par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs. Paris. Faksimile Hildesheim 1979. Feuillet, Raoul-Auger (1700a). Recueil de dances. Paris. Feuillet, Raoul-Auger / Jacques Dezais (1713). Chorégraphie ou L’art de décrire la dance par caractères, figures et signes desmonstratifs. Avec lesquels on apprend facilement de soy même toutes sortes de Dances. Paris. Fischer, Olga / Max Nänny (1999). “Introduction: Iconicity as a Creative Force in Language Use”. In: Olga Fischer / Max Nänny (Hrsgg.). Form Miming Meaning: Iconicity in language and literature. Amsterdam: Benjamins. xv-xxxvi. Franko, Mark / Annette Richard (Hrsgg.) (2000). Acting on the Past. Historical Performance Across the Disciplines. Hannover & London: Wesleyan UP. Goodman, Nelson (1968). The Languages of Art. An approach to a theory of symbols. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. Greenblatt, Stephen (1980/ 2005). Renaissance Self-Fashioning. From More to Shakespeare. Chicago & London: U of Chicago P. Hilton, Wendy (1981). Dance of Court and Theater. The French Noble Style 1690-1725. London: Dance books. Howard, Skiles (1996). “Rivalling Discourses of Dancing in Early Modern England” [online]. In: John Davies. Essays and articles. Created by Anniina Jokinen, August 9, 1996. http: / / www.luminarium.org/ renlit/ davies.html [Zugriff vom 1.10. 2007]. Huber, Werner / Evelyne Keitel / Gunter Süß (Hrsgg.) (2007). Intermedialities. Trier: WVT. Jackendoff, Ray / Frank Lerdahl (2006). “The capacity for music: What is it, and what’s special about it? ”. Cognition 100. 33-72. Jakobson, Roman (1964). “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (Hrsg.). Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 350-377. Jenyns, Soame (1729). The Art of Dancing, a Poem in Three Cantos. London: Roberts. Jeschke, Claudia (1983). Tanzschriften: Ihre Geschichte und Methode. Die illustrierte Darstellung eines Phänomens von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Bad Reichenhall: Comes. Jeschke, Claudia (2001). “Tanznotationen”. In: Sibylle Dahms (Hrsg.): 15-24. Jonson, Ben (1970). The Works of Ben Jonson. Hrsg. von C.H. Herford Percy und Evelyn Simpson. Bd. 7. Oxford: Clarendon. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger & Gudrun Rottensteiner 268 Locke, John (1968). Some Thoughts Concerning Education [London 1705]. Neu hrsg. von James L. Axtell (1968). The Educational Writings of John Locke. Cambridge: CUP. Lukian von Samosata (1788/ 89). “Von der Tanzkunst”. In: Sämtliche Werke. Übers. von Christoph Martin Wieland. Teil 4. Leipzig. Faksimile: Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft 1971. Bd 2. McGowan, Margaret (1963). L’art du ballet de cour en France 1581-1643. Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique. Meagher, John (1966). Method and Meaning in Jonson’s Masques. Notre Dame & London: U of Notre Dame P. Negri, Cesare (1602). Le gratie d’amore. Mailand. Nöth, Winfried (1996). Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP. Peirce, Charles S. (1978). The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce [1931]. Hrsg. Charles Hartshorne und Paul Weiss. 4. Aufl. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard UP. Pfandl-Buchegger, Ingrid / Gudrun Rottensteiner (2008). “Intermedia studies and dance: a first step towards an interart dialogue”. In: Jan Schneider / Lenka Krausová (Hrsgg.). Intermedialita: Slovo - Obraz - Zvuk. Sborník príspevku z mezinárodního sympozia. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci. 163-175. Pfister, Manfred (1994). Das Drama: Theorie und Analyse. 8. erw. Auflage. München: Fink (= UTB 580). Rajewsky, Irina (2004). Intermedialität. Tübingen & Basel: Francke. Rameau, Pierre (1725). Le Maître a danser. Paris. Faksimile New York 1967. Saftien, Volker (1994). Ars saltandi. Der europäische Gesellschaftstanz im Zeitalter der Renaissance und des Barock. Hildesheim: Olms. Schechner, Richard (2002). Performance Studies. An Introduction. New York & London: Routledge. Taubert, Gottfried (1717). Rechtschaffener Tanzmeister oder gründliche Erklärung der französischen Tanz-Kunst. Leipzig. Faksimile München: Heimeran 1976. Thesiger, Sarah (1973). “The Orchestra of Sir John Davies and the Image of the Dance”. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36. 277-304. Wertheimer, Max (1925). “Über Gestalttheorie. Vortrag vor der KANT-Gesellschaft, Berlin, am 17. Dezember 1924”. Philosophische Zeitschrift für Forschung und Aussprache 1. 39-60. Wolf, Werner (2005). “Intermediality”. In: David Herman / Manfred Jahn / Marie-Laure Ryan (Hrsgg.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London & New York: Routledge. 252-256. Ingrid Pfandl-Buchegger Institut f. Anglistik Universität Graz Gudrun Rottensteiner Institut f. Alte Musik und Aufführungspraxis Kunstuniversität Graz AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage”: Family and Nationhood in Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches and Writings Stefan L. Brandt With great rhetorical gesture, Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President from 1901 to 1909, reaffirmed traditional family values in his public speeches and writings. In the same breath, however, the popular President also catered to the changing zeitgeist by including progressive images of family life and especially of gender roles. My essay discusses Roosevelt’s rhetoric as a strategically motivated attempt to grapple with (and eventually overcome) the crisis of the American family in the late Victorian era. This type of family rhetoric, I will argue, was an important element in the fin-de-siècle discourse of cultural selffashioning. Not only did it reflect upon a newly-won sense of national expansion, visible in the U.S. policy in Cuba and the Philippines, it also helped to shape the belief in the large family as the essential core of a functioning society. By staging his own family as a ‘prototypical American’ one, Roosevelt launched an ideology of the family as the ‘bedrock of the nation’ - a pattern which functions as an operational principle in the cultural imaginary to this very day. Introduction: Theodore Roosevelt - The ‘Family President’ On June 21, 1904, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a telling letter to his son Kermit, in which he pondered his upcoming nomination for President by the Republican Party. Composed in a rather nostalgic mood, the letter concluded as follows: I don’t think that any family has ever enjoyed the White House more than we have. I was thinking about it just this morning when Mother and I took breakfast on the portico and afterwards walked about the lovely grounds and looked at the stately historic old house. It is a wonderful privilege to have been here and to have been given the chance to do this work […]. (1925c: 528) Stefan L. Brandt 270 Fig. 1: Postcard of Theodore Roosevelt surrounded by his family. Quentin, Theodore, Jr., Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel (left to right), 1903. Roosevelt’s letter is revealing for two reasons: First of all, it expresses gratitude towards the people of the United States of America, who have granted him the privilege of becoming their President. His attitude is that of a thankful son, a son of his nation, who has been chosen to conduct an important task. The reward is obviously the permission to dwell in that beautiful residence in Washington, D.C., taking breakfast on the portico and meandering through the estate’s “lovely grounds.” Second, and perhaps more importantly, Roosevelt’s letter establishes an intimate connection between the First Family and the historic site of the Presidency, the White House. The “historic old house” is not simply an artefact or symbolic marker in this rhetoric, but a real place, a place of enjoyment and vitality. How much the Roosevelts did indeed enjoy the White House is demonstrated in yet another letter, from March 19, 1906, in which the President describes the noble estate as a place of lively family interaction, with his two youngest sons playing around: One night I came up-stairs and found Quentin playing the pianola as hard as he could, while Archie would suddenly start from the end of the hall where the pianola was, and, accompanied by both the dogs, race as hard as he could “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 271 the whole length of the White House clean to the other end of the hall and then tear back again. Another evening as I came up-stairs I found Archie and Quentin having a great play, chuckling with laughter, Archie driving Quentin by his suspenders, which were fixed to the end of a pair of woollen reins. Then they would ambush me and we would have a vigorous pillow-fight […]. (1925c: 558) It is through such anecdotes that Roosevelt was allowed to celebrate the unity of family life and national leadership. Since the President was the First Man in his country and representative of all people, his family assumed the role of a model family, symbolizing the ideal American household. In this model family, even conflicts seem to have taken place humorously, eventually strengthening family cohesion. At first glance, the Roosevelts fit perfectly into the stereotype of the traditional large family in late Victorian America. On a publicity postcard from 1903, we can see Roosevelt, the patriarch, posing at the side of his loved ones - his wife Edith (a devoted housekeeper and mother) and his six bright children, Alice, Ted Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. This postcard was not the only case in which the Roosevelt family became the object of professional (self-)marketing. In many well-orchestrated events, the President cultivated his image as “a man who loved his family above all else” (Markham 1985: 106). An early biographer reports that the Roosevelts regularly invited children from other Washington families to parties at the White House. Such a party was given during the last holidays, and was attended by several hundred children, all of whom, of course, came arrayed in their best. […] There was a Christmas tree at one side of the room, and the table was filled with fruit, cake, and candy. The President came in and helped to pass the icecream and cake, and Theodore, Jr. and some of the others passed the candy and other good things. (Stratemeyer 2007 [1904]: ch. 30) The image of Teddy Roosevelt serving candy at children’s parties was an important signifier in his public portrayal as a family president. As legend has it, he once rejected an invitation by President McKinley in order to hurry back home and play with his children (Wagenknecht 1958: 172). All these stories were instrumental in creating the impression that Roosevelt was not only a vigorous political leader, trustbuster, and war hero, but also a loving father and patriarch. “Teddy Bear Patriarchy” and the Challenges of the Modern Family Roosevelt’s closeness to the world of children, and especially to that of the “American boy,” was already manifested by the nickname “Teddy” affection- Stefan L. Brandt 272 1 In his writings, Roosevelt maintained that leadership and character building were conjoined through the principles of sportsmanship and endurance (1902a: 164). It is no coincidence that youth organizations like the YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America, which sprang up during this time, saw themselves as “character factories” designed to transform boys into brigades of functional workers (Rosenthal 1986: 6). 2 Notably, the official website of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, http: / / www.theodoreroosevelt.org/ , has sections designed “just for kids,” discussing issues such as “The Real Story of the Teddy Bear” and “Saving Football.” ately bestowed on him during the days when he grew up in New York City. Throughout his life, observers would speak of Roosevelt’s “boyish enthusiasm” being “a central part of his character” (Markham 1985: 39). Consequently, Edward Stratemeyer’s biography from 1904 was titled American Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt (1904). In his own essays, e.g. “The American Boy” (1902a [1900]) and “Character and Success” (1902b [1900]), Roosevelt established an intimate connection between character development, viewed as a process occurring during adolescence, and leadership, seen as a trait that qualified for the Presidency. It is through the equation of these attributes that Roosevelt could equally appear equally as an innocent “American Boy” and as a vigorous statesman. 1 The myth surrounding “Teddy-the-American-Boy” found its most spectacular expression in a much publicized event which occurred in November 1902. Roosevelt was invited to a hunting trip in the Mississippi forests by the state’s Governor Andrew H. Longino. After several exhausting hours of unsuccessful hunting, a group of the President’s attendants cornered and bludgeoned an American black bear, then tied the half-unconscious animal to a willow tree. Offered to shoot the bear, Roosevelt allegedly declined for reasons of fairness and decency. The anecdote was first depicted in a Washington Post cartoon on November 16, 1902, in which the bear appeared as an aggressive adult captured by a lasso. A later version of the same cartoon showed the bear as a cute cub, cowering away in fear from its pursuers. Significantly, it was this later version of the cartoon that persisted in the cultural imagination and eventually led to the production of stuffed bears, originally called “Teddy’s bears,” and a series of book titles such as The Roosevelt Bears, More About the Roosevelt Bears, and The Bear Detectives (Albala 1992: 552-553). The “Teddy Bear” myth not only confirmed Roosevelt’s reputation as a sportsman, it also helped to balance the President’s ‘tough guy’ image by introducing an element of softness and innocence. 2 The sphere of virility and stamina that surrounded Roosevelt is strategically transferred here into the realm of children’s tales, thus reinstating in the President’s aura the elements of virtuousness and morality. Paradoxically enough, Roosevelt’s reputation as a ‘big-stick diplomat’ and ‘man’s man’ was not endangered by such symbolic references to the children’s “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 273 3 Extended households were not uncommon during the time. Due to a variety of phenomenae.g., wars, epidemics, illnesses, and birth complications-families were often compounded by widows and widowers and their new offspring. “In the late nineteenth century,” Steven Fig. 2: “Drawing the Line in Mississippi.” Cartoon by Clifford Berryman (second version), 1902 world. Rather, it enabled the manifestation of what Donna Haraway has trenchantly termed “Teddy Bear Patriarchy” (1984/ 85: 20-23). The metaphorical inclusion of such signifiers made Roosevelt’s public image even more complex and established his reputation as a representative of all people (and not only of his male constituency). It is no coincidence that Roosevelt’s collection of Letters to His Children, published shortly after his death in 1919, became his most popular book, further consolidating his public image as an affectionate father and family man. But what kind of family was it really? Measured by the standards of turnof-the-century America, it was almost a patchwork family. 3 The marriage with Stefan L. Brandt 274 Ruggles and Ron Goeken note, “family and household composition in the United States was more complex than ever before” (1992: 15). 4 Her later reputation as a “hedonist” and “honorary homosexual” contributed to this image, which she cultivated until her death at ninety-six in 1980 (Cordery 2007: 464). Edith Kermit Carow was Roosevelt’s second marriage. In her, Roosevelt found not only a soul-mate but also an intellectual partner. “In intelligence and character,” one biographer states, “she was her husband’s equal” (Wagenknecht 1958: 166). Although Edith visited only a few classes in literature at New York Comstock School, she managed to obtain a broad literary education through her family’s large collections of books. “She is better read,” Theodore confided to a friend, “and her value of literary merit is better than mine. I have tremendous admiration for her judgment. She is not only cultured but scholarly” (Caroli 1995: 123). Out of Roosevelt’s first marriage with Alice Hathaway Lee came a daughter, also named Alice, who, after Lee’s premature death in 1884, was raised by Roosevelt’s second wife. Curiously enough, Alice publicly rejected the moral virtues that her father stood for, even condemning Christianity in various statements. Despite that (or maybe because of it), she quickly became a darling of the media and a well-known cover girl of Harper’s Weekly, setting the fashion of the early 20 th century. “Her high profile,” one biographer notes, “made her America’s most famous young woman and the first celebrity First Daughter. Dashing, beautiful, iconoclastic, and independent, she was the prototype of the ‘New Woman’” (Cordery 1992: 353). 4 Instead of discarding his daughter’s rebellious tendencies, Roosevelt began to utilize Alice’s unconventional charms for his own purposes. During his first term as a President, he sent Alice to countries like Cuba, Japan, and Prussia for month-long diplomatic trips, even making her an unofficial emissary to Puerto Rico in 1903. After her return from the Caribbean, Alice was warmly greeted by her father: “You were of real service down there because you made those people feel that you liked them and took an interest in them” (Cordery 2007: 73). Roosevelt often jokingly portrayed himself as a family tyrant who, however, had to suffer from a ‘female dominion’ in the household. One letter to his daughter Ethel from June 24, 1906, written at a time when he was still President, is signed “Your affectionate father, the tyrant” (1925c: 568). An image sketched by Roosevelt himself shows him being exposed to what seems to be a ritual accusation from the side of his family - an actual “chorus […] led by daughter: For he is a tyrant king! ” (ibid.) Such lamentations were too obviously ironic to be taken seriously by the addressee. As Roosevelt’s biographer Edward Wagenknecht observes, it was “part of the fun […] to pretend that he lived under an intolerable domestic tyranny” (1958: 169). “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 275 Fig. 3: Sketch by Theodore Roosevelt, from a letter to his daughter Ethel, June 24, 1906. To the French ambassador in Washington, D.C., Roosevelt once remarked: “[P]eople think I have a good-natured wife, but she has a humor which is more tyrannical than half the tempestuous women of Shakespeare” (ibid.). The symbolic reversal of traditional power structures in the Rooseveltian rhetoric had a double function. On the one hand, it playfully brought up the idea that Roosevelt’s “man’s house” might actually be “ruled by a woman - and the man in it too” (Wagenknecht 1958: 167). On the other hand, the rhetoric was also designed to make fun of matriarchal power by depicting female dominion as a sheer travesty. The “Woman Question” Roosevelt’s concept of the family was intimately connected to what at that time was labeled the ‘woman question’ - namely, the question of equal opportunities and voting rights for women. In an influential essay titled “The American Woman as a Mother,” which appeared in July 1905 in The Ladies’ Stefan L. Brandt 276 5 The essay was originally conceptualized as a Presidential address, given before the National Congress of Mothers in Washington, D.C., on March 13, 1905. 6 The historian Mark J. Stern writes that, in 1830, “the birth rate in the United States was at least twenty percent higher than that in Western Europe. By the early twentieth century, it was lower than those of England, Wales, Austria, Italy, and Spain […]. The United States had become a low-fertility society” (1987: 8). Similarly disturbing data were reported with respect to divorce rates. The numbers in the United States increased from 7,000 in 1860 to 56,000 around the turn of the century and then soared to an upsetting 100,000 at the start of World War I (Filene 1975: 42). As early as 1871, the magazine New Northwest diagnosed a “divorce mania” in the U.S., making reference to the commercial success of marriage and divorce dramas such as Collins’s Man and Wife and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (Leach 1980: 5). Home Journal, Roosevelt violently attacked what he called the “pseudointellectuality” of modern women (1905: 1). 5 There are certain old truths, which will be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the bread-winner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmeet, the housewife and mother. (1905: 2) The article conjured up an apocalyptic vision according to which the survival of the nation depended on the willingness of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the community. As a consequence of the alarming reports on sinking birth rates and rising divorce numbers towards the end of the 19 th century, new tactics had to be developed to save traditional marriage from dying out. 6 One of these strategies was the symbolic revaluation of women’s role in society. The Woman who is a Good Wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman; though neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. (1905: 2) The readers of The Ladies’ Home Journal were prepared for Roosevelt’s demagoguery by a previous cover story of the magazine. In the edition from May, 1905, the former Democratic President Grover Cleveland had described women’s clubs, in a furious essay, as a “menace,” calling for a return to “the real path of true womanhood” (1905: 4). Cleveland’s argument culminated in the rhetorical question: “Are Women Retaliating on Men? ” Compared to Cleveland’s article, a foaming indictment of the women’s movement, Roosevelt’s case seems almost a moderate one. Notably, it is not the strict rejection of women’s rights as in Cleveland’s text which lies at the basis of Roosevelt’s argument, but rather the plea to society as a whole to unite. This does not necessarily make Roosevelt’s case less conservative, but it was certainly more convincing to fin-de-siècle Americans, who were “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 277 7 In another work, he declared that “[e]xceptional women-like Julia Ward Howe or Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Homer-are admirable wives and mothers, admirable keepers of the home, and yet workers of genius outside the home” (1925b: 145). desperately seeking for a positive and unifying theme. When Roosevelt, in his article on “Women’s Rights,” advocated “woman suffrage wherever the women wish it” (1925e [1912]: 282), he also reached out to progressive Americans. 7 The tone of Roosevelt’s discussion of woman’s suffrage was demonstratively diplomatic as well as strangely circuitous: I would leave the matter to be decided by vote of women themselves. Most of the women whom I know best are against woman suffrage, and strongly criticize me for aiding in, as they term it, “forcing” it on them. But surely both the women who oppose the suffrage and the women who demand it ought to be willing to argue the matter out with the members of their own sex. If a majority of the women of a State vote affirmatively for the suffrage, it is time to give it to them. If only a small minority vote for it, it ought not be forced upon the hostile and the indifferent majority. (ibid.) One reason for Roosevelt’s meandering explanation could be that he did not want to risk alienating progressive voters. By using women as advocates against women’s suffrage, Roosevelt systematically shifted the angle from his own standpoint to that of the average woman. The trope of “forcing” voting rights on women, first used as a quote from the “women whom I know best,” appears later in the same essay as part of his own argument: Most of the women whom I know best are against woman suffrage precisely because they approach life from the standpoint of duty. They are not interested in their “rights” so much as in their obligations. (ibid.) By putting the word ‘rights’ in quotation marks, Roosevelt dilutes the significance of voting rights in comparison to the ‘natural rights’ of the family. Women’s suffrage, the argument goes, can only be meaningful for society if used “wisely and honorably” and other social concerns and “iniquities” would be tackled (1925e [1912]: 283). After extensively delineating the caveats against women’s voting rights, Roosevelt comes to the somewhat surprising conclusion that I believe in the movement for woman suffrage, and believe that it will ultimately succeed and will justify itself. But I regard it as of far less consequence than many other movement [sic! ] for the betterment of present-day conditions as affecting both men and women. I feel that, instead of having to develop in the future […] the highest and most useful type of woman, we already have that type with us now. (1925e [1912]: 288) It was this tactical embrace of feminism - on Roosevelt’s “own terms,” as one critic sharply puts it (Carlson 2003: 1) - that rendered the rhetoric so Stefan L. Brandt 278 8 For an elaborate account of Theodore Roosevelt’s stance on feminist issues, see Furlow (1992). 9 Being the mother of six children, Howe also wrote essays in which she espoused equal rights for women and African Americans. In the 1840s she had even worked on a novel called The Hermaphrodite (2004) dealing with a college student who carries characteristics of both sexes. powerful and compelling to many contemporary readers. 8 More than once in his writings, Roosevelt honored the renowned abolitionist Julia Ward Howe as a model feminist: “I pin my faith to woman suffragists of the type of the late Julia Ward Howe” (1925e [1912]: 280). The figure of Howe, for Roosevelt the embodiment of that “serene” type of womanhood (1925e [1912]: 288), was particularly central to the argument since she personified the values of both Victorianism and progressivism. 9 In an energetic reference to Howe’s social activism, Roosevelt called for a revitalization of the traditional utilitarian ideal, namely familial duties and social responsibility: “The vital need for women, as for men, is to war against vice, and frivolity, and cold selfishness, and timid shrinking from necessary risk and effort” (ibid.). In his Autobiography, published shortly after the “Bull Moose” campaign, Roosevelt continued this argument. Bestowing on women the “complete and entire rights with man” (1946 [1913]: 161), he wrote, should not be considered a universal remedy to heal all social problems the United States were faced with. [W]hen this has been done [i.e., women’s voting rights have been granted] it will amount little unless […] the woman realizes that she has no claim to rights unless she performs the duties that go with those rights and that alone justify her in appealing to them. (ibid.) Roosevelt’s praise of the values of responsibility and unselfishness culminated in a longer passage in his Autobiography which documented a brief exchange of letters with an unnamed American mother. In her letter to Roosevelt, written January 3, 1913, the woman had complained that, after bearing her husband nine children and doing all necessary work in the household, “including washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones” (1946: 164), she was becoming “boring” to her agile and erudite spouse: My husband more and more declined to discuss things with me. […] So here I am, at forty-five years, hopelessly dull and uninteresting, while he can mix with the brightest minds in the country as an equal. (1946: 164-165) Roosevelt’s response eight days later was full of appreciation for her performance as a housewife and mother. “If these facts are so, you have done a great and wonderful work” (1946: 166). Not surprisingly, Roosevelt advised the woman to talk to someone in her family and show that person (“whether “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 279 it is your husband or one of your children”) her letter and the written answer to finally achieve the positive reception she deserved. Roosevelt concluded by recommending a reading of Kathleen Norris’s romantic novel Mother (1911), a copy of which was attached to the letter. “Man and woman alike,” he added, “should profit by the teachings in such a story” (Roosevelt 1946: 167-168). Roosevelt’s choice of Norris’s Mother as a piece of edifying literature for the misunderstood American housewife was not coincidental. The book tells the story of Margaret, a young lady who leaves home and rejects family life hoping to find self-fulfillment in a career. When God starts to speak to the woman, she realizes that independence and affluence cannot grant her the warmth and gratification of a family. Margaret’s occupation turns out to be the real prison, while home and motherhood promise liberation and redemption. In the novel’s last chapter, the protagonist repudiates a well-paid job to reunite with her own mother, finally comprehending that her energy and ambition are better invested in family life than in her potential life as a career woman. The romantic message of Norris’s text is obviously shared by Roosevelt himself, who, in the final paragraph of his essay for The Ladies’ Home Journal, appeals to the same sense of duty in the average woman: “The woman’s task is not easy […] - but in doing it […], there shall come to her the highest and holiest joy known to mankind” (1905: 2). In Roosevelt’s argument, the toils and efforts shouldered by the American mother not only seem justified by the Holy Scripture but also form “the foundation of all national happiness and greatness” (ibid.). Roosevelt leaves no doubt where the priorities in national self-fashioning should be placed: “[F]ar more important than the question of occupation of our citizens is the question how their family life is conducted” (1905: 1). In one of his Presidential addresses, he phrased this point even more harshly: “The home duties are the vital duties” (1970 [1903]: 493). The consequences of a misguided family life, it seemed, were much more serious than those of mismanagement in the national economy. [T]he nation is in a bad way if there is no real home, if the family is not of the right kind; if the man is not a good husband and father, if he is brutal or cowardly or selfish, if the woman has lost her sense of duty, if she is sunk in vapid self-indulgence or has let her nature be twisted […] (ibid.) Social Darwinist Rhetoric and “Strenuous Life” Ideology Roosevelt’s frequent references to the adaptability of the American family and the role of female reproduction owe a lot to the Darwinist model of evolutionism. “There is small question,” David H. Burton asserts, “that Stefan L. Brandt 280 10 Roosevelt’s standpoint on Social Darwinism has been described as a “pragmatic compromise that put practical considerations above theoretical ones” (Harbaugh 1967: xxxviii). Although he acknowledged the importance of Darwinist theories for his own thoughts and writings, he recoiled from fully subscribing to them. “Of course,” he wrote, “there is no exact parallelism between the birth, growth, and death of species in the animal world, and the birth, growth, and death of societies in the world of man. Yet there is a certain parallelism” (1910: 6). Theodore Roosevelt was an evolutionist of some sort” (1965: 103). As the deliberate vagueness in Burton’s phrase (“an evolutionist of some sort”) suggests, there was indeed a strong sense of ambiguity underlying the Rooseveltian rhetoric. 10 In particular, Roosevelt took issue with the Social Darwinist argument that evolutionary processes were mainly rooted in individual interests. Sacrifice and abdication, he argued, were as important in the development of societies as individual strife and vigor. Roosevelt’s approach is well illustrated in his review of Benjamin Kidd’s famous treatise Social Evolution (1894). “Side by side with the selfish development in life,” he wrote, there has been almost from the beginning a certain amount of unselfish development too; and in the evolution of humanity the unselfish side has, on the whole, tended steadily to increase at the expense of the selfish, notably in the progressive communities. (1924d: 114) Roosevelt’s rejection of the radical currents within the discourse of Social Darwinism even grew stronger throughout his Presidency. Even as he “clung to the vestiges of the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory”, one of his biographers notes, “he drastically modified his application of those concepts” (Harbaugh 1961: 346). By 1908, he had become a staunch supporter of key progressive tenets such as democratization, social reform, regulation of monopolies, and conservationism. Instead of endorsing a laissez-faire type of capitalism, like most representatives of the Republican Party, Roosevelt openly advocated governmental actions, especially with regard to the improvement of social conditions and the protection of the environment. In a revealing correspondence with the socialist writer Upton Sinclair, whose novel The Jungle (1906) he admired, Roosevelt maintained that “energetic, and, as I believe, in the long run radical, action must be taken to do away with the effects of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist” (in: Harbaugh 1961: 257). Consequently, he also promoted “the need for collective action” (1946 [1913]: 25) and argued that “in addition to […] individual responsibility, there is a collective responsibility” (ibid.). One of Roosevelt’s last essays, “The Origin and Evolution of Life,” published in Outlook magazine in 1918, underlined this notion, putting forth the argument that Social Darwinism did not supply a satisfactory explanation of the development of human societies (1924a: 29-37). “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 281 11 William H. Harbaugh notes that Roosevelt’s views on race, which appealed to progressives and conservatives alike, “were even more ambiguous than those on religion” (1967: xxxviii). Another scholar adds that “[f]ew Presidents have evoked more contradictory emotions and conflicting judgments among his fellows than Theodore Roosevelt” (Mowry 1958: 109). Due to his political versatility, Roosevelt was called, in one of the earliest biographies, The Many-Sided Franklin (Ford 1899). By the same token, Roosevelt’s views on ‘race’ were more ambiguous and diversified than those of many of his contemporaries. In an address to students and professors at Oxford University on June 7, 1910, tentatively titled “Analogies between Biology and the Human Story,” he asserted that “[a] great nation rarely belongs to any one race” (1910: 6). In another essay, Roosevelt even rejected the notion of ‘race origin’ altogether, while at the same time endorsing the theory that a new ‘American race’ had developed as a hybrid of various other ‘races.’ “[Q]uestions of race origin,” he postulated, “must not be considered: we wish to do good work, and we are all Americans, pure and simple” (1967 [1893]: 15). 11 The construct of ‘Americanness’ allowed Roosevelt to develop his apocalyptic theory of “race suicide” - a tragic fate that he predicted for a nation entrapped in the temptations of self-indulgence and egotism. As in many other works written around the fin de siècle, the terms race, nation, and people are used almost interchangeably in Roosevelt’s writings. This becomes particularly obvious in his 1917 book on American domestic policy, The Foes of Our Own Household (1925b). One revealing passage documents a letter that Roosevelt sent to an impoverished mother of a child-rich family who had earlier protested against his opposition to birth control. “I do not want to see us Americans forced to import our babies from abroad,” he wrote, I do not want to see the stock of people like yourself and my family die out […]; and it will inevitably die out if the average man and the average woman are so selfish and so cold that they wish either no children, or just one or two children. (1925b: 153) His statement somehow frivolously catered to the prevailing fears of “racial degeneration” as well as those of uncontrolled immigration. However, Roosevelt’s characterization of the American nation as a “stock of people like yourself and my family” is not without ambiguity. While subscribing to the Christian values of individual sacrifice and self-abandonment, Roosevelt also conjured up the Darwinist idea that only “[i]f a people proved adaptable” to the changing conditions of their environment, “they merited full acceptance” (Harbaugh 1967: xxxviii). Paradoxically, Roosevelt’s advocacy of collective responsibility and unselfishness as the highest ideals of civilization positioned his argument, at least in parts, in opposition to the common discourse of Social Darwinism. Where contemporary supporters of Darwin- Stefan L. Brandt 282 12 This is documented in a number of enthusiastic letters to Roosevelt, in which voters thanked him “for your ready sympathy and understanding” (1946 [1913]: 167). ism praised the ‘economic man,’ i.e., the man best adapted to the laws of the market, as the highest authority of a functioning society, Roosevelt extolled the moral qualities of family life as a life of abdication and self-abandonment. The Darwinist model of ‘the survival of the fittest’ is replaced in this scenario by a model of maternal love as a “true source of progress” (Carlson 2003: 4). Ironically enough, this ‘motherly’ ideal is shared by both sexes who equally participate in the rescue of civilization. The “highest ideal of the family,” Roosevelt holds in “National Life and Character,” “is attainable only where the father and the mother stand to each other as lovers and friends” (1903 [1894]: 121). Only if men and women engaged in a “partnership of happiness,” which, as Roosevelt points out, must also be a “partnership of work” (1924b [1911]: 161), general conditions could be improved to the benefit of the whole nation. Roosevelt’s model figured, in his own words, as a program for “a truer Christianity” (1919 [1905]: 289). In order to establish this concept as a functioning principle of social practice, each individual had to strengthen the basic relationship between family and society. It was precisely this tie between the individual and the whole which, in Roosevelt’s view, guaranteed the survival of the nation. Against the backdrop of the burning conflict between the classes, a reinforcement of the basic links between family and society seemed more important than ever. In a Presidential address held on August 10, 1905, Roosevelt warned that “[a]n apparent disregard for family ties [was] growing among the poorer classes which will eventually lead to a disregard of the blessings our country affords them” (1919 [1905]: 289-290). An accentuation of the real “blessings” of the nation state seemed to provide a more viable perspective than the unflinching focus on an unrealistic, albeit more impressive ideal. “The important thing to work for in marriage,” Roosevelt argued a few years later in an essay in Outlook magazine, was “to raise the average marriage relations to those that already obtain in the finest type of existing marriage” (1925e [1912]: 288). Notably, the article does not promise a vague or even utopian ideal of marriage but aims at “the finest type of existing marriage” (my emphasis). This focus on the realness of marriage - as an actual fact of social and private life - lent to Roosevelt’s doubtlessly romanticizing approach a more pragmatic tone - a tone which was, as we know today, well received by many contemporary readers. 12 To one of his supporters Roosevelt wrote that the avoidance of marriage and the resistance to procreation was one of the most despicable ‘crimes against the nation’: “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 283 13 Silas Weir Mitchell and George Beard, celebrated physicians of their time, claimed in their writings - e.g., Wear and Tear (1891), and American Nervousness, (1881) - that creative activities such as writing and painting could easily lead to hysterical phenomena in women. To “cure” their patients from this “illness,” they recommended strict rest and abandonment of any form of intellectual or imaginative work. [T]he man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people. (1970 [Oct. 18, 1902]: 509) By lauding the “angel of the home” as a feasible model for “true womanhood,” Roosevelt managed to make his rhetoric appear concrete to readers. The recurrent reference to actual women and mothers also helped him to reject the accusation of pure idealism. “No woman will ever be developed,” he jokingly stated, “who will stand above the highest and finest of the wives and mothers of today and of the yesterdays” (ibid.). Through his symbolic appreciation of women’s merits for the family, Roosevelt managed to soften the harsh rhetoric of his usual attacks against a potential failure of the American nation state. The bitter pill of the “strenuous life” ideology, it seemed, could only be swallowed if the implicit message - that of an overall betterment of society through labor and sacrifice - was conveyed plausibly to the American audience. This becomes clear in the following statement towards the end of his Ladies’ Home Journal essay: If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasures of mere effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. (1905: 2) The obvious references to Darwinist thought in Roosevelt’s rhetoric are barely concealed by the emphasis on partnership and self-sacrifice. In his Autobiography, Roosevelt writes that “[t]he relationship of man and woman is the fundamental relationship that stands at the base of the whole social structure” (1946 [1913]: 161). This romantic concept of traditional marriage as the last resort of a civilization on the verge of extinction might be called reactionary. Yet, by adding the components of mutuality and equal tasks (even if only symbolically), Roosevelt endowed the concept with a progressive touch. Instead of rejecting women’s creative impulses, as supporters of Silas Weir Mitchell’s famous rest cure therapy 13 did, he attempted, at least rhetorically, to integrate these energies into his model of national efficiency. No doubt, the idea of separate spheres is still alive and kicking in Roosevelt’s model, yet with the slight difference that men are invited to get involved Stefan L. Brandt 284 14 This emphasis on the ‘inherent truth’ and ‘profound meaning’ of social processes puts Roosevelt in a secret alliance with naturalist writers such as Frank Norris and Jack London. In his programmatic essay “The Responsibilities of the Novelist,” Norris compared the novel to a powerful weapon and the writer to a warrior. “If he [the writer] is not true nor strong he has no business with the bow. The people give heed to him only because he bears a great weapon” (1969 [1902]: 7). in domestic activities and women to extend their scope of action to the public realm. Roosevelt’s theoretical interest in the structure of marriage had always been based on a direct analogy between the family and the nation. By leaving out in his argument the political processes which connected the smallest units of society with the larger body of the nation, Roosevelt evoked the impression that the relationship between family and nation was primarily of a metaphorical nature. In Roosevelt’s rhetoric, the average family represented the nation state in the form of a pars pro toto relation. The community as a connecting link between the two is basically non-existent in this scenario. Roosevelt’s essay on “True Americanism,” first published in The Forum in April, 1894, is a good case in point. In unusually strong words, Roosevelt criticizes in the article “that unwholesome parochial spirit, that over-exaltation of the little community at the expense of the great nation” (1902d: 52). The “spirit of provincial patriotism” (ibid.), he adds, should be replaced by the concept of the “great nation,” of which the family seemed the most important representative. “[T]he words ‘home’ and ‘country’,” we read three pages later, “mean a great deal” (1902d: 55). The notion of the ‘home’ is so crucial to Roosevelt’s definition of patriotism that the love of one’s country is equated with the love of one’s spouse. “At present,” Roosevelt argues, “treason, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst of all possible crimes” (ibid.). 14 While also clinging to a religiously oriented thinking based on moral values, Roosevelt here takes a bow to the post-Darwinian zeitgeist: A race must be strong and vigorous; it must be a race of good fighters and good breeders, else its wisdom will come to naught and its virtue be ineffective; and no sweetness and delicacy, no love for and appreciation of beauty in art or literature […] can possibly atone for the lack of the great virile virtues. (1967 [1893]: 4) Roosevelt’s evocation of “the great virile virtues” placed his national vision on the grounds of an ideology of manliness. Whereas in some writings he undertook great efforts to involve women in his concept of nationhood, he sketched an almost entirely homosocial vision in programmatic essays such as “The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics” (1925d [1894]) and “Manhood and Statehood” (1902c [1901]). Postulating a fortification of “the iron qualities that must go with true manhood,” Roosevelt here refers to heroic figures of the national past like Washington and Lincoln, claiming that “[t]he least “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 285 touch of flabbiness, of unhealthy softness in either, would have meant the ruin for this nation” (1902c: 257). The “fathers of the nation” are literally transformed in Roosevelt’s argument into patriarchs whose sole interest lied in the preservation of America’s integrity as a nation state. “A politician who really serves his country well […] must usually possess some of the hardy virtues which we admire in the soldier who serves his country well in the field” (1925d [1894]: 47). The same metaphor is used in Roosevelt’s passionate apology of the Spanish-American War, The Rough Riders (1924c [1899]), a glorification of the famous cavalry regiment by the same name, whose leader Roosevelt was. “My men were children of the dragon’s blood,” he writes, adding that the brigade “was a typical American body” (1924c [1899]: 188, 207). The symbols of fatherhood and the male body are combined in this rhetoric into a trope of the nation as a family of men. Such ‘masculinizing’ descriptions of the American family as a military body seem to function as a companion text to Roosevelt’s usual accounts of the relationship between man and woman as the basic core of society. Roosevelt’s teasing declaration in one of his essays, “I know men better, but I can talk of women, too” (1925a [1911]: 247), serves as an ironic comment on his own androcentric approach. The Family as the “Bedrock of the Nation” Not surprisingly, the child-rich family is praised as the archetypal symbol of the functioning nation state in many of Roosevelt’s writings. By citing scholarly works as evidence for his assumptions, Roosevelt aspired to place his argument on a scientific, often even medical foundation. In The Foes of Our Own Household, he quoted approvingly from a scientific article published in July 1917, in The Journal of Heredity: “[I]n a normal and healthy community […], the health of the mother is best, and the infant mortality lowest, in families with at least six children” (1925b: 164). Notably, Roosevelt assured his audience time and again that this philosophy was mirrored in his own life and doings. In a personal letter, written three years before this death and addressed to a disappointed mother of eleven children, Roosevelt reminisced about his own family life, describing fatherhood as one of his greatest successes: We have had six children in this family. We wish we had more. Now the grandchildren are coming along; and I am sure you agree with me that no other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed. (1925b [letter from February 9, 1916]) Stefan L. Brandt 286 Even after Roosevelt had left the White House, his family remained a symbol of American national unity. In various reports and cartoons, Roosevelt’s residence at Sagamore Hill, Long Island, to which he retreated after the Presidency, was stylized into a marker of public attraction. In one particularly informative sketch, a ‘schoolboy elephant’ is depicted (symbolizing Roosevelt’s enthusiastic following in the Republican Party) which spies over the walls of the former President’s estate. Although earlier campaigns had ridiculed Roosevelt as a rich guy “born with a gold spoon in his mouth” (Banks & Armstrong 1901: 56), later accounts would depict him more and more as a typical American and his family as an average American family. According to Brander Matthews, the later Roosevelt “was frank in declaring that he had been happy beyond the common lot of man” (1924: ix). This change in the public perception was, to a great extent, due to a successful rhetoric by which Roosevelt portrayed himself not as a rich man but as a friend of the ordinary laborer (Schaefer 1992: 214). By placing the ‘average man’ and the ‘average family’ on the pedestal of national well-being, Roosevelt underlined the often cited analogy between the smallest unit of society and the overall structure of the nation state. “In the last analysis,” he reasoned in his 1905 address to the National Congress of Mothers, the welfare of the State depends absolutely upon whether or not the average family, the average man and woman and their children represent the kind of citizenship fit for the foundation of a great nation; and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based. (1905: 1) At a time in which public opinion was obsessed with images of degeneration and national decline, Roosevelt’s call for strong family bonds fell on fertile ground. Instead of celebrating the self-made man as the sole ideal of Western progress, as many of his contemporaries did, Roosevelt chose to hold up the family as a model of social survival. In his presidential addresses, Roosevelt tirelessly stressed the analogies between the family and the nation. The duties of the individual family, he pointed out, were central to the well-being of the whole. In another address, given at the unveiling of the Sherman Statue in Washington, D.C., he exclaimed: The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its border; and if the average man is not hard-working, just, and fearless in his dealings with those about him, then our average of public life will in the end be low. (1970 [Oct. 15, 1903]: 493) In this rhetoric, the concept of unselfish effort for the sake of the nation is often most emphatically applied to women: The woman who has borne, and who has reared […] a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the Republic. Her burden has “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 287 15 This symbolic recognition of women’s efforts is not identical, of course, with a plea for political participation. Nevertheless, it represents a shift in society towards an acknowledgment of women’s energies and performances in society. been heavy, and she has been able to bear it worthily only by the possession of resolution, of good sense, of conscience, and of unselfishness. (1970 [Sept. 7, 1903]: 479) Such references to the democratic framework of the nation (“the Republic”) are not merely accidental. What Roosevelt evokes through such phrases is an ideal of society in which the ‘homely duties’ are recognized as equivalent to state duties. The “indispensable work for the community,” he holds, is not that of career-building or industrial development but “the work of the wife and mother” (1925b [1917]: 145). 15 It would be easy to dismiss Roosevelt’s rhetoric as simply conservative and reactionary. But that would certainly leave unconsidered the strategic endeavors invested into the discourse of democratic unity and equality. By singing the hymn of the family instead of praising the ideal of rugged individualism, the Rooseveltian rhetoric called attention to the equal duties of men and women and, at least symbolically, resisted the dominant version of Social Darwinism. Aside from the civic duties, Roosevelt argued, “there are certain homely qualities the lack of which will prevent the most brilliant man alive from being a useful soldier to his country” (1970 [1903]: 493). These “homely qualities” in the public servant were so important, Roosevelt claimed, that their absence could not even be compensated by the “shrewdness or ability” of the public servant (ibid.). A similar rhetoric can be found some eighty years later in a statement made by “the great communicator” Ronald Reagan: [T]he family is the bedrock of our nation, but it is also the engine that gives our country life. […] It’s for our families that we work and labor, so we can join around the dinner table, bring our children up the right way, care for our parents, and reach out to those less fortunate. It is the power of the family that holds the Nation together, that gives America her conscience, and that serves as the cradle of our country’s soul. (1989: 1252) In these remarks, made towards the end of Reagan’s Presidency, we find the same romantic image of the American family united at the dinner table, of unselfish support for other family members, as are found in Roosevelt’s writings. This type of rhetoric, as shallow as it may seem, has proven to be a successful motor of national unity. The family, for Roosevelt as well as for Reagan, is more than an isolated entity; it stands for America itself. The Rooseveltian family rhetoric, I have argued, was an important element in the fin-de-siècle discourse of cultural self-fashioning. Not only did it reflect upon a newly-won sense of national expansion, visible in the U.S. policy in Stefan L. Brandt 288 Cuba and the Philippines, it also helped to shape the modern belief in the large family as the essential core of a functioning society. Roosevelt’s argument established a link between the conservative ideals of noblesse oblige, protectiveness, and reproduction on the one hand and the progressive concepts of exploration, individual empowerment, and efficiency on the other. By modeling his own family as a ‘prototypical American’ one, Roosevelt manifested an ideology of the family as the ‘bedrock of the nation’ - a pattern which functions as an operational principle in the cultural imaginary to this very day. References Albala, Monica T. (1992). “Theodore Roosevelt: The Man and the Image in Popular Culture.” In: N.A. Naylor, D. Brinkley, and J.A. Gable (eds). Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American. Interlaken & New York: Heart of the Lakes. 547-558. Banks, Charles Eugene, and Leroy Armstrong (1901). Theodore Roosevelt: A Typical American. Chicago: Sprague Wholesale Co. Beard, George (1881). American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences. New York: G.P. Putnam. Burton, David H. (1965). “Theodore Roosevelt’s Social Darwinism and Views on Imperialism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 26: 1. 103-118. Carlson, Allan C. (2003). The ‘American Way’: Family and Community in the Shaping of American Identity. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. Caroli, Betty Boyd (1995). First Ladies: An Intimate Look at How 38 Women Handled What May Be the Most Demanding, Unpaid, Unelected Job in America. Oxford: Oxford UP. Cleveland, Grover (1905). “Woman’s Mission and Woman’s Clubs.” The Ladies’ Home Journal 22: 6 (May). 1-2. Cordery, Stacy Rozek (1992). “Theodore Roosevelt’s Private Diplomat: Alice Roosevelt and the 1905 Far Eastern Junket.” In: N.A. Naylor, D. Brinkley, and J.A. Gable (eds). Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American. Interlaken & New York: Heart of the Lakes. 352-367. - (2007). Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker. New York: Viking. Filene, Peter G. (1975). Him/ Her Self. Sex Roles in Modern America. New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ford, Paul Leicester (1899). The Many-Sided Franklin. New York: The Century Co. Furlow, John W. (1992). “TR and the Pinchots: Conservation and Feminism in Modern America.” In: N.A. Naylor, D. Brinkley, and J.A. Gable (eds). Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American. Interlaken & New York: Heart of the Lakes. 459-470. Haraway, Donna (1984/ 85). “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936.” Social Text 11. 20-64. Harbaugh, William H. (1961). Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy. - (ed.) (1967). The Writings of Theodore Roosevelt. Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs- Merrill. “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 289 Howe, Julia Ward (2004). The Hermaphrodite. [Written between 1846 and 1847]. Ed. by Gary Williams. Lincoln, NE, et al: U of Nebraska P. Kidd, Benjamin (1894). Social Evolution. New York: Macmillan. Leach, William (1980). True Love and Perfect Union. Feminist Reform of Sex and Society. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Markham, Lois (1985). Theodore Roosevelt. From the book series World Leaders Past & Present. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Matthews, Brander (1924). “Theodore Roosevelt as a Man of Letters.” Literary Essays by Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ix-xxii. Mitchell, Silas Weir (1891). Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co. Mowry, George E. (1958). The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912. New York: Harper & Brothers. Norris, Frank (1969). “The Responsibilities of the Novelist.” First published in The Critic, Dec. [1902]. The Responsibilities of the Novelist, and Other Literary Essays. New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd. 3-12. Norris, Kathleen (1935). Mother; A Story. [1911]. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Reagan, Ronald (1989). “Remarks at a Luncheon with Community Leaders in Chicago, Illinois, September 30, 1988.” Public Papers of the Presidents: Ronald Reagan, 1988-89. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1252. Roosevelt, Theodore (1902a). “The American Boy.” [First published in St Nicholas, May, 1900]. The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. London: Grant Richards. 155-164. - (1902b). “Character and Success.” [First published in Outlook, March, 1900]. The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. London: Grant Richards. 111-121. - (1902c). “Manhood and Statehood.” [Address at the Quarter-Centennial Celebration of Statehood in Colorado, Colorado Springs, Aug. 2, 1901]. The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. London: Grant Richards. 245-259. - (1902d). “True Americanism.” [First publ. in The Forum, April, 1894]. American Ideals, and Other Essays, Social and Political. New York & London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 46-74. - (1903). “National Life and Character.” [First publ. in Sewance Review, 1894]. American Ideals, and Other Essays, Social and Political. Vol. II. Philadelphia: Gebbie & Company. 91-127. - (1905). “The American Woman as a Mother.” [Address before the National Congress of Mothers, Washington, D.C., March 13, 1905]. The Ladies’ Home Journal 22: 8 (July). 1-2. - (1910). “Analogies Between Biology and the Human Story.” [Address at Oxford University, June 7, 1910]. The New York Times June 8.6. - (1919). “Temperance and the Wage Earner.” [Address delivered in Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, Aug. 10, 1905]. The Roosevelt Policy: Speeches, Letters and State Papers, relating to Corporate Wealth and Closely Allied Topics. Vol. 1. New York: Current Literature Publ. Co. 286-291. - (1924a). “The Origin and Evolution of Life.” [Review in The Outlook, Jan. 16, 1918, of The Origin of Life, by Henry Fairfield Osborn]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XIV: Literary Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 29-37. - (1924b). “Race Decadence.” [Review in The Outlook, Apr. 8, 1911, of Racial Decay, by Octavius Charles Beale]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XIV: Literary Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 151-166. Stefan L. Brandt 290 - (1924c). The Rough Riders. [1899]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XIII. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. - (1924d). “Social Evolution.” [Review in The North American Review, July, 1895, of Social Evolution, by Benjamin Kidd]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XIV: Literary Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 107-128. - (1925a). “The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood.” [Address before the Civic Forum and the Child Welfare League, New York City, Oct. 20, 1911]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XVIII: American Problems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 244-275. - (1925b). The Foes of Our Own Household. [1917]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XXI. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. - (1925c). Letters to his Children. Ed. by Joseph Bucklin Bishop. [1919]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XXI. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. - (1925d). “The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics.” [First published in The Forum, July, 1894]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XV: American Ideals. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 40-49. - (1925e). “Women’s Rights; and the Duties of Both Men and Women.” [First publ. in The Outlook, Feb. 3, 1912]. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. Memorial Edition. Vol. XVIII: American Problems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 276-289. - (1946). An Autobiography. [1913]. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. - (1967). “The Duties of American Citizenship.” [Address to the Liberal Club, Buffalo, NY, Jan. 26, 1893]. The Writings of Theodore Roosevelt. Ed. by William H. Harbaugh. Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-Merrill. 3-16. - (1970). Presidential Addresses and State Papers. Part One. New York: Kraus. - (1994). “Letter to Alice.” [May 27, 1903]. Theodore Roosevelt Papers. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, microfilm edition, reel 461. Rosenthal, Michael (1986). The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement. London: Collins. Ruggles, Steven, and Ron Goeken (1992). “Race and Multigenerational Family Structure, 1900-1980.” In: Scott J. South and Stewart E. Tolnay (eds.). The Changing American Family: Sociological and Demographic Perspectives. Boulder, San Francisco, et al: Westview Press. 15-42. Schaefer, Arthur M. (1992). “Theodore Roosevelt’s Contribution to the Concept of Presidential Intervention in Labor Disputes: Antecedents and the 1902 Coal Strike.” In: N.A. Naylor, D. Brinkley, and J.A. Gable (eds). Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American. Interlaken & New York: Heart of the Lakes. 201-220. Sinclair, Upton (1906). The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. Stern, Mark J. (1987). Society and Family Strategy. Erie County, New York, 1850-1920. Albany: State U of New York P. Stratemeyer, Edward (2007). American Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt. [First published in 1904]. Project Gutenberg, EBook #22352, Jan. 8]. <http: / / gutenberg. mirrors. tds.net/ pub/ gutenberg.org/ 2/ 2/ 3/ 5/ 22352/ 22352-h/ 22352-h.htm>. Teague, Michael (1981). Mrs. L.: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth. New York: Doubleday & Co. Wagenknecht, Edward (1958). The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt. New York, London, et al: Longmans, Green & Co. “The Finest Type of Existing Marriage” 291 Illustrations Figure 1: Postcard of Roosevelt family. 1903. False colors. Dec. 14, 2008. <http: / / commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/ File: TheodoreRooseveltFamily.jpg>. Figure 2: “Drawing the Line in Mississippi.” Cartoon by C. Berryman. 1902. Dec. 21, 2008. <http: / / www.teddybearandfriends.com/ archive/ articles/ history.html>. Figure 3: “The Tyrant.” Sketch drawn by Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to his daughter Ethel, June 24, 1906 (from: Letters to His Children 568). Stefan L. Brandt John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien Berlin AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives”: Pragmatism and Romanticism Ulf Schulenberg Would it be too frivolous to advance the idea that John Dewey’s version of pragmatism, often considered to be somewhat anemic, at least to a certain extent was influenced by P.B. Shelley’s radical Romanticism? And what about the relation between the early Wordsworth and William James? The role of Romanticism is crucial if one seeks to grasp the significance of pragmatism and its much-debated renaissance. This paper concentrates on Richard Rorty’s reading of Romanticism. From the early 1980s until his death in 2007, Rorty developed his own Romanticized pragmatism which relied on his notorious private-public split. While calling attention to the provocative and stimulating nature of Rorty’s notion of a literary or poeticized culture and to the similarities between the Romantics and Rortyan liberal ironists, the paper argues that a Romanticized pragmatism which is true to its Romantic heritage ought to present itself as incompatible with an abstract and unmediated opposition between poetry and politics. In the context of the much-debated revival or renaissance of pragmatism, which was initiated by Richard Rorty in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the crucial role of Romanticism has often been neglected. Instead of underscoring the importance of the line which runs from Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry and its definition of the future role of the poet to Rorty’s postmetaphysical scenario of a literary or poeticized culture, or from the English Romantics to the rather ‘literary’ pragmatism of William James, philosophers, theorists, and antitheorists have called attention to other aspects of (neo)pragmatism: its antifoundationalism and antiessentialism, Hegelian historicism, Darwinian naturalism, Nietzschean and Proustian perspectivism, Freudian understanding of the self, late-Wittgensteinian and Davidsonian nominalism, as well as its Kuhnian understanding of the function of science. All of these aspects can of course be found in Rorty’s brand of neopragmatism. One might feel Ulf Schulenberg 294 1 For a discussion of the renaissance of pragmatism, see the contributions to Dickstein (1998) and Sandbothe (2000). Russell B. Goodman (1990) discusses the relation between Romanticism and the thinking of Emerson, William James, and Dewey. tempted to advance the idea that pragmatists have often seemed to move between two extremes (which are sometimes presented as caricatures): on the one hand, a somewhat anemic social democratic version of pragmatism which has its origin in Dewey, and on the other, an aestheticized version governed by languid Proustian aesthetes who are brought to the brink of ecstasy by the beautiful sound of the word ‘Guermantes’ and who spend hours discussing the contingency of the ‘mémoire involontaire’. Undoubtedly, other discussions of the history of pragmatism have sought to illustrate its radical character, think of Cornel West’s version of neopragmatism which he developed in the 1980s, and its Emersonian and Whitmanian future-orientation and optimism. What ought to be of primary concern for us today, I think, are not the ideological differences between those who focus their interest on Proust’s world of small contingencies and those, mostly Americanists, who seek to turn Emerson and Whitman into important precursors of pragmatism. A new and interesting perspective, I submit, is offered by asking the following questions: What role has Romanticism played for the development of pragmatism, and especially for the renaissance of pragmatism? 1 Is it possible, in other words, to grasp the significance of pragmatism without considering the impact Romanticism has had on it? Is it simply the Romantic idea of the priority of imagination over reason, which the pragmatists would later interpret as a first step in the direction of a severe critique of the correspondence theory of truth and thus of antirepresentationalism, which should be of interest here? In order to approach these and other questions, I shall concentrate on the thinker who did more than anyone else to elucidate the role Romanticism has played for a renewed understanding of pragmatism: Richard Rorty. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I shall discuss Rorty’s reading of Romanticism. I shall try to illustrate why Romanticism plays such a crucial role for Rorty’s version of neopragmatism. His discussion of Romanticism covers more than 25 years - from “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism” (1981) to “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude” and “Pragmatism and Romanticism” (both in his final volume of Philosophical Papers, which was published in 2007). I shall direct attention to the fact that Rorty considers Romanticism an important phase of a development which culminates in (neo)pragmatism. In other words, Rorty avers that (his) pragmatism goes further than Romanticism in the attempt to establish an utterly dedivinized, postmetaphysical, and genuinely nominalist and historicist culture - a literary culture. In order to further explain Rorty’s critique of Romanticism, which concentrates on the Romantic notions of “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 295 depth, profundity, the ineffable, and the infinite, I shall briefly discuss Isaiah Berlin’s reading of Romanticism. In the second part of my paper, I will show what role Romanticism plays in a Rortyan literary or poeticized culture and I will also explain the parallels between the Romantic poet and the figure Rorty calls the ‘liberal ironist’. Most presumably, this idea of a postmetaphysical literary culture, in which the creative and innovative work of the (Bloomian) strong poet is no longer unacknowledged but on the contrary of utmost importance, is one of the most important, and most stimulating, aspects of Rorty’s legacy (cf. Schulenberg 2007). At the end of the second part of my paper, I shall call attention to the difficulties that inevitably arise in connection with Rorty’s interpretation of Romanticism. Following Rorty, “at the heart of pragmatism is the refusal to accept the correspondence theory of truth and the idea that true beliefs are accurate representations of reality. At the heart of Romanticism is the thesis of the priority of imagination over reason - the claim that reason can only follow paths that the imagination has broken” (2007a: 105). To him, who at least since Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) always felt closer to the poet than to the (analytic) philosopher or the scientist, the attempt to expand the present limits of the human imagination is one of the main characteristics of a literary culture. Imagination, the idea of (radical) novelty, the idea of poetic genius, and the idea of the contingency of our (final) vocabularies - on Rorty’s account, these characteristics of Romanticism are crucial if one wants to tell a story of the origin and destiny of the modern age. However, in view of Rorty’s fascination with the Romantics the question arises as to whether his notion of a pragmatist and liberal poeticized culture, which is governed by the possibility of self-creation and which promises to offer Western societies an improved self-description, really demystifies the Romantic impulse. To put this differently, Rorty’s Romanticized pragmatism seems somewhat too Romantic, too focused on the notion of imagination, and too much concerned with offering the possibility of idiosyncratic private self-creations. Consequently, it tends to neglect the task of developing effective tools which might initiate change in the public sphere. As as selfproclaimed Deweyan leftist intellectual, Rorty’s demystification of Romanticism relies too much on his problematic private-public split. His privileging of the private over the public sphere has resulted in a truly fascinating and stimulating postmetaphyscial scenario. However, it has also led to a paradoxical position insofar as, on the one hand, one might advance the argument that Rorty is too Romantic in the sense of too preoccupied with the desire for private self-creation and self-overcoming and with the power of the imagination. On the other hand, he is not Romantic enough since in order to make his liberal postmetaphysical scenario look convincing and attractive he has to ignore the Romantics’ desire for radical social and political change Ulf Schulenberg 296 (for instance, in Blake, the early Wordsworth, and, of course, Shelley and Whitman). It is crucial to understand that this is not a paper on Romanticism, but on pragmatism’s use of Romanticism. For the purposes of this paper, I shall not discuss the various twentieth-century attempts to conceptually grasp the multilayered complexity of Romantic literature, from René Wellek, Arthur Lovejoy, and Meyer Abrams to Paul de Man and Harold Bloom, but I shall concentrate on pragmatism’s attempt to make Romanticism part of a modern antifoundationalist tradition, as it were. This endeavor, I submit, promises interesting results and will lead to new insights. In order to focus on those stimulating theoretical questions, I shall refrain from discussing any Romantic poems or novels in detail. I agree with Rorty that there are many fascinating parallels between Romanticism and pragmatism and that these need to be further illuminated. Moreover, I also agree with him when he suggests that pragmatism goes further than Romanticism as regards the desire for a postmetaphysical literary culture. Concerning my critique of Rorty’s reading of Romanticism, it is indeed true that a problematization of his public-private dichotomy is not very new and that this kind of critique has been repeatedly advanced in the confrontation with his texts. However, this does not make it less valid. As we shall see, Rorty’s public-private split is of utmost importance if one seeks to understand his antifoundationalist reading of Romanticism. 1 Richard Rorty’s Reading of Romanticism If one seeks to understand Rorty’s interpretation of Romanticism, one has to see that many of the ideas which he developed in his later texts had already been present in one of the most important essays in his Consequences of Pragmatism, namely, “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism.” At the beginning of the part which discusses the significance of Romanticism for the narrative he is telling in this piece, Rorty defines Romanticism “as the thesis that the one thing needful was to discover not which propositions are true but rather what vocabulary we should use” (Rorty 1982: 148). By insisting on the importance of new ways of speaking, new vocabularies, or new and stimulating sets of metaphors, the Romantics made (Kantian) metaphysical idealism and the correspondence theory of truth look bad and hopelessly obsolete. However, “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism” is not only an important essay because Rorty demonstrates how crucial the idea of the use of new vocabularies was for the Romantics, but also because of the role he attributes to Hegel. Rorty’s judgment of Hegel as far as the narrative about the origin of the modern age is concerned would not change very much in his later texts. “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 297 Interestingly enough, Rorty maintains that metaphysical idealism ought to be seen as only a brief interlude on the way to Romanticism and thus to a pragmatist literary culture. Rorty is not at all interested in Hegel’s systembuilding, but he concentrates exclusively on Hegel’s historicism. It goes without saying that it is the early Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) which is of primary concern in this context. It was the idealist Hegel who contributed enormously to the establishment of a literary culture shaped by a Romanticism which replaced the pursuit of truth with the search for new vocabularies. According to Rorty, Hegel was of great importance for the development of a postmetaphysical literary culture since he not only celebrated the invention of radically new vocabularies, but he at the same time underscored their transitoriness and finality, the fact that any certainty a new vocabulary seems to offer lasts but a moment. Hegel prepared us, as Rorty seems to hold, for the recognition of the contingency of the vocabularies which constitute our beliefs and desires: “Hegel left Kant’s ideal of philosophy-as-science a shambles, but he did, as I have said, create a new literary genre, a genre which exhibited the relativity of significance to choice of vocabulary, the bewildering variety of vocabularies from which we can choose, and the intrinsic instability of each” (1982: 148). Referring to C.P. Snow’s idea of the “two cultures,” Rorty proposes that Hegel knew all about the literary culture before its birth (cf. Snow 1964; the introduction by Stefan Collini is particularly suggestive). Hegel exemplified, like no one before him had done, what such a radically new culture could offer, “namely, the historical sense of the relativity of principles and vocabularies to a place and time, the Romantic sense that everything can be changed by talking in new terms” (1982: 149). Contrary to his own intentions, Hegel wrote the charter of our modern literary culture. Rorty defines this new culture thus: “This culture stretches from Carlyle to Isiah [sic] Berlin, from Matthew Arnold to Lionel Trilling, from Heine to Sartre, from Baudelaire to Nabokov, from Dostoievsky to Doris Lessing, from Emerson to Harold Bloom. Its luxuriant complexity cannot be conveyed simply by conjoining words like ‘poetry’, ‘the novel’, and ‘literary criticsm’. This culture is a phenomenon the Enlightenment could not have anticipated” (1982: 149). In later texts Rorty would emphasize the antifoundationalist and antiessentialist character of this kind of culture and the fact that its main aim is the production of two different vocabularies: novel vocabularies of self-creation and self-transformation and new vocabularies for the enrichment of public life and the strengthening of solidarity. In “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism,” Rorty argues that the final step in the process of establishing a literary or poeticized culture was the replacement of Romanticism by pragmatism. He particularly underscores the contribution of Nietzsche and William James in this context. I shall further elaborate on this final step in the second part of my paper. Ulf Schulenberg 298 Romanticism also plays a decisive role in Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. At the beginning of the first chapter (“The Contingency of Language”), Rorty advances the argument that what unites the German idealists, the French revolutionaries, and the Romantic poets is that they understood, at the end of the eighteenth century, “that anything could be made to look good or bad, important or unimportant, useful or useless, by being redescribed” (1989: 7). Furthermore, what the German idealists, the utopian revolutionaries, and the Romantic poets had in common was “a dim sense that human beings whose language changed so that they no longer spoke of themselves as responsible to nonhuman powers would thereby become a new kind of human beings” (1989: 7). At the end of the eighteenth century redescriptions became ever more radical in nature, European linguistic practices changed at an increasingly fast rate, and more and more people seemed willing to accept the Romantic idea that truth is made rather than found. This suggestion has to be seen in connection with the idea that a human self is not adequately or inadequately expressed in a vocabulary but that it is rather created by the use of a vocabulary. By introducing new sets of metaphors, and by making the idea of constant gestalt switches look attractive, the Romantic poets initiated a new way of speaking which no longer had use for notions like ‘foundation’, ‘reality’, ‘real essence’, ‘intrinsic nature’, ‘fitting the world,’ and ‘correspondence of language to reality.’ In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty stresses once more that he thinks of “Hegel’s Phenomenology both as the beginning of the end of the Plato-Kant tradition and as a paradigm of the ironist’s ability to exploit the possibilities of massive redescription” (1989: 78). Truly scandalous for every materialist theoretician is Rorty’s redescription of Hegel’s dialectical method, which in Rorty’s opinion “is not an argumentative procedure or a way of unifying subject and object, but simply a literary skill - skill at producing surprising gestalt switches by making smooth, rapid transitions from one terminology to another” (1989: 78). Apart from Hegel’s dialectical method, these notions of surprising gestalt switches and changing terminologies or new sets of metaphors are also useful, for instance, when one seeks to understand the radical nature of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1800). Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and 1800 were subversive volumes not only because of the experimentalism of the language and style and the depiction of the life of the lower classes as a new content, but also because they urged their readers to consider together a plurality of utterly different vocabularies and speakers - from Wordsworth’s “The Female Vagrant”, “Simon Lee”, “The Last of the Flock”, and “The Idiot Boy” to his Lucy poems; or from his “We are Seven” to “Tintern Abbey.” Even more obvious is of course the difference between Wordsworth’s rustic ballads and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” This stimulating plurality of genuinely new ways of speaking, which did not pretend to offer a single, firm, unequivocal, and transhistorical truth, “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 299 2 While I concentrate on the attempt to elucidate the relation between pragmatism and Romanticism, one could also try to analyze how Rorty views the relation between pragmacontributed to the critique of the idea that there is a permanent reality to be found behind the many temporary appearances. Undoubtedly, especially Coleridge was still an unreconstructed (Kantian) metaphysician, yet Lyrical Ballads as a whole might be interpreted as an important step in the direction toward the establishment of an antifoundationalist and antiessentialist poeticized culture. Rorty introduces his idea of a poeticized culture in chapter 3 of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity: “The Contingency of a Liberal Community.” He states that what is needed is “a redescription of liberalism as the hope that culture as a whole can be ‘poeticized’ rather than as the Enlightenment hope that it can be ‘rationalized’ or ‘scientized.’ That is, we need to substitute the hope that chances for fulfillment of idiosyncratic fantasies will be equalized for the hope that everyone will replace ‘passion’ or fantasy with ‘reason’” (1989: 53). The culture hero of this kind of liberal polity would no longer be the priest or the scientist striving for objective truth, but the (Bloomian) strong poet. Following Rorty, a postmetaphysical and poeticized culture “would be one which would not insist we find the real wall behind the painted ones, the real touchstones of truth as opposed to touchstones which are merely cultural artifacts. It would be a culture which, precisely by appreciating that all touchstones are such artifacts, would take as its goal the creation of ever more various and multicolored artifacts” (1989: 53-4). It becomes clear from Rorty’s description of a literary or poeticized culture, his story of progress, that his main concern are the aforementioned chances for fulfillment of idiosyncratic fantasies in the private sphere and not so much the Romantic desire for radical political change. As we shall see further below, what this boils down to is the rather simple suggestion that Rorty holds that American liberal democracy is the best political system we can get, in spite of its numerous shortcomings and insufficiencies, and that all we really need are piecemeal reforms. As he puts it very clearly: “I think that contemporary liberal society already contains the institutions for its own improvement […]. Indeed, my hunch is that Western social and political thought may have had the last conceptual revolution it needs” (1989: 63). Rorty’s attempt to demystify or deromanticize Romanticism has to be regarded as a crucial part of his pragmatist endeavor to dedivinize the world and the self and thus of his attempt to complete the process of secularization. On his account, the Romantic poets did not radically break with man’s deep metaphysical need. As I have suggested above, they only prepared the establishment of a postmetaphysical culture. Rorty develops his critique of Romanticism in two of his last pieces: “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude” and “Pragmatism and Romanticism.” 2 The latter essay is especially Ulf Schulenberg 300 tism, Romanticism, and religion. Important texts for a discussion of this highly interesting question are Rorty’s following pieces: “Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God” (2007c) and “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism” (2007d), “Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility, and Romance” (1999), and The Future of Religion (Rorty and Vattimo 2005). 3 In this context, it would be interesting to ask whether there are any parallels between Rorty’s Nietzschean understanding of self-creation and self-invention and the late Foucault’s ideas as he developed them in L’Usage des plaisirs (1984) and Le Souci de soi (1984). Does Foucault’s aesthetics of existence or his notion of a “hermeneutics of the subject”, as he called one of his last courses at the Collège de France, at least partly come close to Rorty’s conception of self-creation? One might even go further and claim that there are important ‘pragmatist’ moments in Foucault’s texts: for instance, his oft-repeated refusal to develop a ‘theory’ or a system of theoretical ideas implying some conceptual unity; his important as far as Rorty’s notion of imagination is concerned. We already saw that Rorty thinks that at the heart of Romanticism “is the thesis of the priority of imagination over reason - the claim that reason can only follow paths that the imagination has broken” (2007a: 105). In the context of the quarrel between the two cultures he draws attention to “the fear of both philosophers and scientists that the imagination may indeed go all the way down. This fear is entirely justified, for the imagination is the source of language, and thought is impossible without language” (2007a: 106-7). Further below in his paper he formulates even more pointedly: “No imagination, no language. No linguistic change, no moral or intellectual progress. Rationality is a matter of making allowed moves within language games. Imagination creates the games that reason proceeds to play” (2007a: 115). What this signifies is that imagination and imaginativeness go all the way back. It is in “Pragmatism and Romanticism” that Rorty makes particularly clear that his understanding of Romanticism profoundly differs from traditional ones. On his account, Romanticism “is a thesis about the nature of human progress” (2007a: 108). Most presumably, this is Rorty’s central idea as regards Romanticism’s contemporary significance and the role it plays in his liberal story of progress. When Rorty maintains that “the Romantic movement marked the beginning of the attempt to replace the tale told by the Greek philosophers with a better tale” (2007a: 117), it becomes obvious that the Romantics initiated a process of creative redescription and imaginative recontextualization that would eventually allow us to recognize the possibility of establishing a postmetaphysical culture characterized by anti- Platonism and antirepresentationalism. Thinking of imagination “as the ability to change social practices by proposing new uses of marks and noises,” that is, as “the ability to come up with socially useful novelties” (2007a: 107, 115), Rorty underlines the significance of Nietzsche and Shelley for his thought. Nietzsche’s Romantic anti- Platonism not only prophesied the coming of a postmetaphysical age, but he also urged us, in The Gay Science, to become “the poets of our own lives” (“die Dichter unseres Lebens”) (2007a: 110). 3 Imagination, linguistic novel- “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 301 insistence on offering a ‘toolbox’ which can be useful for people to solve particular problems; and of course his radical dismissal of the Sartrean ‘general intellectual’ in favor of the ‘specific intellectual’ who only engages in particular political situations, who does not pretend to speak with the authority of universal principles, and who emphasizes the need for detailed responses formulated by those concretely involved in political or social problems. ties and progress (that is, new vocabularies and new sets of metaphors), self-creation or self-fashioning, and the idea that one should not strive to represent things accurately or adequately, but rather try to replace a good old poem with a radically new better poem or an old tale with a creative new tale - all of these various aspects, which are central to Rorty’s reading of Romanticism, direct attention to the innovative potential of the private sphere and only indirectly illustrate the role the Romantics’ radical gestures might play regarding change in the public sphere. The Nietzschean idea of becoming the poets of our own lives is of course also central to Shelley. Especially in the Defence of Poetry Shelley enlarged the meaning of the terms ‘poetry’ and ‘poet’. Analogously, Rorty’s Bloomian notion of ‘strong poet’ also comprises those who do not write verse, for instance, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Proust, Heidegger, and Nabokov. He defines the poet as “the maker of new words, the shaper of new languages” (1989: 20). Clearly, Rorty agrees with Shelley’s suggestion that it is not too difficult to imagine what the world’s moral and intellectual improvement would have been like, if philosophers such as Locke, Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau had never lived. However, according to Shelley, “it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed [. . .]” (2002: 530). Rorty also approvingly quotes the following famous sentences from the Defence, where Shelley expands on his understanding of the meaning of poetry: Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought: it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. (Shelley 2002: 531) In spite of Rorty’s approval of Shelley’s characterization of poetry’s power, the adjective “divine” must have irritated him. Equally problematic is certainly Shelley’s suggestion that a poet “participates in the eternal, the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not” (2002: 513). Furthermore, Shelley also avers that a poem “is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth” (2002: 515). These are only three Ulf Schulenberg 302 examples which indicate that Shelley’s vocabulary is still that of a poet with a metaphysical need, someone who, in spite of his desire for self-creation and his emphasis on the autonomy of the poet as prophet, still finds himself captured by Platonism. ‘Divinity’, ‘the eternal’, ‘the infinite’, and ‘eternal truth’ - these terms belong to a way of speaking whose uselessness, insufficiencies, and dangers Rorty, the Romantic pragmatist and radical atheist, wants us to recognize. Rorty’s critique of the Romantic poets in “Pragmatism and Romanticism” is less direct in comparison with “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude.” In the former piece he writes: “Just as the Enlightenment had capitalized and deified Reason, so Shelley and other Romantics capitalized and deified Imagination” (2007a: 109). Rorty, as should be clear by now, wants us to no longer deify anything and to continue the process of secularization which ought to eventually culminate in a postmetaphysical poeticized culture. To put this somewhat differently, he wants us to “try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi divinity, where we treat everything - our language, our conscience, our community - as a product of time and chance” (1989: 22). In “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude,” Rorty argues that the Romantic poets only took the first necessary steps in this direction. Concerning his attempt to demystify or deromanticize Romanticism, this essay is particularly suggestive. Moreover, it also shows how important Isaiah Berlin’s interpretation of Romanticism, in The Roots of Romanticism (1999), is for Rorty’s approach. Rorty concentrates his critique on two points: the Romantics’ passionate commitment and their metaphors of depth and profundity. One might feel tempted to surmise that a poeticized culture, whose hero is the strong poet and whose virtues and advantages are praised by antirepresentationalists, nominalist historicists, and other anti- Platonists, is perfectly compatible with passionate gestures and commitments. However, as a Deweyan liberal, Rorty questions the necessity of the attempt to seek what Habermas has termed “an other to reason.” Exalting passion at the expense of reason, as Rorty claims, can be seen as part of “the Platonist hope of speaking with an authority that is not merely that of a certain time and place” (2007b: 83). In contrast to the Romantics’ passionate commitment, their search for new realms beyond the ordinary and for something deep within the subject, pragmatists want us to understand that we are “finite creatures, the children of specific times and specific places” (2007b: 82). Furthermore, they call attention to the fact that this Romantic desire, the harmful Platonist search for what is more than another human invention, threatens to end the conversation of humanity, while Rorty seeks to convince us that this conversation goes “its unpredictable way for as long as our species lasts - solving particular problems as they happen to arise, and, by working through the consequences of those solutions, generating new problems” (2007b: 79). “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 303 Rorty always vehemently rejected traditional understandings of subjectivity. To him, there is no such thing as a core self whose real inner nature might be discovered and accurately represented. He holds that we are best described as centerless webs of beliefs and desires or as sentential attitudes. Consequently, he rejects “the Romantic metaphor of descent to the very bottom of the human soul” (2007b: 80). Rorty wants to deromanticize Romanticism by critiquing these metaphors of depth and profundity, as well as the ideas of the infinite, the ineffable, and the attempt to save us from finitude. Trying to help us get away from Platonist representationalism with its appearance-reality distinction or from what Heidegger called the ontotheological tradition, of which Romanticism has proven to be still a part, Rorty puts a premium on the pragmatist idea (unbearably frivolous to many) of experimentalist tinkering. Universalist grandeur, that is, the appeal to something permanent, transhistorical, and overarching, and Romantic depth, that is, the appeal to something which is ineffable and poetically sublime, do not find their place in a pragmatist vocabulary: “If one thinks that experimentalist tinkering is all we shall ever manage, then one will be suspicious of both universalist metaphors of grandeur and Romantic metaphors of depth. For both suggest that a suggestion for further tinkering can gain strength by being tied in with something that is not, in Russell’s words, merely of here and now - something like the intrinsic nature of reality or the uttermost depths of the human soul” (2007b: 86). It is interesting to see to what extent the eminent historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin, influenced Rorty’s critique of Romanticism. In his A.W. Mellon Lectures, given in 1965 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Berlin does of course not criticize the Romantics for still being Platonists, metaphysicians, and epistemological foundationalists. But he impressively illustrates to what degree their thinking was dominated by the notions of depth, inexhaustibility, infinity, and inexpressibility. Regarding the idea of profundity, for instance, Berlin points out: But in the case of works which are profound the more I say the more remains to be said. There is no doubt that, although I attempt to describe what their profundity consists in, as soon as I speak it becomes quite clear that, no matter how long I speak, new chasms open. No matter what I say I always have to leave three dots at the end. Whatever description I give always opens the doors to something further, something even darker, perhaps, but certainly something which is in principle incapable of being reduced to precise, clear, verifiable, objective prose. (1999: 103) Berlin correctly maintains that the Romantics thought that their relation to the universe was inexpressible, and that they at the same time strove to absorb the infinite into themselves or to dissolve themselves into it. The Romantics’ Sehnsucht not only stands for their narrative desire to express their inner Ulf Schulenberg 304 nature and thus their relationship to the universe, but also for their perpetually renewed attempt to create themselves by means of their new vocabularies or sets of metaphors. The Romantics’ self-creation plays a crucial role in The Roots of Romanticism. Following Berlin, the Romantics abhorred anything static, the rigidity of moral, political, or artistic principles, as well as the oppressive nature of institutions and stable structures. Berlin reads the Romantics’ refusal to accept all this as a necessary given as “the beginning of the vast drive forward on the part of inspired individuals, or inspired nations, constantly creating themselves afresh, constantly aspiring to purify themselves, and to reach some unheard-of height of endless self-transformation, endless self-creation, works of art constantly engaged in creating themselves, forward, forward, like a kind of vast cosmic design perpetually renewing itself” (1999: 91). What is important in the context of our discussion is that Berlin sometimes seems more inclined than Rorty to underscore the Romantics’ antirepresentationalism, antifoundationalism, and antiessentialism, and thus their anti-Platonist gesture in general. In other words, Berlin seems to hold that they are further down the road to a postmetaphysical culture than Rorty thinks or is willing to admit (remember that Rorty’s narrative of the modern age culminates in pragmatism). Berlin, for instance, sees Fichte’s theory of knowledge “as a kind of early but extremely far-reaching pragmatism” (1999: 89). Moreover, he underlines that the Romantics for the first time in the history of human thought taught man “that ideals are not to be discovered at all, they are to be invented; not to be found but to be generated, generated as art is generated” (1999: 87). Apart from this made-found distinction, which is of utmost importance for pragmatists from James to Rorty, Berlin also elucidates the Romantics’ severe critique of “objective criteria” and “objective truth,” as well as their rejection of “any kind of general theory” (1999: 140, 144). From Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty (1929) to Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels’s notorious neopragmatist manifesto “Against Theory” (published in 1982 in Critical Inquiry) and Stanley Fish’s rhetoricized antifoundationalism, this attack on theory accompanied us throughout the twentieth century. That Berlin thinks that the Romantics bring together a certain kind of antirepresentationalism and the notion of (endless) self-creation, becomes clear in the following important passage: Those are the fundamental bases of Romanticism: will, the fact that there is no structure to things, that you can mould things as you will - they come into being only as a result of your moulding activity - and therefore opposition to any view which tried to represent reality as having some kind of form which could be studied, written down, learnt, communicated to others, and in other respects treated in a scientific manner. (1999: 127) “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 305 In the second part of my paper, I shall discuss three points. First, I shall seek to clarify to what extent Rorty’s ‘liberal ironist’ is also a Romantic. Second, I shall illustrate why Rorty is of the opinion that pragmatism goes further in the establishment of a postmetaphysical culture than Romanticism. Finally, I shall develop my critique of Rorty by asking to what extent a genuinely nominalist and historicist poeticized culture would affect the public sphere. 2 Romantics, Liberal Ironists, and the Idea of a Literary or Poeticized Culture In one of his last pieces, “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre,” Rorty states a thesis which is central to many of his texts: “It is that the intellectuals of the West have, since the Renaissance, progressed through three stages: they have hoped for redemption first from God, then from philosophy, and now from literature” (2004: 8). According to Rorty, we live in a (not fully realized) literary culture. As we have seen in the first part of this paper, Rorty’s contention is that the transition from a philosophical to a literary culture began with Hegel. It was with Hegel that philosophy reached its most ambitious and presumptuous form which almost instantly turned into its dialectical opposite, that is, the Hegelian system eventually turned out to be a kind of utterly unironical self-consuming artifact. Hegel’s system was serious in its desire to depict things as they really were and it sought to fit everything into a single context. This also signifies, of course, that it pretended to represent the totality. Rorty writes: “Since Hegel’s time, the intellectuals have been losing faith in philosophy. This amounts to losing faith in the idea that redemption can come in the form of true beliefs. In the literary culture that has been emerging during the last two hundred years, the question ‘Is it true? ’ has yielded to the question ‘What’s new? ’” (2004: 9). In today’s literary culture philosophy and religion have become marginal, they appear as only optional literary genres. A literary culture still offers the possibility of redemption, but the kind of redemption has changed. As Rorty points out: As I am using the terms “literature” and “literary culture,” a culture that has substituted literature for both religion and philosophy finds redemption neither in a noncognitive relation to a nonhuman person nor in a cognitive relation to propositions, but in noncognitive relations to other human beings, relations mediated by human artifacts such as books and buildings, paintings and songs. These artifacts provide a sense of alternative ways of being human. (2004: 10) What this also means is that the search for God was replaced by the striving for Truth, and that the latter has finally been replaced by the search for Ulf Schulenberg 306 4 Rorty uses generic she in the original. novelty and by the recognition that redemption can only be found in human creations and artifacts and not in the escape from the temporal to the eternal or transcendental. How does Rorty define the members of a literary culture, the literary intellectuals? His understanding of the function of the literary intellectual combines a Bloomian interpretation of the autonomy of the self with Emersonian self-reliance. A literary intellectual has constant doubts about the (final) vocabulary she 4 is currently using, she does not want to get stuck in it. She longs to become acquainted with other ways of speaking, other ways of interpreting the purpose of life. For that reason she reads as many books as possible. By becoming acquainted with so many alternative vocabularies and ways of being human, the literary intellectual enlarges her self. Because of her reading she is introduced to a great number of alternative purposes, and ways of expressing those purposes, and she is thus given the possibility of radically questioning traditional vocabularies and explanations. To put it simply, the literary intellectual’s reading leads to her self-creation, it offers her the possibility of creating an autonomous self. Rorty apparently agrees with Harold Bloom that the more books you have read, the more descriptions and redescriptions you have come across, the more human and at the same time autonomous you become. A Rortyan and Bloomian autonomous self puts a premium on the attempt to creatively expand the present limits of the human imagination, and it also seeks to demonstrate that the development from religion (God) to philosophy (Truth) to literature (novelty, imagination, redescription) is a story of increasing self-reliance. So far I have called the members of a Rortyan literary culture ironist literary intellectuals. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty advances the idea that the ideal member of a postmetaphysical poeticized culture is a figure he calls the ‘liberal ironist’. The notion of liberal ironism is central to Rorty’s neopragmatist thinking. He borrows his definition of ‘liberal’ from Judith Shklar, who says, as he understands her, “that liberals are the people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do” (1989: xv). Rorty’s understanding of liberalism was of course also very much influenced by Mill, Berlin, Habermas, and Rawls, but for his explanation of what the term ‘liberal ironist’ means Shklar’s definition is sufficient. For our purposes Rorty’s illustration of the implications of ‘ironist’ is of crucial importance. He uses “‘ironist’ to name the sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires - someone sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea that those central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance” (1989: xv). That the liberal ironist, who is - together with the strong poet - “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 307 the hero of Rorty’s liberal utopia, has no problem to accept the contingency of his or her web of beliefs and desires also implies that he or she is perfectly aware of the contingency of his or her final vocabulary. Ironists, if one follows Rorty, are “never quite able to take themselves seriously because always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves” (1989: 73-4). The ironist, in contrast to the metaphysician (as Platonist), is a nominalist and historicist who radically rejects the notion of intrinsic nature, who dismisses the correspondence theory of truth as outdated and useless, and who constantly calls attention to the contingency, historicity, and creativity of the various vocabularies she uses. As I have already pointed out with regard to what Rorty calls the literary intellectual in “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre,” his heroes abhor the idea of stasis in the sense of getting stuck in one final vocabulary. They constantly look for new possibilities of creatively and imaginatively redescribing and recontextualizing things and persons, that is, their desire for novelty, new sets of metaphors, and surprising gestalt switches has them contribute to the establishment of a radically new kind of postmetaphysical culture in which the notion of correct representation no longer plays a role and in which final vocabularies are considered as “poetic achievements.” According to Rorty, the ironist’s search for a new and better final vocabulary “is dominated by metaphors of making rather than finding, of diversification and novelty rather than convergence to the antecedently present. She thinks of final vocabularies as poetic achievements rather than as fruits of diligent inquiry according to antecedently formulated criteria” (1989: 77). Instead of the metaphysician’s reality, objectivity, and essence, the universalist’s grandeur and transcendence, and the Romantic’s depth, the ironist is happy to admit that all she has to offer is the idea of “continual redescription” (1989: 80). The ironist’s realization of the contingency of her final vocabulary, her awareness of the power of redescription, and her search for the most elegant way of combining certain vocabularies are characteristics of an aestheticized culture in which books are continually placed in new combinations, in which exciting new vocabularies kill off old ways of speaking, and in which persons and cultures are seen as “incarnated vocabularies” (1989: 80). In Rorty’s postmetaphysical literary or poeticized culture final vocabularies, as poetic achievements, are all we have, and there is thus no possibility of comparing our current way of speaking with things as they really are. In this kind of culture critique can only have the form of an imaginative redescription which makes the old vocabulary look bad and rather useless: “For us ironists, nothing can serve as a criticism of a final vocabulary save another such vocabulary; there is no answer to a redescription save a re-reredescription” (1989: 80). Ulf Schulenberg 308 In view of what I have been saying so far in this second part it should have become clear that Rorty’s ‘liberal ironist’ is also a Romantic. Rorty calls attention to a crucial parallel when he writes that “[t]he generic task of the ironist is the one Coleridge recommended to the great and original poet: to create the taste by which he will be judged” (1989: 97). This idea of creating the taste by which one will be judged is a profoundly Nietzschean gesture, of course, which illuminates, once again, the importance of the line which runs from the Romantics to the modern writers of the twentieth century. What exactly are the parallels between the Romantics, as Rorty sees them, and the liberal ironists? Both put a strong emphasis on the power of imagination and hence on the invention and introduction of new vocabularies or new sets of metaphors. This also signifies that both regard the adoption of new vocabularies by human beings and institutions as the motor of history. Both, in other words, make us understand that a story of progress has to focus primarily on linguistic change, the change of linguistic practices or the replacement of one (final) vocabulary by another. Furthermore, both draw attention to the contingency and fragility of our final vocabularies as poetic achievements, or to the transitory nature of our webs of beliefs and desires. Both make us realize the importance of creative and imaginative redescriptions and of the idea that these are all we have. What also unites the Romantics and the liberal ironists is the notion of self-creation, selfinvention, and Nietzschean self-overcoming - the infinite malleability of human beings as emphasized by James in his lectures on pragmatism. Moreover, both certainly help us grasp the new kind of ‘redemption’ offered by a culture which has substituted literature for both religion and philosophy. The last parallel I want to mention is that both underscore the distinctly aesthetic component of modern subjectivity and thus the diversity of private purposes and the radically poetic character of individual lives. In this context, think of, for instance, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Baudelaire, Wilde, Nietzsche, Huymans, Mallarmé, and Nabokov. In spite of these crucial parallels between the Romantics and the liberal ironists, one also has to see that Rorty repeatedly advanced the argument that pragmatism went further than Romanticism in the establishment of a literary culture. On his account, Nietzsche and William James were enormously important concerning this replacement of Romanticism by pragmatism since “[i]nstead of saying that the discovery of vocabularies could bring hidden secrets to light, they said that new ways of speaking could help us get what we want” (1982: 150). Furthermore, Rorty’s contention is that “Romanticism was aufgehoben in pragmatism, the claim that the significance of new vocabularies was not their ability to decode but their mere utility” (1982: 153). The Romantic notions of depth, profundity, the ineffable, and the poetically sublime, as I explained them in the first part of this paper, are almost diametrically opposed to this pragmatist utilitarian understanding “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 309 of art. New and stimulating vocabularies are useful because they open another chapter in the modern story of progress, but they must not be seen as offering a sudden unmediated vision of what is deep down inside us and what defines who we really are. As David Hall correctly points out: “Art does not reach for the ineffable or the sublime; art lets us get what we want” (1994: 40). Further below in his text Hall explains that Rorty regards pragmatism as “that movement which sublates Hegel’s Romanticism and historicism into a single manner of thinking allowing for the desire to perfect the self by appeal to literary sources while leaving a space, the public sphere, for getting on with the practical affairs of social life” (1994: 121). It was left to the pragmatists to radically reject the correspondence theory of truth and, moreover, to make their fellow human beings understand that in a world of blind, contingent, and mechanical forces they must not expect, and do not need, any kind of metaphysical comfort. What Rorty’s discussion of Romanticism boils down to, I suggest, is that he sees the Romantics “as toolmakers rather than discoverers” (1989: 55). Not yet fully escaped from Platonism and still governed by a metaphysical need or urge, the Romantics creatively, and passionately, contributed to the development of conceptual tools (for instance, imagination, redescription, vocabulary, plurality, metaphor, and self-creation) which would eventually offer the possibility of establishing a postmetaphysical poeticized culture. To put it differently, it was the Romantics’ position between metaphysical need and imaginative conceptual innovation that initiated a process which would eventually lead to man’s realization that he or she no longer needs the reliability, certainty, and purity of what is more than another human invention. It has been repeatedly pointed out that one of Rorty’s most provocative ideas is that of a private-public split. This distinction, as it has been argued above, also concerns his reading of Romanticism. For an understanding of a Rortyan literary or poeticized culture the private-public split is of great importance. Rorty writes: “My ‘poeticized’ culture is one which has given up the attempt to unite one’s private ways of dealing with one’s finitude and one’s sense of obligation to other human beings” (1989: 68). While we can be playful and creative ironists or strong poets at home, Rorty wants to persuade us that it is crucial to concentrate all our energies on the attempt to establish a liberal bourgeois consensus in the public realm. The Rortyan emphasis on the necessity to strengthen the relation between liberal democracy and harmony, and between late-capitalist free-market economies and the development of more tolerant attitudes, completely neglects the highly productive dialectical tension between consensus and dissent. Rorty’s notion of liberal democracy and his understanding of reformist piecemeal social engineering, I propose, do not leave room for dissent, resistance, antagonism, and the desire for radical social change, or at least for the radical questioning of liberal institutions and practices. Rorty’s ‘we liberals’, Ulf Schulenberg 310 5 For a discussion of Rorty’s private-public distinction, see West 1989, Fraser 1990, Bernstein 1991, 2003, Critchley 1996, Mouffe 1996, Haddock Seigfried 1996. longing for the establishment of a powerful liberal consensus in the public sphere and constantly advocating the beauty of shared vocabularies, do not want to see the importance of conflicting interests, desires, and values for democratic politics. Consigning sublimity and the dark forces of radical redescription and theory to the private sphere, the public sphere in its liberal version will finally present itself as governed by harmony, tolerance, and undistorted communication. It can never be more than beautiful. 5 Concerning Rorty’s interpretation of the significance of Romanticism, it is crucial to see that he avers that “poetic, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or political progress results from the accidental coincidence of a private obsession with a public need” (1989: 37). He also speaks of “idiosyncrasies which just happen to catch on with other people - happen because of the contingencies of some historical situation, some particular need which a given community happens to have at a given time” (1989: 37). Again, it is contingency all the way down. Inevitably the question arises as to whether this idea of an “accidental coincidence” is useful and sufficient in order to describe the Romantics’ radical political desires. For Rorty’s liberal attempt to deromanticize Romanticism the idea of grasping the relation between the private and public spheres as contingent is crucial since it questions the possibility of radical energies becoming immediately effective in the public sphere and since it thus might be interpreted as a warning against the vulgarizations of leftist (read: Marxist) thinking. Part of the complexity of Romanticism is the desire for social and political change - from reforms to the call for a proletarian revolution. Blake’s depiction of child labor, prostitution, woeful faces, and an increasingly powerful capitalist system in Songs of Innocence and Experience, Wordsworth’s description of the life of what in “Simon Lee” he calls “the poorest of the poor” (60; 2003: 44), a representation which is as evocative of poverty, misery, desperation, and frugality as Van Gogh’s “A Pair of Boots” (think of Heidegger’s reading of this painting in “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerks”). As regards the Romantics’ radical political desire, some of the most impressive examples are certainly the poems which Shelley wrote shortly after the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 and in which he declared himself in solidarity with the radical aspects of the reform movement. At the end of “England in 1819”, for instance, the speaker calls for a (bloodless) proletarian revolution when he speaks of “graves from which a glorious Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day” (13-14; 2002: 327). The same gesture governs the famous last stanza of The Mask of Anarchy when the speaker tells the oppressed and exploited to “Rise like lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number - / Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 311 fallen on you - / Ye are many - they are few” (368-70; 2002: 326). In this context one should of course also mention Whitman’s notion of a radical and multicultural democracy as he develops it in Leaves of Grass (1855) and Democratic Vistas (1871). Rorty’s liberal Romanticized pragmatism, in its attempt to deromanticize or demystify Romanticism, consigns the Romantics’ radical desires and energies to the private sphere and proposes that the poets’ power of imagination and their radically idiosyncratic vocabularies, their new sets of metaphors as poetic achievements, only accidentally and in the long run affect and change the public sphere. Behind this stands Rorty’s idea, as I have mentioned above, that American liberal democracy does not need radical change, that another conceptual revolution is not needed, and that his fellow Americans, in a Deweyan manner, should rather focus their attention on developing effective methods of social engineering and experimentalist tinkering. Contrary to Rorty’s suggestions, I would propose that a Romanticized pragmatism which is true to its Romantic heritage must not consign radical desires to the private sphere, and thereby tend to aestheticize them, but it ought to let those decidedly nonliberal, oppositional discourses become part of the conversation in the public sphere. A truly Romanticized pragmatism ought to show that the private sphere can be more than a realm of hyperindividualization, of excessive forms of self-creation, and of the opacity of idiosyncratic vocabularies. Furthermore, a Romanticized pragmatism might also demonstrate that the public sphere can be more than a realm of disconnected and experimentalist tinkering, social engineering, and piecemeal reform. Fully realizing the potential and multilayered complexity of its Romantic heritage (from the power of imagination to the desire for social and political change), a Romanticized pragmatism ought to present itself as incompatible with an abstract and unmediated opposition between poetry and politics. 3 Conclusion In my paper, I have sought to show that Rorty denies the necessity of mediating between the private and public spheres, and that this denial inevitably leads to a reductionist reading of Romanticism. Mediation as a conceptual tool is often associated with Marxism, whether one thinks of Althusser’s structural Marxism or Jameson’s version of Hegelian Marxism. My suggestion that Rorty’s Romanticized pragmatism would profit from a less unmediated opposition between (Romantic) poetry and (liberal reformist) politics is indirectly confirmed when one considers his attitude toward Marxism. Rorty radically rejects Marxism and its conceptual tools. Concerning Rorty’s Ulf Schulenberg 312 understanding of Marxism, one of the most important articles is his “The End of Leninism, Havel, and Social Hope.” Right at the beginning of this text, Rorty not only stresses that we should drop the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ from the political vocabulary of the Left, but he also expresses his hope that “we can banalize the entire vocabulary of leftist political deliberation” (1998: 229). He clearly points out, moreover, that the longing for total (Marxist) revolution seems utterly pointless after the events of 1989. Rorty apparently agrees with the main ideas of Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992). He agrees, for example, with Fukuyama’s suggestion “that no more Romantic prospect stretches before the Left than an attempt to create bourgeois democratic welfare states and to equalize life chances among the citizens of those states by redistributing the surplus produced by market economies” (1998: 229). As a friend of small patchwork solutions, temporary stopgaps, and small experimental ways of relieving misery and overcoming injustice, Rorty’s dismissal of Marxism and Marxist theory becomes very obvious in this essay. Marxism as a metanarrative (in the Lyotardian sense) has become a large blurry fantasy for him, an over-theorized and ineffective way of thinking that only pretends to be capable of conceptually grasping ‘objects’ such as ‘History’, ‘Freedom’, and ‘Capitalism’. We simply have to stop using the old Marxist vocabulary, to weed out world-historical and eschatological terms: “The events of 1989 have convinced those who were still trying to hold on to Marxism that we need a way of holding our time in thought, and a plan for making the future better than the present, which drops reference to capitalism, bourgeois ways of life, bourgeois ideology, and the working class. We must give up on the Marxist blur, as Marx and Dewey gave up on the Hegelian blur” (1998: 233). Rorty obviously has no use for Marxism anymore, and he also warns against the danger of hoping for a successor to Marxist theory. In view of this Rortyan reading of Marxism, the question inevitably arises (and this question seems to be the standard question when discussing his texts): What are we left with? His answer is unequivocal: “The old large blurry fantasies are gone, and we are left with only the small concrete ones - the ones we used to view as symptoms of petit bourgeois reformism” (1998: 235). The Romantics help us see the limitations of Rorty’s fascinating scenario of a postmetaphysical literary or poeticized culture. The poets’ desire for social and political change refuses to be consigned to the private sphere. One could of course see the Romantic poets as the first heroes of a modern story of emancipation since they teach us, pace Rorty, that one must not be satisfied with the notions of ‘small concrete fantasies’, ‘reformism’, or ‘experimentalist tinkering’ as far as the shaping of the public sphere is concerned. However, this story is relatively well-known. A truly stimulating endeavor, I think, would be the attempt to creatively use Rorty’s pragmatist heritage and to retell the story of the development of a postmetaphysical “Becoming the Poets of Our Own Lives” 313 culture, the story about the metaphysicians, idealists, Romantic poets, strong poets, and liberal ironists, only this time without relying on the privatepublic distinction. This narrative would no longer be Rorty’s narrative, but it would remind us that Rorty, as storyteller, redescriber, and shaper of new languages, never intended to tell a ‘true’ story. Rather, his primary concern was to continue the conversation. References Berlin, Isaiah (1999). The Roots of Romanticism. Princeton: Princeton UP. Bernstein, Richard J. (1991). “Rorty’s Liberal Utopia.” The New Constellation: The Ethical- Political Horizons of Modernity/ Postmodernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. 258-92. Bernstein, Richard J. (2003). “Rorty’s Inspirational Liberalism.” Charles Guignon and David R. Hiley (eds.). Richard Rorty. New York: Cambridge UP. 124-38. Critchley, Simon (1996). “Deconstruction and Pragmatism - Is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Liberal? ” Chantal Mouffe (ed.). Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London: Routledge. 19-40. Dickstein, Morris (ed.) (1998). The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture. Durham: Duke UP. Fraser, Nancy (1990). “Solidarity or Singularity? Richard Rorty between Romanticism and Technocracy.” Alan Malachowski (ed.). Reading Rorty. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. 303-21. Goodman, Russell B. (1990). American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition. New York: Cambridge UP. Haddock Seigfried, Charlene (1996). Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago: The U of Chicago P. Hall, David L. (1994). Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism. New York: SUNY Press. Mouffe, Chantal (1996). “Deconstruction, Pragmatism and the Politics of Democracy.” Chantal Mouffe (ed.). Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London: Routledge. 1-12. Reiman, Donald H., and Neil Fraistat, eds. (2002). Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Second Edition. New York: Norton. Rorty, Richard (1982). “Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism.” Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 139-59. Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge UP. Rorty, Richard (1998). “The End of Leninism, Havel, and Social Hope.” Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP. 228-43. Rorty, Richard (1999). “Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility, and Romance.” Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin. 148-67. Rorty, Richard (2004). “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre.” Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment: Essays for Richard J. Bernstein. Eds. Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 3-28. Rorty, Richard (2007a). “Pragmatism and Romanticism.” Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Volume 4. New York: Cambridge UP. 105-19. Rorty, Richard (2007b). “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude.” Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Volume 4. New York: Cambridge UP. 73-88. Ulf Schulenberg 314 Rorty, Richard (2007c). “Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God.” Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Volume 4. 3-26. Rorty, Richard (2007d). “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism.” Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Volume 4. 27-41. Rorty, Richard, and Gianni Vattimo (2005). 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Ulf Schulenberg Universität Bremen Anglistik/ Amerikanistik 1 For this critique and for a definition of ‘secondary phase’ ecocriticism see Phillips 2003: 30-34. - A shorter version of this article was presented at the University of Oxford confer- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke”: Self-Formation, ‘Energy’ and the Material Environment in John Ruskin and Charles Dickens Anne-Julia Zwierlein Prompted by recent debates in secondary phase ecocriticism about the interdependence of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, this paper looks at nineteenthcentury representations of humans in their material environment, concentrating mainly on John Stuart Mill’s “On Nature” (1874), John Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust (1865), and exemplary passages from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5). Writing at a time when both environmental pollution and the materialism of the human body first became widely discussed, these authors negotiate humans’ identities with, but also (self-)definitions against, the backdrop of their natural surroundings, making use of mineralogical, chemical, and physiological theories of ‘habit-formation’ and growth. Both Ruskin and Dickens are concerned with the influence of the human ‘will’ upon the environment, and thus with Mill’s dialectics of humankind as a part of nature that also alters nature. In Ruskin’s alignment of crystal formation with child development and his decree of “Form, against Force”, and in Dickens’ similar emphasis on energy as a metaphysical defence against hostile external forces, nineteenth-century scientific materialism, seeing the human body as a “thing among things” (Bill Brown 2001), was counteracted by a moral theory of self-formation which, paradoxically, again used materialist metaphors to describe its ideals of physical and mental development. 1 Introduction It has recently been argued that the first wave of ecocriticism, in idealising nature, contributed towards perpetuating Enlightenment’s dualistic distinction between nature and culture. 1 Secondary phase ecocritics now accord- Anne-Julia Zwierlein 316 ence “Bodies and Things: Victorian Literature and the Matter of Culture”, September 27, 2008. I thank the organizers, Rose Dunleavy and Katharina Boehm, for a truly inspiring event. ingly insist upon the complex interconnections and alignments between those two terms, arguing with Martin Ryle that “ecocriticism, like green politics, must be centrally concerned with the historical development of ‘human nature’” (Ryle 2002: 13). Turning towards nineteenth-century discussions among scientists, social reformers and literary writers of the position of humans in their material environment, we come to witness a historical moment when both the impact of environmental pollution on human lives and the ‘materialism’ of the human body itself first became objects of public debate. I will here focus on John Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust (1865) and exemplary passages from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-3) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5), arguing that these authors’ depiction of the interface between humans and their material environment can be said to anticipate John Stuart Mill’s core argument in his famous essay “On Nature” (1874), so pertinent to the recent ecocritical discussion. While acknowledging the validity of certain “absolute limits of the laws of nature” (1874: 375), Mill insists that human beings, part of nature themselves, are free to act upon the rest of nature. Opposing the Romantics’ idealisation, Mill emphasizes that “Nature is a scheme to be amended, not imitated, by Man” and that human actions are also ‘natural’: “Phenomena produced by human agency, no less than those which as far as we are concerned are spontaneous, depend upon the properties of the elementary forces, or of the elementary substances and their compounds” (ibid.; see also Parham 2007: 37-54 and 2002: 156-71). Victorian scientific and literary writings are similarly poised between emphasizing humans’ identities with, but also differences from, their natural surroundings. Physiological accounts of human development, narratives of adult (self-)formation in fictional texts and self-help literature, as well as inquiries into childhood growth, asking “by what steps exactly the wee amorphous thing takes shape and bulk, both physically and mentally” (Sully 1895: 3-4), are all concerned with latent human form as well as with the question of human (self-)definition against the backdrop of a material environment. Both Ruskin and Dickens, in their depictions of human development, make use of a wide range of contemporary inquiries, such as mineralogy, chemistry, new notions of environmental pollution, and physiological theories of habit-formation and growth. In Ruskin, for instance, geochemistry and mineralogy help to supplement the materialist vision of the human body as a physiological machine with a vision of the ‘aliveness’, the energy or spirit and potential for growth of seemingly inanimate matter, such as rocks or crystals. Both Ruskin and Dickens are concerned with the influence of the “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 317 human ‘will’ upon the environment, and thus with Mill’s dialectics of humankind as a part of nature that also alters nature, as indeed do other species. In fact, it will be shown that the nineteenth-century scientific materialist concept of the human body as a “thing among things” (Brown 2001: 4) was counteracted by a moral theory of self-formation which, paradoxically, again used materialist metaphors to describe its ideals of physical and mental development. Applying these images to human processes of becoming amidst hostile external forces, Ruskin and Dickens create a moral universe where the borders between subject and object, assimilation and repulsion, the ‘foregrounded’ individual and the ‘background’ of the material world are continually redefined. Firstly, I will now turn to a more detailed look at nineteenth-century discussions of human habit formation and the question of ‘will’ or agency. 2 Victorian Habit Formation: The Body as ‘Material’ and the Question of Free Will Behind many of the period’s discussions of moral theory, psychology, and physiology, there is a pervasive ambivalence about the role of the human ‘will’: while Darwinism and scientific materialism had abolished the idea of human exceptionality, notions of intentionality or will still persisted in scientific as much as in literary writing, as did the idea of a reciprocal influence between will and material environment. As George Henry Lewes stated ironically in Problems of Life and Mind (1874-79: 401): “Even to this day, in all the glare of Science, the clouds which gather round the conception of Cause are wafted from the mysterious region of Will, and many thinkers hold that no explanation of causation is possible except that which is furnished by volition”. Concomitantly, in the physical sciences, as shown by Bruce Haley in The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Anson Rabinbach in The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, and others, the concept of ‘energy’ “re-emerged as a physical concept […] after an eclipse of more than a century for reasons primarily metaphysical, and especially religious, rather than physical”. Indeed, ‘energy’ now often comes to be synonymous with ‘will’ (Peterfreund 1986: 24; see also Haley 1978, Harman 1982, and Rabinbach 1992). One crucial instance is the discussion of human habit and character formation. In his Principles of Mental Physiology (1874), William Carpenter claims that the psycho-physical nature of humans is nowhere more evident than in their capacities of forming habits (see Carpenter 1874: ch. VIII). Following eighteenth-century associationist psychology, Victorian physiologists considered habits to be material ‘paths’, ‘grooves’, ‘channels’ or ‘ducts’ in the human brain, and thus the boundaries between mind and body, Anne-Julia Zwierlein 318 2 On the links with John Locke, David Hartley und David Hume, see Vrettos 1999: 399. between scientific and moral theory became permeable. 2 During the second half of the century especially, scientists were trying to define the Victorian virtues of self-control, will power and discipline as the results of ‘trained habit’, thus reintroducing the concept of intention where scientific materialism had only seen determinism, and Darwinism only random mutations. As Henry Maudsley emphasizes in Physiology and Pathology of the Mind (1867): “The strong or well-formed character which a well-fashioned will implies is the result of good training applied to a well-constituted original nature” (1867: 158). Moral decisions, contemporary scientists maintained, are taken by a character thus formed unconsciously and spontaneously, but due to a practised and ingrained ‘moral instinct’. Influences of early childhood were seen as essential determinants. Carpenter, emphasizing “the ‘strength of early associations’”, compares such organic modifications, “fixed” in the child’s “growing Brain”, to “the scar of a wound”, emphasizing both the materiality and the irreversibility of this process (see Carpenter 1874: 344-5; see also Bourne Taylor and Shuttleworth 1998: 289). In his precepts for a careful ‘training’ of mind and body, Carpenter takes up the famous passage on necessity and free will from John Stuart Mill’s autobiography, which declares the universe, although deterministic, to be partly subject to our conscious, intentional modifications: ‘I saw’, he says (Autobiography, p. 169), ‘that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of free will, is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capacities of willing.’ (1874: xii; see also Mill 1949: 143-4) In fact, Mill’s autobiography here parallels his assertion in “On Nature” that although we are ourselves subject to natural laws, we can yet to a certain extent adapt and act upon nature, because “every alteration of circumstance alters more or less the laws of nature under which we act; and by every choice which we make either of ends or of means, we place ourselves to a greater or less extent under one set of laws of nature instead of another” (Mill 1874: 379). In a similarly dialectical way, physiological writers saw personal will power as the only bulwark against a passive subjection to unwanted habit, to nervous ticks and compulsions - “[it is] in virtue of the Will, that we are not mere thinking Automata” (Carpenter 1874: 98). But paradoxically, this will power itself had to be developed through education and training, as a ‘habit’: “A man can no more will than he can speak without having learned to do so” (Maudsley, cited in Bourne Taylor and Shuttleworth 1998: 277). Victorian ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’ literature are very much in “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 319 3 As Athena Vrettos remarks, “The very word ‘habit’ refers, of course, to both behavior and clothing, and clothing composes an essential part of what William James called ‘the material me’” (1999: 408, with reference to James 1890: 160). agreement on these topics: Mill’s doctrine of individualism joined Thomas Carlyle’s work ethics as well as the popular new genre of self-help literature, which proclaimed that individuals were able actively to develop their abilities and thus reach social success. Indeed, Mill’s On Liberty has been called “the intellectuals’ equivalent of Self-Help”, the best-known book by Samuel Smiles, “champion of middle-class utopianism” (Morris 1981: 109), which likewise saw humans as material to be shaped. Smiles’ celebration of free will was based on a view of body and mind as a unit: “the moral man lies concealed [in the physical]” (1859: 262). The key term was “energy”: “Energy of will”, Smiles declared, “may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man - in a word, it is the Man himself” (1859: 191). Yet there were more pessimistic interpretations of habit formation as proving humanity’s status of “thingness” or will-less material. According to William James, for instance, collective behavioural dispositions like bodily bearing, gait or pronunciation are internalized through social conditioning, and individuals come unconsciously to reproduce the tastes, value judgements and lifestyles of their class - as James himself emphasizes: “Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent” (1890: 125-26). Such processes, much later also to be described by Marcel Mauss (1934), Norbert Elias (1939) or Pierre Bourdieu (1974), are here seen in material terms as a ‘hardening’ of the body and psyche, “the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, […] from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. […] in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again” (James 1890: 125-26). Indeed, Victorian physiological psychologists routinely describe such processes of formation by referring to the ‘habits’ of dead matter. 3 Thus inscriptions of habits into the body function in the same way “as when a bar of iron becomes magnetic or crystalline through the action of certain outward causes, or India-rubber becomes friable, or plaster ‘sets’” (James 1890: 110). At the core is the nineteenth-century dialectical interface between humans and material environment: as Kate Flint notes, James here investigates “the way in which habit constitutes the material world for the perceiving subject at the same time that it works to constitute the self” (2004: 12). Such interfaces between biology and society, between humans as part of nature and as acting upon nature (or themselves), held a great fascination for literary authors as well as for scientists. However, in their debates about determinism versus free will and the question of ‘energy’ a gradual transition from animate to inanimate, from movement to stasis, is Anne-Julia Zwierlein 320 4 John Ruskin (1865). “Sesame and Lilies”. The Works of John Ruskin: The Library Edition. Eds. E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. 39 vols. Vol. 18. London: Allen, 1903-12. 37-8. All further references to Ruskin’s works are to this edition and will be cited by volume and page number. On Ruskin as an educationalist see also O’Gorman 1999: 35-55, esp. 46-55. opened up - as I will now demonstrate, in the remainder of this article, with reference to the specific cases of Ruskin and Dickens. 3 Crystal Formation and Moral Refinement in John Ruskin John Ruskin subscribed to the views on education put forward by physiological psychologists, especially the idea that a child’s every single act contributes towards fixing permanent habits in the organism: “Remember that every day of your early life is ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and practice of your soul. […] Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat better creature.” 4 Like Mill, he emphasized that meaningful self-formation could only be attained by careful selection of the influences children were exposed to. In The Queen of the Air (1869), for instance, he argues: “No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong, nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing right, whether forced or not; the prime, the one need is to do that, under whatever compulsion, till you can do it without compulsion. And then you are a Man.” (19: 409) For him, virtues are not innate, but have to be produced through education; “the point of the disciplinary process is to instill them in the first place” (Stoddart 1998: 80). Education consists to a great part, as he claims in Fors Clavigera (1871-84), in “habits enforced” and trained in youth (27: 468). Ruskin’s conceptions of nature and humans’ place within it were to undergo several transformations, most severely so towards the end of his life when he famously came to regard nature as essentially corrupted. As Frederick Kirchhoff has argued, “the price Ruskin pays for his imaginative vision of Nature is the possibility of its negative counterpart” (1977: 257). In the lectures that form The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), written under the influence of mental illness, Ruskin sees industrial pollution as an apocalyptic sign as well as, paradoxically, “the evil working of nature herself” (letter to Charles Eliot Norton, April 3, 1871 [37: 30]; see also Rosenberg 1961 and Fitch 1982). However, throughout the greater part of his life, he had emphasized the moral and allegorical implications of natural forms as well as their beauty and, in violent opposition to Darwinism’s new claims, their uniqueness. He insisted on underlining, as Stephen Finley has phrased it, “the immutable bond between form and significance” (1987: 18). As an important part of this more optimistic phase, Ruskin’s series of ten lectures on crystallization, conducted in a girls’ school, Winnington Hall in “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 321 Cheshire, and published as The Ethics of the Dust. Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation (1865), combines the description of scientific knowledge with the appeal to virtuous self-culture. This text which, according to Carlyle, “twists symbolically in the strangest way all its geology into morality, theology, Egyptian mythology, with fiery cuts at political economy” (quoted in Ruskin 1969: 479), anthropomorphizes mineralogical processes in order “[to demonstrate] the general conditions under which the Personal Creative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter” (18: 203). It is a perfect example of how Ruskin perceives the formative influence of the spirit - or “energy” - on biological or material processes. At the same time, in its implications for human education, it is an extended treatment of a metaphor used by Smiles: while Ruskin claims that growing up in a “crystalline household world of truth” (19: 235), a child would learn right behaviour automatically, Smiles proclaims that moral discipline “shapes and forms the whole character, until the life becomes crystallized in habit” (1871: 160-1). In The Ethics of the Dust, composed of lectures masquerading as dialogue in the tradition of eighteenth-century didactic dialogues (see Myers 1989: 171-200), Ruskin’s girl students become subjects as well as objects of the analysis. The lecturer restricts his topic accordingly: “[The] mathematical part of crystallography is quite beyond girls’ strength; but these questions of the various tempers and manners of crystals are not only comprehensible by you, but full of the most curious teaching for you.” (18: 259) At the centre of the text is the analogy between crystal ‘growth’ and human growth. Throughout, the perfect order of crystalline structure is taken as a model for human society. For Ruskin as educator, scientist and art critic, morally good life and defined form are a unit: “You may always stand by Form, against Force.” (18: 341) The form of crystals, the “Old Lecturer” explains, is produced by the crystals alternately assimilating and repelling material. Perfectly formed crystals are moralized as “resolute, consummate, determinate in form”, whereas an irregular structure is seen as the outcome of indecisiveness, of a crystal “[having] never for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have.” (18: 263) The difference, the lecturer emphasizes, is not to be found in the crystals’ substance: “The impurity of the last is in its will, or want of will.” The deformed crystal’s symbolical “distort[ion] in the spine” underlines its mental deformity (18: 263-4). Energy or will, whether in art or nature, creates form out of chaos, as Ruskin also states in The Queen of the Air, quoting himself: “This force, now properly called life, or breathing, or spirit, is continually creating its own shells of definite shape out of the wreck around it: and this is what I meant by saying, in the Ethics of the Dust: - ‘you may always stand by form against force’.” (19: 356-7) In the writings of Victorian physiologists, the ‘true’ strength of a character is fully revealed at the moment of crisis - thus the advice “Keep the faculty Anne-Julia Zwierlein 322 of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day […] so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test” (Carpenter 1874: 424; italics in the original). As James proclaims, only a trained character “will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast” (1890: 130). Such a heroic fight against external difficulties or the forces of a hostile material environment forms a large part of Ruskin’s Ethics of the Dust - an ‘instinctive virtue’ helps his ‘good’ crystal to preserve its purity: Here, for instance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, who was born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood […]; and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life. See here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he only gathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over the clay; conquered it, - imprisoned it, - and lived on. […] (18: 279-80) Here the threatening idea of antagonistic environmental forces that was to overwhelm Ruskin in later age can still be countered successfully by the moral concept of ‘energy’. At the text’s climax, the natural laws by which a crystal refines itself in an age-long process become an allegory of the transmutation of humankind in a life after death (see 18: 358). There are similarities here with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “immortal diamond” and with alchemical notions of self-refinement (1986: 180-81, ll. 23 and 24). Indeed, alchemical metaphors were used by Ruskin in “Of Public Education” (in Time and Tide, 1867) to describe human education, calling it the “Philosopher’s Stone […] to turn base souls into noble souls” (17: 394-5). Later social reformers explicitly reapplied Ruskin’s metaphor to their work; a tract written at the turn of the century, Diamonds from Dust, celebrates the London Female Guardian Society’s work in the city’s poorhouses as “a process excelling that of which Ruskin dreamed - human lives which seemed so unlovely and worthless becoming refined under the patient alchemy of loving hearts and tender hands” (Flint 2000: 49). Ruskin’s moral theory of self-formation thus sees humans as part of nature but also as transcending it. However, it has to be said that in The Ethics of the Dust the ideal state of humans and matter for Ruskin is, finally, arrested motion. As Cathy Shuman has it: “[for Ruskin], […] change inevitably results in ‘movelessness’, and […] the meaning of history is the end of history” (2000: 209). While ostentatiously talking about the development and formation of children, he simultaneously fixes them in a timeless present. Indeed, his alter ego, the “Old Lecturer” of the text, is paradoxically associated with modernity, and the young girls with age-old crystals and ancient mythology (18: 207). This paradox is reinforced by the fact that their destiny as ‘Angels in the House’ “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 323 5 Ruskin 1969: 617. See also, for instance, Charles Dickens, “Where We Stopped Growing”, in Andrews 1994: 193-8. 6 In Unto This Last (1862), Ruskin recommended “especially Hard Times” to all “persons interested in social questions” (17: 1-114, 31n.); but subsequently he became more critical: “Dickens was a pure modernist […]. His hero is essentially the ironmaster; in spite of Hard Times, he has advanced by his influence every principle that makes them harder - […] the fury of business competition, and the distrust both of nobility and clergy […]. The literary loss is infinite - the political one I care less for than you do.” (Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, June 19, 1870; 37: 7) 7 Pip - who is not unbiased, of course - observes: “I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man. […] In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking […] - in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be” (Dickens 1860-1: 333-4). is proleptically stated in the book’s title, “little housewives”. In similar terms Ruskin had written about himself in the nostalgic autobiography Praeterita, “that all significant development ceased before he attained maturity, [and] that the crystallized identity of childhood persisted as the true self throughout his life and into old age” (Robson 2002: 44). As is well known, Ruskin shared his idolizing of children and his fear of their “woeful transformation” into adults with other writers of the period, such as Dickens. 5 4 The Circulation of Matter and Self-Formation in Charles Dickens Despite differences in their social outlook, 6 Ruskin and Dickens converge in their fundamental ambivalence about the role of innate versus acquired characteristics: both believe in moral and physical education as much as in a character’s ‘essential virtue’ - their concept of a trained ‘moral instinct’ loosely connecting the two positions. Indeed, Ruskin states in Sesame and Lilies (1865), “All good work is essentially done […] without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates literally to the instinct of an animal” (18: 167). Both Ruskin and Dickens, moreover, describe the process of individual development in terms of material formation and deformation; Dickens’ convict Abel Magwitch in Great Expectations (1860/ 61), for instance, is a famous study of how habits inscribe themselves physically into the body. 7 In a more systematic way, Dickens’ depictions of childhood development made extensive use of contemporary ideas by Johann Pestalozzi, Friedrich Froebel, Herbert Spencer and others, reflecting his awareness of the links between mental and bodily formation as well as between social situation and healthy physical growth. As a physiologist Spencer saw human beings as machines whose mental development depended essentially on the support of bodily needs: “the mental must not be Anne-Julia Zwierlein 324 developed at the expense of the physical”. Undue emphasis on intellectual development, according to him, would have direct consequences “either in illnesses; or in stunted growth; or in deficient energy” (Spencer 1851: 12) - and it has been well rehearsed how Dickens applied this lore in his famous schoolroom scenes. Dickens also publicized Froebel’s similar principles in an 1855 Household Words article by Henry Morley: How many men and women go about pale-skinned and weak of limb, because their physical health during infancy and childhood was not established by judicious management. It is just so, thought Froebel, with our minds. There would be fewer sullen, quarrelsome, dull-witted men or women, if there were fewer children starved or fed improperly in heart and brain. To improve society - to make men and women better - it is requisite to begin quite at the beginning, and to secure for them a wholesome education during infancy and childhood. […] since they are […] so created as to find happiness in the active exercise and development of all their faculties, we, who have children round about us, shall no longer repress their energies […]. (Morley 1855: 577-8) Dickens’ depictions of children similarly underline the physical aspects of childhood development, often ex negativo: in Hard Times and elsewhere, his child characters are “starved or under-nourished, rendered unsound of body or mind. They are forced into a conformity which ignores their individual tastes and capacities, or into a premature state of adulthood, or into an academic diet of sowthistles” (Collins 1965: 173). Examples abound, such as Oliver Twist’s tender frame during early childhood or Jenny Wren’s “bad back” and “queer legs”; like other social reformers Dickens here emphasizes environmental influence above ideas of ‘innate’ or biologically ‘acquired’ characteristics (Dickens 1864-5: 222; see also Stoddard Holmes 2004). In his criticism of the deformation of labourers through factory work and the deformation of pupils in a rigid utilitarian school system, he is at one with Ruskin: factory workers, Ruskin complained in Unto this Last (1862), were “broken into small fragments and crumbs of life”, and the contemporary educational system was “roll[ing] the students up into pellets, flatten[ing] them into cakes, or stretch[ing] them into cables” (17: 10; 26). Like Ruskin, Dickens emphasized, especially in his late novels, that individual formation has to be achieved in the face of massive adversity, symbolized by the mud, dirt and polluted air that in his texts represent the life-threatening forces of a deterministic universe. The atmosphere of Bleak House has been seen as entropic, tending towards “the putrefaction of every organic form and […] the pulverization of every structured inorganic thing” (Hillis Miller 1958: 192; see also Wilkinson 1967: 225-47 and Fielding 1996: 207-14), and various critics have also stressed that Dickens’ late novels represent a metropolitan version of the Darwinian struggle for survival - ambiguous as Dickens’ position on Darwin may have been (see for instance “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 325 8 “Vainly attempt to think of any simply plant, or flower, or wholesome weed, that, set in this foetid bed, could have its natural growth” (Dickens 1847-48: 619). 9 F.O. Ward, review on J.B. Lawes, On the Sewage of London (1854-5), quoted in Hamlin 1985: 399. See also Dodd 1852: 97-101, where ‘Chemistry’ is called “Nature’s housewife” (101). Levine 1988, Flint 1995: 152-73, and Morgentaler 1998: 707-21). However, Mill’s concept of “Nature” as “a scheme to be amended […] by Man” is certainly congruent with Dickens’ ideology of energy: in his novels, the active transformation of one’s environment is the key not only to survival but to success. As John Kucich has rightly pointed out, the opposites of “expenditure and conservation” (1981: 122) characterize Dickens’ figures and plots: the amount of energy, but also the capacity of channelling that energy into constructive work as well as resistance against overwhelming environmental antagonisms, are directly linked to a character’s achievement. While unbalanced, degenerate characters, such as the schoolmaster Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend or Mr. Krook in Bleak House, are defined, in an exaggerated version of the humours theory, by their eruptive bodily fluids, various ‘strong’ characters, endowed with a surplus of ‘innate’ energy, are able to escape destruction and to maintain an identity “amid modern disintegration” (Hale 2000: 303) and symbolical as well as actual pollution. The physicist John Tyndall, making visible in an 1870 experiment the dirt in London’s air and water, emphasized that “It is so hard to be clean in the midst of dirt” (1870: 164), and this is exactly the task, literally and symbolically, that Dickens’ protagonists, like Ruskin’s ‘good’ crystal, are facing: “in a typical Dickensian manner many ‘good’ characters either shine through the slime or manage to wash it off” (Frank 1977: 132). Indeed, Dickens’ ideology of a positive energy of self-formation is closely linked to the contemporary discourse on hygiene surrounding the 1848 Public Health Act and to debates on epidemics that social reformers had conducted from mid-century onwards. Edwin Chadwick, for instance, saw a parallel between miasmatic infection and moral degeneracy in his Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842), and in Dombey and Son and elsewhere Dickens explains that in the fetid air of poor people’s houses no moral development could be possible. 8 In the same way that social reformers combined the concepts of “dirt and immorality”, cleanliness was associated with personal integrity (Otis 1999: 10). These ideas contributed, as Philipp Sarasin and others have shown, to the creation of the ‘modern’ bourgeois subject and its ideology of autonomy (see Sarasin 2001 and Michie 1999: 408-9); simultaneously, the new London sewage system was seen as a “mine of gold”: it recycled organic waste matter, hitherto a source of infection, into the agricultural system. 9 These ideas recur in Dickens: in Our Mutual Friend, for instance, Jenny and Lizzie Anne-Julia Zwierlein 326 10 See Spencer 1860: 117-8: “In the pale, angular, flat-chested young ladies, so abundant in London drawing-rooms, we see the effect of merciless application, unrelieved by youthful sports […]. Mammas anxious to make their daughters attractive, could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this, which sacrifices the body to the mind. […] Men care little for erudition in women; but very much for physical beauty, good nature, and sound sense.” 11 See, for instance, Ruskin’s explanation of his title Fors Clavigera: “The Fors is fortune, who is to the Life of men what Atropos is to their death, Unrepentant, - first represented, I believe, by the Etruscans as fastening a nail into a beam with a hammer […]. My purpose is to show, in the lives of men, how their Fortune appoints things irreversibly” (letter to Walter Severn, March 1875; quoted in 27: xvii-xc, xx). are, despite their poverty, presiding over a household described as “orderly and clean” (1864-65: 233), and the “iron master” in Bleak House, prominent exponent of Dickens’ hard-working self-made man, creates a microcosm of “perfect order and discipline” (1852-3: 883). In Our Mutual Friend the Boffins oppose their own cleanliness and moral purity to the ubiquitous literal and symbolic dust heaps: “She and her husband had worked […], and had brought their simple faith and honour clean out of dustheaps” (1864-65: 384). Bella Wilfer, finally, at the end of her paradoxical learning process in which she in fact unlearns her presumptions and regains her essential ‘good nature’, is defined against the desolate background of dust heaps as “true golden gold at heart” (1864-65: 772), representing “all the gold in the world” (1864-65: 683) to her husband John Harmon. Through her alchemical energy, dirt becomes gold, in the same way that the time’s sanitary reformers were detecting a “mine of gold” in urban waste - and, indeed, in the same way that Ruskin aligned moral self-formation and a crystal’s refinement process. However, as with Ruskin’s little girls proleptically addressed as “little housewives”, the self-formation of Dickens’ female characters is paradoxical. Neither Bella nor Lizzie learn anything new, but only reveal their essential ‘knowledge of the heart’: “their self-contradictory plots enable them to resist development” (Shuman 2000: 160). Here Dickens is at one with Spencer’s warnings against the dangerous physical consequences of undue mental exertion in women; 10 but this also points to a more general feature of his writings: although Dickens often depicts characters seemingly developing through education or self-discipline, these changes are, in the last resort, only superficial: with negative characters, education cannot efface their ‘animal essence’, while positive characters use self-discipline only to attain a position that in terms of the text’s ideology was already theirs from the start. Thus, while the pre-eminence of work ethics over the privilege of birth is a recurring theme in his novels, social climbing is still depicted in highly ambivalent terms. Like Ruskin, Dickens ultimately believed that people should remain within their ‘allotted’ social spheres. 11 The power of formal education, in spite of his campaigning for school reform, finally appears, in “Standing out like a Quartz Dyke” 327 his writings, as inferior to the power of innate capacity and goodness. On the one hand Dickens explains the rough morals of London slum dwellers by pointing to their desolate living conditions; but on the other he presents figures like Lizzie or Jenny, who, growing up in just such conditions, display a fairy-tale purity of heart. He describes states of being rather than development. Like Ruskin, he prefers “arrested motion”. 5 Conclusion This brief analysis of selected texts by Ruskin and Dickens, in the light of contemporary scientific and educational writings, has shown that Victorian thinking about child development, habit formation, and the role of ‘energy’ in shaping humans’ surroundings is characterized by the same kind of dialectics so prominent in Mill’s autobiography and his essay “On Nature”: seeing humankind as part of nature, Mill also insists on humans’ power to alter their material environment, because “by every choice we make […] we place ourselves to a greater or less extent under one set of laws of nature instead of another”. This nineteenth-century debate thus anticipates contemporary secondary phase ecocriticism in its emphasis on the interdependence of nature and culture as well as on humans’ dependence upon the rest of the natural world. Moreover, the debate about the material constitution of the human body is characterized by the “corporeal imagination” that Cornelius Castoriadis has identified as part of society’s “imaginary institution”: a “socialization of the psyche” predetermines the individual’s apprehension of materiality and environment (1987: 334). The ways in which Victorian scientists, educationalists and literary writers described the material aspects of self-formation reveals much about the underlying cultural default positions. One dilemma especially was ever-present and integral to the kind of Victorian ‘idealist materialism’ that has been traced here: for both Dickens and Ruskin, bodies that “leak, bleed, drip, and drool” are symbols of moral failure (Federico 2000: 152), whereas the energetic formation by living beings of “shells of definite shape out of the wreck around [them]” is a symbol of moral success (19: 356-7). This Bakhtinian difference between the perfectly shaped, disciplined, ‘classic’ body and the shapeless, undisciplined, ‘grotesque’ body frequently recurs in mid-century Victorian literature as homonymous with the difference between the normative bourgeois and the deviant working-class or degenerate aristocratic body. However, the downside of such an emphasis on ‘form’ and ‘shape’ as indicators of moral righteousness is, as we have seen, the ever-present threat of stasis. Let me conclude with the following example: The Ethics of the Dust was intended by Ruskin as didactics of science as well as moral teaching. As the preface to the second edition of 1877 states, he also considered it to be Anne-Julia Zwierlein 328 12 On Mill’s version of the ‘strong man’, his “persons of genius”, see Mill 1859: 71-72. ‘serious’ science, seeing it as a supplement to Deucalion: Collected Studies of the Lapse of Waves, and Life of Stones, his geological and mineralogical lectures delivered at Oxford and London (1875-83) (18: 205). Indeed, in Proserpina (1886), he describes the importance of The Ethics of the Dust in terms reminiscent of the contemporary admiration of the ‘strong character’: “authoritative as far as it reaches, [it] will stand out like a quartz dyke, as the sandy speculations of modern gossiping geologists get washed away.” (25: 413) The Carlylean hero, the ‘strong man’ of Smiles’ and Mill’s writings, 12 is repeatedly envisaged in moralizing scientific and literary discourse as a tower among the toppling stones, as a quartz dyke amidst the sand, or as a perfect crystal withstanding the onset of hostile forces. But obviously, the image of crystallization could also be used - even if humorously - in a derogatory way; thus the physical hardening process of the psyche in habit formation as described by physiological psychologists is eyed with wariness by physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who writes in an 1873 letter to Herbert Spencer - albeit tongue-in-cheek - that in order to prevent one’s own thinking from becoming fixed by the time one reaches forty one has to “put in some ingredient to check crystallization” (quoted in Duncan 1908: 429). By the age of thirty, “the character has set like plaster”, as we have heard, similarly, from William James. Opposing the language of scientific materialism with equally materialist metaphors in order to imagine the ‘forms’ and ‘shapes’ of their moral universe, and to imagine humankind as a part of nature that also acts upon nature, nineteenth-century scientists and literary writers risked implying not only the idea of form, but also of stasis - and death. 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Wilkinson, Ann (1967). “Bleak House: From Faraday to Judgment Day”. English Literary History 34. 225-47. Anne-Julia Zwierlein Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Regensburg AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 34 (2009) Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen Christoph Bode, Selbst-Begründungen. Diskursive Konstruktion von Identität in der britischen Romantik. Band 1: Subjektive Identität. (Studien zur englischen Romantik [Neue Folge] 5). Trier: WVT, 2008. Gerold Sedlmayr Wenn Christoph Bode zu Beginn der Selbst-Begründungen schreibt: “Identität hat man überhaupt nicht mehr (am allerwenigsten die Dichter) - sie ergibt sich [prozessual] stets aufs Neue” (7), so diagnostiziert er damit keineswegs zum wiederholten Male unsere heutige, postmoderne Befindlichkeit, sondern behauptet - und das mag zunächst verblüffen -, dass es sich hierbei vielmehr um den charakteristischsten Zug romantischer Ich-Konstitution handle. Romantische Dichtung zeichnet sich nach Bode gerade deswegen als Schwellenphänomen zur ‘Moderne’ aus, weil sie einerseits und bekanntermaßen die Frage nach der Natur individueller Identität auf radikale Weise fokussiert, andererseits aber keine bestimmenden, essentiellen Antworten darauf bieten kann: Identität ist in der Romantik nicht mehr innerhalb eines durch binäre Oppositionen gekennzeichneten Feldes fest-stellbar, sondern kann nur noch als “das vorläufige und instabile Ergebnis einer diskursiven Verhandlung” (7), mithin also als performative Möglichkeit, augenblicklich aufscheinen. Dass dies gerade nicht ein eintöniges Verflachen der Literatur, ein Verlieren im Indifferenten, bedeutet, sondern die Verschiedenheit von Konstruktionsansätzen diskursiver Identität den besonderen Reiz und Reichtum romantischen Schreibens ausmacht, illustriert Bode an repräsentativen Fallbeispielen. So widmet er sich, mit Ausnahme Blakes, den großen kanonischen Dichtern Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley und Keats; als repräsentativ für sie alle wird aber überraschenderweise Charlotte Smith herausgestellt, deren Werk entgegen der ansonsten eingehaltenen Chronologie im Sinne einer Zusammenfassung ganz am Ende diskutiert wird. Wordsworth weist, wie so oft, den Weg in die Debatte. Das geplante, letztlich aber nie vollendete Epos über “Man, Nature, and Society” - “The Recluse” (vgl. 21) - soll, so seine Absicht, ein Gegengewicht zu Miltons Paradise Lost darstellen, indem es eine Positionsbestimmung des Menschen vom Menschen (und nicht von Gott) her Rezensionen 334 vornimmt. Die Realisierung dieses Projekts erweist sich allerdings von Anfang an als schwierig. In einer Schreibblockade befangen, widmet sich Wordsworth, der Hauptaufgabe ausweichend, dem so genannten Prelude, einer autobiographischen Schilderung seines dichterischen Werdens, welches somit ursprünglich lediglich als Hinführung zum Eigentlichen gedacht ist. Um allgemein über “the Mind of Man” schreiben zu können, muss der Schreibende zunächst klarstellen, wie es um die eigenen Kräfte und die eigene Entwicklung bestellt ist; wie er zu dem geworden ist, der er ist: “das säkulare Epos hat schließlich seine Voraussetzungen zu nennen, denn selbstverständlich sind sie nicht.” (23) Grob formuliert: Gerade weil es für Wordsworth keine feste externe Bezugsgröße mehr gibt, im Verhältnis zu der er den eigenen Standort und den der Menschheit mehr oder minder eindeutig bestimmen könnte (so wie Gott in Paradise Lost), bleibt nur das eigene Ich, welches als solche herhalten muss. In diesem Zusammenhang erweist es sich als vielsagend, dass Wordsworth das Prelude zu seinen Lebzeiten nie veröffentlichte, sondern kontinuierlich überarbeitete: Selbst jenen begrenzten Zeitraum seines Lebens, den das Prelude behandelt (bis 1798/ 99), konnte er niemals als tatsächlich abgeschlossen betrachten und zwar genau deswegen, weil er auch und vor allem als schreibendes Subjekt dem ständigen Wandel unterworfen war und sich somit auch die Perspektive auf sein Ich als Objekt der Darstellung (und dessen Wandel) fortwährend ändern musste. Somit zeigt das Prelude - als Konglomerat all seiner Versionen, als immer nur Vorläufiges, als ständiger Neuentwurf des erzählten Selbst (‘Wordsworth’) - zum einen ganz eindrücklich, wie stark die Frage nach der Identität während der Romantik zur Verhandlungssache wird. Zum anderen macht es aber auch deutlich, dass die Welt/ Natur nicht als etwas Konkretes ‘da draußen’ verstanden werden kann, sondern Produkt der Imagination, also immer schon ‘Verinnerlichtes’, ist: “Das Prelude führt vor, wohin das führen muss, wenn ein sich selbst begründendes Subjekt, das sich nur prozesshaft begreifen lässt, die ‘objektive’ Realität nur als Reflex seiner eigenen Bewegung auffassen kann.” (48) Inwiefern Coleridge genau damit Probleme hatte und dementsprechend eine recht eigenwillige Lösung suchte, verdeutlicht Bode, indem er - anhand von “Frost at Midnight”, der Biographia Literaria sowie anderer philosophischer und poetologischer Schriften - Coleridges Position als eine zwischen und gegen jene Wordsworths, Kants und Schellings gelagerte begreift. So nimmt zwar auch Coleridge ein selbstreflexives Subjekt an, begründet es aber letztendlich in Gott, den er somit setzen muss. Dieser “metaphysical turn” (105) wiederum bedingt allerdings eine “radikale Diskontinuität” (115), insbesondere weil das sich selbst schreibende Subjekt irgendwann an einen Punkt kommen muss, an dem die Philosophie ins Stocken gerät. Dem Subjekt bleibt dann, entweder sich weiterhin im Diskurs zu verorten und die philosophischen Engpässe durch fiktional-literarische Brücken zu überqueren oder aber den Abbruch der diskursiv-prozessualen Ich-Konstitution in Kauf zu nehmen und das selbstbezogene Reflektieren durch Glauben zu ersetzen. Byron geht einen dritten Weg, einen, der aus dem Text hinaus in einen öffentlichen Raum zu führen scheint und zwar so, dass ‘Lord Byron selbst’, das Leben des Schreibenden, die Lektüre des Geschriebenen leitet. Somit wird von Byron der Versuch gestartet, die ontologisch eigentlich zwingende Unterscheidung zwischen Autor und Erzähler/ Sprecher wenigstens scheinbar aufzulösen, um den Rezipienten zu ermöglichen (bzw. sie dazu zu bringen), eine Figur wie Childe Harold als Byron Rezensionen 335 lesen zu können. Entscheidend ist aber natürlich, dass jener angeblich vorgängige ‘Byron’, der in die Figuren hineingelesen werden soll, selbst auch nur eine fiktive Figur ist, deren Wirkmächtigkeit paradoxerweise steigt, je öfter sich der Autor von der Identifikation mit seinen Figuren distanziert. Der “tiefere Witz” daran ergibt sich laut Bode jedoch weniger durch das Infragestellen des “Realitätsstatus der Fiktion […], als vielmehr dass dadurch das Fiktionale der Realität aufgedeckt wird” (142). Das, was die Identität des Subjekts ausmacht, ist somit tatsächlich nicht mehr als das performative Ausfüllen einer (fiktiven) Rolle. Shelleys philosophische und poetologische Position ist vermutlich die radikalste unter den besprochenen Dichtern, und so nimmt es nicht wunder, dass dieses Kapitel das vielleicht am dichtesten gestaltete ist. Zunächst wird anhand des Essays “On Life” nachgewiesen, dass Shelley in einem prekären Spannungsfeld zwischen epistemologischem Idealismus und ontologischem Materialismus einzuordnen ist (vgl. 157). Das heißt: Einerseits ist alles, was ich wissen kann, immer schon Teil meines Bewusstseins (“Nothing exists but as it is perceived.” [145]). Andererseits ist dieses Bewusstsein selbst - das also, worauf sich mein Sein gründet - bloße Funktion einer hoch organisierten physikalischen Materie, wobei Shelley letztere genauso setzen muss wie Coleridge es im anderen (nämlich metaphysischen) Extrem mit Gott tut. Verbunden (sowie gleichzeitig dekonstruiert) werden die beiden Pole des Materialismus und des Idealismus durch die Sprache: Sie ist es, welche es im Sinne eines “großen Intertext[es]” auf entschieden diesseitige Weise erlaubt, die ‘Liebe’ genannte Verbindung des Selbst zu Anderen erst herzustellen, und so eine “große textliche Seinskette” (171) errichtet. An “Mont Blanc”, “Ode to the West Wind”, Prometheus Unbound und The Triumph of Life demonstriert Bode auf verblüffende Weise, wie sich das (poetische) Subjekt im Sinne dieser grundlegenden philosophischen Haltung gerade durch Zurücknahme, das heißt die “Löschung [von] Selbstheit” (182), in seiner Subjektivität behaupten kann. Das romantische Subjekt Shelleys ist, die Annahmen des Poststrukturalismus vorwegnehmend, nur als ewig flüchtiges im Spiel der Differenz ‘identifizierbar’: “Die letzte Wahrheit ist nicht aussagbar; die aussagbaren Wahrheiten sind Serien von Annäherungen, Transpositionen, Umschreibungen, Überschreitungen, Differenz-Spiele, in denen das Gleiche im Nicht-Identischen gesucht und Differenzierung vorangetrieben wird.” (193) Ähnlich wie Shelley entfernt sich auch Keats immer weiter von dem, was er selbst das “wordsworthian or egotistical sublime” (206) genannt hat. Der Dichter zeichnet sich vielmehr durch seine “Negative Capability” (206) aus, also jene ‘Fähigkeit’, das Ich ganz zurückzunehmen, um für das Andere Raum zu schaffen: “Keats besteht auf der Möglichkeit eines subjektlosen Schreibens” (208), was impliziert, dass das Ich zur reinen Form-Sache degradiert wird. Durch die totale Identifizierung mit dem sinnlich erfahrenen Objekt ist das Subjekt lediglich noch über jene Stadien fassbar, in denen sich ebendiese Identifizierung vollzieht. Bode nennt die daraus entstehende Dichtung, insbesondere Keats’ Oden, “Differential-Dichtung” und bezeichnet die solchermaßen hergestellte subjektive (Dis-)Kontinuität als “Kontinuität des Protokolls” (212). Dies heißt nun gerade nicht, dass Keats ein fassbares ‘Ding an sich’ hinter dem Objekt annähme, welches das Subjekt mit seiner Wahrheit ‘(er)füllen’ würde: Im Gegenteil, paradoxerweise sind jene Objekte ihrerseits nichts anderes als “Produkte eines Sinn-Begehrens, das sich seine Objekte selbst schafft” (220). Die Unterscheidung zwischen Subjekt und Objekt muss somit letztlich kollabieren. Was bleibt Rezensionen 336 ist das Protokoll, die Spur, welche somit stets (und ganz wörtlich) vorläufig bleibt. Registriert wird sie durch den Text, nichts sonst. Das Werk Charlotte Smiths, das wie gesagt unter chronologischen Gesichtspunkten vor dem der anderen Dichter diskutiert hätte werden müssen, bildet den Abschluss, weil es vieles von dem fasst, was diese später entwickeln werden: “Zwischen den Polen Elegiac Sonnets und Beachy Head spannt sich noch einmal der ganze Möglichkeitsraum auf, der […] der diskursiven Konstruktion von subjektiver Identität in diesen Jahrzehnten freisteht” (15). In der Weise, wie Smith in ihren Sonetten - ähnlich wie Byron - die Einheit von Sprecher-Ich mit Autor-Ich inszeniert und dekonstruiert, nimmt sie voraus, dass jegliches Authentische immer schon fiktiv ist (vgl. 246). Diesbezüglicher Höhepunkt von Smiths Schaffen - und ganz allgemein Höhepunkt romantischen Schreibens über Identität - ist allerdings Beachy Head, weil dieses Langgedicht auf eindrückliche Weise nicht bloß illustriert, dass jegliche Setzung von Ursprünglichkeit mit einer gegenläufigen Setzung relativiert werden kann, sondern auch darlegt, dass das Subjekt nur mittelbar greifbar ist, also als ein in ein Medium eingeschriebenes. Ein solches Medium, sei es ein Text, sei es die ‘Natur’, ist aber dauernd in Veränderung begriffen, unterliegt der Sedimentation. Wie Muschelfossilien in einer tiefer gelegenen geologischen Schicht wird das Subjekt damit allerdings lediglich “in perfekter Form präserviert, aber nicht in seiner Substanz” (258). Was bleibt, ist die Spur des Selbst im Anderen, “die irreduzible Alterität des Selbst” (260). Würde der gegebene Raum ausreichen, hätten hier selbstverständlich jene Passagen erwähnt werden müssen, in denen sich Bode kritisch (aber stets respektvoll) mit konkurrierenden wissenschaftlichen Positionen auseinandersetzt, weil gerade in ihnen deutlich wird, wie stark es ihm an einer tatsächlichen und lebendigen Auseinandersetzung innerhalb des akademischen Diskurses gelegen ist. So wie er ist, kann dieser kurze, leider allzu sehr verknappende Abriss höchstens einen Eindruck davon vermitteln, auf welche Weisen Christoph Bodes komplexe, gleichzeitig aber erfrischend unterhaltsame und spannende Studie veranschaulicht, wie radikal gegenwärtig die Romantiker doch sind. Seine auf einer äußerst breiten Textbasis fundierten Analysen, in denen er sich dankenswerterweise nicht scheut - dem Trend gegen das close reading trotzend - genau hinzuschauen und präzise zu lesen, bestechen durch ihre hohe Sorgfalt, aber auch provozierende Eindringlichkeit. Bodes Lesarten fordern heraus, erzwingen ein dezidiertes Eindenken und Querdenken, sie überraschen und (was ganz positiv gemeint ist: ) verstören. Wie er uns nicht nur an Wordsworth vorführt: Jedes Schreiben, autobiographisch oder nicht, geschieht im Spannungsfeld zwischen dem schreibenden Ich und dem beschriebenen Objekt. Nicht anders ist das, wenn wir etwas wie die Romantik beschreiben: Wir müssen uns dabei immer selbst mitschreiben. Beziehungsweise mitlesen. Daher: Jede und jeder, die oder der an der Romantik interessiert ist, aber überdies auch an sich selbst, sollte sich dieses Buch unbedingt zu Gemüte führen. Gerold Sedlmayr Lehrstuhl für Englische Literatur und Kultur Universität Passau Rezensionen 337 Christina Meyer. War & Trauma. Images in Vietnam War Representations. Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Georg Olms, 2008. Stipe Grgas Whether it is thought of as the product of innate human predilections or as a consequence of socio-economic factors, war has been a constant of human history. No society has ever been spared its toll of human suffering and material destruction. Geopolitics, military history as well as other social sciences have explored the causes of war, its campaigns and what they have left in their wake. However, these disciplinary forays into the subject frequently bypass the less manifest dimensions of war, its pain and its hurt. On the other hand, the arts, literature and, more recently, cinema and television have, in different ways, thematized these dimensions of war. As such they provide a rich archive of how both the individual and the collective have registered its destructive force. Countless narratives have related how humans have fared in the extraordinary circumstances of war. On one level, they register the universal plight of humanity facing danger and possible extinction, on another it is also possible to discern differences which can be accounted for both by changing historical environments and by the way different cultures have been able to incorporate war into their sense-making stratagems. The correspondence between the individual soldier’s experience of war and the interpretative paradigms his culture provides to give it meaning has varied over time and place. The need for the literary articulation of wartime experience frequently arises when the reality of the battlefield cannot be accommodated to the understanding of the combatants or to the self-images of a particular polity. On the individual and on the collective level this incongruity is experienced as trauma. Christina Meyer’s study deals with one of the United States’ numerous wars. However, Vietnam holds a special position in American historical memory and in its cultural imaginary. Meyer’s study is one of many which confirm that even at our point in time, when the United States have experienced more recent traumatic events and when they are as of now engaged in two other wars, this has not changed. Vietnam was an important turning point in American military history. The deployment of modern technologies of destruction in an impassable terrain, from which the enemies seemed to have vanished after each encounter, the lack of any clear lines of demarcation, and the wracking tension of the constant danger of attacks are only some of the features of this conflict. The fact that Vietnam was daily televised, making it the first “living room” war, played an important role in bringing it back home and making it a contentious site which clearly affected the lives of United States citizens. Both in her research and in her readings of the chosen texts, Christina Meyer admirably intertwines these facets of Vietnam and shows their traumatic impact. In her initial remarks, Meyer positions her study within what she terms, quoting Hal Foster, the “lingua trauma” or the “wound culture,” which has come to permeate various contemporary discourses. She investigates this complex of problems in eight chapters and presents critical readings of a number of novels written by veterans of the Vietnam War, two novels written by non-veterans, and one Vietnamese novel. The emphasis of her study is “the mediation of experiences qua ‘verbal’ images, which implies the question of how things are passed down to a reader, in other Rezensionen 338 words, how ‘verbal’ images can convey (produce) meaning.” (25) There are three thematic sections: the first is titled “Images and the Vietnam War” and begins by defining the basics of trauma and the image, and then proceeds to delineate how different media represent the war. The second section, “Fictionalizing Trauma - Scenic Images & Image Stills,” begins with general remarks on the relationship between trauma and literature; the next three chapters describe how trauma is narrated through images in two novels by Tim O’Brien and one by the Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh. The focus of the third section is on two novels, one by Stewart O’Nan and the other by Bobbie Ann Mason. These novels are not about the war in Vietnam per se but rather about its after-effects and how its disturbing presence lurks within an America that has become a “trauma culture” (217), collectively and individually. In the “Coda” Meyer underlines the manner in which she believes her work departs from dominant research projects and reiterates the relevance of Vietnam for contemporary American policy. The book gives the reader an informative overview of the subject of trauma in the Vietnam War and summarizes the salient points that have been made concerning the way different authors have grappled with the experience on the Far East battlefields. The fresh angle Meyer brings to the discussion, by focusing “on verbal images as a mode and means of representation,” is convincingly argued and yields interesting insights. Her way of theorizing this dimension and applying it in concrete readings can serve as a stimulus to explorations of similar experiences in other locales. What I found particularly interesting was Meyer’s inclusion of a North Vietnamese to bear witness to the horrible impact of the war. Doing this, she remedies an elision which is endemic to many American interpretations of the war. Although she writes that she incorporated Bao Ninh into her study “to examine the extent to which cultural differences determine interpretations of the war in Vietnam” (19), I felt that the main point was to show how the devastation of war and its traumas transcend cultural boundaries. Perhaps literature as such cannot do otherwise. However, if literary study is placed within an “interdisciplinary dialogue”, to quote the title of the series in which Meyer’s book appears, and if the issue of trauma and the Vietnam War are explored within the context of, for example, American Studies, it becomes evident that the fact of defeat was the decisive factor in assigning such unprecedented weight to Vietnam in the American cultural imaginary. If we forget that the trauma in the United States was largely produced by the fact that the war had been lost, then we are missing the impact the U.S. experience in Vietnam has had in questioning the traditional American concepts of (successful) exceptionalism. Stipe Grgas Department of English Faculty of Humanities and the Social Sciences Rezensionen 339 Werner Kremp and Wolfgang Toennesmann (Hrsgg.), Lexikon der populären Amerikabilder. (Atlantische Texte, Band 30). Trier: Wissenschaftliche Verlag, 2008. Daniel J. Leab This is a fun book. It is a pleasure to read. Moreover, its makeup allows the reader to selectively browse the subjects of interest. And it certainly can be worthwhile perusing those topics that do not immediately strike a reader’s fancy. This book, although it calls itself a Lexikon, certainly is more than just a dictionary or encyclopedia overview of a variety of popular images of the United States. In 42 entries, 22 scholars who have written about the country or have studied there or otherwise have an academic interest in the U.S. intelligently, cogently, and some times wittily deal with a remarkable variety of subjects ranging from Americanization (“Amerikanisierung”) to the Wild West (“Wilder Westen”). Among the topics dealt with in terms of their relationship to American developments are Catholicism, Jews, MacDonald’s, and Wall Street. The authors represent a cross section of German language academics of various ages and backgrounds and include both more venerable and honored emeritus scholars such as Berndt Ostendorff (“Kulturlosigkeit”) and Winfried Hergt (“Puritanismus und Prüderie”) as well as younger up and coming types like Michael Butter, writing on investigative journalism. A number of the authors deal with more than one subject. Jakob Schissler, who is associated with the Johann Wolfgang Goethe- Universität in Frankfurt a.M. and lives in Finland, wrote five articles including the ones on dishwashers (“Tellerwäscher”) and universities (“Universitäten”). Editor Werner Kemp, the “Founding Father und Direktor der Atlantischen Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz in Kaiserslautern” and the force behind the series and this book, handles well a kaleidoscopic group of eight subjects, including cowboy mentality, the role of isolationism in American thought, and the relationship between the German Social Democratic Party and the United States (“SPD und USA”). Most of the articles in this book are three to five pages; some have footnotes and a bibliography, others only have footnotes. All are jargon-free, well thought out, and intellectually very accessible. The contents resonate with the knowledge that their authors bring to their subject, including some very strongly held opinions. They are meant to do so, for as the editors point out in their introduction, they originally considered Lexikon der populären Irrtümer über Amerika as a title for the book (7). But they decided it was vitally necessary to go beyond the prevailing popular wisdom. The editors of this book, in terms of the essays they commissioned, determined that any treatment of the popular beliefs of Americans needed to be examined more thoroughly than just accepting the usual arguments. And in doing so the authors escaped the common negative views of America Variety can lead to a different perspective. The editors felt that through a variety of viewpoints by various critics it was possible to achieve such a perspective: “[D]ie Summe der Bilder […] die, zusammengelegt wie ein Puzzle, ein einigermaßen richtiges Bild ergibt.” ( 7). In pursuit of this goal, each article begins with a statement of a generally held view of their subject that often is questioned in the final analysis. The conventional assumptions are offered in an italicized statement right after the title Rezensionen 340 of the essay, and while what follows may not always prove them to be totally in error, the essay certainly does raise questions about them and is not just an echo of past judgments. Editor Wolfgang Toennesmann’s well crafted article on American conservatism, which at eight pages is longer than most in the book, states in its heading that the U.S. is a conservative country; but after an intense, wide-ranging, and intelligently argued overview of American cultural and political developments over the last third of the 20 th century he correctly assesses that conservatism is on the wane. And the results of the 2006 and 2008 elections bear out his smartly-reasoned judgment as he quotes the American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset: “Da aber alle Trends einmal an ihr Ende gelangen, wird es diesem wahrscheinlich ebenso ergehen ( 89).” In the introduction the editors discuss the various ways that the United States has been seen by Europeans, and specifically by Germans. The editors feel that many of those who have written about the United States have failed to understand that it is more like a continent than a single country, and that it therefore incorporates many different aspects. The poet Walt Whitman once said that he incorporated “multitudes within himself,” and it seems to me that this is how the editors of this book and its contributors see America. They also realize that there is not one monolithic Amerikabild, whether it be pro or con. Much of their approach can be summed up in Jakob Schissler’s opening sentence in his attractive essay on “Wilder Westen,” in which he responds to the statement that “[D]er wilde Westen ist das wahre Amerika” by asserting: “Die Antwort auf unsere Frage ist ganz einfach zu geben: Ja und Nein” (193). The editors of this book in my opinion did accomplish what they set out to do in dealing with the United States. Their goal was, it seems to me, not to repeat what numerous others in many parts of the world had undertaken but, as they put it, without the burden of a scholarly apparatus, yet in an approach which is scholarly, sound, and substantial, to present a complex but not complicated picture of the United States. To present one that is simplistic, as has all too often been done in the past they feel, is, as they put it, “eine ständige Gefahr” ( 12). The need for complexity in depicting life in America can be seen in various essays. Christian Lammert’s comments on “Soziale Sicherheit” in his short but perceptive essay touch on the problems that arise from the increasing economic disparity in the U.S. He does not gainsay the problem but points out that recent U.S. administrations have attempted to deal with the fear and risks faced by the elderly and the unemployed; these have not been as successful as they should have been. He argues: “Ingesamt kann also nicht davon gesprochen werden, dass in den USA keine soziale Sicherheit gibt; sie ist allerdings zum Teil sehr ungleich verteilt” ( 144). And he concludes that, whether correctly or not, “aus europäischer Perspektive dadurch der Eindruck entsteht, dass es in den USA keine soziale Sicherheit gibt” (145). The editors of Lexikon der populären Amerikabilder understand that the USA has its problems, that there are some very unpleasant aspects to American life, such as the implementation of the death penalty. But just as with regards to racial discrimination the country has attempted to rectify past and present injustices, so, too, the Lexikon argues, do Americans continue to work constantly to improve their country. The book is a first rate collection of essays that presents interesting views of some Rezensionen 341 contemporary aspects of American life. The editors understand that in effect the book presents a series of snapshots, and in my opinion this is done in the main very well by various intelligent and reasonably open-minded individuals. But it is important to note, as do the editors, that the United States is constantly renewing itself, is undergoing continual transformation, and that it is important to understand that although the book presents a fascinating series of images, it would be wrong to believe that we are “im Besitz des wahren Wesens Amerikas” ( 12). This point of view is one of the strengths of the book. And all of us, in the U.S. and the rest of the world, should heed the editors’ warning that the image of America will continue to change, not least because of internal developments in the U.S. We must, as the editors urge, continue to ask questions “deren Antwort man noch nicht kennt” (12). Altogether, these essays are a provocative, well-done, intelligent, and insightful introduction to a series of topics which underlie American life today and have contributed to the historical development of the contemporary image of the USA. The editors have put together a splendid book. Students will benefit from reading it. The interested layperson will find it very worthwhile. Even experts can learn from it. The Lexikon is a very valuable and readable addition to the literature of American Studies. Its essays and their argument deserve attention. Daniel J. Leab Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ, USA