Peter FitzGerald: I'm struck
by the degree to which a sense of agency comes across from this
book. Any artist who has engaged with theoretical concerns over
the last decades will have come away with a much more depressing
self-view - 'death of the author', 'end of metanarratives', the
notion of being no more than a transmission node in a much larger
text or discourse, the divided self afloat on a barely knowable
unconscious. All very deflating. Yet you present us as self-creating:
I have a say in what my 'self' is. If I can create or re-create
a self, then I can certainly be the originator of a work of art.
Is this a fair representation of your views and if so, doesn't it
represent a radical shift away from these other positions where
the artist is anything but in control?
Ciarán
Benson: I find myself in opposition to two extreme positions.
One anticipates that all dimensions of mentality (including all
to do with 'self') will be adequately accounted for in neural computational
terms. The other position (lurking behind the question you
ask) is that all there is are shifting signifiers without anything
other than the illusion of stability and a delusion of personal
power. That is neither my experience nor my conclusion.
There are
many ways to approach this but let me enter the issue of 'being
in control' via the concept of 'freedom' and its conditions.
My absolutely pared-down proposition is that there is no absolute
'Freedom', that degrees of freedom are achievements, that the cultural-historical
conditions that favour or hinder the achievement of freedoms (I
emphasise the plural!) are variable and contingent, and that these
levels of achieved freedom are a function of skills, of their fluency,
and of the constraints on their exercise.
To become
skilful in any domain is to open up ever greater scope for the exercise
of that skill. The elaboration of that range involves what
we call 'creativity'. Really good free jazz, for example,
can only be played by really skilful jazz musicians. The
same applies to any area of the visual arts. The concepts
of 'freedom', 'skill', 'permission', 'creativity' and 'agency' are
deeply interconnected. Now let me attach this to the concept
of self and agency.
There is
no such 'thing' as self just as there is no such 'thing' as mind.
Whatever these concepts refer to, it is not to entities but to
the most complex processes we human beings know of. In that
sense those who oppose the reification of 'the agent' (conceiving
'it' as some kind of thing or entity) are absolutely correct.
However, this does not entail that there is no enduring stability
to 'the agent' understood in terms of processes, nor that an agent
cannot sensibly be held accountable for his or her actions.
There being
no such thing as self it follows that 'it' cannot be located in
the way that an object can be located in some circumscribed space.
No specific location in the brain, for instance, will ever be
found for 'the self' given that what the word 'self' refers to is
a complex symphonic-like interweaving of many processes over time
in ceaseless dialogue with an incessantly changing non-self world.
The processes of self are moment-by-moment processes, constantly
self-renewing and self-transforming. Their general form is,
I believe, universal. They are simultaneously stable, with
recurring constancies and patterns of organisation that tend towards
invariance. The sense that we all have of being the same
person we were last week or last year is rooted in these patterns
constantly renewing and reproducing themselves. Both the
brain in its body, and the world which locates and configures it,
shape the emergent 'self'. Hence the inadequacies of either
neural or social reductionisms.
With this
background in mind, here are some ideas about self. It is
best thought of as a verb (like 'mind', 'consciousness', 'freedom'
or 'creativity') rather than as a noun. It is the outcome
of a continuity and interdependence of the neural and the cultural.
The adequacy of its functioning from moment to moment depends
on the deeply interconnected conditions of both at particular
points in time. It is simultaneously stable and changing.
As such, and from the point of view of all conscious persons,
most of its underpinning processes function outside consciousness.
Many of these processes will always remain outside the range
of possible availability for direct conscious objectification, some
will be available only under certain special circumstances, and
some will be available 'at will'.
I make
a case in the book for the idea that the 'I-ness' of the subject
is founded on the 'here-ness' of the body and that both together
constitute self as a 'locative system'. Different dimensions
of the stability that underpin our convictions that we are the 'same'
person from one time to another adhere to this continuity of linguistically
constituted 'I-ness' with bodily 'here-ness'.
Now let
me address your question directly, especially concerning 'the death
of the author'. 'Self' is comprised of many skills, at varying
levels of fluency, but always located in particular place-times
(I introduce and develop this concept of 'place-time' in the book)
and always shaped by the demands concretely characterising those
particular place-times. Those dimensions of self which are
fundamentally dependent on our belonging to particular linguistic/symbolic
communities – which includes most of what is entailed by our uses
of names (proper nouns) and pronouns (especially 'I' and its relatives)
– are dimensions that are most frequently called into play for
limited periods of time by specific social demands. I
would select for specific attention the demands associated with
the connected processes of questioning, ownership and authorship.
Aspects
of self come in and out existence in phases which are determined
by demands at any particular point in time. This stress on
self as actively threaded along time is vital, in my view. There
is huge cultural-historical variability in the rules which
govern the interconnected social practices of questioning, owning
and authoring. Hence there is great variability in the shape
of selves and in the ways in which aspects can be called into play
or else stunted, inhibited and denied worthwhile existence.
Facets
of self come into and out of play, therefore, in synchrony with
demand. In answer to direct questioning 'I' comes into play
as a respondent when I answer with 'I think that...'
When responding to queries about ownership, and hence about control
and responsibility, 'I' comes into being as an owner. In
response to questions about who originated something 'I' comes into
social being as an author or perhaps culprit if I lay claim
to being responsible for some thing's or some action's origination
and making. All of these are key concepts for the idea of
agency that I support and contrast with those that you rightly identify
as prevailing in much contemporary art theory and artistic self-description.
There are
further cultural psychological points to be made here, insights
indebted to the early-twentieth-century Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky and to contemporary neo-Vygotskians. What I take
to be my 'interior' or 'private' conscious life (my subjectivity)
depends for the shape of its development on the 'exterior' or 'public'
conditions of my early childhood world. I first acquire the
sorts of practical skills favoured by the community that rears and
educates me publicly. Then in the course of my early development
I internalise or 'privatise' them and they become part of my 'inner'
life. This includes the sorts of ways in which my particular
community enables and favours someone like me (of my class, gender,
race, religion or whatever) to question, possess or choose to creatively
originate. There are, then, great differences in the ways
in which different people and peoples construe themselves as questioners,
owners and authors and hence construe their worlds as being open
to questioning, owning or authorship. The point is that felt
senses of agency are culturally and historically contingent.
So also are the sorts of symbolic abilities and permissions which
enable us to construe and express ourselves.
I think
of these differences in terms of differences in the sorts of skills
that comprise the development of selves. This connects with
my earlier comments on freedom as being constitutively tied to skilfulness.
Ever more intricate levels of skill yield proportionately greater
degrees of freedom. The possibility of individuals feeling
themselves 'free', thinking themselves capable of living creative
lives, feeling responsible for the shaping of their own lives, and
knowing that they themselves and others will hold them responsible
for what they do or don't do, depends on very specific types of
cultural-historical ideals. These particular ideas about
how human beings ought ideally to be are precisely that,
particular. They are not universal nor are they universally
desired by all leaders, regimes or worldviews.
These identity-forming
ideals entail characteristic forms of feeling. They reproduce
themselves through the sorts of feelings (neural bases of current
selfhood again) that direct how their subjects act, and how they
monitor their actions through the meanings they attach to those
feelings. Without understanding the local moral orders that
produce the particular ideals that affectively shape local selves,
you could never understand the contrasting psychologies of a Mullah
rejoicing in the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the frustrated
sense of outraged loss of a Western conservationist, nor could you
understand the psychological difference between a Hamas suicide-bomber
and a follower of Gandhi. I believe this also applies to
the various ways of thinking that go into making the idea of 'an
artist' and shaping the selves of contemporary artists.
The same
applies to understanding the sorts of ideals that empower individuals
who are constituted by them to believe that they can create and
control aspects of their own lives. Beliefs about self and
about what one has the power to do are intimately connected.
Real powers follow in the train of identity-forming beliefs. The
energies of human bodies are recruited by ideals. This is
a site of real empowerment and is not delusionary. The moral
ideals that go into the making of selves can open up and shut down
all sorts of possibilities for the person so made (I am avoiding
saying 'the person who holds these ideals' as though they were other
than them).
These same
thoughts apply to our understanding of the sorts of stability and
the sorts of activity that underpin contemporary notions of agency
in Western art and thought. Nobody doubts that Derrida writes
Derrida's books just as there is no question but that Lacan gave
Lacan's seminars. And who was Foucault if not the agent who
identified himself as the author of his works? In each case
we confidently attribute authorship, responsibility and agency.
We don't see them as out-of-control ciphers shaped by dominating
memes, even though we can rightly grant a great deal to the non-conscious
shaping of their consciousness and action by their own particular
ideas and ideals. What I am arguing for is not necessarily
at odds with their insights into the complexity of the flows and
transformations of signification, subjectivity and motivated action.
I am sympathetic to much of what they affirm, but am unconvinced
by what they deny regarding the self-conscious, self-controlled
powers – however partial and constrained – of human beings.
I see stronger grounds for leaving open the space for self-creating
agency than for denying it and thereby applying a conceptual tourniquet
which will kill it off.
That is
the short answer!
PF: The construction
of self, though, rests on two pillars. You bring in a good deal
of evidence from neuropsychology, drawing in particular on the work
of Antonio Damasio. You show how neurophysiology sets the stage
for different levels of consciousness and self. On the other hand,
culture (as in society) is utterly implicated in the definition
of any self. I'm wondering at what point the self turns from passive
construction to active constructor?
CB: The
roots of active construction are there right in the earliest psychic
life of the infant, I believe. It is there in the construction
of what Colwyn Trevarthen has called 'primary intersubjectivity'.
Processes of remembering are substantially processes of active
re-construction just as the processes of perception are actively
constructive. The intrinsic pleasures of mastering the world
are evident very early in an infant's life. The roots of
centred, self-referring agency lie deep in the pre-linguistic life
of the child.
However,
as I argue at length in the book, the scope of 'self' and of its
powers are massively ramified by the acquisition of linguistic-symbolic
skills which construct, elaborate and maintain the higher levels
of autobiographical self. Mastering our own language's pronoun
system is especially important for the ways in which we narratively
construct our worlds and our selves as part of them.
At these
higher levels of self-narration and autobiography, powers of conscious
self-creation follow on from the development of narrative skills,
skills which enable the imagining of new possibilities for self.
These skills engender new powers for stabilising self and for
enabling new forms of self-consciousness. The incorporation
into these constituting self-narratives of ideals supplied by the
culture is the means whereby their members, via the psychological
dynamics of belief and feeling, can acquire self-creative powers.
In sum,
there is no 'point' at which the turn from passive to active occurs.
Viewed in terms of individual biography, there will be many points
at which powers of self-expansion may be seen to have been nurtured
or hindered. I would stress that powers of self-creation,
while possible, real and potent, are always relative and limited.
They will always be interwoven with key aspects of self which
march to other tunes (the genetics of ageing and illness, for instance,
or the particular deep-seated repetitions of every life whose roots
lie deep in childhood, or the enduring psychological wounds which
sear the victims of trauma, and so on).
PF: On the
one hand you present art-making as the epitome of the Western ideal.
You quote Charles Taylor thus: "Artistic creation becomes the paradigm
mode in which people can come to self-definition. The artist becomes
in some way the paradigm case of the human being, as agent of original
self-definition." Towards the end of the book, though, you deflate
our egos a bit: ideals are culture-dependent, with Western culture
in particular favouring individual 'self-actualisation', often at
the expense of others. In that sense artists have little to be proud
of. Is there any way for artists to create on their own terms, that
is, outside a particular value system?
CB: There
is no way for artists, nor for anyone else, to exist as artists
or as people of a particular kind, outside of some moral order,
however crude and primitive. Furthermore, I would be very
hesitant in arguing that artists themselves are responsible for
the sorts of valuation that contemporary Western cultures confer
on them. There is a bigger picture here. On the other
hand, this currently very high approbation is greatly to the advantage
of the evolving kinds of activity which are called 'Art'. My
consideration of the term 'self-actualisation', as I consider it
in the book, is not uncritical, but that is another story.
PF: You speculate
on how works of art may momentarily disrupt the I-narrative, the
continual sense of being a self in the world. You refer to this
as positive absorption, but you also talk of a push-pull between
losing yourself in a work and coming back to your self. I may be
putting an odd spin on what you've written, but couldn't this absorption
be said to be predicated on dropping to a slightly lower level of
consciousness or selfhood?
CB: From
what kind of perspective would one think of consciousness as having
higher and lower 'levels' as against thinking of consciousness as
functioning in one or another 'way'? One, I would suggest,
is the sort of perspective that focuses on control. In my
identification and elaboration of positive and negative absorption,
it is negative absorption (which I discuss in the context of traumatic
events such as torture and extreme suffering) that I see as 'disrupting'
the narrative of self. 'Disrupt' is not a word that I would
use for those forms of positive absorption which characterise some
aesthetic or 'mystical' experiences. 'I', after all, only
features intermittently in our ongoing conversation (especially
within our 'inner speech'), and usually only when responding to
the demands of questioning, attributing responsibility, ownership
and authorship.
Control
is utterly lost in the instances I use to identify negative
absorption where I see self as suffering great diminution.
I argue that what I call positive absorption characterises
fertile phases of self-expansion where control remains with the
person. What happens, I suggest, is that the self-centring
control associated with the deployment of 'I' is willingly ceded
for short periods so that the qualities of consciousness for that
stretch of time are shaped by objects of attention like those produced
by artists. Reports by those who have described what it is
like to have such experiences rate them very highly and, in hierarchies
of evaluation, place them on the highest 'levels'.
PF: For you,
James Turrell's work represents a compelling demonstration of momentary
self-loss during art appreciation. His disorienting fields of colour
disrupt our sense of physical location and of inner/outer, and they
apparently aid in a passing dissolution of self. I take it though
that you're not advocating this sort of objectless art-making as
a desirable end-point for artistic development?
CB: I would
not describe what happens as 'self-loss'. On the contrary,
Turrell's explicit aim is to make available for conscious attention
'you in the act of seeing'. In the works I discuss, I think
he succeeds and in doing so makes available a phenomenon (what I
call the no-point-of-view phenomenon) which I use to expand
my wider argument about location being a primary function of what
we call 'self'.
The dissolution
which Turrell's work enables is the experiential dissolution of
what common-sense psychology takes as given, namely the inside-outside
construct. Apart from its marvellous artistic-aesthetic qualities,
Turrell's work shows how the idea of a 'boundary' between 'self'
and 'object' is a moveable feast. Most importantly, his work
is not an abstract claim that this is the case; it is a concrete
experiential demonstration of it. That is a main reason that
I use his work in my book.
As for
'end-points for artistic development', my entire argument would
be that the dynamic of human symbolisation is always towards open
horizons. There are no end-points in open horizons. Art,
like science, must constantly self-transform.
PF: In our
culture, theories of mind abound. Most seem predicated on nothing
more than the whim of the author married with copious references
to previous whims by previous authors (OK, I'm editorialising here
a bit). I was very struck, therefore, by your writing on the morality
of particular psychologies, and, if you like, the suggestion that
some theories of mind can be morally flawed. Do you have a shopping
list of theories of mind which you would like to see consigned to
oblivion?
CB: Reductionisms,
whether neural or social.
PF: Does your
book have implications for the making of art?
CB: Not
particularly for the making of art, other than to encourage experimentation
on the understanding that the optimal thrust of self is towards
open horizons and that the recognition of the dialogic relationship
underpinning all making means that new technologies will be engines
of artistic change. Nothing new here. The book does,
I believe, have many implications for how we think about
the making of art and about the ways in which cultures relate to
that making. I have tried throughout the book to signpost
some of these.
This interview
was conducted by e-mail in April 2001.
Ciarán
Benson is Professor of Psychology at
University College, Dublin; he is also a former Chair of the Arts
Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. The Cultural Psychology of Self:
Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds was published earlier this
year by Routledge.
Peter
FitzGerald is editor of CIRCA.
