Things
That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and
Science
by Lorraine
Daston, Eds.
Zone Books, New York, 2004
250 pp., illus. 72 b/w, 9 col. Trade,
$34.50
ISBN: 1-98051-43-9.
Reviewed by Jan Baetans
Jan.Baetens@arts.kuleuven.ac.be
From Object, With Love . . . This wonderful
collection of essays edited by Lorraine
Daston is to be situated at the crossroads
of two major currents in cultural history
and cultural critique today: the heritage
of cultural studies, on the one hand,
and the renewal of historical studies,
on the other hand. By the way, the very
fact that cultural theory and critique
have now been dramatically historicized
can be seen as the ultimate proof that
the thing called cultural studies is now
both dead and incredibly alive. It is
dead, for there is almost nothing left
in cultural critique of the exclusive
focus on contemporary culture and the
great laxity in theoretical matters. It
is also very much alive, since its committed
impulses, its existential drive, and its
inventiveness of research and writing
themes have now completely pervaded all
theoretical and historical approaches
of culture. Projects such as the one conducted
by Bill Brown, for example (first as a
special issue of Critical Inquiry in 2001,
later reprinted in book form), might very
well function as the ("always already",
of course) terminus a quo of a new type
of reading cultural practices that combines
that best of at least two worlds: the
disciplinary approach of culture, with
its carefully constructed theoretical
and historical caveats, and the transdisciplinary
experiments of cultural studies, leaving
room for sometimes dazzling associations
and a stubborn refusal of empiricism and
bodiless theory.
By "things", Lorraine Daston
and the authors of the book understand
less mere objects than the special relationships
of subjects and objects. Objects are speechless,
since we take their meaning and use so
much for granted that we don’t even
notice their presence. Things "really"
speak, for their resistance to simple
meaning and simple use give the opportunity,
and in some cases the necessity, to define
or redefine what they are as well as what
we are. They are, therefore, part of networks
in which they compete as well as collaborate
with human actors or agents in the making
of history.
All contributors to this beautifully illustrated
and printed collection present historical
case studies of such "things",
i.e. of such special object-subject relationships.
The differences in disciplinary approach
are undeniable: half of the group may
be labeled as art historians, whereas
the other half has a background in the
history of science. And so are the differences
in the nature of the selected topics,
whose range is very wide (the very enumeration
produces in the reviewer, and I hope in
the reader, the delicious shiver present
in more than one tale by Jorge Luis Borges):
Hieronymus Bosch’s drawing of The
Treeman, the free-standing column
in 18th Century religious architecture,
the Peacock Island near Berlin, soap bubbles
(as a commodity in classic physics), photography
as courtroom evidence in 19th
Century US, the Ware Collection of Blaschka
Glass Models of Plants (a.k.a. the "Glass
Flowers") at the Harvard Museum of
Natural History, the drawings of the Rorschach
test, the technique of newspaper clipping
around 1920 (starring, amongst many others,
the painter George Grasz and the Ernst
Gehrcke, the Berlin professor who qualified
Albert Einstein as "Dadaist"),
and finally the mutual shaping of Clement
Greenberg and Jackson Pollock.
Yet despite all this variety, the over-all
unity of the book is strong. This has,
of course, much to do with the genesis
of Things That Talk, which is not
the result of an ordinary seminar in which
all speakers take over without knowing
what the others have been doing before
them or will be doing after them, but
of three group meetings during which the
eight authors presented and discussed
versions in progress of their essays.
Most of all, however, the great unity
of the work has to do with the clear scope
of the texts, which all obey four major
rules: 1) the insistence on (very traditional)
storytelling: the cultural and social
life of every thing tells a thousand stories
and all the authors of the book manage
to convert this material in one single
story, told in a straightforward manner;
2) the very cautious use of theoretical
frameworks: the contributors of Things
That Talk try without any exception
to make the many histories as well as
their own single story speak for themselves,
not without theoretical interferences
of course, but without reducing the historical
material to the role of illustrations
of this or that theoretical point; 3)
the almost juvenile enthusiasm (and I
may add: "love") of these subjects
for their objects: the authors of Things
That Talk manage to communicate the
wonder which is or should be at the beginning
of every serious scholarship and which
is not fundamentally different from our
own attitude toward objects in real life;
4) the craving for a method of reading
that complexifies the object, not by inscribing
it in a network of ever more complex theories,
but by gradually disclosing the often
incompatible logics at work in its form,
its evolution, and its interpretation.
This approach is brilliantly demonstrated
by Antoine Picon’s analysis of the
free-standing column in the 18th century.
This object, a historical "monster"
coming after the Renaissance pilaster
and preceding modern "iron-and-steel"
architecture, is first interpreted in
a "symbolic", i.e. Panofskyan
perspective (the object as "reflection"
or "double" of a given culture,
in this case the fascination of a twofold
heritage: Greek harmony and Gothic lightness,
the first reflecting monarchical prestige,
the latter suggesting the growing influence
of the new classes), before this reading
is contested by the study of competing,
often contradictory historical influences
and discourses (the claim of utility,
the need of circulation, the desire of
visibility, the seduction of the sublime,
the longing for scale) and replaced by
a new interpretation, by Picon himself,
who discovers in the very contradictions
displayed by the free-standing column
the symptom of the emerging split between
structure and ornament, architecture and
art, science and technology.
In short, Things That Talk is not
only a book that will provide the reader
with many and marvelous leçons
de choses, but it is also a publication
that will change the reader’s very
feeling of what an object may be.
