Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Précis of “Las Meninas” chapter one of The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les Mots et les choses), by Michel Foucault

Précis of “Las Meninas” chapter one of The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les Mots et les choses), by Michel Foucault
Lindsay Farinella
November 12, 2008

“In this book I wanted to write a history of order, to state how a society reflects upon resemblances among things and how differences between things can be mastered, organized into networks, sketched out according to rational schemes…The Order of Things [is] the history of resemblance, sameness, and identity.”
—Foucault Live

“I should like to know whether the subjects responsible for scientific discourse are not determined in their situation, their function, their perceptive capacity, and their practical possibilities by conditions that dominate and even overwhelm them. In short, I tried to explore scientific discourse not from the point of view of the individuals who are speaking, nor from the point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying, but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the very existence of such discourse.”

—Foreword to the English edition of The Order of Things

Context of Foucault’s philosophy:

Foucault’s philosophy, often labeled post-structuralism, emphasizes the importance of the construction of reality while rejecting the value of the subject. His work is generally divided into three phases, the first of which includes The Order of Things and is deemed his Archaeologies (Oksala 3). This means he intends his work to analyze all the factors influencing (or structuring) past time periods and the conditions they placed on knowledge. For Foucault, individual subjects alter experiences much less than the structure that invariably governs them. The experience of the subject is informed by hidden (or unconscious) structures and their order of things. However, Foucault does not intend to analyze from the point of view of structure in itself—instead he wants to eventually focus on the rules that allow, disallow, or just classify the notion of truth. Foucault seeks to identify what he calls an episteme; in which the history of knowledge is traced by the various conditions placed on its boundaries. There is always a certain amount of space the individual is allowed to think with. The subject is therefore never the primary explanatory factor—philosophy can (and should) go farther.

Context of the Painting:

Las Meninas, or “The Ladies-in-Waiting,” was painted in 1656 by Diego Velázquez. Originally titled La Familia de Felipe IV, the work depicts the artist himself painting while the Infanta Margarita, her ladies in waiting, a dwarf, servants, and a dog stand nearby. As the work became more well-known through the 19th century, it was widely referenced by both Spanish and French artists. The combination of visual discrepancies, psychological interaction, and its use of light was very unique. The name of the painting was changed to Las Meninas in 1843, as critics attached purpose to the more unconcealed representation of the ladies-in-waiting as opposed to the royal family. The quality and the naturalism/realism of the work remained under admiration, while the mystery of its construction of perception remained under study. Countless theories (including mathematical) were put forth in an attempt to explain the location of the painter, the mirror, the Infanta, as well as the meaning behind the perspective it uses (Luxenberg 25).


Foucault’s Analysis:

Foucault spends the majority of the first part of Las Meninas analyzing with great detail (and fascination) the placement of virtually every element within the painting. He observes the arrangement of the work it shows being painted: though it is quite large and takes up the entire left portion of the image, reasonably giving it some kind of significance, its content is facing away from the viewer. Adding to the irony is the sunlight illuminating the Infanta, her meninas, and the concealed front of the painting—thus the only side available to the viewer remains in the dark.

The light also allows, however, enough of a gleam on a mirror—located slightly left of the work’s center—for the viewer to see the reflections of the King and Queen. Foucault notes their position in reference to the painting’s composition: their actual forms are implied to be in the same location as that of the viewer. In comparison with the unseen, “ironic” canvas and the would-be illuminating light, the mirror is the only visible double, or representation. Yet it duplicates nothing within the parameters of the entire painting.

He also makes note of the captured movement of the work. The painter has just presumably stepped into the light from behind his work to examine his subjects: “And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject… the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity” (4).

Therefore the mirror orders two forms of representative identity: the figures the artist is viewing within the context of the painting, and the actual figures in the place the composition of the work opens up the room. Their actual figures are both made unattainable and ultimately implied; only their representations are ordered with placements at each end of the composition. The visibility only speaks to what is invisible: “In this way, the spatial game becomes linguistic in so far as it is related to the formation of subjectivity” (Diego 159). There are two scenes that are sitting as subjects for the other; the spectator notices these two subjects and is forced to reflect on how structure influences this situation.

The spectator of the painting does not see the painting as simply their own viewpoint of whatever speaks to them within the experience. Instead they are forced to take note of the rules controlling the structuring of what they see and what they cannot, or what they can only assume or guess. Instead of noticing or only being aware of the supposed subject of the painting, the King and Queen, the viewer is forced to consider their own place as a spectator in reference to the painter—including the structures that are controlling what they are allowed to apprehend.

For Foucault, Las Meninas represents not an overtly subject-oriented understanding of existence, but one that forces the consideration of how structures are influencing virtually everything. Foucault notes that the nature of the image—or of existence—does not allow “the pure felicity” of what is taking place to be wholly experienced: it is impossible to ignore the fact that there are multiple representations at stake, including the fact that there are structures controlling this circumstance. Focusing on any kind of experience in this manner will result in the spectator ignoring the palpable structures that remain the ultimate influence. In this present time period, the subject has ultimately gone astray in favor of the structures that will invariably provide rules for its experience.



Discussion Questions:

In the foreword to the English edition of The Order of Things, Foucault ends his closing paragraph with a frustrated plea to the English reader not to follow in the French academic world’s (or “half-witted commentators”) footsteps by labeling him a structuralist of any kind. However, he then goes on to admit the existence of certain similarities between his work and that of structuralism. Does Foucault’s work indeed read as a form of post-structuralist philosophy?

How does this compare with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, especially in view of his own account of what the experience of a painting is like?






Works Cited:

Foucault, Michel. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984. ed., Lotringer. Trans. Hochroth and Johnston. New York: Semiotexte, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970.
Diego, Estrella De. Valazquez’s Las Meninas, “Representing Representation.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Luxenberg, Alisa. Idbid., “The Aura of a Masterpiece: Reponses to Las Meninas in Nineteenth-Century Spain and France.”
Oksala, Johanna. Foucault On Freedom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

No comments: