Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying

461 Pages·2003·18.55 MB·English

by  Gary Shapiro

ArchaeologioefsV ision
Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying
GARY SHAPIRO
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London

Gary Shapiro is professor of philosophy and Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the
Humanities at the University of Richmond. He is the author of three previous
books, including Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gifts, Noise, and Women and Earthwards:
Robert Smithson and Art after Babel.
The UniverosfiC tyh icaPgroe sCsh,i ca6g0o6 37
The UniversoifCt hyi caPgor ess, LtdL.o,n don
© 2003by Gary Shapiro
All rights reserved.Pub lish2e00d3
Printed int heU nited Stateso fAm erica
12111009080706005403 54321
ISBN( cloth): 0-226-75046-9
ISBN (paper): 0-226-75047-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shapiro, Gary, 1941-
Archaeologies of vision : Foucault and Nietzsche on seeing and saying I Gary
Shapiro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-226-750(4al6k-. p9a per) - ISBN 0-226-750(4p7bk-. 7: alk. paper)
1.F oucault, Michel. 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
3.V ision. I. Title.
B2430.F7S2543 2003
121'.35-dc21
2002014836
I@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

In memory of Irving H. Shapiro and Leo Shapiro

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xiii
References and Abbreviations xix
Introduction: The Abyss of Vision
1. Iconoclasm and Indoctrination: The Taliban and
the Te letubbies 1
2. Denigrating or Analyzing Vision? 6
3. Foucault as Illustrator: The Case of Frans Hals 12
4. Nietzsche's Story of the Eye 19
5. Realism: Reading from Left to Right 26
6. Hidden Images: Before the Age of Art 30
7. Nietzsche and Heidegger on Visual History 36
one
Between Sun and Cyclops: Nietzsche at the
Dresden Gallery 39
8. Eye Trouble 39
9. Glances of the Golden Age 41
10. Deconstructing the Video 50
11. "Claude Lorraine-like Raptures and Tears" 54
12. Nietzsche and the Time of the Museum 58
13. A Tour of the Dresden Gallery 61
two
Nietzsche's Laocoon: Crossings of Painting and Poetry 69
14. Aesthetics: Nietzsche contra Lessing 69
15. Modernism and Its Discontents: Nietzsche after
Greenberg 71
16. Images, Words, and Music 74
vii
17. The Silence of Saint Cecilia 77
18. The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 82
three
"This Is Not a Christ": Art in The Birth of Tragedy 87
19. Transfiguring the Transfiguration 87
20. Floating and Shining 101
21. Double-Coding the Sistine Madonna 106
22. The Death of (Metaphysical) Art 112
23. The Knight, Death, and the Devil 118
24. Nietzsche and the Little Black Dress: All the Costumes
of History 124
four
Ubersehen: Architecture and Excess in the Theater
of Dionysus 127
25. Optical Illusions 127
26. Aesthetics of Presence 130
27. Double Vision: Seeing like an Athenian 135
28. The Theatrical Dispositif 140
29. Perspectivism and Cyclops Vision 143
30. Postdassical Framing 148
31. Nietzsche in Bayreuth 150
five
In the Twinkling of an Eye: Zarathustra on the Gaze and
the Glance 157
32. The Optics of Value 157
33. The Question of the Augenblick 160
34. The Evil Eye and Its Radiant Other 163
35. Zarathustra's Interpretation of Dreams 171
36. Vertigo 174
37. The Nausea of Vision 181
38. Recurrence as Medusa's Head 184
39. High Noon: Hyphenating the Augen-Blick 187
six
Foucault's Story of the Eye: Madness, Dreams, Literature 193
40. Painting and Pleasure: What Do Philosophers
Dream Of? 193
41. The Difficulty of Silence 195
42. Bataille's Deconstruction of the Eye 199
43. Return of the Phantasm: Dream Vision 201
44. Temptations: Bosch and Other Visionaries 207
45. Fantasia of the Library: The Birth of Literature out of
the Spirit of Painting 213
seven
Critique of Impure Phenomenology 217
46. Merleau-Ponty's Evasion of Nietzsche:
Misreading Malraux 217
47. Cezanne or Velazquez: What Is an Artist? 225
48. The Painter as Phenomenologist 230
49. The Visible and the Invisible 234
50. The Mirror of the Sovereign 237
51. "Enslaved Sovereign, Observed Spectator" 241
eight
Seeing and Saying: Foucault's Ekphrasis of Las Meninas 245
52. What's in a Name? 245
53. Ekphrasis 247
54. Construction of the "We" 250
55. The Vanishing Subject of Vision 256
nine
Toward an Archaeology of Painting 265
56. Archaeology and Genealogy of the Visible 265
57. From Renaissance Similitude to Postmodern
Simulacrum 270
58. Klee, Kandinsky, Magritte 275
59. Archaeology without the Episteme? 279
ten
Visual Regimes and Visual Resistance: From the Panopticon
to Manet's Bar 285
60. Nietzsche and the Theater of Cruelty 285
61. Foucault's Scenarios 291
62. Bentham and Plato as Philosopher-Architects 293
63. Panopticon 294
64. The Visual State 301
65. Shutters and Mirrors: Manet Closes the
Panopticon Window 302
66. Wanderers and Shadows 317
67. The Prison of the Gallery and the Force of Flight 320
Contents ix