Reading 3: The Prose of the World

Foucault, Michel, “The Prose of the World.” The Order of Things. Vintage Books. 1994: pp.17-35.

Foucault analyzed the concept of resemblance especially in the 16^th century that “played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture.” I think this concept could provide a background understanding on the process of abstraction and the minimal concept of repetitive serial imagery in Geert Lap’s forms. However, I am sure that I had better summarize and quote his writing to get a clearer idea on this issue.

I. The Four Similitudes

“Resemblance…organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them.”(17)

Foucault claimed 4 forms of similitudes (resemblance); convenientia (proximity), aemulatio (emulation), analogy, and sympathies.

1. Convenientia “denotes the adjacency of places… adjacency is not an exterior relation between things, but the sign of a relationship... resemblance connected with space in the form of a graduated scale of proximity… by this linking of resemblance with space…that brings like things together and makes adjacent things similar, the world is linked together like a chain.”

2. Aemulatio is “the relation of emulation [that] enables things to imitate one another from one end of the universe to the other without connection or proximity.” As the reflection and the mirror, emulation is the duplication of world “which stand immediately opposite to one another… [and] then become the combat of one form against another… The links of emulation, unlike the elements of convenientia, do not form a chain but rather a series of concentric circles reflecting and rivaling one another.”

3. In the analogy, “convenientia and aemulatio are superimposed… [Analogy] speaks of adjacencies [as well as] the confrontation of resemblances…it can extend, from a single given point, to an endless number of relationships… all the figures in the whole universe can be drawn together….[for example] Man's body is always the possible half of a universal atlas… Their relations may be inverted without losing any of their force.”

4. Sympathies “can be brought into being by a simple contact…it has the dangerous power of assimilating, of rendering things identical to one another… [Since] sympathy transforms [and] alters in the direction of identity causing things individuality to disappear…if its power were not counterbalanced, it would reduce the world to a homogeneous mass, to the featureless form of the same… This is why sympathy is compensated for by antipathy [that] maintains the isolation of things and prevents their assimilation…Through this constant counterbalancing of sympathy and antipathy …all the forms of the world remain what they are.

Foucault concluded that “the sovereignty of the sympathy-antipathy pair gives rise to all the forms of resemblance…The first three similitudes are thus all resumed and explained by it. The whole volume of the world, all the adjacencies of 'convenience', all the echoes of emulation, all the linkages of analogy, are supported, maintained, and doubled by this space governed by sympathy and antipathy, which are ceaselessly drawing things together and holding them apart”

II. Signatures

Even though 4 similitudes “tell how the world fold in upon itself, duplicate itself, reflect itself, or form a chain with itself so that things can resemble one another,” these similitudes are buried while they are exposing signs (signatures) on the surface, so could be visible only in the network of signs. Therefore, Foucault emphasized that “the knowledge of similitudes is founded upon the unearthing and decipherment of these signatures” through hermeneutics (the totality of learning and skills that enable one to make the signs speak and to discover their meaning) and seminology  (the totality of the learning and skills that enable one to distinguish the location of the signs, to define what constitutes them as signs, and to know how and by what laws they are linked). “The world is covered with signs that must be deciphered, and those signs, which reveal resemblances and affinities are themselves no more than forms of similitude…To know must therefore be to interpret.”

III. The Limits of the World

Since “resemblance never remains stable within itself…each resemblance has value only from the accumulation of all the others,” the 16^th century knowledge tried to “find an adjustment between the infinite richness of a resemblance” (between sign and their meanings), thus it developed the discourse of the Ancient, "Antiquity".

 

(On the other hand, Baudrillard’s idea on the objective and systemized structural evolution by technological development could also relate to the conceptual and formal issues of art objects. He claims that the new structure “represents a genuine advance…internally consistent and completely unified” which is showing “a convergence of functions within a single structural feature, not a compromise between confronting requirements.”)