Disavowal and Representation in Magritte's La Trahion des Images

The work of the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte takes us to the boundaries of the aesthetics' do­main.  It forces the observer to abandon his attitude of passi­ve viewing and invites him to reflect upon those questions which, preci­sely becau­se of their everyday-ness and banality, generally escape our observati­on.  Among such questi­ons is that of visual representation and the relationship between the visual signifier (signifiant) and the signified (signifié).  This epis­temological connotation of Magrit­te's work has not escaped philosophical inte­rest.  Most especially, the painting La trahison des images from 1929 has elici­ted a large number of commenta­ries, of which Foucault's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (Foucault, 1973) is perhaps the most well known.

       That which strikes the reader in the various interpreta­tions is that the title of La trahison des images rarely enters into the discussion.  This is remar­ka­ble because the titles of Magritte's works deliver a valuable contri­bution to the question at issue and for precisely this reason they demand their share in the interpretation.  However, because of their puzzling character the titles conjure up considerable resistance against their inclusion in the philosophical discussi­on.  Magritte, commen­ting about this, said: "The titles of the paintings are not expla­nations and the pain­tings themsel­ves are not mere illustrations of the titles.  The relationship is poetic, that is, it merely illuminates a number of the charac­te­ristics of the objects involved, characte­ristics which are generally ignored by conscious­ness" (Magritte, 1979, 259).  For an analysis which is directed at the reception accorded to Magritte's work, the titles offer a tempting starting-point precisely because they reveal something about that which remains unconscious in percepti­on.  This is especially relevant for La trahison des images because the title points to a problem which appears to be closely connec­ted to that of representation.  The title of the painting of a pipe which appears not to be a pipe brings us onto the terrain of disavowal: a disavowal of the images is poin­ted at[1].

       The close connection between representation and disavo­wal, and the fact that these activities extend themselves to the boundaries of our thinking, makes them exceptional­ly difficult to 'master'.  We exist in the fortunate circumstan­ces, howe­ver, of being able to make an appeal to psychoanalytic theory, in which the entang­lement of disavowal and representation have a privileged position, for our studies of the relationship.  The texts in which Freud, and in his footsteps the French psy­choanalyst Mannoni, dealt with disavo­wal (Verleug­nung) in the con­text of fetis­hism especially deserve our attention[2].  These texts will function as a guiding thread in the following study of the expressive com­mentary which La trahison des images provi­des of the relationship between disavowal and re­presen­tation in the experience of mimetic fine arts[3].  Further, an inver­se movement will be initiated from the begin­ning of my argument by my use of Magritte's commenta­ry to interrogate the psycho­analytic concepti­on of this relationship from within.  My interpretation of La trahi­son­ des images also bears traces of texts by Derrida, Bar­thes, and Irigaray concer­ning the ques­tion of re­presentation.  And, just as La trahison des images has unavoi­dably inserted itself into the ordering of language, these spores have carved themsel­ves into the working history of the painting, the never drying veneer of the aesthetic image which the painting embo­dies[4].

1. Magritte's pipe: Yes, I know, but still ...

In their texts both Freud and Mannoni stand still for a moment when consi­dering the remarkable feelings they experienced when, for the first time, they were confron­ted in their psychoanalytic practi­ce with the phenomenon of dis­avowal.  Freud begins one of the arti­cles he wrote about this phenomenon with the words: "I find myself for a moment in the interesting position of not kno­wing whether what I have to say should be regarded as something long familiar and obvious or as something entirely new and puzzling" (SE XXIII, 275).  Mannoni ex­presses the same mood when, in Je sais bien, mais quand même ..., he maintains that, confron­ted with the pheno­menon of disavowal, one "feels on­eself catapulted between a feeling of banali­ty and a fee­ling of ex­treme surprise" (Manno­ni, 1969, 11).  It is precisely this feeling we experience when we are con­fron­ted with La trahison des images for the first time.  The naive style shows us an unmista­kable repre­sen­tation of a pipe, with a text under­neath it reading "This is not a pipe".  The shock occasio­ned when we perceive this similarly carries us into the remarkable borders of extre­me bana­lity and alienati­on[5].  The shock, namely, resides not only in the first banal amazement con­cerning the apparent contradiction (that is, that a pain­ted pipe is actually not a pipe), but it also con­cerns the fact that we were ama­zed, that, despite our know­ledge of the fact that a painted pipe is not actually a pipe, we were nonet­heless shocked at the moment that the  pain­ting made us aware of this knowledge[6].  Without the annotati­on, we realize in surprise, we would belie­ve that what we observe really is a pipe.

The experience of La trahison des images makes us conscious of a charac­teristic which we must assume is inherent to every aesthe­tic observation of a mimetic work of art, namely, the simultaneous exis­tence of two mutually exclu­sive mental attitu­des.  In the aes­thetic observation of these objects we know that what we are seeing is unre­al, that it is a fiction: simultaneously, we deny this know­ledge and abandon ourselves to the reality of that which we are observing.  This disavowal of the images (in favour of the real object they sig­nify) brings us to the sine qua non of the mimetic experience.  Wit­hout the mechanism of the simultaneous existence of a quantum of knowledge and a belief which is irrecon­cilable with that knowledge (that is: a particular form of not-knowing), the mime­tic experience appears to be impossi­ble.  If the knowledge component is lacking, then we find ourselves in the legendary situ­ation of the observers of the first film performance in Paris' Grand Café who ran in panic from the approaching train which they saw on the screen.  The know­ledge component appears in this instan­ce to have been completely absorbed in the affective com­ponent.  If the affective component is lacking, then we can equally not speak of an aesthetic experience.  In Mannoni's words: "Anyone who, un­prepared, attends a Chinese per­formance runs the risk of seeing the play as it is and the actors as they are.  Viewed objec­tively, it is certainly theatre, but it is without the theatrical effect" (Man­noni, 1969, 161).

An important part of 20th Century fine arts, especially that part such as abstract art which reject the mimetic, appears to unconsci­ously remove itself from the boun­daries of the hybrid relationship of believing and knowing.  The strength of La trahison des images resides in the fact that it makes us conscious of this simultane­ous existence of the knowledge and faith compo­nents, and, what is per­haps an even more important effect, it saturates us with the comple­te not-self-evidentness of this relationship.  After all, we are confron­ted with the question as to how it is possible that two mutu­ally exclusi­ve attitu­des can be simultaneously pre­sent in our minds.

La trahison des images does not provide an answer to this questi­on.  The pleasu­re which the painting affords us cannot really be described as anything other than an especially perverse and sub­ver­sive pleasure.  It is a shocking plea­sure which does not intend to please and to explain, but, rather, to disturb (a pleasure that may be called characteristic for the entire tradition of the no-longer-fine-arts).  Magritte's painting is directed at a Verwin­dung of the mime­tic traditi­on.  It is a deconstructi­vist practi­ce which, in a shocking manner, makes us conscious of that which must re­main parti­ally unconscious in the mimetic experience: the very process of representa­ti­on.  The unreflected conti­nuity of presen­ting the presence of an absent object by means of a sign forms the condition of the possibility for every mimetic experience.  The subversive character of Magritte's deconstructivist labour lies in becoming conscious of this disavowal of represen­tation which is so necessary for the mimetic experien­ce.  In this becoming consci­ous, wherein the two mutu­ally exclusive attitu­des are brought together in one move­ment of thought, the representative appearance of the mimetic expe­rience is withdrawn[7].  The mime­tic experience becomes - and this differentiates Magritte's work from abstract art wherein the mime­sis were 'sim­ply' abandoned - enerva­ted from within[8].The fact that La trahison des images provides the observer with a certain desire, despite this Verwindung of mimetic experience, constitutes its perverse character.  This pleasure forms an indi­ca­tion of the existence of another aesthe­tic 'space' on both sides of traditional representation.  It is this space, unlocked by desi­re, which intrigues me.

2. Sexual and aesthetic disavowal

Is it pure coincidence that Freud, when speaking about perver­si­on, also bumps up against the entanglement of disavowal and re­pre­sentation?  He wor­ked out several aspects of this relationship more closely in his analysis of fetis­hism.  Fetishism, in Freud's view, is based upon the fact that the analysand, almost always male, "does not acknowledge that a woman does not have a penis, somet­hing which, as proof of the possibility of being himself cas­trated, is most un­wel­come" (SE XXIII, 203).  The analysand, for this reason, denies his senso­ry perception that the female does not possess a phallus and maintains a firm grip on the contrary convic­tion.  Accor­ding to Freud, however, the de­nied perception continu­es to be influential and, for this reason, the fetishist attributes the role of the phal­lus to something else, another bodily part or an article of clothing.  We could express it as follows: the fetish presents the phallus as being present.  In this connection, Freud speaks about the formation of a com­promise between two contradic­tory attitudes which is related to dream labour.  The fetish forms a compromise between the sensory perception which establis­hes the female's ab­sence of a phallus and the wish to preserve this phallus for percep­tion.  The fetish makes it possible that the belief in the pre­sence of a female phallus is "maintained, but also given up" (SE XXI, 154).

Octave Mannoni offered the assumption that this fetishi­zation of the absent female (mother) phallus stands "for all forms of belief which, despite falsificati­on by reality, remain intact" (Mannoni, 1969, 12).  The structural agreement between sexual and aesthetic disavo­wal is indeed remarkable.  After all, in aes­thetic percepti­on, one of the forms of belief to which Mannoni refers, an object is by a sign equal­ly posited as present on the grounds of its absence.  A painted object (for example the pipe in La trahison des images) forms an aes­thetic 'fetish', a compromise form between knowledge of an object's absen­ce and the disavowal of this knowled­ge, and thereby makes it possible to pre­serve the absent object for perception.  In the case of both sexual and aesthe­tic dis­avowal we travel - the term 'fetish' does not appear to have been arbitra­rily chosen - in the terrain of the magical (or, more rigorously: that of the 'magic of belief' which precedes the 'belief in magic' - Mannoni, 1969, 29).  What is remarka­ble is that in both instances disavowal, despite its irrational character, plays itself out "in full daylight" (Mannoni, 1969, 30).  Neither the sexual fetish nor the painted object possess anything mysterious; at the same time, they are able to carry us into a magical experience.

In the foregoing comments I remarked, and this appears to call a halt to the specified analogy between sexual and aesthetic dis­avowal, that, in aesthetic percepti­on and simultaneously with the experience of disavowal (the magical compromise between knowing and wishing), we have access to knowledge of the object's absen­ce.  In the case of La trahison des images this is the absence of the real pipe.  This knowledge, as I also remarked, does not in any way ef­fect aes­thetic disavowal.  This appears to distin­guish aesthetic disavowal from sexual disavowal wherein this know­ledge-component is absent.  In An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, however, Freud points to a simultaneous existence of dis­avowal and knowledge in sexual fetishism: "The creation of the fetish emerged from the intention to destroy the evidence of possible castration so that one could avoid the fear of castration.  When the woman, just as other living beings, possesses a penis, then one does not have to fear the further possession of one's own penis.  Now, we encounter fetishists who have developed the same fear of castration as non-fetishists and who thus react in the same manner.  In their behaviour they thus express two mutually exclusive attitudes: on the one hand they deny the reality of their perception of no penis being present with female genitals, and, on the other hand, they acknowledge a woman's lack of a penis and draw the correct conclusion from this acknow­ledgement.  Both attitudes exist side-by-side for an entire life without their influencing each other" (SE XXIII, 203)check.

The phenomenon of the mutual existence of two mutually exclusi­ve attitu­des is presented by Freud with the term 'Ego-splitting' (Ich-spaltung).  The emergen­ce of Ego-splitting shows that the disavowal of perception by the fetis­hist is not complete; the ac­knowledgement is, after all, present in consciousness.  In this case, the fe­tish(ism) is only partially developed: "It does not control the object-choice with exclusion of everything else, but, rather, leaves room for a more or less normal behaviour and someti­mes even reduces itself to a modest role or a simple announce­ment of its presence.  The distinction between the Ego and reality is, accordingly, never completely successful for the fetishist" (SE XXIII, 203).  Aesthetic percepti­on is capable of a similar descripti­on.  The obser­ver of La trahison des images surren­ders to the imagi­nary presence of the object but, simultaneously, he realizes this surrender and precisely thereby elevates the experience to an aesthetic one.  Just as, according to Freud, sexual fetishism mostly reduces itself to a modest role or simple announcement of itself (and the sexual goal of genital reproduction is preserved), so does the observer who is captured by the aesthetic experience leave open a path for a complete reproducti­on of knowled­ge.  In this manner, both forms of fetishism remain under the domination of instrumen­tal representation which is in the service of the reality-princi­ple (see SE XII, 213-226).  The  shock which La trahi­son des ima­ges en­genders is only ab­rupt: the trusted frameworks of percep­ti­on quic­kly recover.  Awakened from his aesthetic 'dre­am' the hand fault­lessly goes to the ash-tray and the observer smokes his pipe with satisfaction.

When fetishism becomes acute, sexual activity removes itself from repro­duction.  The fetishist pulls himself free from the domi­nance of the sexual goal.  In analogous fashion, the aesthetic observer, when he finds himself in the same situation of acute fetishism, retreats into his 'unselfish pleasure' and thereby escapes from the domina­tion of instrumental representation.  In both cases, fore-play overmasters after-play and the perception becomes perverse (for the italici­zed terms, see Freud, SE VII, 209 ff; in relation to the aesthetic Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, SE VIII).  In both cases we can therefore speak of an acute aes­theti­cism.  That is: that the pleasure of looking becomes a goal in itself, cut off from the everyday practice of looking which is guided by the demands of sexual reproduc­tion and utilitarian representation.A description of these forms of fetishism which, as in the case of Freud, finds its ultimate criterion in the demands of the reali­ty-principle, cannot veil its pejora­tive tone.  However, the plea­sure which the fetishist experiences  in the sexual and aesthetic game can equally not be hidden.  But it is a pleasure that cannot be repre­sented in an order wherein sexual reproduction and utilitari­an representation are the central terms.  It is, in the different meanings of the word, a non-representati­ve pleasure.  A theoreti­cal approach - assuming, that is, just as Nietzsche argued, that it always finds its origin in the 'factories of use' (KSA 1, 299) - can situate this pleasure at best in an a-topos.  The theory is here made into a detour, perverted by its object it can only evoke the pleasu­re at the mo­ment that it stum­bles and sets its understanding teeth into its own tail.  Is it only irony that La trahison des images hereby indicates its own tail to theory?

3. The perversion of aestheticism

The subversive character of La trahison des images is formed by the fact that the painting breaks through mimetic pleasure.  Star­ting from the order of the repre­sentation, it is shown that that order is empty.  By no longer permitting word and image to support each other, the naive-realistic conceptualization of the repre­sentati­on is raped from within and "in broad daylight".  The signi­fiers (the image of the pipe, the painted text) only point in a negative manner to each other, and, thereby, they become, as it were, meaningless.  The painted sentence does not only make us realize that the image of the pipe is not really a pipe, but, at the same time, it makes us realize that the sentence refers to itself: the painted sentence, too, is not a real pipe.  The signified (the 'real' pipe) disappe­ars com­pletely from the field of view.  Fou­cault, in his essay concerning Mag­ritte, formulates this as fol­lows: "Magritte permits the old space of the exhibiti­on dominate, but only on the surface because it is no more than a flat surface which bears words and images; there is nothing under­neath it" (Fou­cault, 1973, 25).

La trahison des images shows us a remarkable characte­ristic of the sign, about which in structuralist semiology after Saussu­re, too, there has been sub­stantial specu­lation.  The language-sign was conceived by Saussure as a relation between sound (the signifier) and concept (the signified): the mea­ning-content of a sound is determi­ned by the relation which it maintains with the other sounds which belong to the same system.  The definition which Saussure gives can be called differen­tial because he conceives of the sign as an internal and external difference: internal­ly, the sign is determined by the diffe­rence between the signifier (signi­fiant) and the signified (signifié); externally, it is determined by the difference between the signi­fiers and the signifieds them­selves.  Radica­lizing this differential language-definition from Saussure, post-structu­ralists such as Derrida, Lacan, and Bar­thes postulate that the signifier and the signified do not form a fundamental unity of sign, but, rather, that the signified emerged from the articula­tion (that is: combination and substituti­on) of the signi­fiers.  A signified, it is maintained, always points to other elements and thereby also always finds itself in the position of signifier.  A conse­quence of this point is that the signified always postpones itself: every signi­fied is part of a referen­tial game which never comes to rest.  In contrast to what the traditi­onal 'metaphy­sics of the sign' argues, the signifier, according to post-structura­lists, does not repre­sent a signified which already contains meaning within itself, but, rather, it is a derived pheno­menon, an effect of the systemic play of signifiers.[9]

In La trahison des images one could express this by saying that this refe­rential game becomes frantic, as it were.  In the negative reference the referenti­al function of the representation, which, following Saussure, is placed in paren­theses by the post-struc­turalists, is completely removed[10].  The referential ga­me becomes an end­less repetition without originality, a simulacrum.  The obser­ver is involved in a domain from which it is impossi­ble to escape.  On a psy­chic level, this is expressed in the simultaneous experience of the attitudes, necessari­ly separated for the aesthe­tic experience, of knowing and believing.  The obser­ver becomes conscious of his Ego-splitting.  Nonetheless, and this is precise­ly that which is remarkable about the experience, this becoming consci­ous is not, as one would expect, combined with pain or fear.  The 'threat of castration' which, in this instance, concerns the object of our experience (the 'real' pipe), is, after all, acute in the experience of the short-circuit of the signi­fiers in La trahi­son des images.  In contrast to this, the decon­struction delivers a certain desire, a form of desire with which perhaps only perver­si­on can provi­de us.

Derrida maintains: "At the moment a signifier stops imitating the danger of perversion is immediately acute" (1968, 291).  When the signifiers no longer repre­sent the signified, but, rather, only and purely signify each other (that is, are priso­ners in a pure inter-textuality), then they become self-lovers, a fetish.  Magritte, in La trahison des images, completes the transition from a partial fetishism of the aesthetic experience to a total fetis­hism of aestheticism.  The belief-component is eliminated in fa­vour of a special desire for knowledge of "the falling away of mea­ning from under the signifier" (Lacan, E 502).  The dominance of the signified, which is intrinsic to naive realism, is here fors­aken in favour of a desire for the dominance of the signifiers.  Speaking in the con­text of a literary text concerning pleasure (the sexual jouissance) of a game wherein the ultimate meaning continu­ous­ly retreats, Barthes in De l'œuvre au texte says: "The Text, on the contrary, practi­ces the infinite deferment of the signified, is delatory; its field is that of the signifier and the signifier must not be conceived of as 'the first stage of meaning', its material vesti­bule, but, in complete opposition to this, as its deferred action. Similary, the infini­ty of the signifiers refers not to some idea of the ineffable (the unname­able signi­fied) but to that of a playing" (Barthes, 1982, 158On the terrain of visual signifiers, La trahison des images re­fers to the extre­me limits of this game, this jouissance: the ima­ginary turning-point whe­rein that which is signified (signifiance) becomes submerged in showing the senselessness of the representa­tion.  The mimetic-aesthetic experience, which necessarily invol­ves a belief-component, is here abandoned in order that the path be made free for the knowledge of an aestheticism which concerns it­self with all signi­fiers.  Not only the signifiers which are tradi­tionally presented as imaginary or artistic are dragged into this aestheticism: the pipe in the ash-tray, too, is made into an ele­ment of a referen­tial game without any basis.

4. The phallus as transcendental signifier

 In the foregoing I have been guided by the analogy Mannoni noted between sexual and aesthetic disavowal.  Through this reasoning, I came upon the trail of a mysteri­ous relationship between sexual and epistemological representation.  This relations­hip, which continues to emerge in unexpected places in modern philosop­hy[11], is also argued by Lacan, with a reference to the post-structuralist reading of Freud, on more theoretical grounds.  We should briefly follow this detour because it makes it possi­ble to approach La trahison des images from a rather different perspective, in the hope that a combination of these perspecti­ves will provide more 'depth' to the image with which we are concerned.

Lacan's return to Freud is strongly influenced by Saussure's structuralist linguis­tics.  This led Lacan to interpret the pro­ble­matics of castration as a com­plex which marks the entrance of the individual into the symbolic order.  In Lacan's view, the individu­al, who initially exists in an imaginary order of imme­diate expe­rience, only receives the status of subject when he enters into the symbolic order.  In this chain of terms, the individual and the ob­jects of his experience are represen­ted, proposed as present in their absence.  The narcissis­tic identification with the mirror-image (which ensures that in an imaginary manner one continues to coincide with the Other) is there­by relieved by the acknowledge­ment of the other-ness of the (symboli­cally articulated) Other.  The reality (realité) of the subject is thus already a symbo­li­cally marked reality.  From this, the post-structuralist character of Lacan's position is apparent: the meaning of an experience is not given in advance, but, rather, it is an effect, a 'precipitation' of the chain of signifiers.  The meaning slips, as we have already seen, into the jeu de signifiants, the infinite game of the signi­fiers.

Just like Freud, Lacan, too, puts a strong emphasis on the role which the phallus plays in the transition from the imaginary to the symbolic stage.  Howe­ver, he thereby firmly resists a possibly natu­ralistic interpretation of the castrati­on complex.  For Lacan, the phallus is "not a phantasy ... equally not an object ... and even less the organ which it symbolizes" (Lacan, E 690).  For him, the phallus is actually the signifier which pre-eminently marks the transition from the imaginary to the symbo­lic stage.  According to him, this is also the reason that Freud chose a term for this signi­fier which points to the simulacrum which, in Anti­quity, was the phal­lus: "After all, it is the signifier, to the extent that it con­stitu­tes their possibility-conditions, which is destined to indica­te the effects of the signified in their totali­ty" (E 690).

The phallus forms the third term which transforms the combati­tive relations­hip of the mirror-stage, which is characteristic of the imaginary order, into the triangular relationship which is charac­teristic of the symbolic order.  It is 'the tiniest differen­ce' which indicates "that which the child is not, what the mother does not have and the father (presumably) does have" (Mooij, 1975, 142).  In Mooij's words, a double distancing emerges: "In the first place, there arises a separation from the initial two-in-one whe­reby a chasm (une béance) appears between what are now two relati­ons, two terms, and whereby a void (un vide) emerges in the place where ori­ginally the two-in-one existed (une place vide).  Hereby, the lack (le  manque) emerges which is introduced by the insatiabi­lity of desire.  In the second place, a separation emerges between what is now a relationship between two terms and that which names this rela­tionship.  The third term therefore creates a double dis­tinction, internally be­tween the two relations, and externally between the relation and its symbolic repre­sentation.  We can sum­marize this function as: differentiating representation" (Mooij, 1975, 142).Thus, with Lacan, the phallus functions as a transcenden­tal sig­nifier, that is, as the necessary possibility-condition for every production of meaning.  It is the signi­fier which unlocks the entrance to the (symbolic) order of representation and thereby in­troduces a desire which cannot be satisfied.  But, simultaneously, for Lacan the phallus also remains the specific symbolic signifier which indica­tes the penis (cf. Weber, 1978).  This explains why Freud - and Lacan with him - gives a privile­ged role to the castra­ti­on complex in relation to entering into the symbo­lic order.  More­o­ver, it explains why, in psychoanalytic theory, the represen­tati­on of both sexes and the representation of meaning in general cannot be separa­ted from one another.

5. Postmodern schizophrenia

Now we return to the pleasure of fetishizing the signi­fiers.  This has beco­me clear: it is a paradoxical pleasure.  The insight that the signifiers only che­rish them­selves, that every access to the signified is cut off ('castrated'), really makes us suspect the opposite: a cutting pain.  To place this pleasure we should first actually - a new detour - more closely delineate the distinction between aesthetic belief and aestheti­c knowledge.

Here, too, it is Mannoni who suggests the direction we should take.  He maintains, associ­ating himself with Lacanian topology, that be­lief continuously assumes "the support of the Other" (Mannoni, 1969, 33).  In L'illusion comique ou le théâtre du point de vue de l'imagi­naire he explicates this through an analysis of the 'primi­tive' belief in masks and theatrical illusion.  In the theatre, he argues, everything is done to maintain the theatrical illusion while everyo­ne knows that it is an illusion.  Here, the issue is thus one of 'classic' aesthetic disavowal: an 'imaginary creduli­ty' is always present.

Concerning this point, Mannoni remarks: "Even though we are not ourselves the victim of a theatrical illusion or of the illusion of masks, it nonetheless appe­ars that we gladly see someone who belie­ves in such illusion.  Everything appe­ars to be done to produce this illusion, but it must be by someone else.  As if we should con­spire with the actors.  Here, we see who the 'you' was in 'you could say' whereby the playful illusion is expressed.  After all: former­ly, 'one believed in the masks' ...  'Formerly' means, as we could sus­pect, 'as a child'.  An explanation, perhaps rather simplistic but not therefore completely inaccura­te, now imposes itself as it were.  Something, something from that child that we once were, still lives on in us, so­mewhere hidden within the Ego, perhaps in that place which Freud, following Fechner, correctly calls the theatre of the dream (and why precise­ly this metaphor?).  This hidden part of our Self could thus be the place of the illusion, that which we actually do not yet really know what it is" (Mannoni, 1969, 164).

Although Mannoni here explicitly speaks of the theatre, his de­scription can, without too many problems, be applied to the illusi­on which appears in the per­cepti­on of mimetic fine arts.  Belief in representation, that is, in the possibi­lity to imme­diately percei­ve reality itself through the transparent window of the painting, rests equally upon the credulity of an Other.  Of course we know that a painting consti­tutes an imaginary representation of reality, but we conspi­re with the painter, as it were, to lead this Other up the garden path, or better: to lead him behind the wind­ow.  Once again, an irrational process which occurs in broad daylight.

If this explanation is correct, then it offers us the opportuni­ty to more close­ly present the transition from the hybrid coinci­dence of belief and knowledge in aesthe­tic perception to the 'abso­lute' knowledge of aestheti­cism.  This trans­ition would occur at the mo­ment that the observer himself takes the place of the Other.  Manno­ni describes this transition by reference to a passage from Casa­no­va's biography.  It is the story of a person who believes in his own fa­bricati­ons, someone who no longer possesses the phallus by magic but, rather, by deception.  According to Mannoni it is preci­sely here that the transiti­on to com­plete fetishism occurs and know­ledge is completely abandoned: "We can actual­ly see that the place of the Other is now occupied by the fetish.  If this is mis­sing it creates unrest, as occurred with Casanova, when cre­dulity goes by de­fault.  But Casanova imagines that he knows who believes and who does not believe.  Even if he actually makes a mistake, the problem can still be posed in terms of belief.  After the fetish has been established, belief disappe­ars.  We then no longer know how the question sounds and we could say that it is preci­sely the goal of the fetishist to escape from every question.  While everyone enters the terrain of belief with the Verleugnung, it is precisely this terrain which those who become fetishists, at least insofar as it involves their fetish, leave"  (Mannoni, 1969, 32).

We may assume that the perverse power now rests upon the fact that the painting brings the observer into the position wherein he reali­zes that he is him­self credulous.  He coincides in an imagina­ry man­ner, as it were, with the Other to whom he origin­ally ascri­bed belief and thereby causes the implementa­tion of the fetishism of the signi­fiers.  The signifiers cease to mean the Other.  If we remain within Freudian terminology then we cannot fail to conclude that psy­cho­sis is hereby quite close.  We surrender ourselves to an unverifiable and uncon­trollable  process of meaning which must lack an ultimate signified (signi­fié transcendental).  We are con­fronted with that which Moyaert presented as a schizophrenic dis­course: "The schi­zophrenic discourse cruelly teaches us that our discourse does not derive its support or its meaning from the pre­sence of a final signi­fied or an ideal semantic form which can uni­te all discourse.  In a confronta­tion with schizophrenia our dis­course, too, is in its turn pulled along with and written into a game of signifiers without any ultimate basis or sense.  In this manner, each of his discourses loses every foundation or point of refe­rence.  Knowing my discourse collides with a radical not-kno­wing which ridi­cules my certainties: the schi­zophrenic 'futili­zes' my knowledge to a game of signi­fiers" (Moyaert, 1982, 151).

In an analogous manner, Magritte's  La trahison des images could be called a schizophrenic metaphor.  In the circular play of the signifiers (the words and the image), every access to the Other of the signifiers (the signi­fied, the 'real' pipe) is cut off.  To use another of Moyaert's terms, a de-metaphorici­zation occurs (Moy­aert, 1982, 142).  The circular play of the signifiers, the purely negati­ve reference to the words and the image, creates a vacuum where pre­vi­ously belief pointed the Other to 'his' place.  Where first a metap­horical leap to the other side of the signifiers stood, there now only exists the endless meto­ny­my of signifiers.  In other words, La trahison des images surprises us with the realization that the painting (and mime­tic art in general) is not a window through which we can gaze at the Other, but, rat­her, a glass stai­ned by signi­fiers which betrays nothing except its one-dimensi­o­nal surface.

With the help of what we have learned so far, let us approach more closely the pleasure of complete fetis­hism, the aestheti­cism wherein the observer of La trahiso­n des images finds himself.  The aestheticism, which permits us once again to coincide with the ima­ginary Other, removes the fear of castration becau­se thereby the signified disappears completely from view and thereby can no longer be expe­rienced as a loss.  In this context, with respect to the ana­lo­gous position wherein schizophrenia finds itself, Moy­aert rem­arks: "Every possible vulnerabi­lity occasioned by the indestructi­ble presence of the Other (or the other) disappears given that his discourse is just as much a code of the message as a message of the code; and this has as consequence the fact that the subject of the psychosis himself takes the place of the Other and thus himself be­comes the Other.  The schizophre­nic can peacefully maintain himself in a world of signi­fiers which, in his narcissis­tically inflated omni­potence, he can manipulate freely and without any risk (Moyaert, 1982, 151)[12].

Complete fetishism appears in this manner to be characte­rized by a double pleasure.  In the first place, fetishism has the free­dom of the metaphorical leap in the dark: it remains on the surfa­ce, esca­ping from the fear of the loss, the defect (le manque).  Here, plea­sure is essenti­ally negative, based upon the absen­ce of fear.  But, at the same time, there is the other pleasure of manipu­la­ti­on.  It coincides with the Other, dominates the game from wit­hin because the fetishist has himself become part of it.  Expressed in a classic Freudian image: he expe­riences an oceanic relation with the Other.  A return to 'the paradise of pure immediacy' takes placeThe observer of La trahison des images finds himself equally, even if only temporarily, in this circular play of the signifiers.  He becomes, as it were, absorbed into the surface of the canvass.  His belief in the signified makes way for an absorp­tion in the pro­cess of meaning (signifiance).  The knowledge-com­ponent takes the place of believing, but it is a knowledge of a special sort whe­rein the negation (the not-knowing of belief) is eliminated.  This lack of the negation constitutes the radical being-Other of pleasure which unlocks La trahi­son des images.  In Barthes' words, it is "a pleasure without separation" (Bar­thes, 1982, 164).  However, in terms of psychoanaly­sis, it is also therefore continuously an imagi­nary pleasure.  For the same reason, it is a pleasure that can never be adequately contained within the schemas of representati­on, just as ultimately the pleasure of sexual fetishism can never be adequa­tely understood from within the schemata of sexual repro­duction.  Although postmodern expe­rience is a parasite upon modern experien­ce, it unlocks a pleasure which is never completely under­stand­able from within the perspective of the reality-principle.

6. Superficiality from depth

With this last remark we have returned to a place where the de­tours had already brought me, something which makes clear the cir­cu­lar character of these paths.  We have to confirm that, in our at­tempts to bring it under the dominan­ce of our theoreti­cal Bemach­tig­ungstrieb, we have constantly and repetitively pushed the plea­sure from the other - postulated - aesthetic order out in front of us.  Exami­ning it from the order of the representation, that which falls outside is literally non-representati­ve[13].  The image which La trahi­son des images presents to us appears at this point to con­verge with the imaginary constructs of the post-structuralists who have cros­sed our paths.  After all, the post-structu­ralists postu­late that an immediate experience - and must it not be admitted that this expe­rien­ce is the imaginary travel-goal of my wanderings? - is impossi­ble within the symbolic order.  Hereby, in the last analysis, the fetishistic pleasure is only comprehensible as a regression to an imaginary past.  Lacan does speak, per­haps, about a third order, that of the real (le réel), but it is conceived by him as the impos­sible: it is impossible to reach or take on and is ultimately inac­cessi­ble.  Does not Magrit­te appear to say the same when he magical­ly removes the 'real pipe' right in front of our eyes?

Nonetheless, this 'psychoanalytic' interpretation does not appe­ar to agree with the light-footed pleasure which La trahison des images awakens in me.  Does not the pipe appear predominantly to succumb under the weight of these sombre theories concerning the Defect?  It is a charged interpretation.  For this reason it is tempting, having arrived at this point, to continue the rever­se move­ment - with Magritte towards psychoanalysis -, to ensconce our­selves in the experience which La trahison des images offers us, and from this positi­on to question the theory.  In the foregoing I called La trahison des images the embo­diment of the limit of the game of signi­fiers.  This limit forms the bounda­ry between the three-dimen­sional space of the signifiance (which is constantly cha­racterized by the metaphorical leap towards the other of the signifiers) and the flat surface of the circular (metonymical) dominance of the signifiers.  Magritte shows us, where post-struc­turalism criticizes the dominance of the transcenden­tal signified, that the 'chain of signi­fiers' is the rattling herald of a new domi­nance: that of the transcendental signifier and the Eternal Defect.  The legitima­te questi­on which La trahison des images presents to us is whether ma­king the signifier absolute is not a new prison, a new columbarium built with the rubble of the old dungeon?[14]

The paths of the different post-structuralists (whom I have pre­viously too sim­plistically summarized under one heading) appe­ar here to separate.  If Mag­ritte here stands opposite Lacan, then Der­rida and Barthes find themselves on his side.  Samu­el Weber, in his commentary concerning the meaning of the phallus in Lacan's work, points, following Derrida, to the danger of making the signi­fier absolute: "Making the signifier absolute ... removes at the same time, however, its specific and determining differen­ce, and there­by makes it a signi­fied" (Weber, 1978, 124).  The phallus, the Eternal Defect, moreover emerges as a signified to which every signifier ultimately refers.  One way of putting this is to say that at this point La­can's sexual metaphor fossilizes and access to every space outside the phallic repre­sentation is made theore­tically impossi­ble.  Put another way: when the phallus disappears as a specific signifier because it is made absolute, then the other of the phallus also disappears: desire.  And it is precisely this desire around which the circular move­ment of Magritte's La trahison des images 'revolves'.

But how should this desire be evoked?  In any case, Magritte does not have the destruction of representation as his goal.  In La tra­hi­son des images it re­mains demonstratively present - after all, does the naive-realistically presented pipe not always remain a pipe?  It appears that Magritte here tries to support Derrida's com­ment that it is not possible "to articulate a decon­structivist propo­sition which has not already secretely taken over the form, the logic, and the implicit postula­tes of preci­sely that which is being attacked" (Derrida, 1981, 280-1).  Magritte's strategy is different: he per­mits the instrumentalist represen­tation to stum­ble in favour of the acute shock which momentarily isolates the image from the differen­tiating chain of signifiers[15].  At those moments the thing, as Kau­lingfreks expresses it in his study of Magritte, is "undifferentia­ted­ly present, without determination.  It just is there, and hereby, as it were, it is no longer a thing.  In its conveyed isolation, in the presence, it emerges as a myste­ry" (Kaulingfreks, 1984, 111).  Shocked by the negative references of image and caption in La trahi­son des images (cf. note 5, above), we learn during a moment the mystery of "the experiential grounds of pure presence" of the pipe (Kauling­freks, 1984, 45).  This mys­tery forms, to use Heideg­ger's notions, the "miracle of miracles: that Being exists" (Heidegger, 1955, 47)[16].  Magritte himself commented about this mystery: "The mystery is not one of the possibi­lities of rea­lity.  The mystery is that which is absolutely necessa­ry if reality is to exist" (quoted by Kauling­freks, 1984, 46).

Hereby, if I may permit myself such an expression, representa­tion momenta­rily 'gets wasted'.  Or, as one can express it in French, "la représentation casse sa pipe".  Although it is pre-emi­nently art which provides us with this mysteri­ous experience, it is not restricted to art: "... the thought whereof a pipe and the caption 'this is not a pipe' are the terms ...  Such thoughts evoke 'de iure' the mystery, while 'de facto' the mystery is evoked by a pipe in an ash-tray" (Mag­ritte, 1979, 530).  The pipe is at that moment Lacan's object petit a, the first lost partial-object, the - according to Lacan - 'for­bidden' last link in the chain of desire.  Against this, in the expe­rience of the mystery there is no question of a Lack, but, rather, of an abundan­ce (a plus-de-jouir).  The desire is not primarily the result of an unremovable Lack, but, rather, the transcendent open­ness or quality of being unlocked (Entschlos­senheit) wherein the world, the Being of being, appears to us.  This desire constitutes the possibility-conditions of the neighbourliness of things whereo­ver Nietzsche speaks (KSA 8, 588).  Breton, at least with respect to this point, was correct: Magrit­te gives lessons in things.

All of this appears remarkably superficial and banal.  But it is perhaps for preci­sely this reason that it escapes from 'depth-psy­chology'.  The remarks concerning banality and alienation by Freud and Mannoni are an indication of this point.  Mag­ritte explicates far more explicitly his view that psychoanalysis is not able to ex­plain the mystery: "Art, to the extent that I understand it, remo­ves itself from psychoana­lysis: it evokes that mystery without which the world would not be able to exist, that is, the mystery which one must confuse with every problem, no matter how difficult.  No sane person believes that psychoa­nalysis can explain the myste­ry of the world.  The nature of the mystery des­troys curiosity.  Psychoanalysis has just as little to say about works of art which evoke the mystery of the world" (Magritte, 1979, 558).

If this analysis remains on the surface then this is because things show them­selves precisely at this point.  Perhaps we should also interpret the title of the pain­ting from this thought.  That which Magritte makes an issue of in La trahi­son des image is the disavowal of immediate experience, the disavowal of appea­rance as lustre, as the tempting appearance of being.  But, and this too makes the painting clear: afterwards, when theory dominates this expe­rience, the experience is denied and understood as a regressi­on, as a return to an imagi­na­ry past.  A similar wilful 'superfici­al' rea­ding of La trahi­so­n des images reminds us of Nietzsche's hymn to the Greeks: "O, the Greeks!  They knew how to live: therefore the issue is to remain by the superficial, to worship the appearance, to be­lief in the forms, the sounds, the words, the entire Olympus of appe­arance!  The Greeks were superficial - from depth!  And don't we come, daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the hig­hest and most dan­gerous top of current thinking and, looking around from that height, have look­ed down, there from anything new?  In this respect, are we not simply - Greeks?  Wors­hippers of forms, of sounds, of words?  Not just for this reason - artists?" (KSA 3, 352).  Perhaps the greatest achievement of La trahison des images resides in its bound­less superficiality - in depth.

Translation from Dutch by Allen Reeve and Jos de Mul

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Notes