Death, Metaphysical Darkness and Revelation

 

©Artlink Australia, 2013 

Sadly, my friend and mentor, the British-Australian art theorist Donald Brook, died last month at the age of 91. I will dearly miss our correspondence, his encouragement, advice and inimitable wit. Over the last seven years, we exchanged more than 1700 emails, almost all of which are on the subject of representation and cultural evolution. For someone of his advanced years, he was always incredibly lucid and insightful and I often felt humbled by his keen intelligence. Despite the complexity of the many issues we discussed, he almost always found a way to inject humour into the discussion and it was rare that he failed to respond to the many rabbits that I sent running across the field (as he once teased me for doing). The following is his last email to me, written shortly after my previous post on this blog. 

Hi Jim:

Yes, you are right. I was trying to compress too much into what I was trying to say in a single sentence (or two).

An individual kangaroo is an item of the kangaroo kind. The kangaroo kind evolves, whereas the individual kangaroo does not evolve. The variation of complex genetic constitution that is subjected (significantly but not exclusively) to external environmental pressures is responsible for the evolution of the kind of animal.

Similarly an individual cubist painting (or an individual greeting by handshake) is an item of the cubist painting kind (or of the relevant greeting kind). The variation of complex memetic constitution that is subjected (significantly but not exclusively to revelatory discoveries) is responsible for the evolution of the relevant cultural kind.

I don't know how I came to identify memes with cultural kinds (or, indeed with items of cultural kinds), unless it was in a misguided effort to associate memetic activity so intimately with cultural evolution (or with cultural kinds) that I could move on unimpeded to the point about the idea of self-consciousness being logically dependent upon the manifest existence of other items of the same kind as oneself that are regularly and predictably manipulable by the performance of behaviours that qualify (because one can represent them and their anticipated consequences in advance) as actions.

I'm sorry to say that my head has most of the dominant characteristics, these days, of a boiled cabbage.

Donald

As is often the case with Brook’s writing, the convolutions of the cabbage can be a little forbidding. Basically, our conversation was about Brook’s theory of cultural evolution. “Meme” is a technical term, originally coined by Richard Dawkins, conceived as the cultural equivalent of the biological “gene”. Unlike other meme theorists, Brook insists that items of culture cannot be memes for the same reason that items of a biological kind (“members of a species” if you prefer) cannot be genes. It makes no more sense to say that a slogan or song is a meme (in the meme theorist’s sense) than it does to say that a kangaroo or a carrot is a gene. For Brook, repeatable actions are the only logical equivalent of genes. If meme theory was clear on this point, then perhaps it wouldn’t be languishing in obscurity.

I don’t wish to attack or defend meme theory here, but rather to discuss theory itself and especially theory as it relates to the work of Donald Brook. Earlier this month I attended a conference with the title: “Philosophy of Film Without Theory”. I was attracted to the conference especially because of its focus on the rejection of theorisation and the likelihood that it would include discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s views on theory. I wasn’t disappointed.

Of the papers presented, the first was undoubtedly the most relevant to my interests. Dr Andrew Klevan, from the University of Oxford gave a paper about Ordinary Language Philosophy. Like Wittgenstein, most Ordinary Language Philosophers were very wary of the philosophical tendency towards theorisation born of what Wittgenstein called a “craving for generality”. These philosophers devoted themselves to the study of the ways that we use language and to dissolving the sorts of confusions that arise when certain words or phrases are used in unfamiliar or inappropriate contexts.  Somewhat relatedly, and this is something that Klevan emphasised, Wittgenstein is often quoted as declaring that “Nothing is hidden!” He urged philosophers not to regard human intentions or the rules of language as being somehow mysteriously concealed from view but as being fully manifested in the things that we do and say.

At one point in his presentation, Klevan mentioned how understanding can sometimes strike one as a “revelation”. Afterwards, I asked him whether he saw any conflict between the idea of revelation and Wittgenstein’s view that nothing is hidden. He agreed about the appearance of a conflict, but he wasn’t worried by it. What Wittgenstein objected to, was the tendency to make generalisations and essentialist claims about the nature of the world. He had no quarrel with the possibility of illumination. Getting clear about something—understanding it—is usually a more modest enterprise than theorisation. It doesn’t seek to convert the uninitiated.

But what about the theories of Donald Brook? Was he attempting to theorise in the way that scientists do; in the way that Wittgenstein claimed leads philosophers into complete metaphysical darkness? I don’t think so. The roots of Brook’s approach lie firmly planted in the soil of Ordinary Language Philosophy and in the rough ground of non-verbal representation. He freely acknowledged the importance of J. L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Wittgenstein in the development of his philosophical approach and he was evidently convinced that conceptual analysis is key to disentangling metaphysical muddles. Nonetheless, Brook seemed to have no qualms about describing himself as a theorist and there is little doubt that he felt that genuine insights can sometimes be revealed through careful theorisation. Indeed, one of his books, “The Awful Truth about what Art is”, is in many ways a theory of revelation. I’ll try to explain.

Brook begins, like any Ordinary Language Philosopher, by examining the concept of “art”. He notes that we use the term in two quite different ways. For example, we commonly speak of things like the “art of pastry making” or the “art of motorcycle maintenance”. On the other hand, we speak of objects and events broadly recognised as art by the artworld. So, at this point, Brook is merely making a perfectly reasonable distinction. 

Brook’s next step is to remind us of what we all already know: “Art is not instantiated in every work of art just as sucrose is not instantiated in every date; and certainly not in dates such as the 17th of September.” Brook playfully uses this homonym to echo the two senses of the word “art”, but his point is worth emphasis. We don’t need to be cynical to know that there is no prospect of finding art in every object regarded as work of art. And we also know that there is plenty of art to be found outside the objects, institutions and norms of the artworld.

Brook then goes on to show that we commonly distinguish between artworks or works of art on the one hand and art on the other. No sign of metaphysical darkness so far!

So, what does Brook suggest art is? In this sense, art is the revelation of the genuinely new and significant. To discover something new is to gain a previously unrealised ability, whether this be a new way of representing the structure of the universe, a new way of doing the high jump or a new way of splitting the atom. Repeatable actions (or memes according to Brook's important revision) lie at the core of this understanding and are the reason for the recognised parallel between memetic evolution and biological evolution. As Brook often put it: art is “memetic innovation”. It is the “driver of cultural evolution.”

Of course, Brook’s theory demands that we view the concept of “art” with a different lens, but I don’t think he is making any metaphysical claims. I suppose it might be argued that he is making an essentialist claim about “what art is”. That can hardly be denied. But if he has been led into complete darkness, it seems to me that he has taken a very bright light with him and there is a lot to be gained from the illumination it provides.