FIaslic Space and FoIilicaI Space

AulIov|s) Jean-Fvanois Lolavd and MavI S. BoIevls

Souvce Ioundav 2, VoI. 14, No. 1/2 |Aulunn, 1985 - Winlev, 1986), pp. 211-223
FuIIisIed I Duke University Press
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Plastic
Space
and Political
Space-
Jean-Frangois Lyotard
The
interesting thing
about
political posters
is that
they explicitly
establish a
relationship
between the
organization
of
society
and the
plastic
surface
(6cran). Through
these
posters
we should be able to
establish a correlation between the effective treatment of the
plastic
surface and the desired treatment of social
space.
We
propose
the
following hypothesis:
beneath the articulated
signification
and iconic
meaning,
the
poster's plastic
form
(plastique)
has its own value as a
symptom
of a
political
unconscious. Given this
hypothesis,
the localiza-
tion of this
symptom
can be
sought through
Freudian
categories.
Our
aim, then,
is to elaborate a
critique
of
ideology.
First of all we will
distinguish
textual and
figural space. Graphic
(or phonic)
units have no value in and of themselves
according
to the
plastic
force of their form or
rhythmic impact
on the reader's
eye
or
body,
but
only by being opposed
within a
system (e.g.,
the
alphabet,
if we
accept
the letter as a
unit).
This
play
on
opposition
is
rule-bound,
and
breaking
the rules leads to the effects of
signification jamming.
The
system
assumes a
spatial cutting-up (d6coupage) (here visual;
vocal
in the case of
speech) according
to invariant intervals which allow for
fast
recognition.
This
cutting-up
is
textuality.
211
Space is,
on the
contrary,
treated
figurally
when the norm of the
intervals
defining
the textual units is
transgressed, giving currency
to
another order of
meaning.
This definition is
intentionally negative:
it
is
particularly important
to
beware
of
identifying figural
and
perceptual
space,
since even the
organization
of the field and
perceptual profiles
can be
transgressed,
and this
transgression
make them
appear
a con-
trario
as textual elements.
There
are thus "written"
figures. Similarly,
the
graphic signifier
and/or
signified
of a
text, properly speaking,
can
be deconstructed in such a
way
as to
heavily
invest it with
figurality.
Freud's
analysis
in
Chapter
VI of the
Interpretation
of Dreams shows
that this sort of
transgression
is the work of desire insofar as it is a
repressed
drive. The
transgression proceeds through work,
not
discourse.
The
poster
combines
images
and letters and the work of desire
can be followed on both. Reckless
deconstructions, obeying
the
demands of
([the] death) instinct,
recombine new
recognizable ag-
gregates (according
to the
principles
of
reality
and
Eros).
The social
space
the
apprehension
of which
by politicians
we
seek to
diagnose, through
an
analysis
of
posters,
is what
Marx,
in the
introduction to the 1857 edition of the
Critique
of Political
Economy,
called the
empirical space
of intuitions and
representations.
This
space
is not that of the
system
which
supports
it and hides in
it,
but that in
which social relations are
lived,
in which class
struggle
unfolds. The
poster belongs
to this
space
insofar as it is an
object
of intuitions and
representations.
But even in its most "naive" forms,
the
poster
constitutes a
specific object
in the midst of other
objects occupying
that
space:
an
"art'"object,
if one
wishes;
an
object
which mirrors other
objects;
an
empty space (non-place, u-topia)
where situations
given
elsewhere in
lived social
space
become manifest. Now the
way
in which this
recovery
(reprise)
takes
place plastically
is crucial for
diagnosing
the
political
unconscious in
play
in the
poster.
It is a
process
of
simple representa-
tion
(corresponding
to
simple reversal,
described in The German
Ideology
as an
ideological relation) or,
more
precisely,
double reversal
or even
overthrowing.
The
poster
of the Russian Revolution
(1920) (fig. 2)
is divided in-
to
three-quarters figures
and
one-quarter
text:
"May 1st,"
"The Satur-
day
Workers of All the Russias." The scene
represents
a man
striking
an iron bar held on an anvil
by
a woman with the aid of a
pair
of
tongs.
On the
left,
a man holds a
pickaxe
in his hand-at
rest,,
it seems-
staring
toward the locomotive and
flags
in the
background sky.
The fac-
tories in the
background
resemble a
stage set; nothing
allows us to
affirm that these
people
are at work. The scene itself takes
place
out-
doors;
the
flags
and banners
give
it a festive air and the sense of a
joyous
hubbub. The look of the central
figure (red shirt,
black
pants) holding
the
sledgehammer
is fixed on the center of the
picture:
the anvil. The
railroad tracks
converge
toward the same
point.
This nexus of lines is
the reason
why
the
picture's plastic
form knots and
unknots,
where our
look is
inevitably rooted,
like at the center of a
spider web,
so as to
212
traverse all the lines which
diverge
from it. Let us follow line A vertical-
ly (fig. 2).
It contains
"May 1st,"
the
anvil,
a hand and
sledgehammer.
Line
B,
the railroad
track, obliquely followed,
establishes the
picture's
depth, allowing
me to
penetrate it, or, inversely, expels
me toward that
other
expanse
of
space-the
text. Line A shows
planes
of color: white
hand,
red
shirt,
black
pants
and
anvil,
a
fiery
red
object
to be
hammered,
red
"1st,"
black letters: "the
Workers,"
etc.
There is an
image-text symmetry here,
a
passage
from one to
the other via the
plastic
element of
color,
color which reinforces the
general unity
of the
poster.
Note the
interesting placement
of "1st." From the formal view-
point,
this element works as a
"lyrical"
vertical vector which
organizes
the entire
poster
and
gives
it all its
meaning.
The vertical creates the
stage (right-left, front-rear)
on which actors are able to move
about, play.
"In human
representation,
the horizontal
corresponds
to the line or
plane
on which man stands"
(Kandinsky).
If we take the
separation
of
image
and text
literally,
it is clear
that "1st" functions in another sense than a
simple
aid to the scene's
plastic compostion (fig. 3).
"1"
taken
by
itself assumes a
symbolic role;
it no
longer merely
indicates a "directional" vector but the
deep
mean-
ing
of the
poster.
It
supports
and
grounds
the entire
scene, symboliz-
ing
the
opening
of a new era-the socialist
era. Or,
more
fundamentally,
what is
originary,
matrical:
history's
source
point;
the
founding act;
what
separates
what was from what is
yet
to come. The anvil is in this case
the initial fixed base where nascent socialism is
forged,
where it draws
its
strength.
Socialist
ideology
draws its force and sense from
myths,
here
through
Vulcan who transmits his
suggestive power thorugh
the over-
exposed
elements of iron and fire.
But, inversely, myth plunges ideology
into an
abyss.
If one is not
careful,
the connoted elements can crack
to
pieces,
let themselves be invaded
by meanings issuing
from
elsewhere which destablize the
unwieldy
and "exact"
presence
of
ideology.
The
presence
of "1st" on the anvil is ambivalent. It has a dream-
like
quality
insofar as it is a
graphic
and chromatic element. But
through
its
legibility
and
meaning,
it fixes the
image
of the anvil which is ex-
cessively polysemic ("the image, place
of resistance to
meaning
in the
name of a certain
mythics
of
life," says Barthes).
The text in this case is our most solid
point
of
contact,
veneer-
ing
its
meaning
on the
figure, fixing
it: it is a
question
of the
Saturday
Worker. The text informs our view. This
poster
is addressed to the Rus-
sian workers of
1920,
not to us. It is not
surprising
that the text's "an-
choring" (Barthes)
function is less
important
for us and that we be more
aware of the
image's polysemy. Image
and text lock me in a
"reading"
game
from which all
contemplation
is absent. It is at the level of this
game
that we would be able to disclose the
utopia.
The
passage
from
image
to
text,
nowhere indicated as referent in the
poster,
would be
of an
utopian
nature.
213
Reading
becomes enriched in
passing
from text to
image.
New
pulsations
of
meaning floresce;
new circuits of
singifiers
are disclosed.
The
image
which is
presented
to me is
truly
fantastic. The
scene,
like in the theater or a
dream,
shows me workers who are not workers.
The text is here
comparable
to a
stage apron,
"the invisible limit
where the
spectator's
look strikes a barrier which halts and returns it
(the
first
reversal)
to the
spectacle's recepient,
that
is,
to himself in-
sofar as he is the source of the look"
(A. Green,
Un oeil en
trop).
With
that small
difference,
the
stage apron
is constituted as
text,
a text which
precludes
all
narrative,
all
dialogue.
The
figures
here are
mute,
have
only
a dream-like
depth.
Without this
text,
the
figures, presented
in their
silence and
immobility,
would
surely anguish
the
spectator.
The text is the
order,
the written
commentary
of a henceforth
reassuring image
which one recites to oneself-an
image
into which
I can
resolutely project myself.
The
eye, then,
can itself be
captured by
the
invisible,
"written form"
of the
perspective,
more fictive and
illusory
than
ever,
and which makes
it
penetrate
the
allurement-space (espace-leurre),the depth
of the scene.
The
vertical,
the "silent line"
(Kandinsky),
and the
horizontal,
the
oblique,
are not taken in their own
right. They
are
captured,
reified in
the
gestures
and attitudes of the
players
who evolve on the
stage.
The
eye
is
caputred by
that "written" "form" of the
poster
which
presents
itself as
figure-desire,
as action to be realized. This
organiza-
tion of a fantasmatic
scene,
needed to induce the viewer's
desire,
to
make him take his desire for
reality (the
other of
play),
this "visible"
of the
poster
does not refer to the visible of a real
object
but to an in-
visible situated elsewhere. An invisible which is neither of the order
of the
reality
of the
poster
nor the
reality
of which it
speaks.
Like in
More's
utopia,
all contacts with
reality
are
broken,
and
reality
survives
only
in
"overexposed"
traces:
sledgehammer, tongs, anvil,
railroad
tracks.
These elements are divested of their
proper functions,
connoted
on the one
hand,
but reinvested on the other with all their
mythical
at-
traction. The viewer's desire enters into
play
and is constitutive of their
force. I am the one who
swings
the
sledgehammer
and smashes the
iron,
who lifts it and
effortlessly
violates the
sky's
interdiction.
At this
primary level,
there is
harmony
between the
principles
of
reality
and
pleasure.
The
text, however,
fixes the
scene, drawing
it into a more limited
signifying
network. It
poses
its
spatial limit, halfway
to our
eye.
It is this
space
between text and
image
which is
utopian-a
space
that is reduced to an
impalpable
trace in the
poster.
"1st" func-
tions here like an
index,
an ethereal
hinge,
an untranslatable
"relay"
(Barthes)
between
image
and text. It is the
key through
which the
image
posits
its
"reality,"
a
"reality"
which
passes through
"real"
reality by
mediation of the restricted
signification
of the text
proper.
214
June
26, 1968
A
poster put
out
by
the metal
industry
on which the work
rhythms
are accentuated to make
up
time
(fig. 4).
(This
allows a certain
perception
which
brings
out all latent and
unexpressed ideology,
rather than
subjecting
us to the turmoil of im-
ages. Assuming
that this
poster
has some fundamental
ground
or is
grounded,
it is a matter of
seeing
it in extreme
depth;
of
studying
it
from an attitude in which
knowledge
is
put
aside so as to free
up
the
field to
vision;
of
deconstructing it, and, then, perhaps,
of
destroying
or
unravelling it).
We are
immediately
struck
by
three sorts of lines: the line "A
BAS,"2
the line of the chained
wrists,
and the line of "CADENCES IN-
FERNALES."
They
are all
comparable
in color
(here black,
in the
original
green)
and not too different in thickness
(mean
width
= 1 cm. with a
variation from 0.5 to 2.0
cms.).
At the level of the
dynamic
of the
line,
we find the
binary continuous/discontinuous,
which is fundamental.
(1)
In "A BAS" the line is discontinuous:
-
In order to
respect
the interval between the letters
(B-A-S)
and between the words
(A-BAS).
The sole function of line breaks at this
level is so that the letters can be
recognized
and the
linguistic segment
read.
-
In the
letter, itself,
since the characters are
stenciled,
that
is,
form a surface where the
space
of the letter is hollowed out as
op-
posed
to
printing
where it is raised. These characters are thus used
on surfaces other than
paper, supports
such as
packing crates, barrels,
sacks,
etc. This
aspect
refers to a connotation more or less conscious
to the
viewer,
which can be
physical
labor. For these characters are the
kind outlined on crates and sacks at
loading yards, ports,
etc. This con-
notation of
labor, provided by
the internal
rupture
of the
letter,
is an ir-
ruption
of the
figural
in the textural. Another
irruption,
at an
entirely
different
level,
of the
figure
into the text results from the rather
special
interjection
"A
BAS,"
which is defined as "a
cry
of
hostility
toward some-
one or
something."
The
expressive
overcomes the
significative.
The
cry
"A BAS" draws its
strength
from the
repetition
of the "a"
(/a/)
sound,
which is the vowel located at the maximum
degree
of voiced
opening.
In the case of "A BAS" a back
/al
(1st la/)
and a front
/al
(2nd la/) (See
A.
Martinet,
Elements de
linguistique
g6n6rale,
2-18, p. 42).
(2)
The line in the
image
of the chained wrist. This line is con-
tinuous in thr. it closes on itself. The entire outer contour and even
the
greater
A rt of the
figure
can be drawn without
lifting
the
pen
from
the
paper.
i he line of each of the elements delimits an
encircled,
im-
plosive space, consisting
of chain
links,
handcuffs and bound wrists.
Because of its enclosed
constitution,
its
being imprisoned,
the line
transmits its inherent tension from a thin line to the interior of the en-
circled surface it delimits. This
displacement
of tension
produces
a
change
in the value of the white
interior.
Physically,
the white
background
of the
poster
and the white interior of the
design
have the
same value: the
original
color of the
paper
used. But
they
differ
percep-
215
tually.
The white interior
has, by compression,
a more intense
energy
than the exterior white
space
which seems to
spread infinitely
since
the
poster
is unframed. On the
original poster (where
the
drawing
is
green)
the white interior
appears pinker
because the
green
encircles
the white and the
eye instinctively
adds its
complement (magenta),
which
happens
to be the natural color of the hands. We find this dif-
ference of value in all the
compressed spaces
of the
figure (links,
hand-
cuffs, etc.)
and to a lesser
degree
in the enclosed
spaces
of the letters
a, d, e,
of "cadence" as
opposed
to c where the letter
opens
onto a white
exterior.
(3)
The line of "CADENCES INFERNALES" is discontinuous in
order to allow its
reading,
as in the case of "A
BAS,"
but it
respects
th
integrality
of the
letter,
which rids it of the connotation "labor." At
the level of the
signifier,
the usual interval between the words "LES"
and "CADENCES" is not
maintained,
since the interval is the same as
between two
letters, e.g.,
between D and E. In
recognizing
these
words,
however,
the
eye instinctively
reestablishes the
interval,
and for the
following
reasons:
(a)
The
syntagms
"LESC," "LESCAD,"
... "LESCADENCES" are
not
pertinent
in French and
thereby
not
confusing.
(b)
The
key
on the handcuffs
interpolates
and
separates
the
two words much in the same
way
as a caret
(V)
does when we mistaken-
ly
connect two words in a
manuscript:
"Lescadences." This is a rather
original irruption
of the
figure
in the text.
Now that the
poster
is
deconstructed,
we will
present
a
disposi-
tion of its elements.
(A)
A
play
on the
position
of "A
BAS," placed, paradoxically
at
the
top
of the
poster.
(B)
The
image
of the wrists is
stylized:
-the exterior contour of the fists which is in fact thin is as
broad as that of the chain line which has a real thickness.
-there is no indication of
shading,
but a
slight
realist
perspec-
tive on the handcuffs and
fingers.
Although stylized,
this
image posseses
a certain
depth.
The
chain wrists have a hidden
face,
while the
printed
characters do not.
(c)
From the
viewpoint
of
signification,
"LES CADENCES INFER-
NALES" is an
extremely constraining text,
whereas "A BAS" is more
expressive.
"LES CADENCES INFERNALES"
perfectly
illustrates the
functions of
anchorage
and
relay
that Barthes
(Communications,
No.
4, Rhetorique
de
I'image," p. 44) picks
out
among
the functions of the
linguistic message
in its relation to the iconic
message.
Over
against
the
polysemy
of the
figure
and even of "A
BAS,"
"CADENCES INFER-
NALES" determines "the
floating
chain of
signifieds,"
and the viewer
can no
longer
be unaware that he is confronted with a
poster
aimed
at the conditions of industrial labor. For
example,
the
rearranged poster
(fig. 5a) might very
well be viewed as
having
an anarchistic aim.
The vice-like
positioning
of the text in relation to the
figure
rein-
forces its
previously
mentioned
implosive quality by precluding any
escape
route. This
point
becomes clearer in the
posters rearranged by
216
eliminating
one or two of their terms
(figs. 5a-d). (It's
best to look at
each
poster
while
covering up
the
others.)
We can see that in
fig.
5a the
passage
between the two elements
is much smoother than in
fig.
5c. The
exteriority
of the text in relation
to
figure
is
quite
obvious in the latter. The
relationship
between "LES
CADENCES INFERNALES" and the wrists is that of
caption
to draw-
ing.
It is somewhat different in
Fig. 5a,
where "A BAS" is better inte-
grated
with the
figure.
This
piece
of
text, supported by
the fists and
owing
to its
large figural component,
enters into a continuous relation-
ship
with the wrists to which it is
materially
connected at the base of
the letter S. The
cry
"A BAS" seems to come from an
imaginary
mouth
belonging
to the same
body
as the wrists. "A BAS" is like a balloon
in a comic
strip. Caption
and balloon seem to characterize the
play
of
the two texts with the
figure. Moreover, fig. 5b, composed solely
of the
texts,
demonstrates the hiatus
existing
between the two kinds of
characters and the need to
separate
them
by
a
figure.
Fig.
5d shows the extreme
"written"
quality
of the handcuff
sym-
bol.
Heavily coded,
it
intervenes,
in certain
respects,
like a
figural
ele-
ment in a rebus.
The
poster, then, presents
three elements.
A textual element
(A BAS),
but one which leaves considerable
room for the
figure.
An
image
of
fists,
which is
by
nature
figural
but
very
much
written.
These two
ambiguous
elements leave
open
the
option
of
reading
or
seeing.
It is the third element
("LES
CADENCES
INFERNALES"),
essen-
tially
textual and bereft of
figurality,
which
tips
the scale
and,
simultaneously, recuperates
the final
space;
for it transforms the im-
age
into an evasive illustration of a
slogan.
Because of
this,
the
original
desire which tended to invest itself in the
poster,
that of
trying
to break
the chains and free the
hands,
is
sharply
broken off.
The second Russian
poster (fig. 6)
breaks
definitively
with the
horizontal-vertical
system.
The
poster's
surface is no
longer in-depth-a
depth
into which the
eye
can
penetrate-nor, conversely,
a surface
which meets the
eye through
the
play
of inversed
perspective; instead,
it is a surface balanced
strictly by
the lines
defining
it. It is no
longer
a
question
of a window but a
rectangle.
The interior line
tracing
this
rectangle eventually
becomes a black
mass,
and this occurs on the
same
plane.
The
presence
of the text in the
figural space
can
appear surpris-
ing.
How can a
linguistic space
whose
property
is to be oriented toward
a
left-to-right reading-a space
with strict and
apparently
inviolable in-
ternal rules "inhabit" the same
space
as the
figure
without
bothering
the
eye
and ear?
The text here is taken in its
figurality.
The words become oriented
lines to which
reading
lends force and movement.
The words
"wedge" (KANHOM)
and "red"
(KPACHblM), pre-
served in their
legibility,
are
arranged according
to two lines whose
217
source is in the
upper-left-hand
corner of the
poster
and which are in-
visibly prolonged
in the lower
right-hand region, transmitting
their vec-
toral
energy
to the red
triangle.
The red
trangle
is reinforced in its
movement,
in its
tension, by
a
"significative" relationship
with the words:
"wedge"
refers
(se rap-
porte)
to the
triangle,
"red" to its color.
The
linguistic
and
figural space
lose their intrinsic value at this
level.
They
are
mutually
deconstructed and their reference to both
language
and art
displaced.
This unfillable
gap
is the
poster
created
by
El
Lissitzky.
The word
"wedge"
materializes and
"figures"
the all too abstract
form of the
triangle, functioning
like an indicative
sign
which
laterally
illuminates its
meaning.
The
triangle guards
its
polysemic autonomy,
resisting,
as
figure
of
negation,
the solidification of the word. The field
of attraction between word and
figure,
far from
proving
detrimental to
the
latter,
which was the case in the first Russian
poster
where the text
functions to make us select the
proper
level of the
reading
of a "realist"
image,
confirms
it,
restores it in all its
depth
of
meaning.
The lines
circumscribing
the
space
of the word "red" render it
more dense and nearer to our
eye.
Both the letter and the entire word
"red" are related to the color-substance of the
triangle,
but also to the
color
inscribing
the
word, informing
it. Both the color red and the word
"red" are the same
thing, though
it was
necessary
to
designate
the color
so that from
being
seen it could be understood. The red of the
triangle
and the word "red" are
displaced
into another area of the
poster
and
invested in the verb "beat"
(JEN),
constructed in such a
way
as to
ap-
pear
as
though
it
plunges
into the
poster
in the
shape
of an invisible
point
which recalls the other
point
of the
triangle.
The text "whites"
(1EAbIX)
has been
expelled, tangentially
set
off from the white
circle,
and thrown back towards the black area where
it is
positioned
in a white
rectangle. (The
letters written in
gray
indicate
the
passage
from white to
black;
on the
opposite side,
downstream in
the
movement,
is the word "red" with white letters outlined in black
and the color
trapped
in the
word,
in its letter. This also recalls the
gray
masses,
traces of a full
space,
further
framing
the lines of the
triangle
which
penetrate
the
circle.)
The circle is
basically
a
fixed,
closed
figure foreign
to that other
figure,
the
triangle, foreign
to its
straight lines,
its movement and its
energy.
Here the
figure
of the
triangle
breaks with the
symbolic plane
of the circle. At the
point
where the
triangle plunges
into the
plane,
it
creates the center of the circle and at the same time
destroys
it. The
circle becomes a mad
figure,
a death form
lacking
reference to its center.
The
triangle
shatters the
myth
at its
very
root.
Further in time and
space,
as between
parentheses,
the red
triangle completely expels
the white
circle, throwing
it out towards the
black
background (E) (fig. 7).
At the
periphery
of the white circle and the red
triangle
we find:
(a)
Lower and to the left on a white
background,
bits of
red,
black
and white
rectangular spaces.
218
(b) Opposite
in the
upper-right-hand
corner of the black
background,
small
red,
black and white
triangles
and
squares.
Space
surrounded on all sides.
Vibrant echos refracted in the
opacity
of
black,
in the
fluidity
of white.
Colors:
white, red,
and black
"rising"
to create a kinetic
space.
Reading
the words
"wedge," "red," "beat,"
and "whites"
dissociates
reading
from its horizontal base and
left-to-right coordinates,
casting
it into an unusual
up-and-down
dimension. The
phenomenon
of
writing
outstretches in a
spatial
dimension which was unitl now
pro-
hibited. This extension
brings
out the "direction" included in the
legi-
ble.
Using
the letters of the word as
figural material,
without
undermining
the word's
legibility,
involves
displacements
of
writing
itself. A
critique
of the
orderly space
of
writing poses
the
problem
of
the
space
of
respresentation,
a
pseudo-deep space,
but also the
prob-
lem of the
body (a
vertical balanced to left and
right).
This
displacement
does not consist
only
in a shift in the
posi-
tion of the word or the
transgression
of the
regulated
intervals of
syn-
tax,
an unfolded
text,
but
equally
in a "shift in accent" in Freud's sense
of the term.
The characters are handled as follows: a black and
rigid
line for
"wedge";
a fine line for
"red,"
which delimits its letters and at the same
time creates
privileged,
denser white
spaces;
red lines for
"beat"; grey
lines on a white
background
for "the
whites,"
like a
label, which,
far
from
transgressing meaning,
makes it more "audible."
Reading
can be
scanning by
ear.
Reading, by
the establishment of a
space
of difference with
regard
to its normal
legibility, by
the
positioning
of words in different
planes,
reinforced
by
different
colors,
can be
scanning
with the entire
body according
to the
pleasure principle
alone.
Reading
can be scan-
ning
with the look.
The red
triangle
is not the
expression
of the
object "wedge,"
its
abstraction,
but the
expression,
unreifiable
meaning,
form and
pure
violence of
sharpness.
The words remain
legible,
and
thereby
refer to
the horizontal with which
they mutually
arose
(co-naissent).
This ac-
tion is a
"critique"
"of
reading,"
of reference. In other
respects
the text
has a
purifying
function in its relation to a
figure
which it
empties
in
advance of the
projections
that it could all
up,
to
which, through
its
lateral
luminosity,
the text confers an "uncanniness"
(Freud).
Due to
its
normative-space,
this text
precludes
a return to a
space governed
by perspective,
a theater-form
space.
Forms,
visible and invisible lines: their free
play
creates a
space
of
contradictory energies
which
completely
breaks from the
May
1st
poster;
that
stage-space
where attitudes and "sentiments" are the
directly
"readable"
"expressions"
of the
body: captured energy
reified
in an
image.
We should here
oppose
the
writing
of
images (the pictorial)
in
the first Russian
poster
to the
"pure
creation of
figures" (the figural)
in the second. The
quasi-depth
of
perspective gives way
in the latter
219
to the
only
real
density-meaning.
To
pose
the
problem
of
writing
is
to
pose
that of
representation,
of the
body.
And this is substantiated
in the second Russian
poster
because our
body, upset
in its natural
balance of
viewing
and
reading,
must
shift,
find new
positions
from
which
reading
once
again
becomes
legible:
the
seeing
seen.
The
utopia
here is the
very
act of creation which
transgresses
the
interdiction, making possible
the relation between two
supposed-
ly heterogeneous spaces, spiritual breathing
of revolution without which
it would be
merely reassuring revolution,
linear in its search for truth
and
justice.
Conclusion
In the
May
1st Russian
poster
the
recovery
of social
space
is
effected
through representation,
that
is,
the
presentation
of an
absence,
but
readily
identifiable. The
spectacle
is
recognized through
a
highly
connoted use of
colors,
the realistic
organization
of
space,
and recourse
to the social
stereotype
of the steel
industry (tracks
and locomotives
are needed to
transport
the Red
Army).
The
properly plastic
lines of force
are
submerged, they act, they
do not invite detection
by
the
eye.
This
submersion
corresponds
to that of the
plastic
surface which is drawn
according
to the rules of Leonardo's window. The viewer is summoned
to
pass through
this "window" and climb onto the
stage,
to
join
the
Saturday
workers. The
perspectival
treatment works in the same
way
as the use of
stereotypes, provoking
desire and at the same time focus-
ing
it on a known and communicable situation.
An
appeal
is made to an
experience
which
already
bears title
and terms: labor as the
struggle against material;
the workers' collec-
tive as active
subject.
Recourse to these social
objects,
to that ex-
perience
and to the discourse and
representations grafted
onto it
(to
that
experience
and its
complementary ideology)
rules out a
critique
of the social
space
in all its dimensions. Some
regions
of
experience
remain sheltered from the critical
overturning. They are, moreover,
presented
as
regions
to be invested
by desire,
and their
representation
is used to invoke in the
poster's
readers the channels
through
which
this
experience
is
reproduced.
We can see the correlation.
Plastically,
it is a case of
simple
rever-
sal:
reality
is
represented, presented
as a readable absence. With
regard
to libidinal
economy,
what the
poster
evokes in desire is the drive to
repeat
the formation of an
organic unity (the
work
collective,
of which
the
proletariat
has
experience). Politically,
the social
space
is not cri-
tiqued
but
applied
to the ends of
ideological exploitation.
The function of the French
poster
of
May
'68 is no different from
that of the first Russian
poster except
in that the fulfillment of desire
is evoked more
by
what is written
(le verbe)
than
by
the
image.
This latter is
written, symbolic.
The
syntagm
"cadences infer-
nales" is
doubly
conventional.
First,
in the
graphic
treatment of the
signifier, and, second,
in the
powerful
connotation of the
signified.
Even
the "a
bas,"
which is to some extent
figuralized,
conforms to conven-
220
tional criteria
(inscription
on materials used in
work).
The
figure
of the
textual is textual in its turn. This
textuality
does not call for
commen-
tary
different than that of the
May
1st
poster:
it seeks fast
recognition
of the social
object (mass-production),
and to induce conduct which
itself has a
long
tradition within the
history
of
working
class
struggles.
This effect is not
produced by establishing
a visual scene in a
deep space,
but
by inscribing
a text and
symbol
to be read on a sheet
of
paper.
In
fact,
to be read twice:
first,
so as to understand the
signified
of the discourse
itself,
and then so as to understand the second
signified (connoted)
of the discourse and the
figure.
This
predominance
of the written must be related to the time and
place
of the
political
ac-
tion: the decline of
figurality
within the western
tradition; Capitalism's
advancement of articulated
linguistic
communication over all other
forms;
the
importance
of the student environment. The
poster's
laden
connotations attest to the
paucity
of the critical deconstruction-in
fact,
to its absence.
Plastically,
the
poster might very
well be an adver-
tisement.
From the libidinal
viewpoint, however,
it should be
categorized
under the death
instinct,
since it invites destruction rather than con-
struction. The libidinal and
political meaning
of the
poster are,
in reali-
ty,
contradicted
by
its
plastic organization.
The combination of elements
(ensemble) operates
like a
compromise-formation,
with a manifest con-
tent which comes under the death instinct and a latent
content,
secreted
in the form of the
object,
which satisfies Eros
by inducing, through
con-
notations,
the
strong feeling
of
belonging
to a
commmunity.
There is a
plastic paradox
in El
Lissitzky's poster.
The
writing
assumes a
specific form,
while the
figure
seems to create a text of
forms. There is a deconstruction of letters and words on the one hand
which is not
only
manifest in the
signified ("beat
with a
wedge")
but
also in the
graphism designed
in
plastic
relation with the
space,
and
thus
figural
work.
But, inversely,
we
might say
that the deconstruction
of
any representation,
the
placing
of form and color in a flat two-
dimensional
space,
and the
replacement
of the window illusion with
an
opaque surface, changes
the
pictorial givens
back to
scriptural
ones.
It is indeed characteristic of
writing
to treat the material
support
like
a board rather than
something transparent.
This
trait, however,
is
only
a
secondary
manifestation of what
is essential to
writing,
that
is,
that the
graphic
units
only
have differen-
tial
value,
and not
by
their relation to a
body (or
the
unconscious).
Now
this is not the case in this
poster.
Here there is a
disappearance
of the
object, resulting
from the
Suprematist critique
of
representation,
which
involves a use of form and color
entirely
subordinated to their elemen-
tary power
on the
body,
and not
only
the
perceiving, worldly, body
but
the erotic one as well.
It follows that desire cannot be lost here in an
object
or a
discourse
by
which it is fulfilled. It meets the screen and is reflected
on it since the
opaque
surface
merely
reflects the sensible formal
elements with which the work of fantasmatical fulfillment is done. The
poster
recalls desire to itself as
flesh,
as a
region
of
rhythms, profiles
221
and
colors.
It lacks
objectification
and
object recognition.
The
plastic
space
is a
space
of
anguish.
There are three elements in
Lissitzky's poster
which are linked
to a radical
critique
of social
space: (1)
the reflection of desire on
itself;
(2)
the redoubled reversal
(where
the
reality
invoked is not
only presented
in its
absense,
but the desire which invokes it is manifested in its
very
process, thereby
also
reversing
the
relationship
between desire's
opera-
tions and the fantasmatical
object
which
results); (3)
the
empty space
which is
opposed by
the
painted
surface to its
being
filled
by
desire.
To beat the whites with a red
wedge
is not
only
to win the civil
war, improve
the
economy,
build
collectivism;
it is also to drive this
wedge
into all the white zones of
experience
and
ideology,
the
instituted;
and it is to submit
everything social, political, moral,
and aesthetic to
the same reversal that desire
undergoes
in the
poster.
The
enveloped
and closed
sphericity
of the white investment must be
opened
and
broken
everywhere by
the red
sharpness.
It would be
necessary
to
open up
another direction offered to
analysis by making
use of the
complex opposition
introduced
by
Freud
in 1920:
reality/pleasure-Eros/death.
In the first Russian
poster,
the
destructive drive is invested on the material
(anvil, sledgehammer, etc.),
sparing
the social
unity
formed
by
the workers. This
unity
is not
only
represented
on the
stage,
but
presented
in the connotation of the im-
ages
and the
text,
thanks to which it is
easily
reconstituted. We have
said how the French
poster organized
these two
components.
In Lissit-
zky's poster
the dimension of death wins. There is no
recognition,
representation
or
connotation;
there is no
point
where we are able to
link communication and
participation
to an
"erotic"
unity.
The forms
presented
are situated well short of discourse and action.
They
are silent
because
they
break the
illusory
fulfillment of
desire,
the lure
by
which
Eros
gives
itself to
seeing
and
hearing
as
reality.
The connivance of
the
principles
of
reality
and
pleasure
is the
mainspring
of
ideology.
The reader will not fail to
object
that the
composition
of the
poster
and its critical force bear witness to the isolated situation of
the artistic
avant-garde
in
revolutionary
Russia. That's an inconsistent
"concept,"
a fulfillment of desire in words. On the one
hand,
men of
this
period
like Mal6vitch and El
Lissitzky
were not an artistic avant-
garde. They
were
anti-art,
insofar as critical
overturning (it
was the "rear-
guard"
which was
merely "art").
On the other
hand, they
had no
preten-
tion of
being
an
avant-garde
in the
political
sense. What is
important
is that
today they give
us and artists and
politicians
a chance to reflect
on a critical
aesthetic,
an aesthetic of the death drive
(which, moreover,
Freud
suggests
in
Beyond
the Pleasure
Principle)
in its relation with
revolutionary critique.
Translated
by
Mark S. Roberts
222
NOTES
1 This is a translation of
"Espace plastique
et
espace politique,"
which
appears
in D6rive &
partir
de Marx et Freud
(Paris:
Union G6n6rale D'Editions, 1973).
The
text, however,
has a
history
which
precedes
this
particular publication.
Accord-
ing
to a note in
preface
to this version of the
text,
the work first
appeared
as
a seminar
presentation
at Nanterre in
1968-69,
and was then later discussed in
another seminar offered
by
Mikel Dufrenne in 1969-70. This text also contains
a note
indicating
that it was first
published
in the Revue
d'Esth6tique,
23
(December, 1970), crediting Dominique
Avron and Bruno Lemenuel as collabor-
tors.
(I
would like to
acknowledge
the valuable
help
of Professor Geoff Benn-
ington
of Essex
University,
who
thoroughly
read and corrected an earlier version
of this
translation.) (Translator)
2 I have
kept
the French terms for the
May
'68
poster,
since their
peculiar
graphology
seems essential to
Lyotard's analysis.
"A Bas les Cadences Infer-
nales" is
perhaps
best translated as "Down with the Hellish Work
Rhythms."
(Translator)
223
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3
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4
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Figure
5
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6
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7