Theory, Theoria, and the Theoric Gaze by Fold to Center

Theory Theoria and the Theoric Gaze ¿∙

Theory Theoria and the Theoric Gaze ¿∙ © Janelle Rebel, 2014, this edition September 2015. Photos and images by author: Getty Villa (CA), [iv], 10, back cover; Athens (GR), 2; Delphi (GR), 20; Hydra (GR), 22–23.

Preface I once worked with a woman who spoke sentences from the middle or the end of them. There were no beginnings. No conversational entrances. You had to listen closely to find the subject, which invariably was never vocalized. It took a good deal of concentration to assemble the pieces as she flitted from embedded idea to embedded idea. If I was â&#x20AC;&#x153;firing on all cylindersâ&#x20AC;? I could understand 90% of what she was saying.

Introduction How does one begin to talk about visuality? How does one begin to think about theories of vision, or theories of critical visuality? Is the only way to begin, from the middle of a sentence? Visual studies relies on cultural and critical theory to discuss visual phenomena in relation to “their historical, disciplinary, and social contexts.”1 Visual studies has foundationally incorporated theories and theoretical terms from a variety of different fields into its own lexicon, including those of “anthropology, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, intellectual history, and philosophy.”2

1. “Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies: Curriculum Requirements,” School of the Art Institute of Chicago, accessed November 30, 2014, http://www.saic.edu/academics/graduatedegrees/ mavcs/curriculumrequirements/. 2. Margarita Dikovitskaya quoting Stephen Melville’s questionnaire response, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual After the Cultural Turn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 50.

Visual studies scholar Jonathan Crary, who is interested in revealing the origins of modern visual culture, discusses the field of vision in the nineteenth century in Techniques of the Observer.3 He centers his study around the relationship between the observing body and “institutional and discursive power” instead of around representations of modernity in visual art and culture.4 He uncovers forgotten visual apparatuses to help construct his historical narrative. However, he admittedly grounds his history of vision in the hypothetical and his idea of a dominant observer in the abstract. He says: Whether perception or vision actually change is irrelevant for they have no autonomous history. What changes are the plural forces and rules composing the field in which perception occurs. And what determines vision at any given historical moment is not some deep structure, economic base, or world view, but rather the functioning of a collective assemblage of disparate parts on a single social surface.5 3. See also Crary’s website “Origins of Modern Visual Culture,” http://learn.columbia.edu/courses/mvc/. 4. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 3. 5. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 6.

To Crary, who’s drawing heavily on Foucault’s Power/ Knowledge, the observer is not only “one who sees” but “one who sees within a prescribed set of possibilities, one who is embedded in a system of conventions and limitations.”6 Crary’s study is concerned with locating an era’s dominant observer, in this case from the nineteenth century. It does not claim to address oppositional modes of viewing, but is intended to serve as a hegemonic backdrop for other discourses to come into focus.

6. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 6.

I am interested in going farther back in history than Crary, as well as farther afield, hopefully in a way that casts visual studies as “interdisciplinary in an ‘interesting’ sense.”7 If visual studies incorporates theories from a variety of different fields, can the field of visual studies be used to assess the evolution of theory and its relationship to seeing? In other words, from a visual studies vantage, is it enough to presume that we know what theory is, or should we “question the certainty that we know” what theory is?8 The development of theory and its relationship to vision is particularly interesting in the classical, cultural institution of theoria. I am interested in “telescoping the past through the present”9 to examine theory from a slightly different angle.

7. Elkins, James, Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2003), 30. 8. Irit Rogoff, “Studying Visual Culture,” in The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London: Routledge, 1998), 20. 9. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 471.

Drawing on the work of Andrea Nightingale, a contemporary scholar of Greek and Roman literature, I look at theoria in its ancient Greek context during the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. Theoria was a common religious practice in which ambassadors “journeyed abroad for the sake of witnessing an event or spectacle.”10 Philosophical theorizing, as we commonly understand it, appropriated and revisioned the traditional practice of theoria. Nightingale’s thesis wrestles with a topic deeply intertwined with the foundations of Western hegemony. Her main argument, which I will only briefly touch on in this essay, details the ways in which the fourth century thinkers (Plato, Aristotle, Philip of Opus, et al.) used the cultural institution of theoria as a model to “define and defend the new discipline of ‘theoretical’ philosophy.”11 They tapped the familiar and the conventional in order to explain a burgeoning field. Nightingale explores the inventive nature of philosophic theoria and its historical transformation.

10. Andrea Wilson Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40. 11. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 72.

Critic Jennifer Allen points out that it is during this evolution that “theoria and practice” become “an antagonistic couple.”12 In 2009, Allen introduced the concept of traditional theoria to a popular audience by penning a short article for Frieze magazine. The cultural practice of theoria, she presented, “not only mimics global migration but also offers a crucial paradigm for artists-on-the-move,” ethnographers, diplomats, and travel writers.13 Offering a further a connection, she provocatively made the comparison that “maybe [critical] theory is not so far from [ancient] theoria after all.”14 She writes: Many of the theoretical strivings of the last century, especially towards its close, have been struggles about the claims of bodily difference, starting with language and culture and culminating in gender, race and sexuality.”15

12. Jennifer Allen, “Ancient & Modern: The Evolution of Theory and Its Impact on Contemporary Thought,” Frieze, September 2009, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/ancient_modern/. 13.

Allen, “Ancient & Modern.”

14.

Allen, “Ancient & Modern.”

15.

Allen, “Ancient & Modern.”

With respect to the theories presently utilized by the field of visual studies, perhaps the time is right for a closer examination of traditional theoria, the theoric gaze, and the foreign observer. What embedded ideas are at play within ancient practices of theoria? Will a study of its early uses and non-disciplinary contexts be valuable to an interdisciplinary field?

Before Theory Traditional theoria, sixth & fifth centuries b.c. Etymologically, the word theory has its equivalent in the Greek word theoria. Theoria generally connotes the practice of a single theoros or an envoy of theoroi that is sent by a state “to consult an oracle or perform a religious rite.”1 In Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy, Andrea Nightingale expands this oft overlooked connection, locating theoria and the theoric journey in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. as a specific crosscultural practice common in panhellenic Greece. Her work provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of the traditional practice of theoria.2 Nightingale

1. Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “theory, n.2,” last modified September 2014, http://www.oed.com/. 2. It is the most detailed description of traditional theoria that I’ve come across in English. Hannelore Rausch’s 1982 book, Theoria, has not yet been translated from German.

combines “literary, historical, epigraphic, and anthropological evidence” to examine theoria.3 She evaluates the “three most prominent forms of theoria in the classical period: visits to oracular centers, pilgrimages to religious festivals, and journeys abroad for the sake of learning.”4 What was the atmosphere like at that time? Allen helps paint the general scene of the ancients: As the Ancient Greeks were polytheists, there were countless oracles and festivals. In addition to the pan-Hellenic Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian festivals—with rituals, sports, plays and art competitions—there were celebrations for individual gods and goddesses.5 The pilgrim or theoros participating in the theoric journey, travels outside his familiar domain to witness a neighboring spectacle and then returns home with

3. Nightingale herself notes that chapter one “could stand on its own as a contribution to Greek ‘cultural studies.’” Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 41. Ibid., 40. 4. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 40. 5.

Allen, “Ancient & Modern.”

first-hand knowledge of the encounter. The two modes for carrying out a theoria—civic and private—would determine the specific responsibilities of a theoros.6 The theoros was typically a male citizen who had some social, political, and/or religious standing in the polis. If he was a civically-appointed theoros, rather than a private theoros, he may have to, for example, deliver the message from the oracle or report new ideas of governance to the city upon his return. The “inquisitive journeys” of two famous theoroi, Solon and Herodotus, “were both the cause and the result of their wisdom.”7 Regardless if the theoros was operating out of civic duty, for self-cultivation, or for some combination of the two, Nightingale emphasizes that: The practice of theoria encompassed the entire journey, including the detachment from home, the spectating, and the final reentry.8

6. “In classical Greece, the theoros could be sent as an official representative of his city, in which case the theoria was carried out in a civic and public context. But a theoros could also venture forth on his own, enacting a “private” rather than a “civic” theoria.” Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 40. 7. O’Sullivan, Timothy M. “The Mind in Motion: Walking and Metaphorical Travel in the Roman Villa.” Classical Philology 101, no. 2 (April 2006): 140. 8. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 4.

Traditional theoria is circular, a process that not only involves spectating, but the activities of detachment and return as well. This seemingly small detail is a departure from definitions of theoria that emphasize spectating as the sole activity of the practice. As with the definition I quoted in the beginning from the Oxford English Dictionary, there is often no mention of the journey abroad or of the return home. Nightingale says that seeing or witnessing events is one part of the practice of theoria and that the “liminal” phase of traveling, wandering, or journeying is another.9 Crossing geographic boundaries during the journey abroad effectively separates the theoros “from the norms and ideologies of his native city” and in a state of relative freedom and openness, he “encounters—and perhaps even embraces—foreign ideas and practices.”10

9. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 43. 10. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 43.

The dislocation from home is also the necessary set-up for theoric spectating. In fact: Theoric spectating could only take place at a distance from the pilgrim’s hometown or city: geographical distance was a precondition for the special kind of viewing and apprehension that characterized theoria.11 The theoric gaze though “focused on a sacred object or spectacle” is a gaze marked by alterity, the gaze of the foreigner at a festival, shrine, or sanctuary.12 Within a ritualized viewing space, the theoric gaze of the “other” resided beside the democratic gaze of the local citizen: The panhellenic religious festivals—in which all the participants joined in rituals, sacrifices, and prayers—aimed to promote Greek commonality and concord. This encouraged the Greeks to rise above their political and ideological differences and to meet on a higher plane.13

11. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 42. 12. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 4. 13. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 61.

At a gathering of many “others,” the theoric gaze is not a unified viewing position but a multiplicity. The theoros did not shed his own personal, cultural, or political identity in order to “witness spectacles and participate in rituals.”14 In a liminal, ritualized viewing space, he was “engaged in the act of ‘sacred spectating’”15 and in kinship with those around him.16 The choice for him was not “to be a tourist or to be a convert.”17 He could operate somewhat in between those identities, keeping his “outsider status” as well as being fully initiated into the rituals.18 The protective bounds of the sanctuary allowed the theoros to step outside of ordinary time.

14. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 35. 15. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 35. 16. This sort of kinship was not always possible. “In particularly bad periods of war, the hostility among the Greeks actually obstructed theoric journeys and restricted the practice of theoria.” Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 63. 17. I aped this phrase from J. Z. Smith, noted scholar of ritual and religion, who says “there’s a whole world in between!” In its original context, Smith was not discussing the theoros but rather the difficulties his students encounter when studying religions other than their own. He went on to say, “you don’t have to become an apostle— there’s a lot of room in between.” J. Z. Smith, interview by Supriya Sinhababu, The Chicago Maroon, June 2, 2008, http://chicagomaroon. com/2008/06/02/full-j-z-smith-interview/. 18.

Allen, “Ancient & Modern.”

As a sacred spectator, the theoros “viewed the rituals, spectacles, and sacred images,” while his “own religious activities were [being] ‘viewed’ by the presiding god or goddess.”19 Ritualized visuality in that sense was a two-way street between the worshipper and the divine, and one in which the worshipper might “recognize the power of the divine.”20 However, viewing could be aesthetic as well as religious. Theoroi visually “feasted” and delighted at the sight of unfamiliar icons, statuary, and friezes.21 In terms of the theoric gaze, ritualized visuality was an amalgam of both inner and outer vision. *** To continue a discussion of the theoros and to better understand Nightingale’s position in this study, it seems necessary at this point to address who has the privilege of looking. After all, the theoros was usually a male elite or an aristocrat—a fact that I don’t want to overlook.22

19. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 45. 20.

Nightingale quoting Kavoulaki, Spectacles of Truth, 45.

21. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 47. 22. As an aside, I recently read a soft historical account of the Renaissance that instead of saying “male elites” substituted the phrase “the initial protagonists.” The book had been published in 2014 and reminded me that there is no reason to gloss such polemical detail.

If we are to classify or name this viewing position, we could simply call the theoros a dominant spectator. Yet what is so interesting in Nightingale’s account, is that she identifies two gazes at the party: the democratic gaze—that of the host citizen, and the theoric gaze— that of the traveling theoros, the non-citizen. In early theoria, both of these gazes are linked to dominant observers.23 Both have power. It can be confusing from our vantage why the particulars of this might matter. However, within this historical frame, Nightingale chooses to focus on the outsider, on that “other” mode of viewing, that mobile position. In fact, she talks very little about the host citizen or his stable viewing position. With all of the attention paid to the theoros, Nightingale seems to indicate that our understanding of the theoric gaze is important. The gaze of the welcomed foreigner. The theoric gaze takes on a particular significance by the fourth century b.c. Plato, Aristotle, and others “appropriated and transformed the model of traditional theoria” to describe the new activities of theoretical philosophy.24 Nightingale writes:

23. In later theoria, festival attendance is somewhat more egalitarian. Different classes can attend the festivities with the aid of the Theoric Fund. See Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 49–51. 24. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 70.

In aligning themselves with a venerable cultural practice, the philosophers claimed legitimacy and authority for philosophic theoria. They appropriated the traditional practice of theoria by translating the physical journey to a sanctuary into a metaphysical quest for truth. ... Plato, Philip of Opus, and Aristotle claimed that the philosophic theorist (theoros) gazes with the â&#x20AC;&#x153;eye of reasonâ&#x20AC;? upon divine and eternal verities.25 But what about the democratic gaze? Incidentally, the pairing that Nightingale sets up between the democratic gaze and the theoric gaze allows us to extrapolate a bit further. Hypothetically, if the theoric gaze is marked by alterity and distance, is the democratic gaze marked by similarity and locality? We know that the democratic gaze is distinct from the theoric gaze. Citizens attending events locally were not considered theoroi. As a separate viewing position, the democratic gaze cannot therefore, be all-inclusive. It does not incorporate the gaze of the theoros, after all. If the democratic gaze does not include everyone, is it reasonable to deduce that the democratic gaze has an exclusionary element?26 25. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 6. 26. These questions quickly spin out from the scope of this essay, but Kristevaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work on the foreigner and foreignness seem applicable. See Julia Kristeva, Strangers To Ourselves, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Conclusion What is interesting about an investigation of theoria, as it concerns visual studies, is that it is both an institution and a concept. It is not tied to one image or a set of images, but a whole “world of intertextuality in which images, sounds and spatial delineations are read on to and through one another.”1 With traditional theoria, we find that 1.) seeing is connected to learning as an exchange of knowledge; 2.) vision is not isolated from the body or other senses; and 3.) looking is associated with a journey and a traveler’s gaze. In Nightingale’s account: The defining feature of theoria in its traditional forms is a journey to a region outside the boundaries of one’s own city for the purpose of witnessing some sort of spectacle or learning about the world. ... The theoros is an eyewitness whose experience differs radically from those

Irit Rogoff, “Studying Visual Culture,” 14.

who stay home and receive a mere report of the news. On the journey as well as at its destination, the theoros encounters something foreign and different. This encounter with the unfamiliar invites the traveler to look at his own city with different eyes.2 A prolonged reflection on theoria is potentially useful to enhance the current dialogue of visual studies. By looking at traditional theoria as a socially, politically, and culturally embedded practice, certain connections may start to emerge between theory and theoria.

2. Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth, 68.

For instance, I wonder, is the theoric gaze of the outsider anything like Irit Rogoff’s notion of the “curious eye?”3 Curiosity implies a certain unsettling; a notion of things outside the realm of the known, of things not yet quite understood or articulated; the pleasures of the forbidden or the hidden or the unthought; the optimism of finding out something one had not known or been able to conceive of before.4

Rogoff, “Studying Visual Culture,” 18.

Epilogue I once had a friend who would never announce his exits. He would be talking to you one moment and then poof. Gone. He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bother about verbal goodbyes or excuses for leaving the party. He just quietly walked away. Through the door. No big fuss.

Bibliography Allen, Jennifer. “Ancient & Modern: The Evolution of Theory and Its Impact on Contemporary Thought.” Frieze, September 2009. http://www. frieze.com/issue/article/ancient_modern/. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999. Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Dikovitskaya, Margarita. Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual After the Cultural Turn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Elkins, James. Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Nightingale, Andrea Wilson. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. See esp. the introduction and chap. 1, “Theoria as a Cultural Practice.” O’Sullivan, Timothy M. “The Mind in Motion: Walking and Metaphorical Travel in the Roman Villa.” Classical Philology 101, no. 2 (April 2006): 133–152. Rogoff, Irit. “Studying Visual Culture.” In The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, 14–26. London: Routledge, 1998. Smith, J. Z. Interview by Supriya Sinhababu. The Chicago Maroon. June 2, 2008. http:// chicagomaroon.com/2008/06/02/full-j-z-smithinterview/.

For the ancient Greek theoros-as-ambassador, the process of getting to the festival and leaving the festival was essential to participating at the festival. Theory, Theoria, and the Theoric Gaze examines liminal spaces, crossing boundaries, and the spectatorship of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;seeingâ&#x20AC;? traveler.