Daniel Barbiero
Writing the Invisible
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In a well-known passage of Ennead V.8.6, Plotinus asserted that the images (agalmata; agalma in the singular) the Egyptian “wise men” inscribed on their temple walls were visual signs that served as symbols representing the Ideal nature of the things they depicted. In a misunderstanding of the nature of the Egyptian writing system common for his time, Plotinus claimed that the carvings were pure ideograms and not letters or phonetic signs forming discursive statements, but instead provided direct representations of the intelligible Forms of the things shown. As Erik Iversen noted in his The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition, Plotinus’ idea was that these images were part of a “true symbolic system of writing” in which abstract concepts could be directly expressed through the graphic likenesses of given physical objects (p. 49). Ordinarily, an ideogram is simply an image of an object which refers not just to the object itself, but to an idea or quality the object suggests. But Plotinus’ agalmata represented a more profound view of ideograms, one that purported to see in them signs conveying what is, in effect, news from the intelligible world. What Plotinus described was nothing less than a system of representation that could symbolically express the eidetic dimension of a thing and not just depict the object qua object in its concrete manifestation. By picturing it in its physical appearance, the agalma would make it known in its metaphysical reality.
There is some disagreement over whether the images Plotinus was referring to were actual hieroglyphs or a different class of temple carvings. If he was in fact referring to the former, as for centuries he was taken to be, he misunderstood the Egyptian writing system, which contrary to his assertion did include a phonetic component. But it was precisely this misunderstanding that made his comment so attractive to subsequent generations of European interpreters, who were fascinated by the idea of a writing system that could directly transmit the essence of things. Plotinus’ supposedly having found a writing system that could directly express the intelligible essence of a thing had such persistent appeal because it articulated a longstanding desire of Western metaphysics--the desire to make fully present through representation the object or idea being represented. It is notable that in choosing a writing system as the vehicle for this presencing of things Plotinus, who always claimed to be little more than an interpreter of Plato, differed from Plato on this point: Plato denigrated writing systems as little more than aids to memory and in any event as conveying knowledge in a manner inferior to the conveyance of knowledge written directly in the soul. Despite Plato’s misgivings and despite deviations along the way, the path taken by the Western dream of representing things in their metaphysical fullness was the path of writing.
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Plotinus’ notion of the ideogram was based on two intuitions, one regarding the presence of things and the other regarding the medium through which things could make themselves present in Ideal form. Although we often think of things as making themselves present to us by way of our sense perception, their presence to us as the things they are is actually by virtue of something beyond what we perceive of them. Perception by itself gives us only a perspectival and hence partial picture of the object before us; it doesn’t give us the whole thing at once, and by itself has nothing to say about what kind of thing it is we perceive. The thing perceived is in effect pure contingency, a thing existing in the moment. For the thing to be fully present to us as the thing it is is to be present to us not only through its physical appearance, but through a conceptualization of some sort, a conceptualization that would enable us to grasp the thing across different presentations and in various states of imperfection. This was the realization behind Plato’s theory of Ideas. What Plotinus’ agalma recognizes is that to make sense of the visible presupposes what Merleau-Ponty called the invisible—a cognitive component that categorizes the visible thing as a type with certain typical qualities or characteristics. The thing is present not only through a physical presence, but through an eidetic or conceptual presence as well. The upshot of this is that in order to make the represented object fully present, the invisible would have to be made visible. Hence Plotinus’ second intuition, that this could be done by and through representation. For Plotinus the temple carvings had accomplished this in a unique, and uniquely effective, way. They were elements within a system that was pictorially based yet still fell within the domain of writing. The promise they seemed to hold out was that it would be through writing that one would, given the proper interpretive skills, make contact with the Ideal thing. Through writing, the invisible would be made visible.
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In The Necessity of the Mind, a book completed in 1934 but unpublished during his lifetime, then-Surrealist Roger Caillois outlined his own theory of the ideogram. His had nothing to do with Plotinus or Egyptian writing systems; in fact, it purported to situate the ideogram prior not only to writing, but to language itself. Caillois defined his ideogram as a mental representation, specifically, one concerning an emotionally charged idea, image, or object that carries a symbolic value as manifested through the various associations bound up with it. (Caillois’ ideogram was modeled on the Freudian dream symbol; interestingly, in his book on the interpretation of dreams Freud described these symbols as “hieroglyphs.”) Rather than standing for a system of graphic representation it does with Plotinus’ agalma, “ideogram” now refers to a mental representation. And note a second difference between Caillois’ ideogram and the Plotinian agalma: whereas the latter purports to show the essence or Idea of the object depicted, the former is about the symbolic meanings the object suggests through various modes of association.
At the same time that it differs from Plotinus’ agalma, Caillois’ ideogram conserves an essential function of Plotinus’ ideogram, which is to say that it too purports to make the invisible visible, even if this only goes so far—initially, as we will see--as making it present to mind. For like Plotinus’ ideogram, Caillois’ concerns itself with an aspect of things that surpasses the perceptible. Now, though, the invisible is understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the merely eidetic or conceptual content through which the thing is recognized and known as the thing it is. For Caillois, the ideogram is composed as well of the intricate network of affective and associative meanings the thing or image holds for the individual to whom it relates. If Plotinus’ ideogram depicts the thing as it is for us through its Ideal-conceptual mode of being, Caillois’ reveals the thing as it is for us in terms of what it means to us. His ideogram is primarily a carrier of significance—of what role the object represented plays in our lives, how it fits into our histories, or what moods, emotional reactions, imaginative responses, attitudes, or memories it provokes in us, not just what we know (or think we know) about it. The significance it carries arises from often obscure events we’ve experienced or imagined and the affective charges associated with them (and here again the influence of Freud can be discerned). Here again Caillois’ ideogram differs from Plotinus’ ideogram, the content of which is concerned with the essential as it transcends the contingent and circumstantial. For with its emphasis on the affective associations forged over the course of an individual’s life, Caillois’ ideogram refounds essence in contingency—in the particular circumstances and meanings through which the essential is colored and ultimately given to us.
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Of all of the invisible elements making things what they are for us, the kinds of associations and affective charges represented by Caillois’ ideogram are the most intimate and individualized. Even granting the necessarily idiolectical variations through which individuals assimilate, understand, and use concepts, these concepts are, at least in their general outline, held in common by members of a community of shared habits of mind, practices, and language. By contrast, the kinds of associations constituting Caillois’ ideograms are unique to individuals and in addition, often are something they can only obscurely grasp. To raise them to awareness—to make their invisibility visible—Caillois set out a method he calls “automatic thinking,” by which he meant a variety of introspective free association carried out in a state of waking dream or hypnagogic reverie.
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Caillois’ advocacy of “automatic thinking” is a reminder that his notion of the ideogram was formulated largely as a rebuttal to Breton’s advocacy, in the first Manifesto of Surrealism and elsewhere, of automatic writing, which in any case had by the time Caillois was writing proven itself to be a disappointment. “Automatic thinking” was meant to be a way to circumvent automatic writing’s perceived inadequacies, and to serve as a more reliable and direct route to the intimate content to which automatic writing was supposed to provide access. But does a reliance on reverie and mental free association mean that writing would have no place in elucidating this new, expanded notion of the ideogram? Would “automatic thinking” be enough to unpack the meaning of an ideogram? To the extent that it seems to assert the eclipse of language by pre-linguistic representations, Caillois’ ideogram would appear to suggest an end-run around language. But this appearance would be misleading.
Caillois’ ideograms don’t represent the renunciation of language and writing but rather draw the meaning to be translated into language and writing from a source he held to be deeper than the writerly automatism of the orthodox Surrealism he was opposing. In fact it was precisely the writerliness of some of the automatic writings produced by Surrealism—Robert Desnos’ alexandrines produced under hypnosis come to mind—that seemed suspect to Caillois. And not only to him, as is evident from Breton’s comments in “The Automatic Message,” which was written around the same time as The Necessity of the Mind.
The relationship of language to the pre-linguistic substrate to which Caillois’ ideograms belong is a complex one in that this substrate both limits and surpasses the language we necessarily must use to bring it into our world as something that is part of our world. On the one hand it is through language that this substrate can articulate itself; on the other hand, the substrate places limits on what language can articulate while still maintaining fidelity to what had been presented to language to express. And yet at the same time, the pre-linguistic substrate, precisely because it is pre-linguistic, is itself limited in terms of the degree to which it can enter into and fully participate in our our world. What we might say is that the pre-linguistic substrate, while certainly being a part of us in its own inarticulate terms, does not become a part of our world until it is transposed into language. This observation would seem to be borne out by Caillois’ own self-analyses, which were themselves conducted through the medium of language.
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Still, we might ask, why go through writing in attempting to trace psychic processes? Why engage in what essentially is an activity of translation? The answer would have to be: because language is the route through which we can describe, express, and most importantly, interpret these representations and their associations. For this, really, is the route the sub-linguistic must take in order to enter into our world as the latter exists for us in the fullness of its meaning. It is a route that is, at bottom, a hermeneutic one. Thus the analysis of automatic thinking and its constituent ideograms comes fully into its own through language. Language is the paradigmatic medium of hermeneutic activity, and inferring psychic operations from automatic thinking as well as automatic writing is an unavoidably hermeneutic, which is to say interpretive, activity. It is through language that these operations can bring themselves to us most forcefully through an articulate presence, which is to say a presence we can recognize in its being-there by virtue of its having been articulated in language. The chain of images making up the stream of automatic thinking by itself may not tell us much; it is through subsequent hermeneutic activity, necessarily involving language, that we can hear what they are trying to say. (It just seems impossible to avoid using a metaphor drawn from language use.)
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And it is through writing that we can bring the ideogram’s invisible dimension to visibility. For with writing the ideogram is detached from its immanence in the event of the thought that gives rise to it, and becomes liable to interpretation.
Writing the ideogram concretizes it and beyond that alienates it, which is to say, gives it an independent identity in relation to the person whose ideogram it is. As such, it can become the object of interpretation in a way that it otherwise could not. Its otherness, acquired through its alienation in written language, is something that allows us to confront it and to relate to it as a challenge to our own subjectivity—even though its source ultimately is that very same subjectivity. It is by accepting its challenge and the self-questioning that challenge entails that we can come to a critical self-interpretation and self-understanding and consequently come to comprehend it. Until it is detached through writing, we are too close to it to gain a useful perspective on it; the ideogram originates in a web of subjectivity from which writing can release it. In being written, the invisible meaning of the ideogram can be brought out from behind the shadow of subjectivity and in its un-obscuring, can be brought to a more complete presence—can be brought to visibility, by virtue of being written into presence.
This takes us far beyond the invisible purported to be made visible in Plotinus’ ideograms—the eidetic or conceptual essence of things. The invisible made visible by the kind of ideogram Caillois proposed is the record of one’s subliminal life. This is the ultimate invisible which, when written into an independent existence and properly interpreted, promises to realize a desire older than the metaphysical dream of directly representing the Ideal. It is the desire expressed in the Delphic admonition to Know Thyself.
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References:
André Breton, “The Automatic Message,” in Break of Day, tr. Mark Polizzotti and Mary Ann Caws (Lincoln NE: U of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Roger Caillois, The Necessity of the Mind: An Analytical Study of the Mechanisms of Overdetermination in Automatic and Lyrical Thinking and of the Development of Affective Themes in the Individual Consciousness, tr. Michael Syrotinski (Venice CA: Lapis Press, 1990).
Erik Iversen: The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Princeton: Princeton U Press/Mythos Bollingen Series, 1993).
Plotinus, Ennead V, tr. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1985).
Daniel Barbiero is a double bassist, composer, and writer in the Washington DC area. He has performed at venues throughout the Washington-Baltimore area and regularly collaborates with artists locally and in Europe; his graphic scores have been realized by ensembles and solo artists in Europe, Asia, and the US. He writes on the art, music, and literature of the classic avant-gardes of the 20th century as well as on contemporary work; his essays and reviews have appeared in Heavy Feather Review, periodicities, Word for/Word, Otoliths, Perfect Sound Forever, Point of Departure, and elsewhere. He is the author of As Within, So Without, a collection of essays published by Arteidolia Press. Website: https://danielbarbiero.wordpress.com.
There is some disagreement over whether the images Plotinus was referring to were actual hieroglyphs or a different class of temple carvings. If he was in fact referring to the former, as for centuries he was taken to be, he misunderstood the Egyptian writing system, which contrary to his assertion did include a phonetic component. But it was precisely this misunderstanding that made his comment so attractive to subsequent generations of European interpreters, who were fascinated by the idea of a writing system that could directly transmit the essence of things. Plotinus’ supposedly having found a writing system that could directly express the intelligible essence of a thing had such persistent appeal because it articulated a longstanding desire of Western metaphysics--the desire to make fully present through representation the object or idea being represented. It is notable that in choosing a writing system as the vehicle for this presencing of things Plotinus, who always claimed to be little more than an interpreter of Plato, differed from Plato on this point: Plato denigrated writing systems as little more than aids to memory and in any event as conveying knowledge in a manner inferior to the conveyance of knowledge written directly in the soul. Despite Plato’s misgivings and despite deviations along the way, the path taken by the Western dream of representing things in their metaphysical fullness was the path of writing.
At the same time that it differs from Plotinus’ agalma, Caillois’ ideogram conserves an essential function of Plotinus’ ideogram, which is to say that it too purports to make the invisible visible, even if this only goes so far—initially, as we will see--as making it present to mind. For like Plotinus’ ideogram, Caillois’ concerns itself with an aspect of things that surpasses the perceptible. Now, though, the invisible is understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the merely eidetic or conceptual content through which the thing is recognized and known as the thing it is. For Caillois, the ideogram is composed as well of the intricate network of affective and associative meanings the thing or image holds for the individual to whom it relates. If Plotinus’ ideogram depicts the thing as it is for us through its Ideal-conceptual mode of being, Caillois’ reveals the thing as it is for us in terms of what it means to us. His ideogram is primarily a carrier of significance—of what role the object represented plays in our lives, how it fits into our histories, or what moods, emotional reactions, imaginative responses, attitudes, or memories it provokes in us, not just what we know (or think we know) about it. The significance it carries arises from often obscure events we’ve experienced or imagined and the affective charges associated with them (and here again the influence of Freud can be discerned). Here again Caillois’ ideogram differs from Plotinus’ ideogram, the content of which is concerned with the essential as it transcends the contingent and circumstantial. For with its emphasis on the affective associations forged over the course of an individual’s life, Caillois’ ideogram refounds essence in contingency—in the particular circumstances and meanings through which the essential is colored and ultimately given to us.
Caillois’ ideograms don’t represent the renunciation of language and writing but rather draw the meaning to be translated into language and writing from a source he held to be deeper than the writerly automatism of the orthodox Surrealism he was opposing. In fact it was precisely the writerliness of some of the automatic writings produced by Surrealism—Robert Desnos’ alexandrines produced under hypnosis come to mind—that seemed suspect to Caillois. And not only to him, as is evident from Breton’s comments in “The Automatic Message,” which was written around the same time as The Necessity of the Mind.
The relationship of language to the pre-linguistic substrate to which Caillois’ ideograms belong is a complex one in that this substrate both limits and surpasses the language we necessarily must use to bring it into our world as something that is part of our world. On the one hand it is through language that this substrate can articulate itself; on the other hand, the substrate places limits on what language can articulate while still maintaining fidelity to what had been presented to language to express. And yet at the same time, the pre-linguistic substrate, precisely because it is pre-linguistic, is itself limited in terms of the degree to which it can enter into and fully participate in our our world. What we might say is that the pre-linguistic substrate, while certainly being a part of us in its own inarticulate terms, does not become a part of our world until it is transposed into language. This observation would seem to be borne out by Caillois’ own self-analyses, which were themselves conducted through the medium of language.
Writing the ideogram concretizes it and beyond that alienates it, which is to say, gives it an independent identity in relation to the person whose ideogram it is. As such, it can become the object of interpretation in a way that it otherwise could not. Its otherness, acquired through its alienation in written language, is something that allows us to confront it and to relate to it as a challenge to our own subjectivity—even though its source ultimately is that very same subjectivity. It is by accepting its challenge and the self-questioning that challenge entails that we can come to a critical self-interpretation and self-understanding and consequently come to comprehend it. Until it is detached through writing, we are too close to it to gain a useful perspective on it; the ideogram originates in a web of subjectivity from which writing can release it. In being written, the invisible meaning of the ideogram can be brought out from behind the shadow of subjectivity and in its un-obscuring, can be brought to a more complete presence—can be brought to visibility, by virtue of being written into presence.
This takes us far beyond the invisible purported to be made visible in Plotinus’ ideograms—the eidetic or conceptual essence of things. The invisible made visible by the kind of ideogram Caillois proposed is the record of one’s subliminal life. This is the ultimate invisible which, when written into an independent existence and properly interpreted, promises to realize a desire older than the metaphysical dream of directly representing the Ideal. It is the desire expressed in the Delphic admonition to Know Thyself.
____________________
References:
André Breton, “The Automatic Message,” in Break of Day, tr. Mark Polizzotti and Mary Ann Caws (Lincoln NE: U of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Roger Caillois, The Necessity of the Mind: An Analytical Study of the Mechanisms of Overdetermination in Automatic and Lyrical Thinking and of the Development of Affective Themes in the Individual Consciousness, tr. Michael Syrotinski (Venice CA: Lapis Press, 1990).
Erik Iversen: The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Princeton: Princeton U Press/Mythos Bollingen Series, 1993).
Plotinus, Ennead V, tr. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1985).
Daniel Barbiero is a double bassist, composer, and writer in the Washington DC area. He has performed at venues throughout the Washington-Baltimore area and regularly collaborates with artists locally and in Europe; his graphic scores have been realized by ensembles and solo artists in Europe, Asia, and the US. He writes on the art, music, and literature of the classic avant-gardes of the 20th century as well as on contemporary work; his essays and reviews have appeared in Heavy Feather Review, periodicities, Word for/Word, Otoliths, Perfect Sound Forever, Point of Departure, and elsewhere. He is the author of As Within, So Without, a collection of essays published by Arteidolia Press. Website: https://danielbarbiero.wordpress.com.
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