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Addressing the sublime: space, mass representation, and the unpresentable

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0739318042000212707

1529-5036

Nathan Stormer,

Narrative Theory and Analysis

Abstract Mass representations of the sublime use apostrophe as a mode of address that normalizes a moment of expected failure of discourse. Regardless of whether a viewer experiences "sublimity," mass representations of what is supposedly beyond discourse embody the expected limits of communication, aestheticizing conditions of impossibility for discourse, and thereby constituting a space wherein the humanist subject may become a recognizable self in a public sense. Constituting a relationship between the spectator as human and the sublime objects as greater than human, a mass reproduced sublime thus helps establish discursive spaces of humanism. Although the aesthetics of the sublime can be exceptionally varied, the essay applies these ideas to popular Ansel Adams photographs, which illustrate the problems of attempting to represent the unrepresentable and the invocation of a particular kind of subjectivity as a commonplace. Notes Nathan Stormer is an Associate Professor at the University of Maine. Correspondence to: 117 Palm St., Bangor, ME 04401, U.S. Email: nathan@maine.edu. The author thanks the reviewers and editors for the rigor of their comments; they have helped to improve the essay markedly. He also thanks Amy Fried, Ben Friedlander, Naomi Jacobs, Leslie King, and Liam Riordan for their help. Arendt is well known for her disapprobation of the mixing of public and private, particularly along the lines of the social body as a family whose private well‐being becomes a public issue (1958/1998; see also Dossa, Citation1989; Kristeva, Citation2001; McGowan, Citation1998). In that sense, the space of appearance I refer to would not be "true" from her point of view (Arendt, Citation1958/1998). However, her view is grounded in a classical notion of glory that organizes itself through a specific vision of what would now be called sublime. I am poaching her concept, but de‐essentializing it. It is common to think that Lefebvre's The Production of Space (1995) along with Harvey's (Citation1989, Citation2001) and Soja's (Citation1989, Citation1996) critical geography are the driving force behind a surge in interest in culture and spatial theory. Though these authors are undoubtedly highly influential, critical interest in space and culture predates and exceeds their impact. Jonathan Archer, a professor at the University of Minnesota who compiles every possible source on space and society, has a bibliography of over well over 1,000 sources. Of the many sources that have found interest in rhetorical studies, see de Certeau (Citation1984), Foucault (Citation1979, Citation1998), Habermas (Citation1991), Jameson (Citation1991), Massey (Citation1994), Pateman (Citation1988), Rose (Citation1993), and Warner (Citation1990). One should not read an opposition in the contrast of Romantic and scientific aesthetics. Indeed, the science of geology and later evolution impacted landscape artists of the nineteenth century such as Frederic Edwin Church (Gould, Citation1989; Novak, Citation1991). Generally speaking, the aesthetics of art and science have been mutually constituting, such that apparent epistemological oppositions belie aesthetic kinship in many cases (Stafford, Citation1993, Citation1994). Arendt sets spectatorship (in a Kantian sense) against action (Kristeva, Citation2001), but this is dependent on her particular definition of action and speech, wherein speech is ambiguously both a species of and precondition to action (McGowan, Citation1998). Arendt sees identity disclosed in speech and action to spectators, simultaneously forming a space of appearance for disclosure and producing the disclosure of identity through speech and action. In Crary (Citation2001), spectatorship becomes a kind of normative action in its own right (sight is not passive as in Arendt), thus making the social architecture of the space of appearance also dependent on modes of seeing as action. Rather than treat action as disclosing the identity of the actor, I analyze how seeing constitutes the spatial parameters of subjectivity. Additional informationNotes on contributorsNathan Stormer Footnote Nathan Stormer is an Associate Professor at the University of Maine. Correspondence to: 117 Palm St., Bangor, ME 04401, U.S. Email: nathan@maine.edu. The author thanks the reviewers and editors for the rigor of their comments; they have helped to improve the essay markedly. He also thanks Amy Fried, Ben Friedlander, Naomi Jacobs, Leslie King, and Liam Riordan for their help.