Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude (Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities) - Softcover

Cavarero, Adriana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503600408 ISBN 13: 9781503600409

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

In this new and accessible book, Italy's best known feminist philosopher examines the moral and political significance of vertical posture in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of inclination. Contesting the classical figure of homo erectus or "upright man," Adriana Cavarero proposes an altruistic, open model of the subject—one who is inclined toward others. Contrasting the masculine upright with the feminine inclined, she references philosophical texts (by Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and others) as well as works of art (Barnett Newman, Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Alexander Rodchenko) and literature (Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona. Her books in English include For More than One Voice (Stanford, 2005) and Horrorism (2008).

Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona. Her books in English include For More than One Voice (Stanford, 2005) and Horrorism (2008).

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Inclinations

A Critique of Rectitude

By Adriana Cavarero, Amanda Minervini, Adam Sitze

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5036-0040-9

Contents

Foreword, 
Introduction, 
1. Barnett Newman: Adam's Line, 
2. Kant and the Newborn, 
3. Virginia Woolf and the Shadow of the "I", 
4. Plato Erectus Sed, 
5. Men and Trees, 
6. We Are Not Monkeys: On Erect Posture, 
7. Hobbes and the Macroanthropos, 
8. Elias Canetti: Upright Before the Dead, 
9. Artemisia: The Allegory of Inclination, 
10. Leonardo and Maternal Inclination, 
11. Hannah Arendt: "A Child Has Been Born unto Us", 
12. Schemata for a Postural Ethics, 
Coda: Adieu to Lévinas, 
Notes, 

CHAPTER 1

Barnett Newman

Adam's Line

I should demand the invariable application to individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true plumb-rule of persons, eras, nations.

Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas

AT THE TATE MODERN IN LONDON, the abstract art lover can admire two paintings by Barnett Newman (1905–60): Adam (1951) and Eve (1950) (see Figure 1). The story of the founding couple of Genesis is one of the best-loved themes in all of art history and, over the centuries, has been represented in very different ways. Nevertheless, there is a certain constant element despite the diversity. In general, or at least in the traditional iconography dedicated to the story, Adam and Eve tend to appear together and mostly naked: at times they are innocent and immortal, at times ashamed and damned, driven from Paradise and on the way to mortality. Following a minor thread, Newman instead separates them, dedicating a distinct canvas to each of them. This choice breaks the couple and focuses attention more directly on sexual difference.

In Adam, a painting of considerable size, a red vertical stripe stands out against a blackish background, while two other red vertical lines — one thick, one thin, as though replicating through differing thicknesses the concept of red verticality — appear at each side of the canvas. The entire surface of Eve, a painting of almost the same size, is invaded by a red monochrome, whereas a thin, dark, straight stripe appears on the canvas's right border. For Newman, evidently, the vertical axis is decisive for representing the first man, but only marginal when it comes to representing the first woman. This, at least, is what appears from an immediate comparison of the two representations. But of course, it is by no means certain that Newman is working with the intention of representation. Abstract art, as we know, involves complex problems that often trouble even specialists in the field. This nevertheless rarely discourages the untrained eye, which often feels entitled to take bigger liberties. Everything, obviously, depends on the claims. Here the claims don't aspire to art criticism; nor are they overambitious. I simply take Newman's paintings as symptoms — or, if you wish, as effective illustrations of a conception of the human that insists in an explicit mode, even emphatically, on verticality.

In Newman's canvas, Adam, the first man, indeed seems to evoke an essential and constitutive verticality — the same that, according to the painter, would lead the observers to recognize themselves in the upright posture, just as peculiarly human, which they assume as they stand before the picture. Eve, for her part, seems to invoke an overflow or a void, even more so because of the vertical stripe that appears at the canvas's margins, which perhaps interrupts, organizes, or controls the rest of the canvas. Art experts know that Newman's work is characterized by vertical bands set against monochrome backgrounds. His masterpiece, The Stations of the Cross (1958–66), consists of a series of paintings that obsessively repeat the theme of vertical stripes. According to some critics, there are even more specific reasons for his painting of Adam. As the Tate website explains, Newman's inspiration for his portrait of Adam derives from his familiarity with the Hebrew story of creation, but perhaps also from the etymology of the name Adam, which is linked to terms such as earth, red, and blood, and from the doctrine that sees God and man united in a single vertical light beam that rises between the earth and the sky. The name Eve, meanwhile, which is approached with some caution by linguists, is related to the etymological root for the term life and means "mother of the living." More than any etymological suggestion, the relevance of these paintings consists of their colors and geometry. From this point of view, the schema seems explicit: what distinguishes Adam from Eve, in the confrontation suggested by Newman's work, is the accent on verticality in the representation of Adam. This very conspicuous verticality opens up two basic meanings, each consistent with the other. The first relates, in a naturalistic way, to the specificity of the human upright posture. The second, meanwhile, refers to the straight vertical line as the essential form of man's union or relation with God. In both cases, it is easy to argue, the spatial arrangement attributed to man is, structurally, a dimension that elevates him, making this elevation, this vertical rise from earth upward to heaven, the very mark of humanity. Adding a touch of mischief to the question of the comparison between Newman's Adam and Eve, one may ask why Eve is deprived of the vertical line, since she too walks upright, hence sharing with Adam the human tendency to rise toward God. Why then a void instead of a monumental straight strip? Why a homogenous color instead of a rising bar? A plausible response is not difficult to formulate: as sustained by a certain theological tradition, woman belongs to the human species, but does not represent the human in its full and originary sense.

The thesis, part of the patriarchal symbolic order, is so well known that it will suffice to summarize it in a few words. Differently articulated in different epochs, preceding the Bible and persisting in the event of abstract art, this tradition maintains that the human genre finds its essential paradigm in man [uomo], understood as male. The human subject is then molded around him. From this point of view, Newman's paintings do not break with the patriarchal canon but indeed confirm it. They have the merit, however, of expressing that canon emphatically through the mythologeme of the vertical line. If it is true that abstract art is conceptual in nature, then the perpendicular axis that organizes Newman's canvas not only illustrates the fundamental ontology of verticality but also blatantly exposes its concept. In a certain sense, the problem of the two sexes is unresolved in his didactic schema, and remains superficial, quite simplistic, and disappointing. Setting aside the impact on the eye of the color red, Newman's painting of Eve disappoints: it appears as a void, as if the canvas were awaiting a figure the mark of which would also give form to woman. Respecting the artist's style, this could perhaps happen by drawing another line: not vertical but oblique and unbalanced, so as to mark the difference and not, as Newman has, to lose sight of it. In the coupling of humanity's fateful ancestors, man would be marked by verticality, and woman by inclination.

Stairs (1929) is a black-and-white...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1503600408
• ISBN 13: 9781503600409
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 194
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland