In the name of brevity, I’ll briefly summarize one of my traditions: I visit Montreal, I buy a French book. Normally, I buy a poetry book, but this time I tackled a full-length philosophy book. I’m not sure I would have taken on the double challenge of theoretical text that is also in my second language, but Harneet insisted upon this book by throwing it into my hands, neither of us knowing anything about it. So here we are: a philosophy book about the female nude in art.
I hope it goes without saying that, because French is not my first language, I may make some mistakes in translation or conceptualization of this text. If Laurence Pelletier’s Nudités féminines: Images, pensées et sens du désir seems flawed, I assure it is because of my own mistranslations of the text. I’ll take responsibility.
The opening of the book hurls you into the key concepts of the book: art, sex, sexuality, nudity, nakedness, the female nude, the male gaze, and all those interrelated concepts that spark interest and controversy. The essential premise of the book, in my recollection, is that the philosophical significance of the female nude as an art object has been historically defined by men within a male-centric episteme. So, Pelletier is looking to redefine the terms of the discussion in an alternative mode.
Even some of the basics of the argument prove surprisingly controversial. Pelletier explores the discourse surrounding nakedness and nudity as terms, tracing a significant difference between the two terms. To be naked is a fundamentally different quality from being nude. Essentially, the difference seems to be the relation between the viewer and the naked/nude subject and the meaning attached to it: is it primarily erotic? degrading? appraising? Where Pelletier lands is a recurring idea that nudity is attached to knowledge—but whether it reveals or conceals knowledge (and for whom) remains a question the rest of the text explores.
Pelletier traces the discourse around female nudity by examining specific works of art. Much of the earlier pieces in the collection deal with visual art (like Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus or Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde). She later revisits the visual arts in a discussion of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party. Grounding the conversation in particular works of art served as a helpful signpost for key points in the discussion. The literary works often sounded fascinating, but I missed out a little bit on never having read them myself. In particular, Pelletier’s discussion of the works of Marguerite Duras really inspired me to explore Duras’ work, and Kathy Acker gets a chapter’s worth of discussion—maybe I should follow through on reading her as I promised a random colleague at a conference five years ago. Same for Luce Irigaray and Jamaica Kincaid—I’ve got some reading to do!
The works with which I was most familiar also proved most fascinating in the discussion. The trajectory of Pelletier’s book is essentially as follows: 1) establish who creates the discourse around nudity and nakedness 2) consider how women address the issue of nudity and knowledge 3) explore the distinctions that emerge in trans identities, definitions of femininity, and so on and 4) explore how the issue of femininity manifests differently for women of colour. Thus, Pelletier offers a really compelling discussion of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (lots of vulvas—look it up if you’re not familiar) and talks about how Sojourner Truth is the only racialized woman and the only one whose vulva is not represented on the plate. Incidentally, there was a fascinating discussion of the colonial constructions and conversations surrounding Black womens’ rear ends. The fetishistic depictions of them prove a surprisingly fruitful site of historical insight.
All this to say, when Pelletier comments on Zadie Smith’s essay about Their Eyes Were Watching God was a familiar touchstone that emphasized the idea of self-recognition in representations of women. Having read Smith’s essay and feeling deeply moved by it, this was a nice touch for ending off the text. That said, I would note that the book leaves a lot to be desired in terms of conclusions. There are a number of threads that Pelletier follows, but I felt there was never a definitive account of why the female nude is important and what it means. That said, I recognize that offering a definitive account would be as reductive as previous philosophers are accused of being here.
One of the most productive conversations for me came from a surprising direction. One chapter references the Napalm Girl photo. There’s an incredible close reading of the photo. Pelletier contextualizes the image and explains why it was necessary to take the form it did; had it been a man or even an adult woman in the image, Pelletier convinced me it would not have become a part of our cultural zeitgeist. The conversation about the Vietnam war was riveting, but the analysis of the photo was also deeply insightful. Then, the chapter takes a surprising twist: Pelletier moves to a discussion of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, where a nude woman visually evokes the Napalm Girl. Drawing that parallel is not only persuasive but extraordinarily evocative since Pelletier suggests that the filmic woman gives voice to the Napalm Girl that she is not provided in the photo. It produced in me a whole slew of thoughts about diegetic and nondiegetic sound, like if the sound from her mouth can be both diegetic (since it happens in context) and nondiegetic (since it comes from another time, place, and subject)---and to quote Twin Peaks, “What year is it?” Incidentally, Pelletier does discuss the notion of time throughout the book, as well.
At this stage, I’ll try to summarize and extend a commentary on some of the passages that struck me as critical to Pelletier’s overall argument.
Womanhood and femininity are connected to conceptions of truth.
This premise is established early in the text and is indeed the reason that exploring the issue is worthwhile. Pelletier writes, “La rhétorique des deux philosophes lie donc les questions de la femme et du féminin à elle de la vérité. Elle utilise le féminin comme l’instrument, le support ou l’écran d’une expérience ontologique se voulant universelle et sexuellement neutre qui précéderait l’ordre social” (31). The notion that femininity is tied to truth and that the woman serves as a screen for an ontological experience is established as critical. Pelletier continues that “Elle laisse supposer que l’accession à la subjectivité, à la vérité du sujet, entretient une relation causale à l'objet regardé: on devient sujet devant ou par la nudité d’une femme” (31). It’s an essential reversal: the person who gains subjecthood in the act of seeing is the person seeing, not the person being observed, who is often erased in the same moment. Pelletier notes that it is a way of rendering woman an “abstraction, un idéal, un objet ou un instrument de discours. Elle est envisagée hors des conditions de déterminations matérielles, sociohistoriques et politiques qui la rattacheraient à l’existence des femmes” (31). It’s a materialist argument that challenges the universality of depictions of women, recalling that each woman is an individual—not a representative of a whole and that, in some capacity, philosophizing about the deep meaning of capital-W Woman serves to distance actual women from the question of Being.
The fetishization of nude women is related to a thirst for truth.
The female nude renders woman pure image: “Elle est ramenée à la fonction de pure apparence, de pure image. Incarnation de l’antimétaphysique, la femme dénudée trouble et défait les oppositions conceptuelles, ramène tout à la surface. Elle n’est qu’une forme, une surface idéalisée sur laquelle est projeté le désir de connaître la vérité” (44). While metaphysical questions take a back seat to the actual, visible qualities of the woman, she also becomes a surface upon which to project desire—and specifically a desire for truth. Pelletier suggests that the fetishization of women is related to the idea of the “disparition, dérobade, déception de la vérité, est liée à une fétichisation de la visibilité de la femme” (44). The nude woman becomes a kind of ground zero of knowledge: “la femme est concue comme un point aveugle obligatoire de sorte que la pensée philosophique, déireuse de compenser ce manque, s’acharne compulsivement à la rendre visible, à produire et démultiplier son image, lui octroyant un pouvoir de révélation” (44). The reclamation project is a tenuous one because…
Masculine desire muddies the waters of the conversation.
Pelletier continues that “cette dynamique particulière met à jour le désir du sujet masculin” (44). That desire has a sexual layer, but also one that engages with knowledge: “le regard philosophique doit être bloqué, indirect, difficile, de manière à rechercher, continuellement, à se aligner avec le corps de la femme, puisqu’elle est le support d’un manque à voir, d’un <<n’être pas>> de la vérité.” Recalling the hermeneutics of suspicion or paranoid epistemes of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Lacan, the suggestion is that the lack is where the meaning lies, which means the depths can never be reached. In their world, the woman’s power relies also on her own lack of knowledge of the truth: “la possibilité même du pouvoir révélateur de la femme réside dans son inconscience ou son non-savoir de l’inexistence de la verité. Cet aveuglement à l'égard de son propre effet est la condition nécessaire à son idéalisation et son objectivation: c’est ainsi, <<en fermant les yeux sur elle-même, qu’elle devient la pure construction d’un regard philosophique>>” (44). The epistemic appeal of women (for men) depends on women’s lack of knowledge of themselves. It relegates women to a position of ignorance where they are the vehicle to, but never the recipient of knowledge. The passage ends as follows: “Cette posture attribuée à la femme releve d’une volonté théorique visant à destituer le sujet rationnel, idéalisé par les philosophes modernes. Pour ce faire, la femme se voit érigée comme la preuve théorique de la précarité de la raison, de la conscience et, corollairement, de la connaissance. Elle est un sujet qui n’en est pas un, qui ne se connait pas lui-meme. Le fait de sa féminité est à ce titre indicatif du procédé d'altérisation et de différenciation” (44-45). The female nude is defined by a paradox: to be an object of desire is to be unknowable. Or, in Pelletier’s words: “L’autre féminin est pris dans un paradoxe: sa réalité comme objet de désir dépend de son inconnaissabilité” (45).
Hence, philosophers come to see women as the limit of knowledge or an abstraction.
In turn, “La femme en vient à représenter la limite de ce qui est maîtrisable, de ce qui est pensable, et c’est en cela qu’elle constitue l’objet du désir épistémologique masculin” (45). In turn, “parce qu’ils l’imaginent occuper l’au-delà de la théorie, la femme figure l’ultime fantasme philosophique. La femme occupe la limite et l’excès de la pensée tout en demeurant, pour la philosophe, inaccessible” (45). Referring to Derrida and others, she suggests that “Dans le discours philosophique, la différence sexuelle est niée puisque la femme devient la véhicule, le support d’un désir <<hom(m)osexuel>> pour réprendre la formule d’Irigay: un désir autoeffectif du masculin. C’est dire que, chez ces philosophes, la méconnaissance est un fait fantasmatique, l’objet d’un désir qu’ils projettent sur une femme, plus qu’une posture qui concerne ou affecte les femmes” (45). The discourse around the female nude erases women in order for men to supplant their own ideas onto them. Misunderstanding becomes as important as actually understanding.
Pelletier continues on to note that when philosophy discusses women, “elle n’en parle pas comme d’une réalité matérielle” (49). Later, this becomes tied to an antiessentialist argument. It’s a timely addition to the conversation. Given how conservatives seem to be using “you can’t define a woman” as some kind of “gotcha” question, Pelletier offers an effective discussion of why all essentialist arguments fail—a woman is not just a being with a vagina and uterus; a woman is not just someone who has children; a woman is not even necessarily feminine. Womanhood is related to lived realities, “un cadre matérialiste, phénoménologique.” That is where feminine consciousness arises. Thus, traditional philosophy denies women their own identities: “Dans la résistance à engager leur pensée dans un rapport spéculaire, les philosophes refusent à la femme une existence subjective, matérielle dans le language et la théorie” (50).
The question remains on how the image of the female nude in art engages with this discourse. It is not immediately apparent whether, by default, the nude form creates an abstraction or brings knowledge to the fore. I don’t know if Pelletier resolves this seeming paradox other than through individual treatments of the subject. It’s not as though there’s a set of rules that we seem able to apply consistently.
Returning to the matter at hand, Pelletier notes that representations create a challenging relationship to essentialism. One woman comes to stand for all women. She notes, “Cette différence exclusive entre femme (réele) et représentation (soit l’une, soit l’autre, <<ce n’est pas une femme, c’est une image>>, écrit Didi-Huberman) est essentialle à une réflextion universaliste, qui repose sur l’indifférenciation sexuelle (il n’y a pas de femme). C’est dire que l’image de la femme a plus qu’une fonction métonymique, métaphorique ou encore symptomatique; la femme – mise à nu – fait office de nouveau paradigme formel et représentationnel” (50). It’s a complex argument to follow, and I admit that I don’t fully understand the nuances. There’s a difference between real women and depictions of them; that much is clear. The image is not the thing, there’s always a distance. But that then becomes a universalist depiction that erodes difference. As an art form, then, the idea of a nude figure inaugurates a new way of thinking.
The subject becomes the site of a sexual difference: “En raison de la relation particulière des femmes au régime de la visibilité, on se trouve dès lors devant la nécessité d’engager une réflextion matérielle de l’image et l’intégrant à une pensée de la différence sexuelle” (50). Pelletier advances the idea that a woman’s image “convoque bel et bien l’existence des femmes, leur réel; cela les concerne, cela les regarde. La forme, et plus précisément la mise en forme des signifiants qui nous présentent une femme, a une consistance matérielle, une valuer de phénomene, une valeur référentielle sensible et empirique” (50). In this moment, the nude subject does seem to offer a perspective of the truth that corresponds to material realities. It becomes a window in itself.
The issue is often that sites of difference become sites of negation. Consider,f or example, the essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. That which communicates differently might as well be erased. So, Pelletier searches for a difference that is not at the same time a negation: “Le virtuel s’actualise en se différenciant, en procédant par une différence sans négation. Et de même, l’actuel peut se virtualiser, c’est-à-dire se déplacer de l’ici et maintenant, vers un autre champ spatio-temporel, dans un champ incorporel. Ainsi, l'actuel et le virtuel coexistent, et entrent dans un étroit circuit qui nous ramène constamment de l’un à l'autre” (66-67). There’s a kind of balance between the artificial representations and the real, a circuit of correspondence. Under the surface here is the primacy of individuality versus the archetypical: “Il a été commode pour la tradition de séparer le féminin à l'intérieur d'un rapport négatif où les femmes se différencient de la <<Femme>>, et où ces deux termes, par leur statut, ne peuvent jamais se rencontrer” (67). This places women once more in a precarious position that instantiates a new ontology, a kind of resistance to being perceived as anything “stereotypically” feminine. This individuation ensures that the collective and the individual remain separate: “L’une n’a pas à voir avec l'autre. L’une est idéale, un fantasme, une abstraction; l’autre est réelle, physique, matérielle. Une femme réelle peut bien penser, fantasmer, imaginer la <<Femme>>. Mais la <<Femme>> ne peut jamais être l’affaire des femmes” (67).
Pelletier’s response to the relationship of the Ideal to the actual is to ensure that the causal relationship is inverted. The idea of capital-W Woman and the existence of actual women are misaligned. In turn, the idea is that rather than having an Ideal Woman against which to measure oneself, the idea of an Ideal Woman can only emerge from the actual lived realities of women. It’s a materialist approach that strives, simultaneously, to go against essentialist discourse: “je peux envisager le féminin, bien sur comme idéel, toutefois constitutif et existant dans le réel, comme vecteur de potentialités. Car (dans un retournement de la proposition de Malabou, <<le “féminin” doit bien quelque chose aux femmes>>), s’il ya quelque chose qui lie la <<Femme>> aux femmes, c’est peut-être ce qui passe et circule de l’une aux autre: quelque chose de féminin” (67).
This emphasis on the feminine (over, I suppose, the female), problematizes the idea of the Ideal. The feminine exists as “fantasme, comme idée, comme représentation, comme souvenir ou comme discours” (67) and“problématise le réel qui présente, sous diverses actualisations, la contingence de l’identité et de l’existence des femmes” (67). The notion that the real destabilizes the Ideal serves as an effective philosophy which restores the primacy of specific instantiations of womanhood. Returning to the idea of nudity, “La nudité féminine, comme cadre, comme mise en scène, virtualise le féminin; elle interpelle, concerne, regarde et rejoint les femmes dans la réalité de ce qu’il y a chez elle de féminin, de ce qui entretient un rapport avec la <<Femme>>” (67).
In terms of specific instantiations of femininity, Pelletier has several extended sections about the author Marguerite Duras [anecdotally, I want to to read her work and at Type Books I saw that they’re doing a book club with her book The Lover. But I digress.
In short, the central premise regarding Duras is that she refuses to show: “Elle n'offre aucune image de la Vérité; remet même en doute la présence d'une Vérité” (85). The arboreal interpretation of womanhood (cf. the criticisms of Deleuze and Guattari) is thus subverted. The secret at the core of femininity is not exposed and instead “Elle offre un point de vue depuis le noir de la chambre, sur la <<chambre nue>>, là où est étendue la femme. Elle fait paraître en périphérie ce qui ne se capte que dans un fondu de lumière ou un mouvement de matière” (85). Having not read any of Duras’ work, I’m ill-suited to comment. That being said, Pelletier offers a really compelling and engaging discussion of Duras’ work. There’s a mystery at the core of the work and in refusing to reveal a secret she seems to resist the paranoiac episteme that everything has a deeper and deeper core to explore. In turn, she does not collect truth like a butterfly pinned to its display but instead hovers around them: “Avec Duras, je me permets de penser la nudité féminine comme ce qui flirte avec le fantasme de l’origine – celle du monde, mais surtout celle de la femme –, et ce qui rend visible dans l’écriture le désir de la femme, et sa méchanique proper, qui consiste à mettre en échec le fantasme de la connaissance” (85). It’s a compelling inversion where the male gaze is de-centered in favour of feminine desire and understanding.
Pelletier focuses on “les divers rideaux et systèmes de caches qui ont recouvert la toile de Courbet ont longtemps renvoyé à la volonté des spectateurs masculins de voir et de savoir le sexe de la femme, et de maintenir dans sa potentialité ce désir épistémologique spécifiquement phallique” (85). Hearing this commentary about curtains is particularly interesting, especially given the connection to Lynch. In another recent read of mine, The Weird and the Eerie, Mark Fisher comments on Lynch’s obsession with curtains and, while Pelletier doesn’t comment on it here, it is nonetheless interesting to consider the idea of disclosure in relation to the symbolism—particular because Lynch seems to give voice to the voiceless Napalm Girl.
The curtain is something that conceals, but could also be projected upon. In the work of Duras, Pelletier comments on how “En revanche, le drap blanc qui dit et s’étale dans la chambre de La maladie de la mort figure la toile mise a plat, le voile déjà tombé et absent sur lequel rien ne peut plus se projeter. Seul demeure le corps exposé, exhibé, de la femme qui n’offre rien sinon, peut-être, dans la fausse profondeur de son sexe, par sa plasticité et sa capacité à changer de forme en fonction de la mise en scène, son irréductibilité” (85). It’s paradoxes like these I feel compelled to read Duras’ work—perhaps these sections of Pelletier’s work are best revisited after experiencing Duras’ novels first hand.
Overall, Nudités féminines. Images, pensées et sens du désir offers a fair amount of thought-provoking commentary. I really appreciate how Pelletier gives a nearly chronological narrative, ranging from defining Woman, but then replacing that discourse femininity, bridging into trans and racial experiences of femininity. Dealing with the particular art works is probably where Pelletier most shines. Looking for a comprehensive philosophy is much more challenging throughout the book, but is, after all, not really the point. The materialist, antiessentialist philosophy is worthwhile, even if I sometimes lose the thread of the overarching thought.
For me: a gold star for reading French philosophy. For you: happy reading!
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