Double(nesse)s

1/One

“The spectacle he is observing is thus doubly invisible.” (Foucault, 4)
“The mirror (…) allows us to see, in the center of the canvas, what in the painting is of necessity doubly invisible.”
“A reflection [that] (…) restores, as if by magic, what is lacking in every gaze: in the painter’s, the model, which his represented double is duplicating over there in the picture: that is, an ideal point in relation to what is represented, but a perfectly real one too, since it is also the starting-point that makes the representation possible.” (Foucault, 15)

What is the notion of “representation” – or, more accurately, of “representation in its pure form” (Foucault, 16) – that Foucault operates with?

In the lecture today, Prof. Doane suggested that Foucault is engaging with the Classical concept of representation as resemblance, as the negotiation of likeness and difference. Taking into consideration the (frequent) use of the term “double” in “Las Meninas”, however, I would suggest that an account of representation as “the process of double(nesse)s/double(nesse)s in process” is equally valid and perhaps more fruitful in its implications. In his essay about The Uncanny, Freud claimed that the double(ness) is a source of the uncanny. I would argue that, in the case under scrutiny (Foucault’s discussion in “Las Meninas”), (representation as) double(nesse)s is a source of fascinating paradoxes.
Along with the direct presence of the word “double” (and in its adverbial form) in the text, the “double” is also indirectly present in “Las Meninas” through the use and discussion of the mirror. Intriguingly, the painter (he who maneuvers – and supposedly understands – the mechanism of representation, in this case) is not captured in the reflection in the mirror – even though he is interposed between the representation on the canvas and its reflection/representation in the mirror. His double remains an absence. This suggests, in my view, that representation “in its purest form” (in the mirror) presupposes a co-existence in the moment of both the present and the absent, undoing in a sense the logical principle of non-identity which asserts that an X cannot be and not be at the same time. On this account, the represented both is and is not in the system of representation (Foucault posits an exterior point along a sagittal plane to the painting that the painter, the spectator, and the subject matter (the royal figures, in Las Meninas) occupy). These double(nesse)s turn the represented and representation into a great unknown, expanding thus the space of (their) meaning infinitely.

2/Two

What is the relationship between representation and language? Is language representation as double(nesse)s?

I find the idea of language as representation of the world particularly fascinating. A model of language, thought, and the world as isomorphic structures – as proposed by Wittgenstein – seems most compelling to me. Such a model involves a necessary double(ness) that maintains the interdependence of language, thought, and the world that Saussure postulates while allowing for an autonomy of the three which – even if illusory – opens a space of freedom and agency.

3/Three

(How) Does representation as double(nesse)s operate in language?

In my view, language/ the act of engaging in language produces a double subject: the present subject that is being represented in language, and the absent (from the system) one that represents itself in language. These two are inseparable – like two sides of a sheet of paper – just like Saussure’s signifier and signified. (This idea is perhaps somewhat similar to Lacan’s account of the split subject. The difference lies, however, in that in the model I am proposing, the double subjects are co-present, whereas for Lacan the real “self” (for want of a more appropriate word) ceases to exist with the entry into language/the symbolic. I believe that such a model would enable a rescue of the self while maintaining some of the major tenets of the Saussurian theory of language and of those derived from it.

4/Four

Barthes’ s proclamation of the “death of the Author” entails, I would argue, a paradox, a double(ness). On one hand, it acknowledges – in the same line with Saussure – that language is not (merely) a tool: it is relational, active, and inescapable; it “sometimes has a life of its own” (Catherine Belsey). On the other, it opens up the space of signification/meaning, thus empowering the reader-subjects (a move that, I would argue, is not new: in a sense, though in a very different context, Protestantism argued for a similar opening of the space of meaning when it proclaimed that individual readers should/could turn to the Bible themselves and derive meaning from it). This tension is, I believe, irresolvable, yet (or precisely because of this) worthy of inquiry.