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Journal des africanistes

A pragmatic impulse in the anthropology of art ? Gell and semiotics


Karel Arnaut

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Arnaut Karel. A pragmatic impulse in the anthropology of art ? Gell and semiotics. In: Journal des africanistes, 2001, tome 71,
fascicule 2. pp. 191-208;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/jafr.2001.1277

https://www.persee.fr/doc/jafr_0399-0346_2001_num_71_2_1277

Fichier pdf généré le 09/05/2018


Arts et esthétiques

Karel ARNAUT*

A pragmatic impulse in the anthropology


of art ? Gell and semiotics

Review article of Alfred Gell, 1998. Art and agency : an anthropological


theory. Oxford : Clarendon Press.

When, in preparation of this article, I asked a friend and colleague


whether he had come across any reviews of Alfred Gell' s Art and Agency
(1998), or of anthropologists who had applied Gell' s « system » to their
field data, he responded in his usual stringent way that « Everyone seems to
have fallen for the « Gell is a genius » line and failed to engage ».
In some indirect way, the fact that I have only been able to locate two
book reviews (Harrison 1998 ; Jamieson 1999) may indicate that on the
whole anthropologists and certainly africanists have failed to engage. This is
all the more surprising because the two reviews share an equal admiration
for Art and Agency on three points : (i) Gell is a creative scholar who has
produced an original and powerful model which connects with
contemporary theory-building on selfhood and social relationships, (ii) this
making it into a (the first ?) proper anthropological theory of art/material
culture, which (iii) makes use of an inventive, valuable terminology. What
then precludes, one may ask, scholars from further « engaging » ?
This paper tries to make out a central problematic in Art and Agency :
it goes both too far and not far enough. It goes too far, I argue, in trying to
devise a high theory, a proper anthropological theory of material culture. To
that end Gell reinvents a theory of difference which excludes certain
analytic practices as non-anthropological and which is based on delimiting
an alleged « anthropological » empirical field. Although the theorising as
such is found innovative and promising, the initial limitations weigh heavily
in that the many possibilities that are opened up by introducing a novel
analytical scheme are bound to be left unexplored.
What I hope to demonstrate in the end is that it could be a mistake to
seize upon the analytical shortcoming in order to subvert the theoretical

* Ghent University

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192 Karel ARNAUT

excess and to end up with nothing. Instead, I try to show that the initial
analytic renewal gets eventually caught up in some theoretical spin and that
by detecting the latter we can profitably save the former.
For the sake of this argument I make a distinction between two parts of
the book. The first part consists of chapters 2 to 6 in which Gell outlines his
new method and terminology and illustrates their use with ethnographic
examples. The second part consists of the introductory chapter 1 in which
Gell sets out the general lines of his theory, which is then further developed
in the chapters 7, 8, and 91.

INDEX AND ABDUCTION :


PEIRCE PUT TO ETHNOGRAPHIC USE

Art and agency is basically about analysing the contexts of social


relations (i) that are objectified in the art object and (ii) which « social
objects » constitute. In order to support such a description, Gell devises a
four-term model. The main players in any action-context in the vicinity of
objects are identified and related as follows : a material (artefactual) Index
made by an Artist « represents » a Prototype and appears before a Recipient.
The uncommon term is index and Gell points out that this is a loan
from the semiotic theory of Charles Saunders Peirce ; the tricky term in the
above equation is « representation » because indices do that in a specific
way. Gell uses « index » in the sense of « natural sign », which in my view
can be understood better in the definition given of it by Sebeok « a sign that
has a causal relation between signifier and signified » (Schillemans 1992,
p. 270). Because of this special relation, indices have the effect of drawing
the attention of the interpreter / user / addressee (Recipient) to the object of
the index (Prototype) or its maker (Artist) (Lee 1997, pp. 119-120)2 This
« attention » is theorised by Gell and made to cover many kinds of cognitive
processes - « abductions » or « abductive inferences » - that surround the
artefactual index3. Indices motivate abductive inferences about both the
artist and the prototype, and exert agency on the recipient or the other way

1 I will not be dealing much with chapter 8 because it more or less stands on its own and is
rather detached from the rest of the book, and from the problematic of the « index » and the
« anthropological theory » with which this review article is concerned.
2 There is a vast literature on Peirce. Apart from a rather general introduction (Hookway
1985), I have used a number of recent publications by the anthropological linguist Benjamin
Lee (1997) and the semiotic anthropologist Richard Parmentier (1997a and 1997b).
3 Although introduced into sign-theory by Peirce, the term « abduction » was redefined and
popularised by Umberto Eco. In his hands abduction became a rather vague term, covering
what one commonly understands as speculation or hypothesising : not strictly controlled
kinds of scientific knowledge (Caesar 1999, pp. 117-119).

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 1 93

around (Gell 1998, p. 27). To the extent that a variable in the above
equation exerts agency relative to another variable that undergoes the effects
of it, the former is the agent and the latter the patient. People (Artist,
Recipient, but sometimes also the Prototype) can bring to bear « primary
agency» on objects, while an object's agency is of a secondary kind,
derived as it is from the motivated actions of primary agents. It is important
to note in this how the agency of people when applied to many objects is
being transferred and disseminated by artefactual indices.
Indices are bi-directional, they point (i) towards their Prototype and
Artist (abduction of origination) and (ii) towards the Recipient (for instance
by « captivating », « trapping », or « repelling » their observers or
addressees). This indexicality can further be seen accompanying the
distribution of objects in time and space : objects refer back to their origin
(place and time of production, prototype, artist), are inscribed with their past
use (e.g. handling, blood sacrifices, etc.), and may influence the production
of other artefactual indices whereby the original index is turned into a
prototype.
Examples of artefacts-in-context throughout the book illustrate the
above exemplary indexical profile of the artefactual signs. The two most
salient features of the objects that emerge from these reconstructions are (i)
objects « internalise » the agency of one and mostly several people/agents,
and (ii) objects « exteriorise » their internalised agency (power, meaning,
intention) in the social action that surrounds it. These two reconstructive
gestures follow the parallel movements of involution and distribution. At
the empirical level one witnesses a near-identification between these very
social objects and the people that socialise (with) them.
Together with the four terms, Gell also devises a notational system
with letters for each of the four agentive variables and for each of the two
statuses (agent, patient) ; connecting them through long or short arrows.
These arrows can stand for any possible action effected from one variable
upon another, while the long arrow usually represents the culminating
moment in the nexus of actions and relationships described. Here it is
important to note that the diagrams by which these contexts are formalised
are not put forward as presentations of « what objectively happens », but are
made to reveal a certain perspective on who exerts agency on whom or what
(Gell 1998, p. 57).
In all, such a method supported by a manageable array of terms and
interrelations appears to promisingly explore the domains of interaction that
decenter (contextualise) the art object and turn it simultaneously into a tool
and an agent of semiotic action and intersubjective exchange. Much of this

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194 Karel ARNAUT

success can be seen residing in the choice and partial redefinition of the
Peircean « index ».
Although Gell is careful to point out that he merely borrows the term
from Peirce and does not necessarily take much « content » or définition
with it, looking at how the index is generally positioned among other terms
in Peirce's system is illuminating. The index features in one of Peirce's
three sign-type trichotomies, the one that distinguishes icon, index, and
symbol. Icons are signs that establish relationships between different visual
or other experiential registers, they basically translate certain « qualities »
into other « qualities ». Symbols are signs which relate a signified to a
signifier which is recognised as such by convention ; « a law » causes the
symbol to be interpreted as referring to an object. The index, then, covers
signification whereby there is contiguity between sign and object to the
extent that the object modifies the sign. Comparing these three domains of
signification one can attribute to them a specific terrain of human and
scholarly activity. The field of the icon is exemplarily « cultural » : at a
relatively low level of awareness people experience phenomena and order
and connect these experiences. The scholarly activity that deals with art as
iconic signification is aesthetics (Gell 1998, pp. 4-5). The field of the
symbol is that of communicative action relying on relatively stable codes
for articulating experiences/knowledge/intentions ; the most linguistic-like
of the art studies disciplines is iconography, which seeks to decode the
meanings in art (Gell 1998, pp. 6-7). Indices then constitute a third field
somewhere in between the two others, that of the « social », of human
agents using « cultural » objects to « articulate » their action, intentions, etc.
Gell (1998, p. 6) sees artefactual indices play « the practical mediatory role
in the social process ». The discipline most suited to deal with this domain
is a new anthropology of art й to be built from scratch, according to the
author, because anthropologists so far have been lured into aesthetic and/or
iconographie analysis. Finally, within the domain of the social, Gell
perceives one other discipline that can deal with art but differently : the
sociology of art (e.g. Bourdieu) or the social history of art focus on the
institutional side of art use and the participation of large, society-wide
groupings (classes), in the art phenomenon. In contrast, as Gell (1998, p. 1 1)
concludes in his introduction, anthropology operates ideally in a
biographical space, that of the lives and life-stages of subjects and objects alike.
The above presentation is meant to bring out how I see « index »
functioning at at least two levels within Art and Agency. As an analytic key-
term it helps to develop a new method of analysing « social objects ». As a
term known and used by theories of signification in the human sciences, the
index is made to index, so to speak, a proper anthropological perspective on

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 1 95

material culture. As said the latter is accomplished in what I have called


part 2 of the book, to the analysis of which I turn now.

A PROPER ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 1 :


MARCEL MAUSS AND PARTICIPATION

This is how Gell announces his determination to build a proper


anthropological theory :
« In fact, it might not be going too far to suggest that in so far as Mauss' theory of
exchange is the exemplary, prototypical " anthropological theory ", then the way to
produce an " anthropological theory of art " would be to construct a theory which
resembles Mauss, but which was about art objects rather than prestations » (idem, p. 9).
At that point it is unclear to what extent his will resemble Mauss' theory
apart from the fact that « anthropological theories are [...] typically about
social relationships» (p. 11). The latter is certainly the case, but it needs
little arguing that « prestations » in Mauss' theory of the gift concern as
much the « objects » as the social relationships that they institute.
Throughout the book, this scheme is at work, although enriched by more
recent approaches by Marilyn Strathern and Nancy Munn4. In the end,
however, it is difficult not to see that the Maussian archaic gift whereby
people participate in the inalienable gifts (objects) they allocate (produce
and distribute), sharing out themselves in the process (Mauss 1990, p. 46),
is the leitmotiv of GelPs entire project.
What connects the Maussian gift and Gell' s art object is that they are
both instantiations of participation. This participation paradigm has the
double effect (i) of piloting a coherent theory of « social objects » not only
in their material but also in their conceptualised form, and (ii) of narrowing
the empirical field that Gell is able, or disposed, to cover. The enthusiasm of
the two reviewers mentioned earlier is aroused by the first observation, this
paper wants to highlight the second and then tries to see how this
undermines the theory-building as such.
In part II of Art and Agency the theory of social « objecthood » and
objectified personhood are developed using, in this order, the examples
of (i) exuviae sorcery first in a person-to-person situation (volt sorcery) and
then in a person-to-god situation (Tahitian To'o), and of (ii) idols first in a
simple form (as establishing reciprocity and intersubjectivity between god
and worshipper in Hindu effigies) and then in their more complex form
combining internal and external animacy : idols are put forward as social

4 More specifically Strathern's cocept of the « distributed person » and Munn's theorising of
Kula in Gawa as « process of constructing an intersubjective spacetime » in which she
develops a « generative or causal-sequential and iconic nexus of relations » (Munn 1986,
pp. 268 et 269).

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196 Karel ARNAUT

agents, and encapsulate willpower. This leads to the conclusion that art
objects as much as persons are at the same time part of social networks and
embody, internalise these networks. This model of the internal and external
distributed nature of objects and human beings, in chapter 7, prepares for
the final argument in chapter 9 that not only do people and objects act in
social networks, they also think in them. The Malangan memorial carving
(New Ireland) is brilliantly theorised as an index through which the total
« agentive capacity » of the deceased is reproduced in the « heads » of the
living (in return for ritual payments). In another, final example, the Kula
circulation of objects (the example is from the Kula ring of which Gawa is
part) is identified as the workings of an extended mind, the mind of the Kula
operator thinking (strategically) through objects and transactions, their
history and their anticipated future ; in other words Kula is extra-bodily
cognition from a largely invisible but nonetheless ever-present Kula
operator.
The last chapter concludes with two cases which at first sight are
somewhat of an anti-climax. First we see « the extended mind » at work in
the oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp. This seems to beg the question because the
mental participation of the artist in all and every instance of his / her opus is
presupposed, and Gell ultimately capitalises on an oeuvre and a particular
work (Large Glass and its constituent parts) which the artist sought to frame
as his extended self through inscribing it with indices (traces) of himself.
The second and penultimate example of the Maori meeting house makes the
rather obvious point that it is a space where past (ancestors), present
(memories and aspirations), and future (children, model for future building)
merge ; here Gell puts to use the observation by Nicholas Thomas that these
houses index the vitality of the group (Gell 1998, pp. 251-258)5. However,
in both cases, it is the obvious that Gell wants us to face : the fact that
individuals and groups self-consciously objectify their (changing)
consciousness in the material environment they create for themselves and,
surely, for others. Indices reveal their time-transcending, shifting, potential
because they can, at other moments in time refer to other ancestors, to
another present and another past. What is happening in these last pages is
that Gell puts the index as analytic instrument back into the hands of the

5 For this Thomas is fully acknowledged. This is not the case for a well-known art-historical
analysis of Large Glass by Rosalind Krauss (1977) in which she uses the concept of the
index to analyse contemporary art ; Krauss is recognised (Bal & Bryson 1991, p. 190, n 70)
as the one who introduced the « index » (or « shifters » as Peirce »s student Jacobson called
them) into art studies. This is pure « abduction of origination » from my side, but it seems
that the finale of the book equally tells about the initial inspiration for Art and Agency.

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 1 97

people he has been studying. Anthropologist and artist now participate in


the same semiotic trade.
This series of examples clearly illustrate the earlier contention that
participation is being explored consistently, but also, I hasten to add,
systematically. There is so to speak a certain direction to it, which in itself
corroborates a deeper link with Mauss'object / person theory and the theory
on which the latter was based.
In outlining the systematic study of aesthetic phenomena,
Mauss (1967) in his Manuel d'ethnographie follows a path which is based
on Preuss (1904-1905). The latter's theory situates the common origin of art
and religion in the primitive belief « an die Zauberkraft von einzelnen
Kôrperteilen und bestimmten Handlungen » (1904, p. 322). What follows is
an evolutionary process of externalisations of this « Zauberglauben ». The
subsequent attempts to gain control over the outside world start with the
body orifices (« Zauber der Kôrperôffnungen »), move over to the use of
different parts of the human body (« Sympathiezauber ») - forms of excreta
(e.g. faeces, semen, saliva, « sounds » from the throat), and bodily
movements (dances)- and finally result in using external objects which,
through imitation of the outside world (« Analogiezauber ») are believed to
capture its power (Preuss, 1904, pp. 322, 389 ; 1905, p. 380). Analogously
with this externalisation of mediating power-objects, the very locus of
power is gradually removed away from the human body : from personal to
anonymous spirits, and finally to gods (Preuss 1905, pp. 381-382).
In the Manuel d'ethnographie the categorisation of art objects follows
Preuss'
trajectory - the order in which the ethnographer explores the
aesthetic works of other peoples matches the way humanity gradually
discovers art. «On se servira, pour l'étude des arts plastiques », Mauss
(1967, p. 94) sets off, « d'une division établie, comme pour les techniques, à
partir du corps. Le premier art plastique est celui de l'individu qui travaille
sur son corps ». The subsequent entries for studying the arts are :
« cosmetics », decoration of the body (first of the body itself, then by
adding objects to the body), decoration of other objects (such as tools and
houses), and finally the « ideal arts » (drawing, painting, sculpture, and
architecture). Like in Preuss' series of artistic and religious phenomena,
Mauss explicitly framed his series as exemplifying a movement away from
the body (externalisation) coupled with that away from materiality
(spiritualisation). After discussing the plastic arts, Mauss introduces the
verbal and musical arts, saying that in considering them, we will observe
« des phénomènes » qui se dégagent de plus en plus de la matière. » (idem,
p. 108). The entries here are « dance », « music and song », « drama »,
« poetry » and « prose », and constitute a series in which form (« des choses

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198 Karel ARNAUT

tenues dans la main ») becomes secondary to spiritual content (« des états


de conscience ») {idem, p. 109).
By comparing Preuss' magico-artistic stages and Mauss' aesthetic
course with the successive examples in Art and Agency, I basically intend to
reframe Gell's theory as a gradual deployment of mechanisms of object-
mediated participation in and cognitive mastering of the outside (social)
world in a high theory of universal art production. It must however be noted
that « gradual » has a very different meaning in each of the three theories :
Preuss clearly sees a gradual progression in an evolutionary scheme ; Mauss
embeds this in a « scholarly » plan for the exploration and systematic study
of aesthetic phenomena, while in Gell's case the progression must be solely
understood within the context of theoretical perfection.
Nonetheless, the problematic which I pointed out before -the
simultaneous movements of theoretical amplification and empirical
reduction - can be rephrased in terms of such gradual progression. At the
point where the three theories reach their respective summits, the empirical
ground they cover becomes considerably smaller. At the height of
Preuss' evolution lies real art and religion « as we know it » ; at the end of
Mauss» course, scholars can have a go at «l'art ideal, mais qui n'est
qu 'une toute petite partie de l'art » (Mauss 1967, p. 95) ; in his final chapter
Gell chooses to theorise a number of specific cases of which he implicitly or
explicitly admits that they presuppose a kind of closure - a closeness and a
closed-ness, however, which contemporary anthropologists are prone to
reject right away. In the case of the Gawan Kula, the rope-pulling, semi-
divinised Kula operator calculates his strategy based on an albeit impressive
amount of more or less predictable exchange events. In the case of
Duchamp, Gell (1998, p. 242) specifies that his model « best applies to
artists whose oeuvre embodies a high degree of conscious self-reference and
coherent development». The theory advanced appears, in other words,
exceedingly successful in what contemporary anthropology would recognise
as a terribly rare sort of cases : that of a stable and closed group or
individual6. Here is a breaking point ; here it becomes obvious that Gell's
promising methodology is somehow trapped (« ensnared » as he might say)
in his own theory-building. My argument will be that the analytic tool of the
index not at all precludes addressing socio-economic contexts which do not
demonstrate such a degree of closure ; it is Gell's initial resolution to build a
proper anthropological theory that is meant to deal with other people, that
forces him to methodologically back down. Presently, I will focus on the

6 It may be of some interest that Strathern's concept of « dividuality » is precisely used to


argue against a stable selfhood across personal and social histories and cultural boundaries
(Battaglia 1995).

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 1 99

second aspect of the proper anthropological theory : its attempt to address


other art.

A PROPER ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 2 :


LEVI-STRAUSS AND OTHER ART

From the very start, Gell makes the choice of considering visual art
and excluding verbal and musical arts. Apart from this, he makes it clear
that his is a theory which supplements regular art theories and art history to
the degree that they appear successful in making sense of non- Western
colonial and post-colonial arts - if they are indeed, Gell prefers to stay away
from them. By implication his is a theory of « anthropological art » or what
he elsewhere called « primitive art » (1992, p. 62, fh 1) making thereby the
rather unappealing move of aligning anthropology with precolonial (and
surely, precolonial-like) non-Western society7. Methodologically Gell
excludes three ways in which anthropologists so far have approached art :
(i) as meaningful (language-like) communication, (ii) as sophisticated form
appreciated according to culture-specific aesthetic standards, and(iii) as
special products circulating in recognised art institutions. Apart from the
references to the prototypical theories of Mauss and, to a lesser degree Lévi-
Strauss, Gell sees anthropology effectively covering the relational context
constituted by human lives and life-stages. This biographical outlook
situates anthropology in between sociology (supra-biographical) and
psychology (infra-biographical).
All this indeed makes for a whole series of exclusions and what
emerges from it is Gell' s resolution to carve out an empirical field that is
substantially different from Western / modern art and that therefore cannot
be successfully covered by existing art studies. Distancing himself from
most contemporary anthropological art studies and aligning his theory with
those of Mauss and Lévi-Strauss, demonstrates how determinedly Gell is

7 As can be see from his other work and from his own reflections on it (Gell 1999), it was
not at all Gell's overall purpose to distinguish an empirical zone of primitive artistic action.
Such empirical reduction, I argue, emerged specifically from the theory-building in Art and
Agency to the extent that it prevented Gell from fully integrating the underlying ideas
developed in essays such as « Vogel's Net » and « On Coote's " Marvels of everyday
vision " » in this, his ultimate book on the anthropology of art. In the light of what he later
said about these two essays (in Gell 1999), this is all the more surprising. Of the former
essay, Gell declared that it was meant to open up the reactionary, 19th century definition of
art used in the anthropology of art, and to put Duchamp and so-called primitive art on an
equal footing {idem, p. 18). The purpose of this « Coote » essay is, according to the author,
approaching « a work of art as something more pragmatic and something wich emerges out
of a context of social interaction » {idem, p. 20).

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200 Karel ARNAUT

looking for a (new) theory of other art very much like Mauss was looking
for an other economy and Lévi-Strauss, even in his ideas on art, for other
ways of constructing knowledge. To start with Mauss, it has been argued
that L 'essai sur le don rather frankly constructs an anti-image of commodity
exchange to the extent of blurring a large range of factual distinctions in the
kinds of gifts described (Testait 1998, Thomas 1991). In Lévi-Strauss' ideas
on art, Hénaff (1998, pp. 190-213) detects a similar kind of « orientalist »
search for an anti-western art object. Here we see that Lévi-Strauss puts
forward the opposition between representation (in western art) and
signification (in «primitive» art). Signification resembles index-like
« participation » in that there is a material relation between the signifier and
the signified ; the signifier has not liberated itself from what it signifies.
This primacy of material over model is to be found, according to Lévi-
Strauss, in primitive art and in early Western art. Contrarily, in
representative art (Western art since the quattrocento), the model prevails
over the material, and through mimesis « the represented world is a world
possessed in effigy, mastered in its double » (Hénaff 1998, p. 196).
The general point about these, admittedly rather crudely summarised,
theories of art is that they feature in a shared tradition of imagining other
art. In building a distinctive theory (« anthropological ») pertaining to a
distinctive empirical terrain (non-Western, precolonial, primitive, etc.), Gell
does not escape this othering of art and the tradition of ideas that comes
with it.
There is no space here to illustrate the many models which this
imagining of other art has produced over a period of more than one hundred
years. For this we can rely on a recent reconstruction by Richard Parmentier
(1997b, pp. 63-89) who found that in culture historical discourse, one
distinguishes four epochs or types of cultures, each characterised by one
kind of prototypical semiotic activity. Slightly adapting his reconstruction
for our purposes we could distinguish between :
1. Cultures of confusion (primitive or archaic culture) employ symbols
without consciousness of the fundamental bar between signifier and
signified ; the signifier is magically confused with the signified ; the natural,
the human and extra-human (gods) realms participate in each other8'
Prototypical art product : the « fetish ».
2. Cultures of motivation (classical and medieval culture) see the
phenomenal world as a realisation of the divine realm ; signifiers are

8 With reference to Lévi-Strauss, Parmentier (1997b, p. 79) names this « the Age of
Bricolage ».

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 20 1

motivated by their signifiées ; the natural and human world are directed by
supra-worldly forces. Prototypical art product : the idol.
3. Cultures of convention (modernity) use conventional signs, and are
well aware of their arbitrary nature ; modern man assumes a positive
transparency between the phenomenal world and the realm of man-made
signs. Prototypical art product : the « representative » painting.
4. Cultures of aesthetics (postmodernity) detach signifying from any
referential ground ; signifiers are emptied ; there is multiplication of
autonomous code structures severed from an anchoring reality. Prototypical
art product : contemporary art collages, installations, and happenings.
The above model may seem dated and somehow too essentialising to
be still in use in the humanities. However, this is not the case. Up to the
present there is a vivid debate in art history, for instance, about how other
peoples' art functions and what it really is. For an example I turn to a
review by Arthur Danto of David Freedberg's The power of images.
Looking for a fundamental explanation of « the power of images », Danto
(1990) introduces the difference between « transeunt » and « immanent »
representation. In the first case the subject is distinct from the image
representing it, while in the case of « immanent representations made in
tribal Africa » or in religious icons « it is believed that the thing represented
is actually present in the representation » (Danto 1990, p. 342). The above
example further brings out that the reconstructed semiotic typology
differentiates types of art which are often grouped otherwise, for instance in
two opposing categories. Such is the case in Lévi-Strauss' distinction
between signifying and representative art - and this is a classic, popularised
as it was by Gombrich» (1963) opposition between conceptual and
perceptual art.
In seeking to capture Art and Agency in the above semiotic typology,
we could naively remark that most of the objects that feature in the book fall
within the categories of what culture historians would call confused and
motivated art (cultures 1 and 2 in Parmentier's scheme). Moreover, two of
the final examples in Chapter 9 virtually exemplify the fetish and the idol,
respectively. The Malangan memorial carving is the confused object par
excellence because it pulls together in its image the prototype (the
deceased), the artist (the few who have acquired the knowledge of
production) and the recipient (the wider community). The Gawan Kula, on
the other hand, perfectly illustrates the motivated object, controlled as it is
from a distance by a semi-divinised Kula operator.
However, presenting it like that, denies the theory-driven construction
of ethnographic « objects ». Therefore I do not argue that Gell has fallen
victim to the highly questionable semiotic typology presented above and

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202 Karel ARNAUT

that his « index » is an elegant way of rationalising such a position. In fact


what he does is quite the opposite : because of their indexicality, art objects
trigger confusion and motivation either in the minds of their immediate
audience or of the people who study them. Precisely the concept of the
index - sometimes deployed self-consciously by the users themselves {cf.
Duchamp and the Maori) - can help the anthropologist to de-confuse or de-
motivate the art objects ; to reveal what the objects plainly are : the focus of
social interaction and therefore invested with social agency themselves. The
object posing as either confused or motivated is, for want of a better
expression, a discursive effect, caused by the serious ideological game of
undergoing the agency of objects (or concepts) which one has created with
one's own hands and invested with the intentionality one wanted them to
possess.
All the same, if this refraining of Art and Agency in a sort of
Durkheimian problematic is correct, it remains all the more surprising that
Gell almost exclusively focuses on fetishes and idols, knowing full well -
and there are those scarce indications in examples like Duchamp and a
painting by Velazquez - that proper (« post-quattrocento », « perceptual »,
« representative ») art is liable to the same problematic, sometimes
deproblematised in the cute psychological phrasing : « the suspension of
disbelief».
As already hinted at, the key to solving this contradiction in Art and
Agency is by looking at what looks more and more like an arbitrary option :
the resolution to build a new anthropological theory and the perceived
necessity to exclude from this the two main ways anthropologists have been
dealing with art objects in aesthetic and iconographical studies. With these
methods Gell associates the kind of objects, which he prefers not to deal
with beautiful and meaningful art.

EXCLUSIONS AND CAPACITIES

I started the previous section by summing up the initial limitations both


in empirical range (e.g. possible exclusion of art proper) and in study
methods (exclusion of iconology and aesthetics) which Gell imposed on his
theory. If our observation that Art and Agency is understood by its author as
dealing with the semiotic processes identified as « confusion » and
«motivation» is correct, then we can now see how these limitations
function meaningfully within Gell' s theoretical discourse.
From the three sign-types identified by Peirce - icon, index, symbol -
Gell chooses the index because it illustrates appropriately the kind of
participation in the object, and motivation of the object which artworks of
the fetish and idol type exemplify. Approaching works of art as icons or

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 203

symbols would bring out the kind of qualities Gell chooses not to deal with.
Icons in Peirce's trichotomy are signs that share certain qualities with their
object. Considering this signifier-signified relationship one can highlight a
degree of resemblance between signifier and signified, either based (i) on
convention (Bal & Bryson 1991, p. 189), or(ii) on personal, albeit
negotiable, experience (Vansina 1984, pp. 136-137)9. Aesthetics in its
broader sense can be taken to refer to signification and valuation of qualities
(colour, visual or auditive configuration, texture, smell, etc.) that different
orders of experience differentiate or share (see Morphy 1994, p. 673).
Symbol on the other hand almost always points to conventional meanings of
images and objects ; analysing these falls within the range of iconography
and iconology. Stereotypically, iconology, unlike « aesthetics », approaches
the art object almost exclusively as an encoded message, and has less
attention for aspects of quality and materiality.
The above presentation brings out how approaching the art object as
icon and symbol covers most of regular art historical practice and indeed
most of what « art anthropology » has submitted as its research programme
(Morphy 1994). It is precisely in reaction to this double programme of
aesthetics and iconology as formulated by Morphy that Gell presents his
« third way » based on the concepts of index and abduction10. Put otherwise,
foregrounding the « index » can be seen within a general strategy of
dislocating icon and symbol, aesthetics and iconology from the centre of
anthropological theories of art.
Moves similar to the one of Gell can be witnessed in art history and
anthropology from the part of semiologists such as Mieke Bal, Norman
Bryson (Bal & Bryson 1991), and Keith Moxey (1994) for art history, and
Richard Parmentier (1997b) for anthropology. Their « démarches »
resemble the one by Gell in that they (i) rely on Peirce for methodological
guidance, (ii) use the « index » to discover neglected aspects of the sign-
functions of art objects, and (iii) envisage to build a general theory of
art /material culture which goes beyond the traditional framework of
separately regimented meaning, form and quality analysis.
On at least one important point Gell does not fit the « sémiologie
consensus » portrayed above : he privileges the index as much as he
excludes the iconic and symbolic functioning of art objects. Such exclusion
is not at all what the other semiologists have in mind. On the contrary, the
reconstruction of the semiotic typology by Parmentier (1997) had the

9 Vansina (ibidem) speaks of a « mental image » in the mind of the artist and of the patron ;
both their preconceptions of what the object should look like direct its realisation.
10 It must be pointed out that Morphy (1994) does not speak of a double programme but sees
the study of form and meaning come together in an enlarged programme of aesthetics.

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204 Karel ARNAUT

double goal of (i) profoundly interrogating the ethnocentric essentialisation


of the semiotic or metasemiotic activity of a culture or period, and more
importantly, (ii) drawing up a checklist of semiotic procedures all of which
could be explored by anthropologists when studying material culture.
Gell might have been surprised to find himself in the company of
semiologists but I consider this imagined alliance useful because it rightly
exposes how Art and agency is about meaningful objects, in the sense that
this meaning is always emerging in the different contexts of human action
that surround it11. Gell' s is a radically albeit narrowly defined semiotic
approach that shies away from projecting -reading- (relatively static)
meaning in the object itself - indeed, reading poses as if the meaning is
there to consume. Gell' s resolutely ethnographer's stance, puts meaning not
in what people are able to say about objects but, « abducts » meaning from
the human action in its vicinity. Throughout the many diagrams (in the first
part) and the rephrasings of others » fieldwork findings (second part), Gell
manages with efficiency to basically de-essentialise (de-confuse and de-
motivate) the object by laying out, as it were, its relatively objectified
« meaning » or « power » in the intentions and operations of the relevant
community around it.
The magical power of « nail fetishes », for instance, is « liquidified »
by looking at the gradual process of what Gell calls « involution » in the
course of which « a whole series of relations » are objectified in one index
(1998, p. 62). Another example makes this even more clear. Here Gell
reconsiders Kuchler's conclusion that a Malangan sculpture serves as a
temporary repository of the « life-force » of the deceased, and he points out
that:
« the life-force which accumulates in the Malangan carving is the net result or
product of a lifetime's activity in the social world, not a species of mystical energy
distinguishable categorically from ordinary life and activity ». {idem, p. 226)
The same reconstruction is made in connection with mauri fertility
stones of the Maori. Here again these stones are not understood as bluntly
embodying the fertility principle (hau) but of indexing fertility : the stones,
like the hair and nails of humans, are seen as the exuviae of the forest, that
grow and can be « harvested ». To conclude, laying out meaningful action
in and around objects, reintegrates them radically into the context that they
are indexing and let them be understood as objectification's of this relation-
context.

1 1 Although Gell at some stage admits that « there seems something irreducibly semiotic
about art » (p. 14), he states clearly enough that he suspects semiologists of obstinate
linguistic imperialism.

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 205

Venturing a step far beyond these observations and into the realm of
critical semiology, « meaning » and « power » in Gell's hands are
redistributed in their contexts and not locked up in the objects themselves,
whether the latter positioning of meaning or power is believed in by its
users, constructed by its anthropologists, or marketed by its tribal art
merchants. However, the latter kind of « protentions » outside the realm of
« traditional » art practice and the traditional anthropological subject, and
into the uses of objects in the context of commodity economy or in
ethnographic practice (whether professional or amateur) are few and far
between. And now that we have assessed the potential of the index in
spelling out social objectification, this may seem all the more disappointing.
By confronting Gell with the other semiologists, we are bound to
conclude that his can be conceived as a profoundly sémiologie way of
dealing with art. On the other hand, we learn from this confrontation that
excluding other processes of signification (iconic and symbolic) is most
probably narrowing one's view of the overall meaningful functioning of
objects. I have tried to argue that the exclusion of iconic and symbolic
signification may be motivated by Gell's resolution to build a proper
anthropological theory. This prompted him to push aside aesthetics and
iconography and led indirectly to the excommunication of the allegedly
non-indexical forms of signification. From what we can see from the other
semiologists, by having set these limitations, Gell may eventually have
drained his method from very useful resources.
One of the other consequences of opting for « traditional »
anthropological subjects was that, as his theory developed, Gell chose to
focus on what we identified as closed contexts in which the preferred
mechanisms of participation and motivation appeared unproblematic if not
downright exemplary. My final argument is that staying within these closed
contexts, focussing on these confused and motivated signs, and
presupposing total understanding between the different participants (artist,
recipient), has prevented Gell from sorting out the essential aspect of the
index, namely its indexicality. In the final section of this paper, I will
demonstrate that Gell's concern with building an anthropological theory has
regimented his sémiologie ideas in such away that he was unable to
perceiving the structural problem of indexicality of the Gellian index. Once
one starts dealing with this issue, emerges a series of research questions
which can be characterised as « pragmatic ».

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206 Karel ARNAUT

THINKING THROUGH INDEXICALITY :


THE PRAGMATIC IMPULSE

When presenting the concept of the index in Art and Agency, I pointed
out that although the term was of Peircean provenance, the core
characteristic of this « natural sign » resembled the definition given by
Thomas Sebeok, namely that there is a causal relation between signifier and
signified. Taking the example of deer stripping bark of trees whereby the
stripped bark is the index (Hookway 1985, p. 123), brings out the main
characteristics of this kind of indexicality : there is a general focus on
spatial contiguity (the deer must have touched the tree), there is an aspect of
ongoing participation (as traces) and motivation (tasteful bark, hungry deer),
and, finally, the stripped bark draws attention to its maker and triggers
speculations about his/her identity, intentions, etc. (abduction of
origination).
This is the meaning in which index is used in most of Art and Agency
and in two other publications mentioned above, namely Thomas'
description of the Maori meeting house and Krauss' analysis of traces of the
absent / present artist in contemporary art. However, this « index » in some
of its aspects is different from the way other semiologists like Parmentier
(1997b) and Bal & Bryson (1991) use it. They stay closer to the linguistic
definition of indices as « shifters » : « empty » signifiers within the object
which point to elements inside but also outside the whole object ; the basic
point about these shifters —think of a person in a painting pointing to
something or someone outside the painting- is that any changes in this
« outside » provokes shifts of meaning. Therefore, because they consider
changes of context to be essential in grasping the full historicity of the art
object, the other semiologists find it also advisable to make use of another
Peircean term, that of interprétant. « Interprétant » basically stands for the
meaning that is created by the recipient assuming a certain ground -the
« recognition » of what the object is or means on the basis of acquired
knowledge or past experience. Again in changing contexts and in
confrontations between recipients and « alien » objects, the reconstruction
of the interprétant is problematic and therefore a critical subject of enquiry.
After all, when the recipient does not share common ground with the artist
or the prototype, shifts in meaning are bound to occur.
I have argued that Gell remains operating ethnographically within
closed contexts which we can now redefine as : (i) contexts in which there is
no fundamental change in the contextual referents to which the shifters are
pointing, and (ii) contexts in which artists and recipients share the necessary
common ground to grasp what the objects are about (no radical change in

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ARTS ET ESTHETIQUES 207

« interprétant »). The general point is that because Gell remains operating
within these relatively closed rings of perpetual participation and mutual
understanding, the problem that indexicality is different and more complex
than the referential properties of the Gellian index, is not felt.
Once the theoretical (« anthropological ») excess is exposed as such
and the theory of social semiosis and objectification freed from its weight, I
believe the way is open for contemporary anthropologists to engage with
what is reconstructed as a middle-ground theory of the meaningful
functioning of social objects within and through historical localities. This
falls nothing short of what Parmentier (1997b) and Bryson (1991, p. 73)
suggest to call a « pragmatics » of art.

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