La ficcionalidad de la selfie

Questioning linguistic, and exclusively psychoanalytic models of subjectivity, feminist art criticism and scholarship turned to affect to highlight the role played by the body in the perception of images, sounds, smell, tastes and feelings (Papenburg, B. and Zarzycka, M., 2013: 8). This may be interpreted as a backward step towards binarism, which aligns

femininity with feelings and emotions and masculinity with rationality and reason. However, this strategy can also be seen as a way to re-define terms that have been ‘degraded’ through their association with femininity. For Susan Best, for instance, this gendering of feeling may explain its almost complete absence in art history (Best, S. 2014: 4).

The ‘affective turn’ has been interpreted as both, a distancing of art criticism from post structuralism and psychoanalysis, as well as a strengthening of the connection between psychoanalysis and art, (Best, S. 2014: 6). For Griselda Pollock both the affective and the symbolic play an important role in the creation of art (Pollock, G 2013b: 32). De Bruyckere’s

sculptures inhabit an in-between space, a place where “knowing and not-knowing” converge.

As Caruth explains, “it is at the specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experiences precisely meet” (Caruth, C. 1996: 3). I argue, therefore, that both psychoanalysis and affect theory will complement each other when discussing the connection between these two contrasting states of knowledge. Moreover, it is in this intersection that we may be able to make sense of De Bruyckere’s fragmented human bodies.

Scholarly interest in the notion of affect was prompted by the work of the American

psychologist Silvan Tomkins in the 1960s. He combined Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Darwin’s theory of evolution to demonstrate that affect is an innate and complex structure of emotions and responses functioning as the “primary motivational system” (Tomkins, S. 2009:

164, 168). In his theory, affect refers to the biological and genetically transmitted part of the emotional mechanism that pre-exists in each of us. The affect system lies at the base of all human actions and its responses. These bodily responses become a means of communication between individuals. Affect can be activated both by internal / external and unlearned / learned

“stimuli” (ibid 164).³⁰ The evolutionary and biological interpretations of human emotions have been heavily criticised, by both neuroscience and cultural studies, as it has been shown that what may provide happiness / suffering in one person/culture may not necessarily correspond to the emotions raised in another. Nonetheless, recent genetic research has found that the descendants of Holocaust survivors have been epigenetically marked by the enormous trauma, corroborating the hypothesis of a connection between external environments, traumatic events and genetics (Yehunda, R. et al. 2014).

Central to this study is Tomkins’ notion of resonance. Resonance describes the tendency of a person to experience the same affect when viewing the external signs of that affect on another person (Tomkins, S. 2008: 652). Many studies in neuroscience demonstrate the existence of inference or resonance, yet there has not been much interest in the humanities in developing a notion of ‘spectatorship’ that combines the complementary viewpoints of the unlearned ‘universals’ with the learned cultural specificity of emotions. I think that a theory which considers both viewpoints could contribute to the understanding of the viewers’

30 The research on facial expressions has found evidence of six universal basic emotions in the West. The emotions are: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust with contempt (Ekman, P. 1992: 550). When basic emotions are considered genetically transmitted, bodily and automatic responses, their external expression becomes invested with a certain

‘essentialism’ (Leys, R. 2011: 438). There is, however, a growing body of scientific research confuting the existence of a finite number of basic emotions from which to scientifically generalise (ibid: 439).

engagement with artworks that reproduce the human body or part of it.

There are a number of contrasting definitions of terms such as affect, emotions and feelings; in part this depends upon how conscious these ‘emotional events’ are considered to be. Often described as a structure of ‘basic emotions’ located between the body, and

consciousness, affect is considered as an energy originating from a personal and interior energy that attaches itself to objects (Bennett, J. 2012: 21-22). As a term, affect is often used as a synonym for emotions or defined as the physical expression of emotions and feeling.

Iréne Matthis, for instance, defines affect as an overarching term that contains both the notions of emotion and feeling (Matthis, I. 2000: 217). Brian Massumi, instead, distinguishes between the notions of feelings, emotions and affect. For him, feelings are personal as they are derived from previous personal experiences. Emotions, for him, are social because being the visible expression of feelings they tend to abide by the restrictions of social norms. Affect is a pre-personal unconscious and non-linguistic occurrence (Massumi, B. 1995: 88) and he defines it as the influence of the virtual on the actual and vice versa (Massumi, B. 1995: 96).³¹

In art discourses, affect is often equated to the spectators’ experience and the effects created by the art object upon their bodies. With its connection between the psychic and the somatic, between the cultural and the biological, between feeling and knowing, affect plays an essential role in the formation of meaning in De Bruyckere’s artwork. In her artwork the bodies are presented as open and defined by their capacity to affect. The human body is then potentially displaced, expanding corporeality with the psychic, the animal and the ‘interacting of bodies’. This extension blurs the boundaries between the biological, psychological and social. By setting up relations between the object and the space in which it has been directly placed, between presence and absence and between inside and outside, De Bruyckere’s work takes advantage of the embodied connection between space, body, art object and senses.

A constant between all the diverging definitions and theorisation of affect is the belief that affect is an unconscious bodily process, which takes place before cognition (Leys, R. 2011:

443). Affect will therefore be helpful in understanding De Bruyckere’s artwork, which plays

31 A possible link between the virtual and human perception is provided by an empirical study, in which scientists noted contradicting results in the children’s reactions to different versions of a short TV program. From the results of this experiment Massumi concluded that there is no connection between content and intensity in the reception of images.

Describing intensity as a non-conscious automatic bodily reaction, he claimed that intensity cannot signify, but may change the meaning, (Massumi, B. 1995: 84-85). Pointing out the incompleteness of ‘symbolic’ approaches to understanding images, he called for the integration of ‘intensity into cultural theory, (ibid: 87), which he equates to affect, (ibid: 88), leading to a clear distinction between the notions of feelings, emotions and affect. He defines affect as the influence of the virtual on the actual and vice versa, “the simultaneous participation of the virtual in the actual and the actual in the virtual, as one arises from and returns to the other. Affect is this two-sidedness as seen from the side of the actual thing, as couched in its perceptions and cognitions”, (Massumi, B. 195: 96).

on the spectators’ immediate and visceral reactions. This immediate physical and emotional engagement, which temporarily precedes the conceptual understanding of her artwork, also involves haptic visuality and becomes an experience of imaginative touching (Sobchack, V.

2004: 67-70). Recognising the importance of all the senses in the perception and interpretation of artwork may draw attention to both the personal and the shared knowledge involved in experiencing art.

Additionally, the recent discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ in human beings may influence the debate whether it is ever possible to share some embodied experiences with other human beings. Scientists have shown how for individuals watching another person moving a body part, the corresponding part of the brain becomes engaged and the muscles become

unconsciously more active as if they would have been doing the movement themselves. The discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ explains the biological mechanism behind the unconscious mimetic body behaviour and underlines the importance of physical human interaction for healthy development (Frascari, M. 2011: 77). The repercussions of this discovery on the empathetic responses of spectators to artwork have not yet been considered. However,

Freedman predicts that these neuroscientific discoveries will question the primacy of cognition and he states that “a crucial element of aesthetic response consists of the activation of

embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal

sensation, and that these mechanisms are universal” (Freedberg, D and Gallese, V. 2007: 197).

In the context of this thesis, the mirror neurons theory, similar to Tomkins’ ‘resonance’, will support the idea that human beings can empathise with the pain and suffering of another human being.

During the last ten years, neuroscientists have shown an increased interest in researching the connection between art and empathy. The interest in empathy, which started in the nineteenth century as a contribution to aesthetic and then spread to psychology, has more recently caught the interest of neuroscientists.³² Indeed, the empathetic response to artwork has recently gained renewed attention in the Sciences with the publication of several articles showing the connection between having pain and seeing images of other people suffering. Out of this research, two approaches emerged: the mirror neuron system, as described above,

32 In 1873 the art historian Robert Vischer introduced the term “Einfühlung” in his book Über das Optische Formengefühl: in Beitrag zur Aesthetic. ’Einfühlung’, which is often translated as ‘feeling-into’, related to the affective personal emotions and experiences felt by the viewer when confronted with an art object (Cambray, J. 2009: 70). Psychologists’ interest in empathy started in 1909, with the German philosopher of aesthetics, Theodor Lipps and Edward Titchener translation of the German term ‘Einfühlung’, as ‘empathy’ into English (Gaut, B. 2010: 138).

which presupposes automated responses upon seeing movements; and on the other side, the alternative neural networks (Schott, G.D. 2015: 812). There is now evidence that sometimes empathy is conveyed without engaging mirror neurons. This happens especially when viewers are presented with well known prevailing images or histories from within their culture that reference the notion of suffering. In this case, pain is mediated through a metaphor (ibid, 813).

As far as De Bruyckere’s art is concerned, both approaches will be useful in explaining the viewer’s empathy towards her fragmented figures. On one hand, the alternative neural networks model may shed light on the reasons behind the spectators’ emotional investment when viewing images which reference Christian iconography or old masters aimed at triggering the spectators’ emotional responses. In this case, the visual analogy involves cognitive processes. Empathy is evoked through a complex convergence of knowledge and visual clues. On the other hand, mirror neurons can begin to explain the spectators’ feelings when presented with impossibly contrived bodies, as most of us have experienced bodily pain and can refer to it. Therefore, combining both scientific theories will help to form a better understanding of the spectators’ emotional reactions provoked by De Bruckyere’s artworks.