This chapter seeks to develop the question of what may be taken as sociologically acceptable evidence for it has become apparent that, in addition to the original intention of collecting verbal data from= marketing managers and the subsequent attempts to evaluate the design of artefacts, there are significant aspects of social structure, commercial exchange and the nature of evidence which are only apprec
iable in visual terms. It will therefore be argued that marketing may
be seen as both a reflection of and a contribution to the asymmetry implicit in those common sense understandings which result from the search for
"a reconciliation between reality and man, between development and explanation, between object and knowledge."
The importance of individual perceptions of reality will be discussed un the same basis, as these considerations are not readily appreciated without some reference to the culture which produced them. The
following is a case in point, for even textual evidence must be reconsidered accordingly.
"Ultimately, I want to agree with Garfinkel and others re the primacy of the situated, practical, methodical and accomplishable character of all social and cultural objects. There is absolutely no doubt on this score. However, I fail to see how studies of such phenomena, no matter how
1 empirical*, could be carried out without reference to a theoretical tradition (of, in this case, ethnomethod- ological studies) which relied on, among other things, specifically textual resources as a normal means of (scholarly) communication. And I fail to see, further, why textual topics such as reading should be excluded on the grounds that they somehow escape the title 1 social1 or because they do not involve 'actual1 social settings."
McHoul's (1982) assertion of the 'specifically textual' resource is not without its difficulties for the nature of reading is that of a socially situated act which depends upon the interrelationship between a text, a reader and an 'actual' social setting. As Terry Jones (1982) points out, in an analysis which sprang from his uneasiness with the uncharacteristic but apparently genuine prolixity of 'Chaucar's Knights Tale*.
"I- began to learn about the changing military world of the late fourteenth century, and, in trying to explain these six-hundred-year-old jokes, I found myself
plunging ever deeper into the everyday detail of Chaucerfs
times. It has been an exciting chase, and confirmation of
suspected ironies has turned up in the most unlikely places. For example, early on in the investigation, I had come to the conclusion that the Knight must have been a mercenary fighting in various corners of the globe for whoever would pay him - an interpretation of Chaucer!s Knight which is apparently anathema to literary scholars but which is fairly self-evident to historians - particularly those familiar with the relationship between Europe and Islam in
the fourteenth century. My problem was then to find out
what Chaucers contemporaries thought about these mercenaries." Whilst it may be argued that 3ones (1982) is merely attempting to render a fourteenth century document accessible to twentieth century readers by recreating the unspoken assumptions which make reading
possible, it should be remembered that these assumptions are
themselves the result of contemporary perceptions and not fourteenth
century reality. This in turn helps to demonstrate the value of
texts for, in a largely literate society, the debate over textual meaning may be seen as a significant medium for the renegotiation of common sense understandings. However, there is an asymmetry in
these discussions in that a given text will have widely differing meanings for those who produce it and those whose creativity is
limited to according the text with some significance. McHoul (1982)^ documents this not inconsiderable skill in his description of an
•experiment* in which a ’randomly constructed poem1 is put together one line at a time and readers are recorded as they attempt to develop coherent meanings for the entire construct. His remarks do nevertheless suggest that the relationship between reader and text is in some way independent of its milieu for he appears to see little or no difference between meanings that have been derived from entire texts and those that have been pieced together under these unfamiliar
•experimental’ circumstances.
"since the performance of both Cumulex and Readex, it has become increasingly obvious that the tapes and their
transcriptions (Readex) and the written protocols (Cumulex) could stand just as they are, in need of no further comment. The slightest awareness of the complex work routinely
performed by readers would lead to the conclusion that readers of the transcripts and protocols should be capable, given these alone, of ‘seeing* the features described in the present analyses, along with others not noticed here.
The 'analyses* act, perhaps, as a guide only - a guide which furnishes some of the dubious benefits of having been on the scene of the experiments and having perused the data that they engendered many times over a lengthy period."
4
McHoul's Cumulex experiment does, in a somewhat indirect manner, draw attention to the way in which familiarity, in this case with a text, not only removes the difficulties of coping with an unprecedented situation but also breeds meaning by allowing a
process of reinterpretation. The work is nevertheless open to
criticism for there would appear to be a number of inconsistencies and internal contradictions in his disclaimer.
"The randomly constructed 'poem* had,- for our experi mental purposes, several advantages over an 'actual poem*. It had no author with a possibly researchable knowable biography. There was no person who had 'intended' this poem as it stands. The poem was not written for its
sensible character 'as a piece*• No person ever had the
■'intention* of any reader seeing any connection whatsoever between these lines. In short, it was never 'authored',
'Intended as sensible', 'rationally conceived,’ 'publicly distributed* and the rest. Cumulex was then designed so as to render observable readers supplying of these and other features so as to (re)organise its random character; to (re)render it a public document which was 'authored' and the rest. The experimenters presented the poem to the Cumulex readers in such a way as to be able to observe whether or not and, if so, how a documentary method was
employed as a collection of resources for this (re)normalising
activity. The readers were not informed how the poem was
constructed. They were simply told that it was a poem." The last stage of McHoul's argument represents a major diffi culty for if the text is presented as a 'poem' then readers will assume it to be one and tailor their expectations of syntax and vocabulary accordingly. This need not mean that the public negotiation of meaning is excluded but one wonders if any other
literary form would have signified so much. That this is a legitimate 66
point of concern can be shown by the following, which arose whilst I was on the way to an interview with the marketing manager of a chicken farm, and would seem to suggest that the evocative nature of certain phrases and forms of language is sufficiently well understood to be played upon in the course of everyday life.
I presented myself to the Gate Keeper of the factory in question and he, in turn, asked a passing foreman to take "this researcher
chappie" down to the office block. As we walked along, my guide told me about the macabre goings on in the buildings around us. 1 had worked in a similar establishment myself and felt confident enough to make what I thought were appropriate noises and to ask what seemed to be the right questions. All this was borne uncomplainingly until the moment when the foreman decided to make it apparent that what I had taken for equanimity was, in fact, him biding his time.
A gangling and maladroit youth was attempting to sweep the yard where his efforts with the broom ensured that he would never be
out of work. "That’s ’Enner", said the foreman, "E's a bit simple.
*E’s no trouble though, not as long as you use a bit of psychology." "Really?" said I, whilst trying desperately to decide whether ’psychology1 was a malapropism or not.
"Oh yes," came the confident reply "E’s an anal compulsive." A feeble "How’s that?" brought the coup de grace.
"It’s true", the foreman smiled "E can’t help making an arse’ole of ’imself."
Thus, if McHoul's poem was intended as a medium for an
attributed meaning, then it was meant to be seen 'as a piece’ and
readers wers expected to see connections between the lines. There are also the accidents to be considered, for if a reader were to recog nise one of the lines and not remember its sourcs or context then the ’poem’ would be accepted as a genuine whole. One further point can be made about the significance of telling readers that a 'random'
text is a ’poem1. As common sense understandings of the word involve notions of priviledge, education and exclusivity, McHoul may be said to have restricted the debate about the meaning of Cumulex by making reference to an-authoritative way of seeing. In short, those readers who feel they lack the necessary insights to make ’sense1 of what they believe to be a single text, will accept that lack as a function of their own exclusion; they do not feel empowered to make language.
This same sense of withdrawal can also be seen in common sense perceptions of other significant objects and activities so that those who feel themselves to be, to a greater or lesser extent, powerless, will reinterpret their entire world from such a perspective*. For these people, participation in trade is not just an extension of the contemporary myth that mass production is the final arbiter between nature and society, but an acknowledgement of their distance from the making and remaking of the industrialised world.
Barthes (1981) argues that this aspect of contemporary mythology represents an innate tendency towards conservatism.
’’Statistically, myth is on the right. There, it is essential; well-fed, sleek, expansive, garrulous, it invents itself ceaselessly. It takes hold of everything, all aspects of the law, of morality, of aesthetics, of diplomacy, of household equipment, of Literature, of entertainment. Its expansion has the very dimensions of bourgeois ex-nomination. The bourgeoisie wants to keep reality without keeping the appearances: it is therefore the very negativity of bourgeois appearance, infinite like every negativity, which solicits myth infinitely. The oppressed is nothing, he has only one language, that of his emancipation; the oppressor is everything, his language is rich, multiform, supple, with all the possible degrees of dignity at its disposal.”
The same argument can be seen in Jones's (1982) description of the way in which historians appeared to accept his version of the Knight's Tale because he tended to work in their terms. The more traditional literary critics may be taken to have disagreed for similar reasons; Jonss refused to see their ’text' in what they considered to be an adequate manner and so his reading was not to be trusted.
"In short, recognisable sense, or fact, or methodic character, or impersonality, or objectivity of accounts are not independent of the socially organised occasions of their use.”
Garfinkel's (1967)^ remark becomes all the more appropriate when it is realised that a text or, indeed, any other artefact, may be capable of evoking or representing authoritative ways of
seeing. Whilst this point is argued at some length in Chapter 8, it
7
can be summarised by Terry Cones!s (1982) discoveries about the 'built environment*.
"In 1974 I was in Scotland, filming 'Monty Python and the
Holy Grail', when I picked up the guide-book for the castle in which we were filming, and there I found that not only was Doune Castle built at the very time that Chaucer was writing the 'Canterbury Tales' but it was specially constructed so as to minimise the kind of
treachery which had come to be expected from the new breed of globe-trotting mercenary. So there, expressed in the very fabric of the building we were using for our film, was the answer to my question about Chaucer's Knight - evidently the people of Chaucer's day were deeply suspicious of these mercenary knights."
That 'ways of seeing' and the 'built environment’ are still very much a part of the negotiation of everyday reality is apparent
0 from such as Berger (1983) .
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."
It will be argued that the negotiation of common sense under standing depends upon this visual grounding and that many of the asymmetries of contemporary society may be seen to derive from the "relation between what we see and what we know" and its importance to the interpretation of language. The following is therefore intended as a demonstration of the way in which social structure is shaped by the debate over what may constitute an approved 'way of seeing' and
who has the authority to make such a decision. So, then, the story; g
David Hockney by David Hockney (1980)
"The day before I came back (from New York), I!d gone to 42nd Street and bought some male nudist magazines. When I got back they were seized by the Customs at London Airport. I arrived at the airport with the magazines just rammed in the top of my bag. In those days they weren't in any sense pornographic; they were just nudes. They were very unsexy, strangely unsexy; they were boys in sylvan glades, a bit artistic, old-fashioned artistic. A very young Customs officer took them off me and said We're seizing these; they're pornographic. And I said, Oh, come on, they're not pornographic at all.1'
And so the debate went on, with Hockney pursuing the official definition of pornography through successive levels of the Customs and Excise hierarchy until an extremely senior officer finally decreed that the magazines were confiscated because "in one of the pictures the boys have painted their genitals with psychedelic
10
colours." The officer was, by his own admission, a trained economist but nevertheless, an art lover.
The tone of this judgement encouraged Hockney to take his grievances to the National Council for Civil Liberties where it was agreed that, if he could afford to risk the £500 that losing would cost him, the Council would provide a solicitor and take the matter to court. Public interest in Hockney's decision and the apparent nature of the magazines culminated in a newspaper statement entitled
11
"Magazines seized from Artist". The response was immediate. "I began to think it'd be nice having my day in court, my first litigation, and I'd begun to get the people lined up. Suddenly the Customs phone up and say we've reversed our decision; you can have them back. The National Council for Civil Liberties had got a solicitor who said to the Customs Now before you destroy them they must be legally condemned; that's the law. The moment it was arranged that the case would go to court, it must have gone to the Home Secretary. He probably looked at the magazines and said Give them back; it's, not worth fighting. He probably also thought I would win."
Hockney's story may concern the nature of texts and their readers just as it may be a discussion of the importance of books but it is not primarily about these things. The essence of the
anecdote must surely lie in Hockney's daring insistence upon the public renegotiation of a marginal 'text' and its meaning. This challenge to the social order exposes that very asymmetry which McHoul (Op.cit) draws upon when he describes the 'Cumulex* as a
12
•poem1, Clastres (1977) is suitably bold.
"To speak is above all to possess the power to speak. Or again, the exercise of power ensures the domination of speech; only the masters can speak. As for the subjects: they are bound to the silence of respect, reverence or
terror. Speech and power maintain relations such that the
desire for one is fulfilled in the conquest of the other. Whether prince, despot, or commander-in-chief, the man of power is always not only the man who speaks, but the sole source of legitimate speech."
Hockney's assertion of his right to ’legitimate speech* becomes all the more remarkable when it is considered in the light
13
of Adams’s (1976) critique. This review covers a range of legally contested works by artists as dissimilar as Whistler and Rothko before noting "that a strange thing happens when art goes on trial."
"In every case, there is a distinct quality of the absurd permeating the courtroom. Somehow the lawyers always
seem to get around to the question: what is art? Regardless of the original reason for the trials, one side or the other feels it necessary to apply verbal definitions to works of art. It is, in fact, impossible to define art to everyone's satisfaction. Nevertheless, four themes continuously recur in the course of the various sets of testimony which offer some comment on the nature of art. These themes, interrelated for the most part, are the aesthetic response, a certain kind of religious devotion, money and value and, oddly enough, patriotism".
Adams's findings are worthy of further consideration for if the laws of a society reflect its oldest and most respected ways of seeing then the challenge of an unusual or disturbing work of art must always seem to get around to the question: What is art?" The importance of this struggle "to possess the power to speak" is such that only these extreme and highly ritualistic measures will