Kojève and Photography: The Visualization of Logos – Notes

During his time as a peripatetic bureaucrat coping with the issues of worldwide commerce, Alexandre Kojève collected postcards of historic monuments and artistic endeavors; on the identical time, he took up the follow of pictures. Kojève produced round 5 thousand images, and he collected many hundreds of postcards. Both his images and his assortment of the postcards may be present in his archive within the Bibliothèque Nationale Française in Paris. Kojève’s images are stunning, and he appears to have been conscious of that. He didn’t print them—each considered one of his images remained in his assortment as a singular slide, a singular paintings.

For his images, Kojève adopted the nameless and extremely standard fashion of the hundreds of postcards he collected. One might say that Kojève photographed pictures itself by appropriating this business aesthetic. Kojève’s pictures celebrates the disappearance of the topic within the neutrality, anonymity and objectivity of the digital camera’s gaze. One can see right here a parallel to Andy Warhol’s work or the early images by Richard Prince that follow the identical impartial, impassive repetition of photos of American mass tradition. At first look, Kojève appears to repeat not the mass tradition of his time however the monuments of an excellent European historic previous. But Kojève repeats that wonderful previous within the fashion of mass-produced postcards. This use of a impartial, unusual photographic fashion is very noticeable compared to these postcards in Kojève’s assortment that symbolize historic artworks. This a part of the postcard assortment demonstrates Kojève’s characteristically modernist style. The twentieth century is represented largely by Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and different main modernist painters.

Kojève put all his postcards in bins and organized them in a method that mirrored the travels he undertook in his perform as a political dignitary in the course of the years 1959–68, largely in Europe and Asia. In the bins that contained his postcards, Kojève additionally positioned self-made playing cards—the identical dimension because the postcards—on which he traced the itineraries of the travels throughout which he had collected postcards and brought images. In common, one can argue that the artwork assortment not solely presents photos for our gaze but in addition demonstrates the framing of their presentation—the mode wherein the gaze of the spectator is decided, oriented, and manipulated by the collector. The assortment just isn’t merely selective; it displays its personal selectivity. The assortment displays itself earlier than it displays the rest. A worldview is a technologically created phantasm—however Kojève’s assortment and its association present exactly how this phantasm is produced and introduced.

The inventive follow and discourse of post-histoire and postmodernity had pictures as their essential level of reference. The reproductive, non-original character of pictures made it the main medium of our time. In up to date society, pictures is produced constantly and ubiquitously. Not all people is a painter, and never all people is painted. But each observer of {a photograph} is, at the very least probably, a photographer or a photographic mannequin. Everybody who appears to be like at {a photograph} finds it simple to determine with the photographer’s methods of self-dramatization, self-concealment, narcissism, or voyeurism. Moreover, pictures, in contrast to portray, by no means pretends to precise the hidden essence of issues however, somewhat, stays on their floor—depicting all of them, together with human beings, as empty types.

This vacancy is nicely thematized by a brief article by Siegfried Kracauer from 1927 entitled “Die Photographie,” which eloquently describes what may be known as the photographic situation. As an instance, Kracauer refers to {a photograph} of his grandmother, that’s, a non-public {photograph}, {a photograph} of sentimental worth, and he observes that this {photograph} doesn’t convey again reminiscences of his grandmother because it ought to, however blocks them. His grandmother as an individual, as a person, as an inside being just isn’t disclosed within the {photograph}; as a substitute, solely her outward look is seen, which, nevertheless, due to the style of the occasions—that’s, the garments and make-up—appears impersonal and deindividualized. Kracauer writes:

We are contained in nothing and pictures collects fragments round this nothing. When my grandmother stood in entrance of the lens, she was current for a second within the spatial continuum providing itself to the lens. Yet as a substitute of my grandmother, this facet is immortalized. Not the individual stands out within the {photograph}, however the sum of what’s to be subtracted from her. It destroys the individual by portraying her, and if she had been to coincide with it, she wouldn’t exist.

For Kracauer, each {photograph} is merely, as he says, a common stock of various fragments or particulars that lacks, nevertheless, an inside unity. Such a unity can come up solely on the extent of that which is supposed, its sense and which means, and but this sense and its which means can not, by definition, be photographed. As a consequence, pictures, for Kracauer, is mere refuse, a phantom and an indication of demise: as a substitute of vanquishing demise, pictures kills, for it captures solely the physique and negates the soul.

Kracauer retains loving reminiscences of his communications along with his grandmother. But these reminiscences—being familial reminiscences—can’t be discovered within the photographic picture that’s made for the exterior, nonfamilial world. In this {photograph}, Kracauer’s grandmother grew to become an émigré. And the grandmother knew that from the start. Her mode of look within the {photograph} was clearly chosen by her with the purpose of trying good and dignified. Kracauer’s grandmother was not merely a passive object in entrance of the digital camera however an energetic presenter of her personal picture to the gaze of the photographer and, thus, extra typically to the gaze of others in a seek for recognition. Through this act of self-presentation, she revealed her inside world—that’s the reason, as Kracauer writes, nothing of her has remained past what may be seen within the {photograph}. This “beyond” was her relation to her family however, by accepting to be photographed, she stepped out of the familial context—and into the overseas world.

She manifested her want to be acknowledged by this world exactly by her selection of make-up and garments. Kracauer couldn’t bear in mind his grandmother by the {photograph} as a result of he had seen her earlier in a loving familial context. And, thus, he didn’t see her physique, her face, her method of presenting herself exterior of this context. The act and the trouble of self-exposure past the familial circle, past the native surroundings, require an act of discommunication, a break with one’s personal authentic milieu, an emigration out of it. When Kracauer writes that within the images of his grandmother he might acknowledge solely the style of her time and never her subjectivity, he overlooks the truth that our subjectivity is nothing apart from our potential to comply with the style that defines our “here and now”—or to interrupt with it. We comply with—or don’t comply with—trend not blindly and instinctively however, somewhat, in a aware and knowledgeable method. We need to be up to date and we need to be acknowledged by a sure worldwide cultural milieu—and our technique of following a sure trend displays this want. The correlation between the act of being photographed and the readiness of the mannequin for this act is nicely captured by Friedrich Jünger:

The photographic course of might be invented solely after man had turn out to be psychologically able to be photographed. The new invention, in different phrases, signifies a change of thoughts. It was within the diploma that the human mannequin tailored itself to portrayal by pictures that the brand new strategies developed.

And the variation to pictures is nothing apart from an inside readiness for danger—if not of 1’s life then at the very least of 1’s acquainted self-image—within the battle for recognition past the familial, native cultural context.

Often sufficient, photographers attempt to escape the conditions wherein their fashions are conscious of being photographed and wherein they take poses they consider to be extra advantageous to them. As a rule, pictures tries to catch a singular second of life, to eternalize the fleeting right here and now with the clicking of a digital camera. But Kojève completely ignores pictures’s potential to cease the movement of time. Instead, he images solely monuments that already symbolize arrested, immobilized time. His purpose is to gather the pictures of the previous which have survived the top of historical past and may nonetheless evoke “historical spirits.” Kojève’s images manifest and make sure his faithfulness to the occasion of historical past—in the midst of post-historical actuality. In this respect, Kojève makes no exception for his beloved France and his native Russia. The Soviet Union that Kojève had visited within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s regarded very totally different from the Russia that he had left in 1919. Nevertheless, Kojève doesn’t let himself be fascinated by the brand new Soviet actuality. Instead, he obstinately images outdated Russian church buildings. Looking at these photos, one might marvel wherein century they had been taken. Thus, Kojève signifies—by his photographic technique—that Soviet socialism is, for him, merely one other model of the identical mode of existence within the post-histoire that’s attribute of the states of the West. What in Russian territory has remained from historical past is just the Russian Orthodox custom.

One can argue that Kojève’s photographic work is a continuation of his philosophy by different means. Indeed, it’s an try to provide a picture of the world in its post-historical situation. The images that Kojève made throughout his travels replicate his administrative view of the world mixed with a sure post-historical melancholy. Indeed, photographic follow has so much in widespread with administrative work. In an ancient times, painters produced photos by the speedy involvement of their our bodies. Thus, the painter remained principally a guide employee. But photographers aren’t guide staff. Rather, they do all the pieces that an administrator does. They choose, select a standpoint, acquire or discard. Their gaze is a sovereign gaze. This gaze doesn’t produce photos however orders and locations them. The identical may be mentioned in regards to the curator of a group, whose position is to order the gathering. Kojève capabilities right here as a curator of his personal assortment—a group that has the purpose of presenting your entire world.

In considered one of her essays in On Photography (1977), Susan Sontag writes: “To collect photographs is to collect the world.” As an instance, she cites a parody of such a complete assortment of the world in Jean-Luc Godard’s movie Les Carabiniers (1963), wherein two poor chaps, Ulysses and Michelangelo, go to conflict with the purpose of capturing the world. They later come dwelling with luggage stuffed with postcards, saying to their wives, Venus and Cleopatra, that these postcards are proof that they’ve certainly conquered the world. Photography is analogous to language as a result of it appears to be a medium for appropriating actuality—buying data and energy. Of course, this appropriation is an phantasm, however it’s the phantasm that defines fashionable and up to date tradition. Discussing the query of the connection of pictures to artwork, Sontag writes:

But the very query of whether or not pictures is or just isn’t an artwork is actually a deceptive one. Although pictures generates works that may be known as artwork—it requires subjectivity, it will possibly lie, it provides aesthetic pleasure—pictures just isn’t, to start with, an artwork kind in any respect. Like language, it’s a medium wherein artistic endeavors (amongst different issues) are made. Out of language, one could make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac’s Paris. Out of pictures, one could make passport photos, climate images, pornographic photos, X-rays, wedding ceremony photos, and Atget’s Paris.

Photography is a sort of language as a result of all the pieces within the phrase may be photographed—similar to all the pieces may be mentioned. As Sontag writes, “The most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” This evaluation is much more correct right now, within the period of Facebook and Instagram.

In reality, Kojève at least Mallarmé believed that all the pieces that exists ought to and can find yourself in a guide—and, truly, had already ended up in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Thus he writes that after the top of historical past, the motion of the sage separates itself from human beings and enters the guide. The world, together with human beings, turns into a factor of the previous. And he continues:

The materials provider of the perpetual motion of the Notion turns into the Book that is known as the Logic: this guide (“Bible”) is the incarnation of the everlasting Logos. Thus, the Sage doesn’t act as a human. But the Sage doesn’t act on this method solely as a result of the human can not act any extra in the meanwhile at which Wisdom grew to become doable.

Insofar as a thinker continues to dwell in historical past, they don’t have to know actuality however, as Marx says, remodel it. However, after the top of historical past has been reached, the perspective of the sage turns into contemplative. But the sage doesn’t ponder the world to know it as a result of, at that second, the world has been already understood. Instead, the sage reads a guide—Hegel’s Science of Logic, the post-philosophical bible—and follows the round, dialectical motion of its ideas.

Here Kojève professes his religion within the guide—along with the conviction that the world has already emigrated right into a guide. However, being an acute observer of his time, Kojève couldn’t miss the ubiquity of pictures as a brand new method of communication that partially prolonged and partially substituted itself for language. As photographed, the true world grew to become immobilized and turned itself into an illustration and extension of Hegelian philosophy—an empty kind that needs to be saved and cherished. Choosing between actuality and language, Kojève at all times selected language—just because he didn’t consider that actuality might escape language. And thus he didn’t consider that actuality might escape pictures both.

However, Kojève collected not photos of the world however artwork photos—as slides or postcards. In this sense, his assortment was part of what André Malraux known as a Museum with out Walls (Le musée imaginaire). Malraux speaks about coloration pictures as a medium wherein totally different sorts of visible artwork may be equally represented—be it portray, sculpture, structure, stained glass, tapestry, mosaics, or murals. In this sense, pictures is the lingua franca of artwork—and, particularly, it’s such for unusual people who find themselves unable to go to the locations the place the originals are exhibited. Postcards, albums, and guide illustrations may be seen as elements of an open museum for the plenty that probably brings artwork to everybody. In this sense, Malraux’s Museum with out Walls may be seen as a precursor of Instagram and, extra typically, artwork on the web. However, Malraux factors out that the medium of pictures as it’s utilized in postcards and illustrations modifications the reception of artwork insofar because it presents all artworks in the same body—so {that a} small drawing appears to be like as if it’s the identical dimension as a giant statue. This normalized body makes artworks comparable that will not be simply comparable in actuality. Kojève makes use of the medium of pictures exactly as a standard denominator for the artwork of various epochs and nations. In this sense, Kojève’s images and assortment of postcards replicate the post-historical administration of historic reminiscence. In the context of his photographic work, Kojève continues the technique of authentic non-originality that he had already pursued in presenting his personal philosophical discourse as a mere repetition of Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit. And one mustn’t overlook that, in accordance with Kojève, Hegel’s philosophy itself is a repetition of the true historic motion of the plenty, who—by conflict and work—created the area wherein this philosophy grew to become doable. Thus it isn’t stunning that, on the visible stage, the recollection of this motion is introduced by a mass medium.

This is an excerpt from Boris Groys’s Alexandre Kojève: An Intellectual Biography, out now from Verso.