I have some writings on alterrealism….. here is one of them by John McCarthy
“Reality” is a very slippery word, and thus anything that is “alter”-“reality” is going to be equally slippery. In a kind of conventional usage we tend to use the term “reality” in two ways: 1) to refer to the everyday, practical, generally shared views of the way things work, that allow us to interact with others without constantly explaining ourselves. In this sense “reality” is what we tend to share with others, what we often assume to be the way we and others look at things. 2) A second sense of “reality” tends to be a more critical one, and it usually occurs when we think that someone is understanding something in a distorted way. It may indicate that the shared sense of a whole society (“reality 1” above) is distorted and that they are not seeing the “reality” of what is going on—e.g. somebody might say “you don’t really understand the impact of capitalism on the world” or “Buddhism lets you see a higher reality.” Because it is a more critical sense of the notion of “reality” it usually calls upon someone to change, to be transformed in some way, so that they can move from what they think is real, to what is the undistorted, actual reality.
Both of these senses of reality still maintain some sense of “mimesis” (imitation)—that there is something out there that should be “imitated” or “pictured” correctly—that our thoughts are “correct” when they imitate or picture “reality”, or that art ought to imitate reality in some way. When this sense of mimesis is tied with the above two senses of reality, then the mimetic impulse is to either represent in some way what the usual social conventions are (reality 1) or what is critically real (reality 2). My sense is that Surrealism is trying to do the latter—by incorporating something like psychoanalysis into the picturing of reality it highlights images and symbols and dreams and repressed thoughts as what is “really” going on, and what need to brought forth in art. It is a kind of “alter-realism” that is critical of “reality 1”. And thus it is “alter-real” in a very specific sense.
It seems that the kind of “alter-realism” that Loty is getting at is a utopian one, pitched against modernism, and achieved through a broad sense of dialogue. It is still a kind of “reality 2” to my mind—that you can critically correct the distortions of modernity by making a utopia that better reflects “reality.”
I am struck in some ways by what is going on in contemporary French phenomenology. Phenomenology calls into question the whole mimetic framework—that we picture a reality outside of us, or inside of us, with thoughts, or images or the like. Rather than calling for an alter-reality, it calls more for what I would term an “alter-mimesis”, a questioning that there is a reality that is either out there or inside of us that ought to be imitated. Rather it holds in tension two kinds of motions—that which is given, and that which recognizes. It is not concerned with “reality” which can never be gotten at anyway; it is concerned with phenomena, that which occurs at the intersection of what gives itself to be noticed and what we recognize. This is constantly in oscillation, and thus it resists the designation “reality” as either what is shared and stable, or what is “really” behind our distortions. One of the French writers who focuses on some of this, Jean Luc Marion, makes the distinction between “idols” and “icons”. He has a very interesting approach to the visual descriptions of these two terms, one which gets at some of the aesthetics of this. “Idols”, he suggests, are what halts our vision; they stop our seeing in an object. It is what we identify as the thing that we are seeing, but it is our sight and it is ultimately our vision that is going out and coming back to us as an object. We see something. The “icon” on the other hand is there to be transparent in its being seen—you are to see through it; if it stops your gaze, then it becomes just one more idol. In that sense the “icon” is what gives sight, rather than what is seen. It is what Marion calls a “saturated phenomenon.” It is so effusive that it is not a correction of distortions; it is a gift to sight.
It is only on the other side of this correction of the desire to imitate reality either by picturing it or by correcting a picture with another picture, that you can get beyond a mimetic theory of the aesthetic. There is something that seems alter-mimetic (alter-mimesis), rather than alter-realistic (alter-realism) that occurs when you stay inside this oscillation between “givenness” and “recognition” rather than move to the try to capture one side or the other in an image that stops the oscillation—something like an “idol”. This does not mean, to my mind, the end of picturing or art, but rather the replacement of emphasis from some form of reality-mimesis (whether it be graphics, or impressionism, or abstraction, or surrealism, or hyperrealism, or utopianism) to some form alter-mimesis that is always playing with the oscillation of givenness and recognition. Marion turns to the form of the “icon” to get at some of this. Maybe—I am not sure that this is the best form for this, but I think what he is getting at, what I would call some form of alter-mimesis, is seeking a form.
Anyway, this is what I am thinking. It is surely not a manifesto. And this sense of alter-mimesis may be better named alter-reality—I am not sure. I do think that the danger of invoking “reality” at all, is that it leads to some form of imitation or mimesis that inevitably misses the interchange between givenness and reception. So I think more in terms of something like the notion of a Japanese koan—it is meant to stop thinking rather than to be a riddle to be solved. The famous example is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” If you read this as a riddle you are left assuming that there is an answer. But if understood as the means to stop “reality” as if it is out there or inside you, or can be pictured, then something else happens.
So I think I will stop here. This is what I have been thinking about since we last talked. I had originally worked it out in terms of memories and lost chances, but I don’t think that avenue is the way to go. I think this sense of givenness—reception—oscillation better captures the motion and alter-vision that I understand you to be disclosing.
Let me know what you think; and again I apologize for being so slow on this. I have been thinking about a good deal, but Ph.D. exams, dissertation, classes, and endless meetings—along with all the regular things of life often set up other deadlines.
John McCarthy
