"Arts, Faculty of"@en . "English, Department of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Haag, Stefan"@en . "2009-04-17T22:54:10Z"@en . "1995"@en . "Doctor of Philosophy - PhD"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "The characteristic doubling of postmodern works of art is best seen in\r\nterms of an allegorical gesture that melancholics undertake in order to create\r\nlife in an entity they consider dead and meaningless. Walter Benjamin has\r\ntheorized the allegorical gesture and provides a basis for extending his understanding of modern allegory to the postmodern. The postmodern can be seen\r\nas a continuum that at its two extremes veers towards a deconstructive and a\r\nreconstructive impulse, respectively. While the former decentres meaning and\r\nauthority, the latter reconstructs the two on the basis of an arbitrary allegorical construct that relies itself on audience belief which is generated\r\nin participatory rituals. Watson and Schafer exemplify the interdependencies\r\nof these two postmodern impulses and their emblematical qualities. Furthermore, they illustrate how melancholics view the world, how they imbue their\r\nworks with a political agenda, and how they try to indoctrinate their\r\naudiences. Ultimately, the allegorical construct is as ideological as what it\r\nbrutally replaces. An outward sign of the violence that is at the root of the\r\nallegorical gesture can be seen in the many acts of violence in Watson and\r\nSchafer. Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s project ends in ambiguity because he ironically subverts\r\nhis own authority so that the audience is left mocking the allegorical \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmessage.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Schafer, on the other hand, represses the challenge that this violence\r\nposes to his allegorical construct. Although he does not realize it, his work\r\nremains caught in ideology. Reconstructive postmodernism, as far as it\r\ndepends on the author(ity) of allegory, is thus built on a validating act of\r\nthe audience, which is a leap of faith rooted in ideology."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/7368?expand=metadata"@en . "5364463 bytes"@en . "application/pdf"@en . "ALLEGORIES OF THE POSTMODERN:THE WORK OF WILFRED WATSON AND R. 11JRRAY SCHAFERbySTEFAN HAAGM.A., The University of British Columbia, 1989A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OFTHE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OFDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYinTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES(Department of English)We accept this thesis as conformingto the required standardTHEAugust 1995Stefan Haag, 1995In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanceddegree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make itfreely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensivecopying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of mydepartment or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying orpublication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my writtenpermission.(Signature)_______________________________Department of 1&.The University of British ColumbiaVancouver, CanadaDate LJLrDE-6 (2/88)11AbstractThe characteristic doubling of postmodern works of art is best seen interms of an allegorical gesture that melancholics undertake in order to createlife in an entity they consider dead and meaningless. Walter Benjamin hastheorized the allegorical gesture and provides a basis for extending his understanding of modern allegory to the postmodern. The postinodern can be seenas a continuum that at its two extremes veers towards a deconstructive and areconstructive impulse, respectively. While the former decentres meaning andauthority, the latter reconstructs the two on the basis of an arbitrary allegorical construct that relies itself on audience belief which is generatedin participatory rituals. Watson and Schafer exemplify the interdependenciesof these two postrnodern impulses and their emblematical qualities. Furthermore, they illustrate how melancholics view the world, how they imbue theirworks with a political agenda, and how they try to indoctrinate theiraudiences. Ultimately, the allegorical construct is as ideological as what itbrutally replaces. An outward sign of the violence that is at the root of theallegorical gesture can be seen in the many acts of violence in Watson andSchafer. Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s project ends in ambiguity because he ironically subvertshis own authority so that the audience is left mocking the allegorical \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmessage.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Schafer, on the other hand, represses the challenge that this violenceposes to his allegorical construct. Although he does not realize it, his workremains caught in ideology. Reconstructive postmodernisrn, as far as itdepends on the author(ity) of allegory, is thus built on a validating act ofthe audience, which is a leap of faith rooted in ideology.Wilfred Watson R. Murray SchaferChapter 2 Visions of Beginning 29Decolonizing the North: Obscuring the Program:Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Music in the Cold Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CSermon on Bears\u00E2\u0080\u009DChapter 3 Foundations:The Postmodern Continuum and the Allegorical Gesture . 55TableAbstractTable of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgementDedicationChapter 1of ContentsPrelude:The Argument11]11111VViVii1and Biographical SketchesStefan HaagContents Allegories of the Postinodern ivThe Village Fair as a Site for the Construction ofGender90122142190Chapter 6 Left in a Maze 234Labyrinths of Allegories: Allegories of Riddling:Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Labyrintheatre Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s RiddlesChapter 7 Coda:Reverberations 272Bibliography 286Chapter 4Chapter 5The Work of Wilfred Watson:Last JudgementsMeaningful ReversalsPostmodern Multi-ConsciousnessesThe Work of R. Murray Schafer:Postmodern McLuhanesque UtopianismFrom the Stage to a Wilderness Lake and Back Again:Murray Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Patria Cycle168171Appendix Descriptions of R. Murray Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Patria Cycle . 322VList of FiguresFig. 1: Richard Rosenblum\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Manscape 74Fig. 2: Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CBoustrophedon\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Ariadne 17).... 239Fig. 3: A fragmented delineation of Ariadne\u00E2\u0080\u0099s name(Ariadne 42-43) 241Fig. 4 & 5: Labyrinths from Dicamus 246 & 247Fig. 6: Overlaying of texts in Dicamus 248Fig. 7 & 8: Crossed-out passages in Dicamus 249 & 250Fig. 9: Four icons from Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s riddles 260Fig. 10: Cryptographic private thoughts from Ariadne 262Fig. 11: The Princess of the Stars on Two Jack Lake 281viAcknowledgementMy greatest thanks go to my supervisor, Sherrill Grace, whose comments on my drafts were always prompt, to the point and insightful. Moreover, her genuine interest in my project and her generosity and kindnesswere the encouragement I needed to persevere.I also would like to thank my dissertation committee, Richard Cavell,Peter L\u00C3\u00B6ffler, and Peter Quartermain, for numerous discussions and fortheir helpful comments on previous drafts. Shirley Neuman and the librarians in Special Collections at the University of Alberta Library in Edmonton permitted me to do research in the Wilfred Watson Papers as well as toquote from them. I also owe thanks to Wilfred and Sheila Watson, MurraySchafer, Diane Bessai, Thomas Peacocke, and Elizabeth Beauchamp, for timespent talking to me but also for valuable copies of books, scores, andtypescripts. I am grateful to Scott Taylor for many anecdotes about theWatsons and McLuhan as well as for his hospitality during a research tripto Edmonton.Courteously, R. Murray Schafer and Shirley Neuman (for NeWest Press)have given me permission to reproduce material from books for which theyhold copyright.Finally, I have been fortunate enough to have the wholehearted support of my parents and of my wife H\u00C3\u00A9l\u00C3\u00A8ne. To H\u00C3\u00A9l\u00C3\u00A8ne I am also grateful forreading drafts and offering suggestions but mostly for the ongoing dialogue. In recognition of their contribution, I happily dedicate my dissertation to my parents and to H\u00C3\u00A9l\u00C3\u00A8ne.xCCD\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDCD..CD\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDCDCD under the title NorthernReview. Watson thus replacesone set of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmaster\u00E2\u0080\u009D-poets withan indigenous one; he does notsuggest that Dorothy Livesay orP.K. Page are the new Canadianpoets. Poetry stays in therealms defined by European(masculine> modernism becauseLayton and Dudek were also influenced by European modernism,a circumstance that makes themeven less different from theirEuropean counterparts.To the narrator of \u00E2\u0080\u009CLaurentian Man,\u00E2\u0080\u009D they write poetryoverwrought with emotion andsentimentality which is communicated in too obvious a manner: Layton \u00E2\u0080\u009Csings,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009Csighs\u00E2\u0080\u009Dand even \u00E2\u0080\u009Csemaphores\u00E2\u0080\u009D untilAdam is reduced to \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca sentimental concrete windmill,\u00E2\u0080\u009D helplessly exposed to the onslaughtof Layton\u00E2\u0080\u0099s poetry and Dudek\u00E2\u0080\u0099sVisions Allegories of the Postinodern 37This triad--survival, soundscape, art\u00E2\u0080\u0094-is not dialectical, for dialectics isanother pattern of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cuniversal\u00E2\u0080\u009D conceptualization that would be imposed onthe North. It is a constellation thatemerges from and re-informs the local.Moreover, none of the three terms dominates any of the others. As soon asthis constellation is transformed intoa dialectic, it is thrown off balance.In other words, if a society in northern territory violates, negates, ele\u00E2\u0080\u0094yates or hides one or more of the triadic components in favor of others,Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s North becomes unbalanced. Asa result, he denounces the violatingsociety as an artificial economic construct whose only raison d\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00C3\u00AAtre is theexploitation of the North.In the ensuing section, depictingcolonialism and the emergence of Canadaon northern ground, Schafer describesacerbically but recognizably thehaughty colonial attitude:\u00E2\u0080\u0098Culture,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 they explained, \u00E2\u0080\u0098You have none.Where you have a log house we have palaces.Where you have an axe we have grand pianos.Where you have a bog we have heated swiingpools.lecturing. This kind of indigenous poetry reduces therecipient through sentimentality to passivity, a responsediametrically opposed to thatof the performative poetry Watson calls for in \u00E2\u0080\u009CA Manifestofor Beast-Poetry.\u00E2\u0080\u009DThe metaphor that controlsthe remaining poems and extendsthem into allegories is that ofthe beast and the wildness andfreedom associated with it.Beast-poetry is a new poetrythat comes from the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinnerbeast\u00E2\u0080\u0099 of the poet, which is tosay from some usually, and toordinary human beings, inaccessible essence of experience.This essence of experienceemerges as a part of the Selfthat is also anOther; it isliminal, something the poetdesires but also fears. Watsondetects this essence in thesingle-minded determination toVisions Allegories of the Postinodern 38Great art is not kept in a refrigerator.You need to mediterraneanize your existenceYou also need people. Your cities are toosmall--too out of touch. (MIC 67)For the seemingly disinterested projectof breeding culture, then, the colonialist powers send people and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cknowhow.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Schafer, however, at once unveils this project as a sham, for theunderlying motive for their friendliness is that their resources are running out:They had culture and empire.Why were they speaking to me?It seems their resources were running out.They needed resources to carry forwardtheir empires.If I would send them the resources, theywould send me \u00E2\u0080\u0098da people.\u00E2\u0080\u0099They did not wait for an answer. (67)Changes to the North include an increased population (\u00E2\u0080\u009C1 became we\u00E2\u0080\u009D [67],which signifies a shift in narrativeperspective) and a reliance on theworld economy. As a result, the newsociety violates one of the triadiccomponents and disrupts the triad\u00E2\u0080\u0099s internal equivalence: the market economy,which replaces survival, dominatessoundscape and art so completely thatit threatens them with extinction. Asfulfill a purpose that goeshand in hand with the reductionto a machine:The ant-eater is a machine foreating ants.The lion is a machine for eatingantelopes.The ant is a machine for eatingdead cats, etcetera etcetera.(53)Beast-poetry focuses energy onpassion; \u00E2\u0080\u009Cit is the blood crying\u00E2\u0080\u009D (50). This metaphor withits connotations of primitivepassion and determination reinforces and further extends themetaphor of the beast by creating an ancestral legitimacy.One is reminded at thispoint of T.S. Eliot\u00E2\u0080\u0099s notion ofpoetic tradition and the \u00E2\u0080\u009Chistorical sense\u00E2\u0080\u009D which aids apoet in situating himself inpast and present alike (\u00E2\u0080\u009CTradition\u00E2\u0080\u009D 27). Yet Watson rejectsthis kind of tradition instanzas 11 and 12. He alsogives credit to T.S. Eliot fora \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwonderful beast\u00E2\u0080\u0099s nose forVisions Allegories of the Postrnodern 39a matter of course, Canada replaces theNorth, or, more precisely, Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099sCanada replaces Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s North becausethey are both his constructs.Progress, Schafer implies in Musicin the Cold, is one of the meaning-creating forces in a modern society.He links it to an economy based uponthe expectation of unlimited growth.As a matter of course, then, the urgeto quantify \u00E2\u0080\u009Cachievements is intrinsicto this society and leads to a \u00E2\u0080\u0098beliefin quantification as the definingcharacter of the real--a characteristic that Robert Frodeman described asthe foundation of modern society(\u00E2\u0080\u009CRadical Environmentalism and thePolitical Roots of Postmodernism\u00E2\u0080\u009D 308).Schafer takes this belief in progress to its logical extreme. But healso points to a necessary side effectof quantification, namely that in aworld where only numbers count, so tospeak, humaneness retreats:Everything was reckoned in billions.\u00E2\u0080\u0098There is no difference between one and abillion,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 said the statisticians, except thedecimal point.\u00E2\u0080\u0099images.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Ultimately, however,he rejects Eliot because \u00E2\u0080\u009Chisbeast-images are screens forthought\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Poems 54).Men commonly use words forexpression or to give structureto human acts:Whether a man dancesor whether a man makes musicor whether he gestures or paints apicture or carves sculptures(or simply is)words keep recurring, It isn\u00E2\u0080\u0099tsufficient merely to dance, thiswon\u00E2\u0080\u0099t do for a man.Re must dance a madrigal.He must caper to the words of aballad. (55)Being \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe most dumbing of allhuman acts\u00E2\u0080\u009D (55), beast-poetry.however, uses words in a newway, not in order to think,speak or communicate, but tobe, as experiences in themselves:Let us understand this, thatbeast-poetry uses words in atotally new way,it uses words as experiences. Itexcludes speech.Beast-poetry is profoundly uneloquent.Words are used so as to be, not tospeak. (55)Visions Allegories of the Postniodern 40A few individualists argued: \u00E2\u0080\u0098If a man hasa soul, then a billion men have 069 609 000000 1 of a soul each. That was the difference, they said.But the statisticians were counting,products and profits and immigrants.The soul went into hiding. (IIC 70)In Music in the Cold, quantificationsof progress and growth are used to compare one person with others and ultimately with the entire world:We began to prosper.We became richer.We became one of the richest nations in theworld.We became the most powerful nation in theworld. (68-69)Yet Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Canada is only \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe mostpowerful nation\u00E2\u0080\u009D with respect to thosestandards that colonialism mistakenlybelieves to be universal. He considersall those values that grow out of theplace, or out of the North, to be outof sync with the modern age and, hence,in need of being replaced. The resultis a hostile takeover, as it were.The soundscape of Canada becomesmore and more mechanical. \u00E2\u0080\u009CFierce,noisy computers\u00E2\u0080\u009D control everything,and in the higher echelons of the administration one can hear the \u00E2\u0080\u0098hissingair conditioners\u00E2\u0080\u009D (70, 71). AlthoughPerhaps Watson is pointing inthis stanza at his reinterpretation of McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s mediatheory. In his view, media donot extend sense (as McLuhanclaimed) but they make sense.In beast-poetry, words do notrepresent or express a reality,but they are a reality on theirown. As a result, beast-poetryprovides access to other modesof consciousness that juxtaposedifferent realities and aresituated in the media themselves. In McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s view,however, media extend sensefrom an inner consciousness.In his introduction toPoems, Thomas Peacocke notesthat Watson has regarded language as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca unique materialfrom which to create unique effects\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Poems xix, Peacocke isquoting From Clich\u00C3\u00A9 to Archetype). Peacocke suggeststhat these \u00E2\u0080\u009Cunique effects\u00E2\u0080\u009DVisions A]legories of the Postinodern 41pro-outcome about largely through per\u00E2\u0080\u0094formance:In the poems in the sorrowfulcanadians, I begin with counting,mass on cowback, and now inriddles, there is for me a performance imperative, (Poemsxviii)Seeking a vehicle to achievethat \u00E2\u0080\u009Cperformance imperative,\u00E2\u0080\u009DWatson turned first from themythopoeic Friday\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Child totheatre and then in the 1970swith The Sorrowful Canadiansand Number Grid Verse to per-formative poetry. In thel980s, Watson combined theatreand performative poetry in hisplay Gramsci x 3.\u00E2\u0080\u009CA Manifesto for Beast-Poetry\u00E2\u0080\u009D can be seen as Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099sway of sketching what he istrying to achieve as a Canadianartist. His vision of beast-poetry projects an indigenousand original Canadian art formthat is best realized in performance and that has an apocathese interventions into the soundscaperepresent the final \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctriumph\u00E2\u0080\u009D of modern\u00E2\u0080\u009Cman\u00E2\u0080\u009D over nature, they only betray thenihilistic motive of destroying thenatural soundscape by putting somethingin its place or overlaying the hi-fisounds with the lo-fi rumblings of machinery. *Furthermore, Schafer associatesgress with the attempt of shuttingthe natural soundscape while stilltaking in the visual pleasures of theoutside world: \u00E2\u0080\u009CWe lived in glasshouses hundreds of feet in the air\u00E2\u0080\u009D(MIC 69). Recently, Schafer has expanded his thoughts on this moderntrend in living. In an articleentitled \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Glazed Soundscape,\u00E2\u0080\u009D hedescribes how the increased use of* I use \u00E2\u0080\u009Chi-fi\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and lo-fi to describe thesoundscape. In The Tuning of the or1d, Schafer defineshi-fi as an \u00E2\u0080\u009Cabbreviation for high fidelity, that is, afavorable signal-to-noise ratio. The most general use ofthe term is in electroacoustics, Applied to soundscapestudies a hi-fi environment is one in which sounds may beheard clearly without crowding or masking,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009CLo-fi\u00E2\u0080\u009D is anabbreviation for low fidelity, that is, an unfavorablesignal-to-noise ratio. Applied to soundscape studies a lofi environment is one in which signals are overcrowded,resulting in masking or lack of clarity (The Tuning of theld 272).Visions Allegories of the Postniodern 42glass in our society causes a divisionbetween \u00E2\u0080\u009Chere\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and \u00E2\u0080\u0098there\u00E2\u0080\u009D that matchesa division between the senses. \u00E2\u0080\u0098Someof the glass in which we have sheathedour lives [must be] shattered\u00E2\u0080\u009D in orderto heal the division that prevents usfrom \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinhabit[ing] a world in which allthe senses interact instead of beingranked in opposition\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CThe GlazedSoundscape\u00E2\u0080\u009D 5).With regard to the northernsoundscape, the results are devastating. Yet modern society\u00E2\u0080\u0099s impact onthe arts is no less concrete becauseCanadians restructure their arts in imitation of those of the colonialpowers. The results are at first negligible, to say the least:We set up institutions just like theirs: artgalleries, orchestras, arts councils. We published books and made films just like them.We copied them carefully and lifelessly.They did not read our books or look at ourpaintings.We did not read our books or look at ourpaintings.Our culture products went into everybody\u00E2\u0080\u0099swaste basket. (MIC 68)Eventually, however, as Canada becomeseconomically more powerful, modernCanadian art gains international recoglyptic air about it as indicated by the reference to W.B.Yeats\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Second Coming\u00E2\u0080\u009D:It is excusable in a Canadian tobelieve that the great beast-poetry slouches towards Toronto tobe born. (5)In \u00E2\u0080\u009CSermon on Bears,\u00E2\u0080\u009D thebeast metaphor is further extended but specified to the\u00E2\u0080\u009Cmystery of bears . . . poetsof our wilderness\u00E2\u0080\u009D (57). Inthis poem, Watson suggests thatthe apocalypse of beast-poetrymay fail to come about becausethere is neither freedom norwildness left in our \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmachine\u00E2\u0080\u009D(58) of living. The sanctuaries we have set aside for thepoets/bears compromise everything we cherish in them, namely \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe beast we never are\u00E2\u0080\u009D(57). In this way poets/bearscould only survive if wechanged radically:let us therefore abandon .those whom we cannot save--withouta revisionof heart we obviously have no mindfor;Visions Allegories of the Postmodern 43nition too: \u00E2\u0080\u009COur novelists were translated into forty languages and wereread on Korean buses and in Bulgarianbarber shops\u00E2\u0080\u009D (68). Modernist high artmanifests similar claims to universality as does colonialism. But soonthereafter the lifestyle of Canadiansjeopardizes this achievement:Artists disputed over the importance of individuality.Some still painted originals, but the successful ones did everything in multiplecopies, and the really popular ones printedeverything up in lots of a billion.Artists who continued only to produceoriginals remained poor after poverty had beenabolished,It was a tricky situation.They argued that true art was labour-intensive, demanding hours of work in production and appreciation.It suddenly became clear that labour andart were correlatives. (79)In Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s view, the result is thatpopular postmodern culture replaceshigh modern art. The former has theadditional advantage of fitting intothe market economy; in other words, artas entertainment turns a profit for itscreators, who manage it like a business:Let us borrow the dead word art, . anduse it to transfigure entertainment.The reason for getting into these fields is tobe financially successful. (71)knowing at the bottom of ourhearts, that with progressall poetry ends, (58)However, Watson stops short ofsuggesting how we could \u00E2\u0080\u0098revise\u00E2\u0080\u0099 our hearts to save thebears. This is the more damaging since Watson identifies\u00E2\u0080\u0098progress\u00E2\u0080\u009D as the adversary ofpoetry. Hence the bears/poetsprovide access to anOther ofprogress. This Other is afreedom and wildness not foundin a progress-oriented society,which is why the bears/poetsare in a liminal position. In\u00E2\u0080\u009CSermon on Bears,\u00E2\u0080\u009D human society is about to eradicatethose occupying that liminalposition and to lose access toanOther. The poem is a bleakwarning; a loss occurs, andWatson does not make any attempt to fill the void that theloss bestows on us all.The three allegories in the\u00E2\u0080\u009CSermon on Bears\u00E2\u0080\u009D sectionVisions Allegories of the Postmodern 44Once Canada reaches this point ofcultural development, Schafer mentionsthe credo of the modern world: \u00E2\u0080\u0098Youcan\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back\u00E2\u0080\u009D (72). This dictumshelters several connections to modernprogress. In his essay \u00E2\u0080\u009CA Post-Historic Primitivism,\u00E2\u0080\u009D Paul Shepardpoignantly describes some of these connections:On the one hand, Schafer gives the dicturn a somewhat more hesitant form thanShepard in saying \u00E2\u0080\u009CYou can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back\u00E2\u0080\u009Dinstead of \u00E2\u0080\u009CYou can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t g\u00C3\u00A7 back.\u00E2\u0080\u009D On theother hand, he makes it more forcefulthan Shepard by avoiding the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cphysicalrationalizations\u00E2\u0080\u009D of why we cannot turnback and confronting the readers withthe eventual (and natural) decline ofCanada. In this way, Schafer forcessketch a program that I describe as follows: The Canadianpoet must try to create a per-formative paradigm to which heror his Canadian audience canactively (rather than passivelyand sentimentally) respond. Ifthis paradigm cannot beachieved, Canadians had bettergive up all efforts at creatingindigenous poetry.I think it is fair to saythat Watson intentionally obfuscates his program by meansof an ironic subtext. His intention to be enigmatic willemerge in his plays as well,where he hints at his refusalto take a stance. Watson conveys his position more directlyin an article on his collaboration with Marshall McLuhan.Apparently the two mendeveloped very differentstrategies for approachingtheir project:You can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t go back\u00E2\u0080\u0099 shelters a number ofcorollaries, Most of these are physicalrationalizations--too many people in theworld, too much commitment to technology orits social and economic systems, ethical andmoral ideas that make up civilized sensibilities, and the unwillingness of people to surrender to a less interesting, cruder, or moretoilsome life, from which time and progressdelivered us. This progress is the work oftechnology. When technology\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009Cside effects\u00E2\u0080\u009Dare bad, progress becomes simply \u00E2\u0080\u009Cchange,\u00E2\u0080\u009Dwhich is, by the same rote, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinevitable.\u00E2\u0080\u009D(42>Visions Allegories of the ?ostmoo\u00E2\u0080\u0099ern 45his readers to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cturn back,\u00E2\u0080\u009D at leastfor a moment.Schafer describes the beginning ofthe end, as it were, in terms of another \u00E2\u0080\u0098change\u00E2\u0080\u009D to the soundscape:A loudspeaker dangled from every laffip-postproviding a relaxed background of \u00E2\u0080\u0098noozie\u00E2\u0080\u0099through the streets. (MIC 71)To Schafer, this degenerated soundscapesymbolizes the ultimate decadence ofthe leisure society. When the Northassaults Canada with cold, snow, andwolves, this society cannot put up muchresistance. The people can only chooseto leave (which millions do [731) or\u00E2\u0080\u0098to surrender to a less interesting,cruder, or more toilsome life.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Tonguein cheek, Schafer repeats the dictum ofprogress four times, as though probingit for its truth content, until he addsthe decisive and shattering tag question:You can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back.You can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back.You can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back.You can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t turn back, can you? (72)The struggle for Canada ends significantly with the howling of wolves.Schafer then transforms this howlingMarshall McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s insistence wason the book, and getting it written, Mine, I confess, was on thedialogue, wherever it night leadus to. (Marshall McLuhan andMulti-Consciousness\u00E2\u0080\u009D 198)To Watson, it seems, the arguments that McLuhan wanted toforeclose, write down and fixon paper were still in flux,open for discussion, which implies open for revision too.*Of course, being open to ongoing revision is a stance thattakes knowledge and wisdom asconstantly changing and not inneed of definition. The ironictone of Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s allegoriesserves to subvert and questionany fixed stance we may want toattribute to him.At the end of the poems,the readers often return to thetitles in order to find thecrumb of illumination that theThe different approaches of McLuhan andWatson led to a number of problems in theircollaboration, see chapter 4.Visions Allegories of the Postmodern 46into numbers--not into the quantifyingnumbers of the \u00E2\u0080\u009CCanadian\u00E2\u0080\u009D age, but intothe absence of quantity:Wolves howled derisively atnight--0000 0000 0000ZeroZeroZero. (73)Out of this absence of quantity growsthe absence of (mechanical) noise: \u00E2\u0080\u009CAllis still\u00E2\u0080\u009D (73). In Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s view,this is the perfect stillness for thefew people left to contemplate whatwent wrong and how to start anew.Those who stay behind \u00E2\u0080\u009Cturn back\u00E2\u0080\u009D inthat they integrate into their liveselements of older, perhaps even \u00E2\u0080\u009Cprimitive,\u00E2\u0080\u009D societies, such as sittingaround a campfire:Around the campfire sit young men lookingforward to the future and old men looking backat the past.But the middle-aged man looks in bothdirections. That is his advantage. The lastword will be his, (73)Situated between future and past asthough undergoing a rite of passage,the middle-aged man is in a position ofliminality. He alone, Schafer claims,is capable of learning from past mis-poem itself withheld. Perhapsa reconsideration of the titlein light of the entire poemwill further unlock its significance. There is indeedsome merit to such reconsiderations because of the many generic titles in Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s poetry.As we shall see, these titlesmanipulate the reading processin subtle ways.A generic title describeseither form or generic contentor both of the poem. Watsonhas assigned generic titles tomany of his poems. For example, in Friday\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Child, 13 outof 31 poems bear generictitles. Some of them describethe form of the poem (song,ballad, lines, letter); somedescribe the generic content(admiration, valediction, contempt, curse), while othersdescribe both form and genericZeroVisions Allegories of the Postniodern 47takes and of projecting a better future.At this point, Schafer recovers the\u00E2\u0080\u009CI\u00E2\u0080\u009D that he lost to the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwe\u00E2\u0080\u009D earlieron. The \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmiddle-aged man,\u00E2\u0080\u009D the \u00E2\u0080\u009C1\u00E2\u0080\u009D andSchafer himself become indistinguishable in the conclusion of Music in theCold because the middle-aged man issurvivor, inventor (of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cunknown instruments\u00E2\u0080\u0099), and artist in one person. Themiddle-aged man/\u00E2\u0080\u009DI\u00E2\u0080\u009D/Schafer seeks tooccupy a liminal position becauseliminality situates him \u00E2\u0080\u009Coutside\u00E2\u0080\u009D thesystem--outside any system. He recognizes what was wrong with the art ofSchafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Canada, but at this point heis not speaking about Canada or, forthat matter, any modern society: \u00E2\u0080\u009CArtwithin the constraints of a system ispolitical action in favour of thatsystem, regardless of content\u00E2\u0080\u009D (74).The middle-aged man/\u00E2\u0080\u009DI\u00E2\u0080\u009D/Schafer, finally, reminds us of seemingly timelessvalues. As well, he remembers a concept of time that is rooted in space orin the natural rhythms of a region:content (invocation, canticle,love song).In the \u00E2\u0080\u009CBawl of Wool\u00E2\u0080\u009D section of Poems, which followschronologically after Friday\u00E2\u0080\u0099sChild, the generic titles areclearly dominant: 99 out of 101poems bear such titles. Allpoems in the subsection \u00E2\u0080\u009CLetters to the Bach. of Wire\u00E2\u0080\u009D appear to bear the generic title\u00E2\u0080\u009Cletter\u00E2\u0080\u009D because all 34 poemshave the title \u00E2\u0080\u009C. . . to thebachelor of wire.\u00E2\u0080\u009D The 67poems in the subsection \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpoemsby Jenny Blake\u00E2\u0080\u009D have the following generic titles: pome(46), lines (11), poem (3),ode, song, epilogue, sonnet anddialogue (each 1).In Sorrowful Canadians &Other Poems / Les Malheureux,39 out of 47 poems bear generictitles. Watson here employsVisions Allegories of the Postniodern 48The old technology of waste is gone.What then remains?The old virtues: harmony; the universalsoul; hard work.will live supersensitized, the antennaeof a new race,I will create a new mythology.It will take time.It will take time.There will be time. (74)In the last section of Music in theCold, Schafer continues what he beganin the first, but with the additionalexperience of what can go wrong. Thelast and first sections serve as orientation points that help us to anchorSchafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s vision; they constitute anunchanging frame within which some aggressive developments occur. Theircalmness contrasts with these developments. Schafer wants us to take ourtime to consider this contrast and findsome comfort in the confidence withwhich he speaks at the end. The monotonous, almost hypnotic, repetitions atthe end of Music in the Cold are hardto escape. They express the confidencethat we need to weather the new iceage\u00E2\u0080\u009D announced at the beginning.To be sure, one can explain thebreakdown of Canada on the level ofhis new ?modularI* form ofcomposition in which he differentiates the components ofthe poem by using a number oftypefaces. Frequently, suchmodules consist of a singleline alternating with othermodules of lines. Thus, themodular composition explainsthe prevalence of the title\u00E2\u0080\u009Clines,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 which occurs 32 times.Other generic titles are: poems(4), song, birthday lines andpostscript (each 1).Of the 77 poems in the NGVvolumes I Begin with CountinRand Mass on Cowback, 55 beargeneric titles. I also include\u00E2\u0080\u009Cre,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 which occurs 32 times,because it aids in describingthe form (e.g. \u00E2\u0080\u0098re counting\u00E2\u0080\u009D)or the content of a poem (e.g.\u00E2\u0080\u009Cre ducks\u00E2\u0080\u009D).* The term is Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s (Scobie 287).Visions Allegories of the Postniodern 49content as the eventual and naturalbreakdown of an artificial constructthat simply does not work. However, Ithink another reading of Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s vision complements the one thus far givenin that it tells us something aboutMurray Schafer the artist and his methods of composing his works.When Music in the Cold was republished in 1984 in On Canadian Music,Schafer included a prefatory paragraphgiving some background information onthe text. He writes:In 1974 1 moved with my wife to an abandonedfarm in south-central Ontario near AlgonquinPark. . . The natural and social environment of my life changed completely, . . Weshared the fields and forest around the housewith birds and wild animals, often not seeingpeople for days. The soundscape was ideal.The rhythms of this life were beginning to affect my musical thinking even though the influence was not yet precisely evident in theworks I was writing. Music in the Cold waswritten as a kind of manifesto in advance ofthe work I knew would follow. (MIC 64)Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s depiction of Music in theCold as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca kind of manifesto\u00E2\u0080\u009D raisesseveral questions. On the one hand, itadequately pinpoints the enunciatoryqualities of the text. To the extentthat the text announces a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnew mytholoThe most recent of Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099spublished poems are the NGVriddles, which make up the lastsection of Poems. Of the 40poems in this section 37 beargeneric titles: riddle (32),sonnet (6), haiku and re (each1)The reading process forWatson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s poetry is often circular in that it starts andends with a consideration ofthe titles. In most instances,readers expect titles to provide some indication of apoem\u00E2\u0080\u0099s form or generic content,either concretely, abstractlyor metaphorically. They turnfirst to the titles and returnto them once the poem is finished in order to probe whetherthe titles may add anotherdimension that went hithertounnoticed.Generic titles provide acontext for the readers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 exVisions Allegories of the Postmoo\u00E2\u0080\u0099ern 50gy,\u00E2\u0080\u009D it is indeed a statement manifesting Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s position on art and lifein what he believes to be North. Butenunciatory qualites are not alone constitutive of manifestoes. For thisreason, one could say that Schafer wasmisguided when he called Music in theCold a manifesto.However, I contend that Schaferquestions this strong link in his text.In \u00E2\u0080\u009CRe-Introducing Canadian \u00E2\u0080\u0098Art of theTheatre\u00E2\u0080\u0099: Herrman Voaden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Manifesto,\u00E2\u0080\u009DSherrill Grace describes the manifestoas a vehicle of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cexplication and asempowering act of validation\u00E2\u0080\u009D foravant-garde movements (62, n.l). ForSchafer, the manifesto gains new importance as a vehicle not of an avant-garde but of another entity. Thisentity is not in any way linked to acertain modern concept of progress asan avant-garde unavoidably is. To thecontrary, Schafer utterly discreditsprogress in the modern sense. As aresult, it seems unfit to serve as aconcept to govern a culture, and Schapectations. It may be verybroad, as in \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpome,\u00E2\u0080\u009D which suggests an orthographic variationof the word poem as well as afruit of the apple family andis a reference to James Joyce\u00E2\u0080\u0099sPornes Pennyeach. \u00E2\u0080\u0098Tome\u00E2\u0080\u009D inthis way merely reminds thereaders that what they areabout to read is one artisticstep further away from a factual account of the subjectmatter and, metaphoricallyspeaking, has a kernel (ofmeaning> hidden inside. \u00E2\u0080\u009CRe\u00E2\u0080\u009Dalso evokes a broad context.As with \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpome,\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u009Cre\u00E2\u0080\u009D points outthat the poem is a construct ofwords, under no circumstancesto be mistaken for an immediatedescription of the subjectmatter--Watson merely wrote it\u00E2\u0080\u0098with regard to\u00E2\u0080\u009D some subjectmatter.Yet the context may also bemore specific, as in \u00E2\u0080\u009Criddle,\u00E2\u0080\u0099Visions Allegories of the Postniodern 51fer insists upon a revaluation of thecentral position of progress in ourcurrent view of the world. At the sametime, he asks us to validate an attitude that would bring us \u00E2\u0080\u009Cback\u00E2\u0080\u009D to nature.The work that ultimately did followSchafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s move to south-central Ontarioincluded several parts of the Patriacycle which share a specific type ofallegory. Beginning with the prologueto the Patria cycle, The Princess ofthe Stars, Schafer embarks on an allegorical project that attempts to instruct the audience in a number ofrituals. What causes this will to instruct or, more pertinently, whatcauses this will to assert authority?Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s desperate state of mindleads him to assert the authority ofallegory. The vision and intense contemplation of a fundamental loss generate this state of mind that is a formof melancholy. An example of loss isin The Princess of the Stars the lossof ritual in our daily lives. Music inwhich situates the recipient inthe position of the ignorantbut eager-to-learn riddlee andthe poet in the position of theknowing and eager-to-teachriddler.Two of the three poemssketching Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s allegoricalprogram bear generic titles,namely \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmanifesto\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Csermon.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In \u00E2\u0080\u009CRe-introducingCanadian \u00E2\u0080\u0098Art of the Theatre\u00E2\u0080\u0099:Herman Voaden\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 1930 Manifesto,\u00E2\u0080\u009D Sherrill Grace characterizes the manifesto as toposand practice. Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009CManifesto for Beast-Poetry\u00E2\u0080\u009D presents and explains his stanceon creating poetry in Canadaand is an assertion of hisposition because it sets his(coming) poetry off againstother poetry written in Canadaat this time. But it is itselfnot an example of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbeast-poetry\u00E2\u0080\u009D or of the envisionedVisions Allegories of the Postmoo\u00E2\u0080\u0099ern 52the Cold focuses on similarly fundamental losses, such as on the loss of thenatural soundscape, on the loss of thehuman capacity to appreciate the natural soundscape while we can, and on theloss of regional standards in favor ofuniversal ones.In Music in the Cold, Schafer givesa number of clues as to how his melancholy transforms his attitude and howBecausehe intends to redeem the loss.modern Canada in his view hasthe natural soundscape of whatsiders North, it must declinethe allegorist can start withrasa, as it were, and inscribemeaning in a new mythology.\u00E2\u0080\u009Dstants of this mythology willmyth and ritual.spoiledhe con-so thata tabulahisThe con-be place,performative paradigm. Gracealso describes a strong link ofthe manifesto with an avant-garde (62, n.l). This link isproblematic in \u00E2\u0080\u009CManifesto forBeast-Poetry\u00E2\u0080\u009D because an avant-garde defines itself throughthe new. Beast-poetry, on theother hand, is far too dependent on \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpassionate mindlessness\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Poems 50) and an overallregression to the beast the human animal once was. Still,Watson uses the generic titleto set a context for thereaders\u00E2\u0080\u0099 expectations. Hepartly confirms and partly rejects this context in his poem.\u00E2\u0080\u009CSermon,\u00E2\u0080\u009D as well, sets upsuch a context. It suggestsmore of an atmosphere than acontent: the readers expect tolisten to someone who can provide moral guidance. This atmosphere attains its full impact only after readers haveBy means of his newmythology, Schafer will enlighten andinstruct his audience on how to developbetter ways of living in harmony withnature.At this point, we gain an insightinto Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s relationship with theauthority of allegory. Schafer dependsVisions Allegories of the Postmodern 53on convincing his audience of his authority, which will guarantee the validity of his new mythology. He exhortshis audience to take a leap of faith.We must accept Schafer as \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccreator\u00E2\u0080\u009D ofa new mythology that will speak for allCanadians or Northerners. In acceptinghis authority, we all become hisbeings, constructs of his ideal world.Which is why it is not unwarranted torefer to the middle-aged man/\u00E2\u0080\u009DI\u00E2\u0080\u009D/Schafer as a trinity speaking \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctruth\u00E2\u0080\u009D tous. Without this leap of faith, Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s art will remain ineffective andunable to build on the underlyingframework that broadens it from anaesthetic sphere into a socio-politicalsphere. It is only in the latter effort that Schafer can achieve what hecalls for with his allegorical project.Insofar, then, as it is a \u00E2\u0080\u009Ckind ofmanifesto,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Music in the Cold enunciates a program of socio-political action that, nevertheless, remains confined to a pre-paradigmatic stage whichusually defines itself in opposition toread the last words of thepoem, reconsidered the title,and realized that they are arepresentative of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cultimatemonster\u00E2\u0080\u009D (58). That realization gives voice to Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099sexhortation of his readers tochange their ways.It is significant that Watson gives in to two opposingimpulses: on the one hand, hedisplays the impulse to give upon the bears/poets and to prayfor their re-entry into heaven,and, on the other, he acknowledges the impulse to call forchange so that the bears/poetsmay survive. Also significantis that Watson almost stealthily hints at the second impulse.This stealth reminds me of oneof Suzi Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s assertions:Deconstructive artistsl oftenwork by stealth, assuming the posture of a sort of tricksterfigure, who is not going to get usout of the mess we are in but willengage in the only legitimatecultural practice possible for ourVisions Allegories of the Postmodern 54the status quo (in Music in the Coldthrough the use of manichean dichotomies) . But I also suspect that in themore recent Patria works, Schaferbreaks through to a new paradigm ofthinking which is in harmony with thenatural soundscape and in which humansrepossess a place in nature that is nota privileged place at all but merelyone that allows us to take part in whatSchafer has so fittingly described, inanother context, as the \u00E2\u0080\u009Csupreme activity called life\u00E2\u0080\u009D (The Tuning of theWorld 112).time--which is the chance,labyrinthine, manipulative play ofsigns without meaning. (TheReenchantment of Art: Reflectionson the Two Postmodernisms\u00E2\u0080\u0099 179)It seems to me that Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099sstealth works both ways; thatis, in the poem, it embraces adeconstructive, nihilist viewin which no change is possible,but in the space between poemand title the trickster complements the deconstructive viewand reconstructs a resistanceto the outcome projected in thepoem.The prevalence of generictitles in Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s poetry,then, reveals a will to controlboth readers and the readingprocess. This will to power isan integral part of Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099swork and has its roots in hisallegorical method.35Chapter 3Foundations:The Postmodern Continuum andthe Allegorical Gesture\u00E2\u0080\u009Ctier c\u00E2\u0080\u0099as Unverkoifte niclit erliofft, wiro\u00E2\u0080\u0099 das Erlioffte nie erreiclien. \u00E2\u0080\u009C1 (Ernst Block)\u00E2\u0080\u009CAllegories of the Postmodern\u00E2\u0080\u009D--the first part of my titlebrings the two terms into a relation of derivation or reference. Hence allegories of the postmodern are not necessarilypostmodern allegories; they can also be allegories about thepostmodern. I want to use the intersection of these conceptsas a starting point for my discussion of the postmodern continuum and its deconstructive and reconstructive impulses.On the one hand, the relation of derivation addresses allegories of the postmodern as aesthetic phenomena. In my view,the impossibility of an a-political aesthetics, however, isespecially conspicuous with regard to allegory. As I understand it, the allegorical gesture provides allegorists withconsiderable authority because it enables them to fill whatthey consider a meaningless entity with their own meaning. Themeaningless entity is defenseless in regard to the allegorists\u00E2\u0080\u00991 Except where otherwise noted, all translations are myown, and the original passages appear in footnotes: \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhosoeverdoes not hope for the unexpected, will never attain what s/hehopes for.\u00E2\u0080\u009DFoundations Allegories of the Postinodern 56re-inscription that either ties the entity in complicity to thestatus quo or engages it in redemptive projects of filling thevoid of a perceived loss. Both types of re-inscription inflatethe allegorists\u00E2\u0080\u0099 authority beyond the entity in question andreach out to the recipient whom allegorists try to overwhelmwith their newly gained authority. The redemptive projects aimat accomplishing aspects of a process that a number of theorists have described as the \u00E2\u0080\u009Creenchantment\u00E2\u0080\u009D of the world. SuziGablik views the reenchantment of art as the constitutiveprocess of an alternative, \u00E2\u0080\u009Creconstructive\u00E2\u0080\u009D postmodernism.Once I have theorized the postmodern continuum, I can situateWatson and Schafer with regard to deconstructive and reconstructive postmodernism.On the other hand, the relation of reference identifiesthe postmodern as a broader cultural phenomenon about which allegories of the postmodern make an allegorical commentary.This allegorical commentary depends on the author(ity) of allegory that may decentre the work (as deconstructive allegoriestend to do) or provide a centre to the work (as reconstructiveallegories tend to do). However, the authority itself is contingent on being accepted by the recipient in a leap of faith.Deconstructive and reconstructive postmodernists affirm thisleap of faith in different ways; while the former solipsistically claim to manifest a crisis of meaning, the latter claimto fill the void resulting from a loss of meaning.But before approaching the postmodern, I want to outlinemy understanding of allegory. I build on Walter Benjamin\u00E2\u0080\u0099sFoundations Allegories of the Postmodern 57theorizations of modern2 allegory because I contend that theprinciples he ascribes to modern allegory (loss, melancholy,reinscription, and authority) hold for postmodern allegory aswell.In Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Walter Benjaminviews the allegorical gesture as based upon the emotive stateof melancholy. He describes how Lutherism denied good deedsany special powers to salvage the soul from damnation. Peoplewere thus solely dependent on their belief in God\u00E2\u0080\u0099s grace. According to Benjamin, this rigorous morality had far-reachingconsequences:By denying \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgood deeds\u00E2\u0080\u009D the spiritual force to workmiracles, Lutherism implemented in the people astrict obedience to duty but in the great men it ledto melancholy.3The root cause of this melancholy is a loss of a belief, herethe belief in the salvation powers of good deeds. But the losswas not confined to theological matters. Because of an underlying dark belief in fate that has its roots in Germaniclore, that loss gradually broadened into an existential loss ofthe belief in good deeds altogether. As a result, human ac2\u00E2\u0080\u009CModern\u00E2\u0080\u009D here refers not to modernism, but to modernity;that is, to the socio-cultural conditions that came into beingwith the Renaissance.3 \u00E2\u0080\u009CIndem [das Luthertum] die besondere geistliche Wunderwirkung [den \u00E2\u0080\u009Cguten Werken\u00E2\u0080\u009D] absprach . . . hat es im Volkezwar den strengen Pflichtgehorsam angesiedelt, in semen Gro3enaber den Tr\u00C3\u00BCbsinn\u00E2\u0080\u009D (119).Follildatiojis Allegories of the Postmodern 58tions were robbed of value and an empty, meaningless world cameabout.The \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgreat men\u00E2\u0080\u009D of that age felt the existential impasseof a meaningless world acutely. They mourned the devaluationof life:Because those [the great men] who dug deeper sawthemselves thrown into a being filled with ruinous,half-hearted, false actions, Life itself protestedagainst that.4Benjamin encapsulates an essentialist notion of life in hisdescription of the allegorical gesture. It is this essentialism that makes Benjamin\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theorization of allegory compatiblewith Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s notion of reconstructive postmodernism (see mydiscussion of Gablik below).In a gesture of protest, the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cgreat men\u00E2\u0080\u0099s\u00E2\u0080\u009D melancholyfills a meaningless world with new meaning, so that theirmelancholy emerges as a condition for a certain type ofcreativity, namely an active rewriting of the world:Mourning is the mental outlook in which emotion enlivens the emptied world like a masque in order togain a riddle-like satisfaction from gazing at it.The emotion Benjamin mentions in this passage needs furtherreflection for it is the foundation of the allegorical gestureas Benjamin describes it and as I use it to describe postmodern\u00E2\u0080\u009CDenn die tiefer Sch\u00C3\u00BCrfenden sahen sich in das Daseinals in em Tr\u00C3\u00BCmrnerfeld halber, unechter Handlungen hineingestelit. Dagegen schlug das Leben selbst aus\u00E2\u0080\u009D (120).5 \u00E2\u0080\u009CTrauer ist die Gesinnung, in der das Gef\u00C3\u00BChl die entleerte Welt maskenhaft neubelebt, urn em r\u00C3\u00A4tselhaftes Gen\u00C3\u00BCgenan ihrem Anblick zu haben\u00E2\u0080\u009D (120).Foundations Allegories of the Postiiiodern 59allegory. In a complex proposition, Benjamin suggests thatthis emotion occurs independent of the empirical subject andinstead attaches itself to the materiality of an object. Themourning intensifies the underlying intention of this emotion:Every emotion is bound to an apriori object and itspresentation is its phenomenology. The theory ofmourning . . . can thus be developed only in the inscription of the melancholist\u00E2\u0080\u0099s world. For the emotions, as vague as they may appear to self-apprehension, respond in mechanical attitudes to anobjective structure of the world. . . . A mechanicalattitude that has its determined location in thehierarchy of intentions and is called emotion onlybecause this location is not the highest. Being comparable only to love among the emotions (and notlightheartedly either), the surprising persistence ofthe intention determines this location. For [mourning is] capable of a particular intensification andcontinuous, profound thought of its intention. Profound contemplation is appropriate primarily for thesad person.6As a result of the intensification of intention, the reinscription of the world appears all the more forceful and potentiallycoercive to the recipient. These characteristics of reinscrip\u00E2\u0080\u00946 \u00E2\u0080\u009CJedes Gef\u00C3\u00BChl ist gebunden an einen apriorischen Gegenstand und dessen Darstellung ist seine Phanomenologie. DieTheorie der Trauer . . . ist demnach nur in der Beschreibungjener Welt, die unterm Blick des Melancholischen sich auftut,zu entrollen. Denn die Gef\u00C3\u00BChle, wie vage immer sie der Selbstwahrnehmung scheinen mogen, erwidern als motorisches Gebareneinem gegenstandlichen Aufbau der Welt. . . . Eine motorischeAttitude, die in der Hierarchie der Intentionen ihren wohlbestimmten Ort hat und Gef\u00C3\u00BChl nur darum heif3t, weil es nicht derh\u00C3\u00B6chste ist. Bestimmt wird er durch die erstaunliche Beharrlichkeit der Intention, die unter den Gef\u00C3\u00BChlen aul3er diesemvielleicht--und das nicht spielweis--nur der Liebe eignet.Denn [Trauer ist] zur besonderen Steigerung, kontinuierlichenVertiefung ihrer Intention bef\u00C3\u00A4higt. Tiefsinn eignet vor allemdem Traurigen\u00E2\u0080\u009D (120).Foundatiolls Allegories of the Postniodern 60tion are contingent upon the peculiar alliance between allegoryand authority.Inscribing a dead world with new and deliberate meanings,Benjamin says, is the principal allegorical gesture. I arguethat inscribing the world can be seen as an encoding of language in order to show that the allegorical gesture primarilyresponds to a crisis of meaning.The metaphor of encoding is particularly appropriate toclarify the allegorical gesture: encoding signifies the conversion of a message from plain text into code. What allegoristsexperience as a dead world (namely, the meaninglessness of it)can be mapped onto the plain text that is to be converted intocode. The allegorists\u00E2\u0080\u0099 inscription constitutes the code inwhich they store the dead world. New meaning (of the inscription) and the stored plain text (of the dead world) make up thecipher. The gaze of the melancholic authors forces objects inthe newly inscribed world to exhibit, in a double gesture, boththeir demise and resurrection as signifying entities. That iswhy the manner of encoding information in allegory is contingent upon the melancholic gaze. The allegorists control thenew meaning. This meaning is anOther of the object, and, as aconsequence, the allegorical gesture provides allegorists withprivileged access to a normally hidden knowledge. Hence theyI use meaning in a way that foreshadows several connotations that Gablik assigns to the term. Meaning, to her, has aquasi-biological function in human life: without it, we cannotexist (see my discussion of meaning below).Foundations Allegories of the Postinodern 61revere the allegorical object, not only as an emblem of thishidden knowledge, but also as a store of authority.Allegory, then, can be seen as a mode of encoding languagewith another (or anOther) meaning.8 It may defer meaning either to another level of contemplation or even endlessly if theauthors choose (for whatever reasons) not to provide a key atall. I understand the postmodern primarily as a crisis ofmeaning. The deferral of meaning in allegory exhibits thiscrisis and explains the prevalence of allegory in the post-modern.At this point, I want to broaden my discussion of allegoryby comparing briefly Linda Hutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s and Suzi Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099stheories of the postmodern. Hutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s work is an importantstarting point for any discussion of the postmodern in theCanadian context, but Gablik offers a broader understandingthat I find particularly useful, especially when her theory ofthe postmodern continuum is read in conjunction with Benjamin\u00E2\u0080\u0099stheory of allegory. Benjamin and Gablik also build theirtheories on essentialist notions with which Hutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s positionis incompatible.At the beginning of her book on The Reenchantment of Art,Suzi Gablik admits freely that hers is not so much an\u00E2\u0080\u009Cacademic, scholarly work\u00E2\u0080\u009D as it is a \u00E2\u0080\u009Csustained meditation[with] a visionary bias\u00E2\u0080\u009D (1). She then sketches the coor\u00E2\u0080\u00948 This is also Angus Fletcher\u00E2\u0080\u0099s initial observation (3).Foundations Allegories 01\u00E2\u0080\u0099 the Postniodern 62dinates of a postmodernism that she calls \u00E2\u0080\u009Creconstructive\u00E2\u0080\u009D andviews as diametrically opposed to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeconstructive\u00E2\u0080\u009D post-modernism. However, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdiametrically opposed\u00E2\u0080\u009D to her does notmean that the two postmodernisms are not in subtle ways contingent on each other. On the contrary, Gablik writes, ourculture reveals itself best in the interplay of its opposingtendencies (9), which is why she strives to construct the twopostmodernisms, not as antagonistic movements, but as complementary components of a larger project in which many disciplines remap the modern paradigm.The term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdeconstructive\u00E2\u0080\u009D postmodernism warrantsclarification. In her use of the term, Gablik does not referdirectly to Jacques Derrida because in her view, it is JeanBaudrillard who \u00E2\u0080\u009Chas been most influential in orchestrating theart world\u00E2\u0080\u0099s whole deconstructive scenario\u00E2\u0080\u009D (31). Nonetheless,the type of poststructuralist philosophy she holds responsiblefor the deconstructive impulse in postmodernism also revealsDerrida\u00E2\u0080\u0099s influence, especially when she discusses the crisisof meaning, which to her is triggered by the deconstruction ofmeaning.In The Politics of Postmodernism, Hutcheon outlines herunderstanding of postmodernism and its politics, but a decisivedifference between Hutcheon and Gablik is that where Gablik be-Foundations Allegories of the Postinodern 63holds \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmeaning,\u00E2\u0080\u009D Hutcheon sees \u00E2\u0080\u009Crepresentation.\u00E2\u0080\u009D9 Postmodernmeaning, for Hutcheon, is always already and endlessly deferredso that we can only access it through representation:What postmodern theory and practice together suggestis that everything always was \u00E2\u0080\u0098cultural\u00E2\u0080\u0099 . . . thatis, always mediated by representations. (34)By deflecting the issue of meaning into one of representation,Hutcheon says, postmodernism challenges our mimetic assumptionsabout representation. For her, the key question is this:We may see, hear, feel, smell, and touch it [thereal\u00E2\u0080\u0099], but do we know it in the sense that we givemeaning to it? (33)But her question assumes that meaning is dependent on a chainof representation that moves from the \u00E2\u0080\u009Creal\u00E2\u0080\u009D1\u00C2\u00B0 via sensory experience and knowledge to meaning. Suzi Gablik, however, suggests another approach to meaning.\u00E2\u0080\u009CMeaning\u00E2\u0080\u009D is a key idea in the aesthetics Gablik proposes.At the end of The Reenchantment of Art, Gablik expresses herHutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s approach towards meaning and representationalso explains why she only mentions Murray Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s The Characteristics Man without alluding to the Patria cycle. Lookingat The Characteristics Man in its larger context within Patriawould precisely lead to those aspects of meaning that go beyondrepresentation, namely the participatory rituals. Excludingthose aspects seems to be a blindspot in Hutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s view of thepostmodern. For a discussion of The Characteristics Man andits context see ch. 5.10 As Hutcheon\u00E2\u0080\u0099s quotation marks signify, the \u00E2\u0080\u009Creal\u00E2\u0080\u009D itself is a doubtful category that is not fit to serve as a foundation. Nonetheless, it points to realism which seems to bethe yardstick against which she measures everything: \u00E2\u0080\u009CWhatpostmodernism does is to denaturalize both realism\u00E2\u0080\u0099s transparency and modernism\u00E2\u0080\u0099s reflexive response [to realism\u00E2\u0080\u0099s transparency], while retaining (in its typically complicitously critical way) the historically attested power of both\u00E2\u0080\u009D (34).Follildations Allegories of tile Postniodern 64hope that her book is a first step towards an aesthetics oreven theory of a hitherto only marginal movement, that of the\u00E2\u0080\u009Creenchantment\u00E2\u0080\u009D of art. She writes:My sense is that the artists in this book who havemoved beyond protest and oppositional mind to embracereconciliation and positive social alternatives donot represent merely the response of isolated individuals to the dead-endedness of our present situation. They are not a movement in a vacuum. They areprototypes who embody the next historical and evolutionary stage of consciousness, in which the capacityto be compassionate will be central not only to ourideals of success, but also to the recovery of both ameaningful society and a meaningful art. (182)In this passage, Gablik summarizes key issues of the newaesthetics she envisions. One of these is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmeaningfulness.\u00E2\u0080\u009DGablik initiates her discussion of meaning in modern and post-modern paradigms by quoting Albert Camus, who maintains that\u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe question of life\u00E2\u0080\u0099s meaning is the most urgent question ofall.\u00E2\u0080\u009D11 Gablik takes Camus\u00E2\u0080\u0099s dictum as evidence that there is\u00E2\u0080\u0098\u00E2\u0080\u0098 Qtd. in The Reenchantment of Art 29. Gablik repeatedlyrelies on Albert Camus to explain key terms. Another exampleof this reliance on Camus is the monological encapsulation ofartist and observer that reconstructive postmodernism mustovercome in order to become more \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdialogical\u00E2\u0080\u009D and establish a\u00E2\u0080\u009Crelational dyad\u00E2\u0080\u009D of artist and audience. Her reference toCamus is as follows: \u00E2\u0080\u009C\u00E2\u0080\u0098Art cannot be a monologue,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Albert Camuswrote in Resistance, Rebellion and Death. \u00E2\u0080\u0098Contrary to thecurrent presumption, if there is any man who has no right tosolitude it is the artist\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Qtd. in The Reenchantment of Art158). Gablik views Camus as a signpost of the modern aporiawith regard to existential questions. I do not think that thewords \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdialogical\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmonological\u00E2\u0080\u009D should be seen asreferences to Bakhtin because of the ethical overtones ofGablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s argument. She clearly seeks to integrate Camus intoan ethical argument on the impact of these existential questions on the human condition and how we can respond to them under current circumstances. Her treatment of Camus is similarto Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s; see ch. 4.Foundatiojis Allegories of the Postmodern 65a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwill-to-meaning\u00E2\u0080\u009D that she understands to be a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfundamentaldrive of human life,\u00E2\u0080\u009D so much so, that a framework of meaningis an \u00E2\u0080\u009Cessential biological need\u00E2\u0080\u009D for the human organism (29).According to Gablik, however, poststructuralist philosophyenacts a radical break with this drive and undermines the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cverylegitimacy of meaning itself\u00E2\u0080\u009D (29). Hence, she perceives acrisis of meaning on two levels.The first level concerns the way that signs or images maybe deconstructed to destabilize the symbolic order. In thisway, deconstructive postmodernists question the union of signifier and signified, a union which is necessary to convey aspecific meaning. She argues thatlife presents itself, in our current society, as anendless accumulation of meaningless spectacles,originating in the loss of any unifying narrative ofthe world. (31)As a result, postmodern works of art tend to exhibit a crisisof narrative meaning and social function. In the paintings ofDavid Salle for instance, Gablik says, \u00E2\u0080\u009Canything goes with anything, like a game without rules; images slide past one another, dissociated and decontextualized, failing to link up into acoherent sequence\u00E2\u0080\u009D (30). She distinguishes this deconstructiveworking method from that of the Surrealists, who also createddisjunctive and decontextualized images but in order to sparknew and unexpected meanings. Salle\u00E2\u0080\u0099s paintings, however, perform without \u00E2\u0080\u009Cexpressive or manipulative intent\u00E2\u0080\u009D (30). Sheconcludes that \u00E2\u0080\u009CSalle\u00E2\u0080\u0099s images exist without any referent\u00E2\u0080\u009D(30).Foundations Allegories of the Postmodern 66Deconstructive postmodernism, however, subverts meaning onyet another level that, to Gablik, represents an even greaterrisk to meaning. She defines this risk as follows:There is also the greater loss of a mythic, transpersonal ground of meaning in the way that our particular culture transmits itself. It is the spirit, or\u00E2\u0080\u009Cbinding power\u00E2\u0080\u009D holding everything together, the pattern connecting and giving significance to the whole,that is lacking in the underlying picture we have ofour world. (30)Gablik describes this level further with regard to differentways of looking at works of art. On the one hand, the audienceremains passive in front of a spectacle. This passivity, shesays,is the very opposite of waking up, looking at eventscritically, seeing reality and feeling responsible--that is to say, responding to what is going on.Responsibility implies that one is carrying out intentions, shaping the environment, influencingothers. (33)In a world determined by television and computer screens wherevastly different events appear on a single plane of electronicflow, we are confronted with more and more information and lessand less meaning so that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe \u00E2\u0080\u0098will\u00E2\u0080\u0099 to meaning often deliberately courts meaninglessness and even finds satisfaction in it\u00E2\u0080\u009D(33-34). Gablik extends the metaphor of \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccourting\u00E2\u0080\u009D in terms ofa \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdance\u00E2\u0080\u009D and \u00E2\u0080\u009Cstaying in free fall [in a] sense of dizziness\u00E2\u0080\u009D(30).12 According to Gablik, then, deconstructive postmodernism exalts in declaring its own meaninglessness.12 She entitles her third chapter \u00E2\u0080\u009CDancing with Baudrillard: Postmodernism and the Deconstruction of Meaning\u00E2\u0080\u009D (29-40).The expression of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Csense of dizziness\u00E2\u0080\u009D is an allusion toBaudrillard.Foundations A]]egories of the Postniodern 67The concepts of meaning\u00E2\u0080\u009D and such adjectives as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmeaningful\u00E2\u0080\u009D or \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmeaningless,\u00E2\u0080\u009D then, appear to be charged in Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099sprose with specific connotations. When she discusses the crisis of meaning in the modern world, she spells out this connotation. She says:[Theodor] Adorno\u00E2\u0080\u0099s meditations on the social implications of Auschwitz led him to the belief that anyidea of harmonizing with the world, of striving for apositive or meaningful relation to it, is cheap optimism, like the happy ending in movies, obtained byrepressing the reality of radical evil anddespair. . . . The shock administered to modernsociety by the presence of the concentration campsmade the notion of a benevolent, or meaningful,universe seem naive and unrealistic forever. (31)Yet this modern view of the world is out of focus, according toGablik, because it epitomizes the Cartesian philosophies that\u00E2\u0080\u009Ccarried us away from a sense of wholeness by focussing only onindividual experience\u00E2\u0080\u009D (7). The modern focus is misguided because it does not allow for a holistic vision of the world thatin Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s view alone can restore the benevolence of meaning.This benevolence of meaning is the irreducible starting pointof her reflections on the postmodern. As a result, Gablik persistently describes the crisis of meaning as a loss of meaning.\u00E2\u0080\u009CMeaning,\u00E2\u0080\u009D to her, is an inherently benevolent term so that anycritique of meaning as such, and not merely of a particularkind of meaning, represents a nihilist, or life-denying, gesture that can only end up in complicity with the forces causingFoundations Allegories of the Postniodern 68modern alienation.13 At this point, it becomes clear that herbook itself should be seen as a part of what she defines asreconstructive postmodernism. In my view, it is an instance ofa new intuitive theorizing that adheres not primarily to theprinciples of logical rigour but projects in a visionary modeof thinking what is possible in a world that has not given uphope. But where does this hope come from?Gablik contends that hope is the key issue when it comesto distinguishing the two postmodernisins. While reconstructivepostmodernists \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccontinue to aspire to transforming our dysfunctional culture,\u00E2\u0080\u009D deconstructive postmodernists \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbelieve such ahope is naive or deluded\u00E2\u0080\u009D (18-19). But Gablik does not meetthe deconstructive objections to hope directly; rather, shepoints to the benefits of hope--providing that hope is stillpossible.Gablik points out that there are some artists, such asMary Beth Edelson, to whom hope is a matter of belief. Whenasked whether she felt optimistic about our society moving inthe direction of ecological and cooperative stability, Edelsonreplied:It doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t make a difference in my behavior whetherthere is a chance that this will succeed or not. Iwill still behave as if these goals were a possibility, regardless of what my doubts are. . .The opposite of not hoping is what we have-\u00E2\u0080\u0098 On the other hand, in The Politics of Postmodernism,Linda Hutcheon claims that it is one of the strengths of postmodernism to undertake precisely such a \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccomplicitous critique\u00E2\u0080\u009D(passim)Foundations Allegories of the Postmodern 69extraordinarily paralyzing, cynical alienation. Ifwe sit back and say, \u00E2\u0080\u009CWe are not going to do anythingbecause it\u00E2\u0080\u0099s useless,\u00E2\u0080\u009D obviously nothing is going tohappen. What makes things happen is believing thatthey can happen. What some people call fooling ourselves may be our only hope. (Qtd. in The Reenchantment of Art 25)Reconstructive postmodernism envisions a social renewal that isdependent on a human effort which is itself motivated by optimism.Optimism, Gablik reminds us, is the leap of faith thatWilliam James saw as rooted in life itself. Although Gablikdoes not provide a specific reference, I think James\u00E2\u0080\u0099s The Willto Believe corroborates her statement. Arguing against what hecalls \u00E2\u0080\u009Cscientific absolutism,\u00E2\u0080\u009D James proposes an alternativethat is able to address moral questions whose solutions cannotwait for sensible proof. He contends that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe question ofhaving moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided byour will\u00E2\u0080\u009D (22-23). One of his examples is that of a man climbing in the Alps and maneuvering himself into a position fromwhich the only escape is by a terrible leap. If the man believes he can make the leap, that belief will create subjectiveemotions without which the successful leap would be impossible.If, on the other hand, the man mistrusts his abilities, he willhesitate so long as to lose his confidence and miss his leap.James concludes from this example that,the part of wisdom clearly is to believe what onedesires; for the belief is one of the indispensablepreliminary conditions of the realization of its object. There are then cases where faith creates itsown verification. Believe, and you shall be right,for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shallFoundations Allegories of the Postinodern 70again be right, for you shall perish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage. (97)Gablik interprets the current crisis of meaning as havingthe same structure as James\u00E2\u0080\u0099s moral questions. In this way,she maintains that reconstructive belief is right and deconstructive doubt is right; the difference is that to believe is\u00E2\u0080\u009Cgreatly to [our] advantage\u00E2\u0080\u009D for it opens a space where reformof aesthetic and socio-political realities is possible.Hutcheon, however, does not see the current crisis ofmeaning as an ethical issue. As a result, her notion of post-modernism as instances of \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccomplicitous critique\u00E2\u0080\u009D cannot open aspace where reform would be possible. To her credit, she admits as much:While the postmodern has no effective theory ofagency that enables a move into political action, itdoes work to turn its inevitable ideological grounding into a site of de-naturalizing critique. (ThePolitics of Postmodernism 3)This de-naturalizing critique makes her theory of postmodernismcynical and hopeless because it removes the ground on which tobuild any ethics of action. In the following passage, Hutcheondescribes the de-naturalizing critique of postmodernism:The postmodern\u00E2\u0080\u0099s initial concern is to de\u00E2\u0080\u0094naturalizesome of the dominant features of our way of life; topoint out that those entities that we unthinkinglyexperience as \u00E2\u0080\u0098natural\u00E2\u0080\u0099 (they might even include capitalism, patriarchy, liberal humanism) are in fact\u00E2\u0080\u0098cultural,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 made by us, not given to us. (2)Hutcheon, of course, chooses her examples carefully. Criticshave attacked capitalism, patriarchy and liberal humanism inrecent times so that the thought of a de-naturalizing critiqueFoundations Allegories of the Postiodern 71of these entities is not as far-fetched as she may want us tobelieve (\u00E2\u0080\u009Cthey might even include\u00E2\u0080\u009D). Furthermore, why are only\u00E2\u0080\u009Csome of the dominant features of our way of life\u00E2\u0080\u009D de-naturalized? Hutcheon does not say which ones nor does she describethe criteria for selection. And what happens if the postmodernalso de-naturalizes not only \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdominant\u00E2\u0080\u009D features but stillmarginal ones, such as environmental protection, equality forwomen and minorities? Such a de-naturalizing critique wouldindeed throw out the baby with the bathwater because it wouldremove the grounds on which such movements as environmentalism,feminism and multi-culturalism can take action against currentinjustices.To come back to Gablik, I still see a flaw in her theoryof reconstructive postmodernism. She points out that there areneither prescriptions on how to achieve hope nor logicallycoherent explications of where hope comes from. The bestGablik can do is to point to the belief that originates in aleap of faith. She does not theorize the leap itself.Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theoretical blindspot in my view is as serious asthat of Hutcheon, who does not admit an ethical dimension toher argument. The consequences, of course, are almost diametrically opposed because Gablik ends up holding a positionthat facilitates political action on ethical grounds, whileHutcheon denies such action can be taken in or with the post-modern.Often, and especially in reconstructive postmodern allegories, I contend that this leap of faith is contingent on aFoundations A]]egories of the Postinodern 72desire to replace a lost object. Allegorists count on thisdesire in their audiences to bring about a trust in theauthor(ity) of allegory. Without this trust, these allegoricalworks remain meaningless (in Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s sense of the term).To Gablik, the benefits of hope materialize most clearlywith regard to a particular role-model of the artist that shefinds convincing. In this way, she quotes Jungian psychoanalyst Marie-Louise von Franz, who says: \u00E2\u0080\u009CA civilization whichhas no creative people is doomed . . . . The person who isreally in touch with the future is the creative personality\u00E2\u0080\u009D(qtd. in The Reenchantment of Art 24). Gablik concludes fromthis that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthose artists who are in touch with the necessarypsychological tasks of a culture prepare the way for theculturally supported solution to a conflict to emerge, or forthe healing of a psychological defect\u00E2\u0080\u009D (24). To Gablik, ofcourse, the modern paradigm presents such a defect. More specifically, the modern defect is that of the Cartesian separation of the observer from the observed. It is this separation that reconstructive postmodernism attempts to overcomeby instating \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca more participatory aesthetics of interconnectedness\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Reenchantment of Art\u00E2\u0080\u009D 180).Gablik views the Cartesian woridview as positing arigorous distinction between subject and object. Modernaesthetics sanctifies this distinction in that it adheres tothe monologic encapsulation of author and audience in separate,non-interactive spheres. The autonomy of modernist art furtherFoundations Allegories of the Postmodern 73reinforces this encapsulation because the work of art is thereto be passively observed (which is why it is bound to the issueof representation). It cannot, however, interact with theworld it represents; it is aloof, without impact. Says Gablik:Our culture\u00E2\u0080\u0099s most cherished idea remains the aggressive insistence on freedom for its own sake, freedomwithout praxis--the kind of freedom that makes picking up the garbage valid as art only if you want to\u00E2\u0080\u009Cromance\u00E2\u0080\u009D the trash (that is, use it for an aestheticeffect), but not if you step beyond the value vacuumto try to clean up the river.\u00E2\u0080\u00994 (The Reenchantmentof Art 135)As soon as a project tries to have an impact within the environmental ethics Gablik describes, modern aesthetics discredits it as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwork\u00E2\u0080\u009D and refuses to call it \u00E2\u0080\u009Cart.\u00E2\u0080\u009DThe notion of art as compassionate action depends onshamanic consciousness that does not permit us to experiencethe world as apart from ourselves. Richard Rosenbium\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Manscape sculpture, according to Gablik, upsets the dualism of theCartesian woridview: \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe boundary between self and world hasbeen allowed to dissolve, and the figure of a man becomes awalking landscape\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Reenchantment of Art\u00E2\u0080\u009D 185; see alsofig. 1).14 The latter is a reference to an art project of Dominique Mazeaud, who in 1987 began \u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Great Cleansing of the RioGrande River\u00E2\u0080\u009D (see The Reenchantment of Art 119-21). This project includes Mazeaud--sometimes in the company of friends,sometimes alone--removing garbage from the Rio Grande River ina ritual, occasional exhibitions of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctreasures\u00E2\u0080\u009D found thatway, and a journal that she calls \u00E2\u0080\u009Criveries.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Gablik citesthis project as an example of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cart as compassionate action.\u00E2\u0080\u009DFoundations Allegories of the Postodern 74Fig. 1: Richard RosenbiUm.Manscape. 1984-85. Photo courtesy of AddisonGa1leof American Art. Andover. Massachusetts.)(\u00E2\u0080\u009CThe Reenchantment\u00E2\u0080\u009D 187)Foundations Allegories of the Postniodern 75Another instance of shamanic consciousness, this time in amodern, urban setting, is the performance art by MierleLaderman Ukeles, artist-in--residence at the New York CityDepartment of Sanitation. In Touch Sanitation, a performancethat lasted eleven months, Ukeles shook hands with everyone inthe Sanitation Department. Gablik claims that through this\u00E2\u0080\u009Ccompassionate gesture of the hand which embodies a non-threatening openness to others, a space of enchantment isopened up, if only for a moment\u00E2\u0080\u009D (190).In another performance, Following in Your Footsteps,Ukeles followed the workers and pantomimed their movements, \u00E2\u0080\u009Casa way of showing her appreciation for what they do, and actingas a stand-in for all the people who do not do this work\u00E2\u0080\u009D(190). Ukeles\u00E2\u0080\u0099s two performances allowed her to become a partof the community of sanitation workers. The parameters of herart are neither autonomy nor monologic encapsulation, butempathy and healing. Gablik comments:The image of the shaman strikes at the roots ofmodern estrangement: merging her consciousness withthe workers, she converses with them, learns fromthem. There is no critical distance, no theoreticalviolence, no antagonistic imperative; but as something more than art, her work becomes an exercise inmodel-building, in the construction of an alternativeto the professional role model. When one developsthe woridview of a shaman, one becomes a healer inall one\u00E2\u0080\u0099s activities. (191)It seems that reconstructive postmodernism, especially when itemploys rituals, obliterates the distinction between theaesthetic and the social realms of society. This distinction,however, only came into being with the advent of the CartesianFoundations AJiegories of the Postmodern 76woridview and its division of society into realms of differenttasks. Obliterating this distinction is another attack on theCartesian worldview.Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s examples emphasize a consistent bi-partite traitof the reenchantment of art or of reconstructive postmodernism:on the one hand, enchanted art challenges the rigidity of themodern paradigm and its alienating principles, while on theother, it offers an alternative to deconstructive postmodernism, which she sees as an extension of modern nihilism. Socialand environmental ethics charged with responsibility provideGablik with the basis for her concept of reconstructive post-modernism.The aesthetics Gablik is proposing entails a movement fromobservation to participation. Observation, of course, isentangled in the issue of representation; however, Gablik neverconfronts the issue of representation directly. In her view,nature or the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnon\u00E2\u0080\u0094cultural real\u00E2\u0080\u009D (as Hutcheon calls it [34])can be experienced in our intuitive responses15 to participatory rituals that partake of the new aesthetics she envisionsin opposition to the one built on Cartesian dualism.I see a relation between Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s unwillingness to confront the issue of representation and her unwillingness to15 These responses allude to the cluster of connotationsGablik assigns to the term \u00E2\u0080\u009Cresponsibility,\u00E2\u0080\u009D namely \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwaking up,looking at events critically, seeing reality and feelingresponsible--that is to say, responding to what is going on.Responsibility implies that one is carrying out intentions,shaping the environment, influencing others\u00E2\u0080\u009D (33).Foundations Allegories of the Fostinodern 77theorize the leap of faith that is so important to her conceptof reconstructive postmodernism. Gablik hesitates to engage inthe theoretical discussion of issues when she has to argue withthe claims of deconstruction. A possible explanation for thishesitation is that such an argument with deconstruction wouldimpede the intuitive flow of her argument, which deals withmuch more important issues, for instance, creating a fertileground for reconstructive postmodern art in the name of environmentalism. The ethical imperative of trying to press onwith this project leads her to neglect doing the meticulousgroundwork usually needed to make such an ambitious projectcredible. Ultimately, I think, Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s blindspots are flawsin her concept of reconstructive postmodernism. Hence I amgoing to address the issue of representation in reconstructivepostmodernism in an effort to make Gablik\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theoretical basemore accountable to critical questioning.Craig Owens has described how art history, for instance,has constructed representation either as symbolic action (Vorstellung) or else as theatrical presentation (Darstellung). Inthe former, the image substitutes for an absent object, whilein the latter it creates the illusion of a presence of an object. Owens comments:Art historians have always located representation interms of the poles of absence and presence which, asDerrida has shown, constitute the fundamental conceptual opposition upon which Western metaphysics isbased. (\u00E2\u0080\u009CRepresentation, Appropriation & Power\u00E2\u0080\u009D 13)What is needed, Owens suggests, is not a new theory of representation but a critique of it. Gablik, I think, would agreeC H-CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-H CC)HH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-CDHaCDCDHH\u00E2\u0080\u0099\u00E2\u0080\u0098-H-CDCl)CD Cl)tqCDCH\u00E2\u0080\u00995C)HCDH- CC::HH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-Cl)C)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDH- CDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099)Cl)CH-H-H- ZCC)CDC eHZH-)Cl)CDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl) H-CCCl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 C)Cl))H-HCDH-Cl) H))CDH)Cl)HH-L)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 CH-HH-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099ICC CD Cl)H- C CD H CD CD H CD CD CD C) 1) H CD H C H H H CD Cl) H- Cl)H-CD H H C H C Cl) H H H Cl) H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 C H H H- C H CD H- H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Cl) H-CD H C CD H CD C) H- H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 H H H- CD CD C) CD -sDCHCD\u00E2\u0080\u0098))1))Cl)C)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099)H-))CD-sCDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099VH-H-CDCDCDHH-1CH-C)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-CDHCCDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-ZCDH-C)CDCD)ZCDH-H-H-Cl))CCC)CH-CDH-CDC)Cl)C)Cl))H-CD)\u00E2\u0080\u009C)sC\u00E2\u0080\u0099CCDHH-C\u00E2\u0080\u009CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099))CDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-H-H-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-H-1H-r+Cl)CCCl))H\u00E2\u0080\u0099C)HCDC)1H-HCDCl))H-Z)CDCDVH-C.)CH-CC)CCDCDH.H-CD\u00E2\u0080\u0099sXCH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-VCDCl)))CH-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-Cl)r+CCl)+hH\u00E2\u0080\u0094CDCCDCCDZCDCDCDNC\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Cl)Z)CDCD)CD)CDCDH\u00E2\u0080\u00A2)\u00C2\u00A9CDCl))CCDH.H\u00E2\u0080\u00A2r+-)>\u00E2\u0080\u0094CDCl)))CCCDCl))CD)C)CDDCDDO.ctr+>CDC)CDCl)c-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099))CDe)Cl)CDrl\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cfl)c-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099C)CCCDCl)c-iCCCD\u00E2\u0080\u009Cc-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-c-I-1CDCDCCl)CCDr+-)CDOCc-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099H-C)CCDH\u00E2\u0080\u00A2H\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Cl)CDC)Cl)CC-H-HCDICDCDCCDC/)H-rCCDr-i-0H-H\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Cl)Cl)CDCDC)CCDCDH\u00E2\u0080\u00A2CC)Cc-i-CiDOCDc-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDc-i\u00E2\u0080\u0099CCCCH)CDC/)I\u00E2\u0080\u0094a3C)CCDCDC)c)C))CDH-Cl)Cl)XCl)r+HCD.ZCCl)Cl)C))CDH-CDCDCDCl)ZICl)CECC))rC))C))CDCDH-CDH-CD--Cl)i\u00E2\u0080\u0094aC))C)CDCDH-C-C3CDCI--CCDc-i-DOr+CDHCDHC))CDCDC))i\u00E2\u0080\u0094C))CCDDOH-<-C))H-ZZ\u00E2\u0080\u009D\u00E2\u0080\u0094CDc-I-Cc-i-DOCDCDc-I.>C)CC.CCC)r+C)C)))H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099BC)CDCl)\u00E2\u0080\u0094C)CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099C)r+ciHCDZciI.-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)CDCDCDCCl))C)r1\u00E2\u0080\u0098Cc-I.)c-I.c)Cl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099c-I.)c-I)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDZ\u00E2\u0080\u0098\u00E2\u0080\u0094Cl)c-I-CDCl)Cl)rtCciCDCDCH\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cc-I.CDCDCc-I.YCCDCl)ciCDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDH.CICl)r+)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099)ciH\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl))Cl))H\u00E2\u0080\u0099C)F--CDCDCDC)CDCCc-I.H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDC)yqCl)H.Cl)ci\u00E2\u0080\u0098I\u00E2\u0080\u0094CD<\u00E2\u0080\u00A2ciCDCDZCD)CO.)c)\u00C3\u00A7:c)BC)CDci\u00E2\u0080\u009CICDCl)Ic-I. CD B C Cl) c-I. C Cl) Cl) H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 C\u00E2\u0080\u0099 CD c-I) C ci c-I. H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 Cl) Cl) H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 B CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099I--IIICCCZciciciBBBBH.)>CC\u00E2\u0080\u0099)c))Cl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099<<BCD))H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDCCDCCBC>r+)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CD1H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDH.H\u00E2\u0080\u0099-CDCDC\u00E2\u0080\u0099IH\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)C\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099BH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl))BCCD\u00E2\u0080\u009CCDCl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDCDCDCD\u00E2\u0080\u0098CCC\u00E2\u0080\u0099CD)CDCD5H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDX=C\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)Cl)CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CCl)CDCDH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099)Cl)CDC\u00E2\u0080\u0099CD)1H\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)CDCl)CC\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)CCDCDCl)ci\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099)C\u00E2\u0080\u0099CH\u00E2\u0080\u0099-5CD3CDIC\u00E2\u0080\u0099C\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099ICH\u00E2\u0080\u0099CC..C..CC..CDCDC..Cl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099)ICDC..-sCDCl)c)1cJ1The Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postodern 156McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s principles to do that. The title thus emerges as aninvitation to use McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theory to think beyond McLuhan.28By employing characters from Greek mythology, Watson seemsto suggest an analogy between that mythology and the post-modern. Greek mythology embodies an unacknowledged Other ofGreek rationality, the foundation of Western rationality.29The analogy suggests that the postmodern is an unacknowledgedOther of the modern. The positional infighting among the Greekcharacters (Clytemnestra vs. Orestes) parallels and representspositional infighting within the postmodern (McLuhan vs. Watson)From the beginning of the play, Electra feels responsiblefor moral impasses brought about by her environment. Dr Psiand Dr Kykoku reenforce these feelings of guilt before alleviating them in rituals of aging and rebirthing. Electracould be seen in this way as the universal (and stereotypical)female, taking moral responsibility for her environment andseeking relief from male characters. Watson, it seems, reenforces this chauvinist attitude of the male characters towards28 The variation on the first running header, \u00E2\u0080\u009CLess molderKlukluxklanestra\u00E2\u0080\u009D (346), signals primarily an association ofClytemnestra with the Klu Klux Klan. In this way, Watson further discredits the position of Clytemnestra/McLuhan.29 Horkheimer and Adorno wrote, for instance, that inGreek mythology we encounter the dark side of enlightenedthought which they defined not as limited to a historical period commonly called \u00E2\u0080\u009Cenlightenment\u00E2\u0080\u009D but as a certain rigour ofthought that the human mind applies to its methods of inquiry(see 12-16).The Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postifiodern 1S7Electra by accepting the dichotomy of power and moral responsibility and aligning it with the male and female characters inhis play. This alignment implicates Watson in the issues ofpower and gender. To Watson, it seems, Electra, or the femalehe construes, is portrayed as an anachronism that does not fitinto the postmodern multi-conscious world. As a result, theadvocates of the new age try to alter her in medical experiments.Dr Psi seems to take the role of the judge since he chairsthe trial, explains initial procedures, and rules who is tospeak. The accused are Orestes and Electra, while Psamathe andOrestes\u00E2\u0080\u0099 nurse are witnesses for the defense. The counsel forthe defense has to be determined first. Electra suggestsOrestes as counsel but Dr Psi tells her that a prisoner cannotrepresent another prisoner. Psamathe suggests that they ask\u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe Company of young Psychocanadians [. . .1 to send us abunch of student actors . . . to sort of represent us\u00E2\u0080\u009D (378).Psi, however, blocks this suggestion by explaining that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ceveryone in the age of the new charisma is a student. If you are astudent, you can\u00E2\u0080\u0099t represent a student\u00E2\u0080\u009D (379). This paradoxleads to an impasse in which no one can represent the accused.Psi uses this impasse for his attempt to dismiss the case, butKykoku volunteers to represent the prisoners. Psi explains toKykoku the consequences of not dismissing this case:KYKOKU. If Orestes is found guilty of murderPSI. we shall have to re-educate--re-program himKYKOKU. and in order to re-educate himPSI, we shall have to re-educate the entire globalThe Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postodern 158communityKYKOKU. and that will mean the end of the age of thenew charismaPSI. before it has barely got under wayKYKOKU. and almost before the age of McLuhan is overPSI. and at a time when we haven\u00E2\u0080\u0099t had time--tothink of what comes after the age of the newcharisma! (379)Because of the stychomythia, it seems that both speakers arefully aware of the consequences of Kykoku\u00E2\u0080\u0099s actions, namely areturn to temporality. The age of the new charisma, however,is atemporal: characters from Greek mythology participate inl96Oish peace dances in the spirit of a true McLuhanesqueglobal village.Dr Psi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s reason for wanting to disallow Kykoku the defenseof the prisoners is his intention to dismiss the charges in order to save the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cage of the new charisma.\u00E2\u0080\u009D In this way, itseems that more than the individual crimes of the prisoners areon trial, but an entire age is on trial. These circumstancesturn the trial into another version of the Last Judgement. Inthe Last Judgement, the judge is God; in the play, Watson exploits the medical clich\u00C3\u00A9 of the \u00E2\u0080\u009CGods in white\u00E2\u0080\u009D to have a godlike judge, namely Dr Psi. In light of these parallels of thistrial with the Last Judgement, the outcome of the trial promises to be final, whichever way the verdict goes. However,this trial does not produce a verdict; instead, Dr Psi dismisses the charges. Yet the outcome of the trial still resembles averdict: Dr Psi also orders Kykoku to perform an aging ritualon the prisoners. In other words, they remain in the power ofthe age of the new charisma.The Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postmodern 159According to Watson, media and technologies constitute newsenses and not merely extensions of senses so that he canrepresent these new senses in peculiar pullulations of heads(Dr Psi, Electra), backbones (Dr Kykoku), legs (Samuela),tongues (Psamathe), and vaginas (Electra). On several occasions, repetitions of language accompany these pullulations.In scene one, the revelation that Dr Psi has two heads is accompanied by a prolonged doubling of utterances:(Dr Psi steps to one side with Orderly Smith)ORD. SMITH. Sir, when\u00E2\u0080\u0099s this autopsy about to begin?Sir, when\u00E2\u0080\u0099s this autopsy about to begin?DR PSI. Why, what\u00E2\u0080\u0099s the hurry, Mr Smith?Why, what\u00E2\u0080\u0099s the hurry, Mr Smith?ELECTRA. (with a shriek of surprise)Dr Psi has two heads!Dr Psi has two heads!ORD. SMITH. (to Dr Psi)They are getting very restless.They are getting very restless. (356)The doubling continues with few inconsistencies until Samuelaquadruples one of her utterances:Why doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t the orderly get them to sign something?(does a short gallop)Why doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t the orderly get them to sign something?(another short gallop)Why doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t the orderly get them to sign something?(short gallop)Why doesn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t the orderly get them to sign something?(357)Samuela\u00E2\u0080\u0099s fourfold repetition is another verbal representationof a pullulation of extremeties. It is once more Electra whodiscovers this pullulation saying that \u00E2\u0080\u009CDr Psi has two heads,Dr Kykoku has two backbones, and Dr Psi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s secretary who I thinkis called Samuela has FOUR legs\u00E2\u0080\u009D (357).Cl)> IICD\u00E2\u0080\u00A2CDCD CD CDCl)>CD\u00E2\u0080\u00A2CDCD CDCDCDCl) CD Cl)CDCCl)CD CDC) CCCDrfrr1)\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Cl)CDCl))Cl)CZ CDCDr1CD1F-\u00E2\u0080\u00A2Cl)CZ)C.rtrCDCC) CCl)CDr+r+Cl)r1H\u00E2\u0080\u00A2CDrtCC.TjCl)CDr1C)CD)ri Cl) CDCDH\u00E2\u0080\u00A2\u00E2\u0080\u0094C)riCDCl):: >C)IrCl) CDCl)Ij CD C) > Cl) CD C) CD Cl) CD C) Cl)H Cl) Cl) C) C) CD CD C) CD Cl) C) x CD CD C) C Cl)Cl)CDCDCl)CCDC)CD)CDCDC CDtlj CD C) CC CC C) CD Cl) Cl) CD CD CD CD CD Cl) CDC) C CD Cl) C) CD Cl) C) CD C) CD Cl) C Cr+C)1. 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[. . \u00E2\u0080\u00A21But oh the laughter in the tears of things--each ofher PIAT\u00E2\u0080\u0099s turned out differently. Every one of hernineteen heads has a different age. [. . .1But she has the entire gamut of female intelligenceto draw on--from the moist thinking of nubile girlmind to the gravelly platitudes of an aged sybil hungup in a cage to die! (394)In this way, PIAI results in a reduction of Electra into a number of clich\u00C3\u00A9s stereotyping women at different stages in theirlives and in different roles. Kykoku emphasizes this reductionand hints at its sexist nature when he says, \u00E2\u0080\u009CEvery shade offemale cogitation [. . .1 from flirt to ancient bitch!\u00E2\u0080\u009D (394).Watson considers the outcome of the trial as flawed because of its injustice to Electra: PIAI prevents her fromliving her life. As a result and as in the plays from the early l960s, Watson overturns this damnation--not in a deus exmachina redemption but in a ritual of rebirth that allows Electra to start her life over again. This ritual is reminiscentof PIAI: Kykoku places Electra in a circle and he, the sisters,orderlies and prisoners dance around her chanting incantationsto the sole accompaniment of drums. Eighteen of Electra\u00E2\u0080\u0099sheads will be turned into vaginas which the chorus\u00E2\u0080\u0099 repetitiveincantations foreshadow: \u00E2\u0080\u009CPlant her eyes in a lion\u00E2\u0080\u0099s pole / forit to plant in a lioness\u00E2\u0080\u0099s hole\u00E2\u0080\u009D (409). This first chant andits sexual explicitness and the implicit act of copulation setthe tone for the remaining chants, which are not as explicitThe Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postmodern 162but still build on the male-female opposition and an act ofcopulation. For instance, the \u00E2\u0080\u009CBrahma bull\u00E2\u0080\u0099s pizzle\u00E2\u0080\u009D and the\u00E2\u0080\u009Cbrood-cow\u00E2\u0080\u0099s twizzle\u00E2\u0080\u009D can be seen as comic neologisms for maleand female genitalia. Kykoku and the others repeat this patterned chant nine times, perhaps because an eighteen-foldrepetition would be too long drawn out. The result of thisritual is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe new young Electra\u00E2\u0080\u009D (415).The reencoding ritual also attests to Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s malechauvinism because of an implicit equation of woman with sexualorgan. In Western cultures, this equation is often a way ofdenigrating women. Watson uses this denigration in a particularly flagrant form because Dr Kykoku transforms Electra\u00E2\u0080\u0099s multiple heads into multiple vaginas in a ritual reminiscent of arebirth. This rebirth suggests that Electra\u00E2\u0080\u0099s head should betransformed into a vagina so that she would be coded \u00E2\u0080\u0098properly\u00E2\u0080\u0099and perhaps not blame herself compulsively for a murder she hasnot committed.The singing and dancing at the end of the play seem tocelebrate an outbreak of peace:Agamemnon has declared peace on Israeli.Agamemnon has declared peace on Israeli.Israeli has declared peace on Saudi Egypt.Israeli has declared peace on Saudi Egypt. (423)Orestes interrupts this chant with a long monologue in which heasks Moses, King David, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jesus what heshould do for peace. All of them, except Ezekiel, who saysthere is nothing he can do for peace, advise him to take offThe Work of Wilfred Watson Al]egories of the Postmodern 163all his clothes for peace. Orestes then addresses the audiencewith a sixtyish appeal to do something for peace:Won\u00E2\u0080\u0099t you take off all your clothes for peace?Won\u00E2\u0080\u0099t you take off some of your clothes for peace?Won\u00E2\u0080\u0099t you take off any of your clothes for peace?Won\u00E2\u0080\u0099t you do anything for peace? (423)The singing and dancing and Orestes\u00E2\u0080\u0099 monologue with the implicit appeal to the audience to do something for peace seemlike an interruption of the play\u00E2\u0080\u0099s plot. However, the late1960s provide a context for the play that explains the interruption. The late 1960s saw a rapidly escalating Vietnam warand a popular people\u00E2\u0080\u0099s movement against it as well as an escalating cold war on a world scale. One may think of the Wood-stock Music and Art Fair, held Aug. 1-17, 1969 on a farm nearWoodstock, N.Y. and better known as the Woodstock Festival, asan expression of that era: OO,OOO, mostly young, peoplelistened to their favorite music, which expressed directly andindirectly their opposition to the Vietnam war and the coldwar.The \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpeace\u00E2\u0080\u009D-interruptions, then, emerge as something akinto a more or less spontaneous \u00E2\u0080\u009Chappening.\u00E2\u0080\u009D One could imaginethe audience joining in the chanting, dancing, perhaps eventaking off their clothes \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfor peace.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Any of these actionswould collapse the defining element of the Western prosceniumstage, namely the strict separation of performing space andspectator space. However, as Yi-Fu Tuan has pointed out in hisarticle on \u00E2\u0080\u009CSpace and Context,\u00E2\u0080\u009D this separation is in sometheatrical genres not as strict as in others. Popular theatreThe Work of Wi]fred Watson Allegories of the Postaiodern 164at times approaches the space of a village festival where performers and spectators share a space where everyone joins inthe performance. In comedies, too, the laughter of theaudience shows their active participation and breaches thestrict separation of performing space and spectator space,while in tragedies we tend to retain our distance by assumingthe role of observer because the situations represented are tooextreme and painful for us to want to become \u00E2\u0080\u009Cinvolved\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Tuan242)This \u00E2\u0080\u009Chappening\u00E2\u0080\u009D--if it occurs with audience participationin varying degrees--can be seen as the culmination of the farcical elements in Let\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Murder. The audience\u00E2\u0080\u0099s acceptance ofmoving into different spaces and their complacency towards thedestruction of plot, which is already partially manifest in thedrawn-out PIAI and reencoding rituals, are the key elements inWatson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s \u00E2\u0080\u009Cradical\u00E2\u0080\u009D absurdity because they expand the theatre ofthe absurd towards a representation of postmodern multi-consciousness. Watson still increases the anarchy of the play,to wit Dr Psi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s statements that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe law has been abolished\u00E2\u0080\u009D(351,377), by means of the ritualistic audience participations.He exposes the audience to multiple spaces and experiences thatrepresent multiple levels of awareness or consciousness. Inother words, Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s radical absurdity tries to decentre thehomogeneous experience of going to see a play by turning thatexperience into a heterogeneous one consisting of observationof and participation in multiple worlds or milieus.Ike Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postniodern 165Yet the happening can also be seen in analogy to the playsfrom the early 1960s as an invitation to the audience to participate in the continuing struggle, since neither the trial northe rebirth solved any of Electra\u00E2\u0080\u0099s problems. The happeningserves in this way as a preparation of the audience to acceptthe everyday reality of life in a world determined by multi-consciousness. As in Shakespearian comedy, the marker for thereturn to a \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnormal\u00E2\u0080\u009D life uninterrupted by the comic confusionsjust witnessed on stage is the marriage that Dr Kykoku an\u00E2\u0080\u0094nounces at the end of the play. Electra decides to marry DrPsi, who thinks marriage is the only alternative to PIAI andthe only \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccompensation\u00E2\u0080\u009D for having suffered the reencodingritual (419). If we take this marriage as a positive event,then Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s allegorical message to the audience appears tobe: sing, dance, take off your clothes for peace, or getmarried, but the struggle of life will go on infinitely, nomatter what you do . . . However, especially with regard toWatson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s construction of gender as well as his male chauvinism,we should not be deceived by a traditional happy ending and a1960s Make-Love-Not--War atmosphere. Below the surface, Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s message is conservative, if not reactionary. When considering the happy ending, one should immediately ask, happyfor whom? Here, then, we can come back to Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s belief inoriginal sin over last judgements and final redemption. In thecontext of this belief, his male chauvinism can be seen as anaffirmation of the Catholic belief in Eve\u00E2\u0080\u0099s (or woman\u00E2\u0080\u0099s) guiltThe 1ork of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postmodern 166in the fall of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cman.\u00E2\u0080\u009D Time and again, Watson employs methodsof characterization that transform female characters intostereotypes of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cfemale\u00E2\u0080\u009D behavior, whether we look at the\u00E2\u0080\u009Cdocile\u00E2\u0080\u009D acceptance of moral responsibility in Electra or atthe characters participating in the women\u00E2\u0080\u0099s solidarity inGramsci x 3 and The Woman Taken in Adultery. On closer examination, these stereotypes are vehicles for inscribing an allegorical message because they broaden the characters\u00E2\u0080\u0099 significance beyond what they present on stage. Against thisbackdrop, Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s allegorical message is that, ultimately,woman is to blame for the condition of the continuous struggleof life.Thus far, I have shown how Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s plays from the 1960sintegrate trial scenes with the theme of the Last Judgement andhow this integration serves to communicate to the audience andeducate it that there is no end in sight to the struggle. NowI want to take these insights into Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s plays and relatethem to the process of allegorical encoding as it is triggeredby the melancholy of the author.As I argued in chapter three, a deeply felt loss is theroot cause of melancholy. For Watson, the redemption of theoriginal sin is lost. Last judgements and final redemptionsare supposed to put an end to the suffering caused by anoriginal sin, but they fail to do so. Watson experiences thisfailure as catastrophic. And here is the unspeakable for WatThe Work of Wilfred Watson Allegories of the Postmodern 167son: the collective guilt that follows the original sin is irredeemable. The knowledge of this irredeemability is anOtherof Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s allegories. To quote Wittgenstein\u00E2\u0080\u0099s truism here,\u00E2\u0080\u009COf that which you cannot speak, you must remain silent,\u00E2\u0080\u009D is todescribe Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s dilemma as it represents itself to me: forhim, not being able to communicate anOther or to remain silentequals death. Death, however, is profoundly unacceptable andhe expresses as much in his description of the \u00E2\u0080\u009Catypical absurdist impasse\u00E2\u0080\u009D (\u00E2\u0080\u009COn Radical Absurdity\u00E2\u0080\u009D 37). This impasse, namely \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe fact that when you are dead you cannot die,\u00E2\u0080\u009D only posesitself to someone who does not accept death as an end of life.Indeed Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s characters go on living in atemporal ritualsafter they are fatally shot, summoned to stand trial in heaven,or have reportedly died shortly after being released fromprison. Because his recognition is unspeakable, however, it isbracketed and the allegorist in his melancholic broodingfocuses on that which provides continuity. For Watson, thiscontinuity evolves from the never-ending struggle. This struggle is ahistorical because it manifests itself in timelessrituals.168Chapter 5The Work of R. Murray SchaferPostmodern McLuhanesque UtopianismAfter looking at Watson\u00E2\u0080\u0099s relationship to McLuhan, it isinteresting to consider Murray Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s stance towardsMcLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s theories, which influenced him very much. He wrotean article on McLuhan full of praise for the man and hisachievements. Primarily, he uses McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s concept of\u00E2\u0080\u009Cacoustic space\u00E2\u0080\u009D to introduce a new notion of genre into thehistory of music.\u00E2\u0080\u0099Schafer states that music-historical periods thus far havebeen described according to minute stylistic criteria. However, moving from one acoustic space into another one is farmore momentous and significant a development so that he arrivesat different generic, music-historical periods and the move,for instance, from the church into the concert hail has a moreprofound effect on composers and their music than a periodchange from, say, classical to romantic music with itsstylistic changes.\u00E2\u0080\u0098 Although I am not particularly concerned with influenceson Watson and Schafer, I acknowledge that McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s treatmentespecially of the visual/aural orientation of cultures exerteda massive influence on both Watson and Schafer. I assume thisinfluence throughout.The tiork of R. turray Schafer Allegories of the Postajodern 169Even from this terse account of Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s McLuhanesquereconceptualization of music history we can see that Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099sposition is closer to McLuhan than it is to Watson because ofits concern with history and temporality. Watson rejects suchnotions in favor of an atemporal global village. But Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099sproximity to McLuhan becomes even clearer once we look at hisnotion of ritual in the context of synaesthesia and its impacton sensorial experience. Schafer states repeatedly that inPatria he strives to elicit synaesthetic experiences from hisaudiences. In his monograph on Patria, he points to theCatholic liturgy as a model of the type of synaesthesia hetries to achieve in Patria:Life itself is the original multi-media experience.Single art forms amputate all of the senses exceptone. If we look for examples of ritualized multi-channel experiences we will find them in unusualplaces. Thus, the Roman Catholic mass is (or was)such an experience. All the senses are summoned up:vision--the architecture of the church, the colour ofthe vitraux; hearing--the music of the choir and instruments, the ringing of bells; taste--the transubstantiation of the bread and wine; smell--the incense; touch--devotion on the knee (which at timeseven took the form of elaborate peregrinations aboutthe church), prayer beads in the hand, etc. Whatstrikes us here is that at no time are the sensesbombarded aimlessly; everything is neatly integrated.In the Catholic mass there is no sensory overload.It could serve as a model for study. (Patria and theTheatre of Confluence 32).Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099s description posits a similar, utopian notion of perception as the one Watson criticized in McLuhan. Schafer\u00E2\u0080\u0099sutopianism is even more pronounced than McLuhan\u00E2\u0080\u0099s because hemaintains that we can achieve again that state of unified experience in a carefully orchestrated, synaesthetic ritual. AsThe Work of R. Iurray Schafer Allegories of the Postinodern 170well, the teleological nature of his Patria cycle (manifest inthe underlying quest-theme and in the ultimately successfulquest) introduces forcefully a sense of temporality intoPatria\u00E2\u0080\u0099s atemporal ritualistic sub-sections.\u00E2\u0080\u00A2r+r+tjCD\u00E2\u0080\u009410CDr1 Cl),.C)Cl)i)(ID C)CDC)O)H\u00E2\u0080\u00A2CC)-\u00E2\u0080\u0098)Cl))CD-\u00E2\u0080\u0098CD-O)C)tCl)ZCD))Cl)-sCDH.O)r\u00E2\u0080\u00A2\u00E2\u0080\u00A2O0. r\u00E2\u0080\u00A2+\u00E2\u0080\u0098HCD0.\u00E2\u0080\u00A2)0F\u00E2\u0080\u009451)-CD.-sCri5-s)rCD)\u00E2\u0080\u0094CD)-\u00E2\u0080\u0094OCl)CD\u00E2\u0080\u0094<0 -sOCD 0.H\u00E2\u0080\u0099H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CD Cl)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099 N CD0 C) CD0CDCD)H )5. C)0. \u00E2\u0080\u0098I5\u00E2\u0080\u0099 -t 5. CDH.0.Cl) H\u00E2\u0080\u00990(C_5(C-H\u00E2\u0080\u0099Cl)00.OCDDq-5-5 )CDOD CDr1CD -5CDH.C)C) < C)H\u00E2\u0080\u0099CDH CD 0CD-t0. 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