On Enchantment. Alan Macfarlane 2008

Thoughts for part of lecture based on Alfred Gell, ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, ch.5 of Alfred Gell, The Art of Anthropology, Essays and Diagrams (1999)

The puzzle and the methodological solution

Why has the study of art objects around the world been so unsatisfactory and the anthropological study of art and communication faded away?

Methodological approach: just as anthropologists in relation to religion use ‘methodological atheism’ (Peter Berger), so in relation to art objects they should use ‘methodological philistinism’. i.e. they must not be ‘believers’, seduced by truth and beauty etc.

Hence: p. 162: ‘I continue to believe… that the first step which has to be taken in devising an anthropology of art is to make a complete break with aesthetics.’

Art as a technical or technological system

The anthropology of art ‘can do this by considering art as a component of technology’. (p.162) So ‘painting, sculpture, music, poetry, fiction’ should be seen as ‘components of a vast and often unrecognised technical system, essential to the reproduction of human societies, which I will be calling the technology of enchantment’.

What is meant by enchantment? It is bewitching the individual. Art ‘is propaganda on behalf of the status quo’ (after Maurice Bloch), p.163. Thus ‘art provides one of the technical means whereby individuals are persuaded of the necessity and desirability of the social order’ (cf. Durkheim).

Where does this enchantment come from? ‘The power of art objects stems from the technical processes they objectively embody: the technology of enchantment is founded on the enchantment of technology.’(p.163) And what is meant by ‘the enchantment of technology’? ‘The enchantment of technology is the power that technical processes have of casting a spell over us to that we see the real world in an enchanted form.’ (p.163)

An example: Trobriand Islands prow-board: but cf. also an example from the Nagas, use of colour and decoration to assert will over other groups – general characteristic.
(insert some Naga slides & refer to book)

- bright eye patterns : hypnotic effects (also drumming etc.) – Ripley’s note of a ‘design which was claimed to hypnotize sheep’

The effects of these kinds of art are to ‘produce visual or cognitive disturbances’.

Back to the enchantment of technology :
Here it is the difficulty of the work, its amazing and apparently inspired virtuosity, that gives rise to the idea of magic at work. Alfred’s story about the matchstick model of Salisbury Cathedral which amazed him…

Why does such virtuosity impress us? Here draws on Simmel’s idea from the Philosophy of Money that (in Gell’s words), ‘the value of an object is in proportion to the difficulty which we think we will encounter in obtaining that particular thing rather than something else.’ Or, as Simmel puts it, ‘We desire objects only if they are not immediately given to us for our use and enjoyment, that is, to the extent to which they resist our desire.’ (pp.167-8)

- what A.Gell calls ‘the halo effect of resistance’ or ‘the bewitching effect they have on us’. Their power ‘resides in the symbolic processes they provoke in the beholder’ (p.168-9)

The artist as occult technician

- gives the example of John F.Peto, Old Time Letter Rack: but an example from Leonardo, or Naga art (or Japanese art) just as good. – how does he transform pigment into something realistic?

- this does not apply to photography, which is regarded as button pushing

this cannot merely be a matter of creating illusions, ‘since primitive art is strikingly devoid of illusionistic trickery’ (p.172)

The trick is the way in which art is deeply social: ‘In reconstructing the processes which brought the work of art into existence, he is obliged to posit a creative agency which transcends his own and, hovering in the background, the power of the collectivity on whose behalf the artist exercised his technical mastery’. (p.172)

- the essential alchemy of art is ‘to make what is not out of what is, and to make what is out of what is not’ (p.174)

How primitive art works

Much of the art of primitive societies occurs within ritual, particularly political ritual; secondly, art objects are produced in the context of ceremonial or commercial exchange. (p.175) - again see Naga art.

In order to achieve this, the ‘primitive artist’ must have access to non-human powers. E.g. ‘carvers undergo magical procedures which open up the channels of their minds…(p.176)

The invisibility of the link to technology

We do not see the technical side of art, ‘because we are inclined to play down the significance of the technical domain in our culture, despite being utterly dependent on technology in every department of life. Technique is supposed to be dull and mechanical…’ (p.178)

Gell argues for a completely different, almost technologically determinist position, with considerable implications:

‘social relations are themselves emergent characteristics of the technical base on which society rests’ (p.179)

The link between magic, art and uncertainty

One famous thesis is that gardening, which is technical activity, is peripherally surrounded by magic (in Trobriands), because of Malinowski’s uncertainty principle (pace Heisenberg – same time – linked?). But Gell does not think it is as simple as that. ‘The idea of magic as an accompaniment to uncertainty does not mean that it is opposed to knowledge, that is, that where there is knowledge there is no uncertainty, and hence no magic’. (p.179) - there is basically never enough knowledge about the future….

Furthermore, because magic allows short cuts (avoidance of work as well as risk), ‘magic is the negative contour of work’ (p.181) – as with helping Trobriand ships go more smoothly through water, or fishermen be more efficient.

Final point:

Trobriand gardens, extraordinary precision, with ‘magical prisms’ at each corner, ‘according to a symmetrical pattern which has nothing to do with technical efficiency, and everything to do with achieving the transcendence of technical production… Only if the garden looks right will it grow well, and the garden is, in fact, an enormous collective work of art’. (p.182)

Some immediate thoughts/ reactions to the above…

1. Some fertile ideas, particular on the function of art as a political or other tool, a sort of application of Durkheim’s theories re. Social cohesion, effervescence etc.
2. The idea of the magical element of artistic technology, the inspiration, the sense of wonder at it, what one might call the Kubla Khan (‘beware beware… for he on honey-dew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise’) is worth drawing attention to
3. It complements the structuralist/semiotic approach and gives another dimension
4. It provides a useful linking- in device to our work on glass, which takes the idea that technology shapes our world much further.
5. It rightly points to the limitation to the risk/magic association – that magic is needed much more widely
6. Its focus is quite narrow & could be extended to music, film, television etc. And this I shall partly do.
7. There is no reference to Weber and his disenchantment thesis, which would have been good to consider.
8. The humorous asides are nice and the personal anecdotes
9. The ethnographic example of the Trobriands could be replaced by the Naga materials.