Abject Performance Art as Sublimation and Desublimation

Leo Deng

2/24/23

Critical Studies: The Precarious Body

The direct and indirect manifestations of psychoanalytic theory in the sphere of abject art are undeniably present and thus, it deals with Freud’s idea of sublimation. In his renowned essay “Character and Anal Erotism,” Freud most clearly defines sublimation as a reaction to sexual excitations in a way where they are “deflected from sexual aims and directed towards other(s)” non-sexual activities such as social interaction, hobbies, and—namely—art.[1] This deems this special type of repression as particularly tied to the abject art movements of the 80s, though having elements stretching before that and still continuing to this day. Abjection in the art discussed here will simply be of Kristeva’s definition: “what I must get rid of in order to be an I at all. It is a phantasmic substance not only alien to the subject but intimate with it—too much so in fact, and this overproximity produces panic in the subject.”[2] By looking at Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley’s Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup performance piece (both artists who have been wound up in the psychoanalytic theory of Kristeva, Lacan, Freud, etc. much like their contemporaries), contradictory attributes of what abject art even does for the audience—in terms of its use of abjection and self-awareness of sublimation—collide and come about. I will use Hal Foster’s analysis in “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic*” to interrogate McCarthy and Kelley’s work in terms of their attempts to represent sublimation, as well as utilize it for social commentary, or its failure to do either.

Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup is a two-part, fifteen-minute improvised performance art piece where McCarthy notably told Kelley, “I’m the father, and you’re the son” and just started filming.[3] According to McCarthy, the grant he received to create the set and to film the art piece was “on a proposal to do a video tape on child abuse,” and I think that clearly comes through in the first half, Family Tyranny, where we see the father character demonstrate a disciplinary measure of shoving abject white paste (mayonnaise from context clues) into a funnel jammed in a ball with a hat.[4] As the father does this demonstration, he notably says, “this is what my daddy made me do / you can do this to your son, too,” hinting at the idea of generational trauma in a cutthroat way, subverting a phenomenon that usually permeates the unconscious of subsequent generations that usually unknowingly take on their parents’ disciplinary methods.[5] Also the repetition of “daddy come home from work again, daddy come home from work” is interrupted by scenes of false reenactments of disciplinary punishment on the son. It is enacted sometimes humorously and sometimes disturbingly by a grown adult, Kelley, while giving the high energy of a tantrum or actual discomfort in the punishment that a real child might receive.[6] Notably, the father’s face or head is mostly absent from the video,[7] posing him as this isolated, intangible other that is violating the son (subject). In turn, the son’s position, as the subject, interestingly asserts himself as the precarious victim (as opposed to if the father was the visually centered subject disciplining his son as mere object). The latter supports McCarthy’s intention to make a commentary on child abuse. The isolation of the father carries into the latter half of Cultural Soup where what are objects (the bowl and dolls) have the possibility of being subjects. Thus, the isolated father simultaneously represents an atmospheric otherness that allows him to symbolize the paternal law (with a maternal body completely absent in the video) and the abject itself—or perhaps, the enforcer of abjection as he squeezes, squeaks, and twists the phallic doll,[8] which is also the cliché uncanny representation of the “erect human.”[9]

In the latter half of Hal Foster’s “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic*,” he analyzes and critiques art like McCarthy and Kelley’s; for example, abject art, or the “shit movement,” in contemporary art represents the critical reversal of the “erect human,” “a symbolic reversal of this first step into civilization [of Freud’s analysis], of the repression of the anal and the olfactory.”[10] He goes on to quote Freud, using Kelley as an example of an artist where:

“anal eroticism finds a narcissistic application in the production of defiance,” Freud wrote […]. The shitty performances of Mike Kelley […] may test the anally repressive authority of traditional culture, but it also mocks the anally erotic narcissism of the vanguard rebel-artist.[11]

Thus, to productively critique Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup, we ought to not only question the content’s ability to create any socio-cultural commentary worth discussing but also question the method of representing abjection for its viability in delivering and expressing such commentary—of being something more than just literal “shitty art.” Foster formulates abject art to manifest in two ways: either it probes “the wound of trauma, to touch the obscene object-gaze of the real”[12] or to “represent the condition of abjection in order to provoke its operation— […] to make it reflexive.”[13] How then do these two manifestations of abject art occur in Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup?

The artwork simultaneously probed the wound of the trauma from child abuse that precisely exemplifies the rupture of the Real when presented to an audience. Additionally, the mayonnaise’s bodily-fluid-like texture and its use provoked the instinctual disgust that signals an occurrence of abjection. The Lacanian Real is precisely the contradictory posing of something that isn’t imaginable yet occurs in reality, ruptures its accumulation of familiarity (which is inevitable), and ruptures the symbolic order (like being told in 2019 that there would be an unimaginable global pandemic killing millions the next year).[14] In that way, the Real makes contact with the audience when presenting a heinous depiction of the language of the punisher and a grown man’s reenactment of the punished and their suffering. Additionally, mayonnaise’s grimy, chunky nature adds to the abjection already present in the ejected substance reminiscent of puss, semen, and perhaps popped pimples. Such provocation pushes the limits of comfort in shoving it down the throat of the makeshift doll (ball on a stick with a hat). Moreover, slathering it on dolls evokes abjection itself. This all works in tandem to tie punishment with the erotic. The question then becomes whether or not this is an effective method of commentary, especially if you are more disgusted than open to contemplation. Foster argues that McCarthy’s method might be more distracting and, more specifically, abjection’s ability to be represented may be dubious: “Can the abject be represented at all? If it is opposed to culture, can it be exposed in culture? If it is unconscious, can it [be] made conscious and abject?”[15] These rhetorical questions set up a site of critique, despite McCarthy and Kelley’s satisfaction of abject art’s tasks, for there too “is a disillusionment with the celebration of desire as an open passport of a mobile subject.”[16] Watching this video, too, in 2023 may distract more than provoke as we live in a post/intra-desublimated society. As Herbert Marcuse outlines in One-Dimensional Man, desublimation is the dangerous reversal of sublimation, where in art, creation is incorporated into the incessantly reproduced world of art as commodity rather than a true rejection of elitist culture.[17] Undoubtedly, the advent of the internet and smart devices have expedited absurd and abject video into the realm of repressive desublimation. Thus, Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup can come off as merely a more extreme form of such videos that we are averse to watching, negating its subversive effects in the 80s (as seen by the popularity of such performances in that era). Thus, the disillusionment of the abject artwork (and thus, a lack of meaningful commentary) becomes over-pronounced by the desublimation (simply as a reversal of sublimation) of the artists. Foster would agree.

Ultimately, any analysis of these extreme forms of abject performance art, especially where the depiction of an unleashing of the unconscious seems to be attempted, will be two, three, or four-fold. Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup is an example of the utmost contradictory nature of abject art, an attribute that makes it simultaneously more interesting and visceral but also repulsive. Does a productive commentary on child abuse come through? At times, it seems possible; however, is abjection a good means of doing so? As Foster points out, such a concept ingrained in the unconscious is not representable; for me, it may be more distracting than revolutionary when watching in an era of commodity exchange where desublimation becomes a form of sublimation itself—that redirection of sublimated desires can be aestheticized and socially acceptable.[18] Either way, McCarthy and Kelley’s artwork stand as an example of a conceptual work in the juncture of psychoanalysis, going through epochal change that, like everything else, even art is subject to.

Bibliography

Breht, O’Shea. “Learning About Lacan w/ Todd McGowan.” Accessed February 23, 2023. https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/learning-about-lacan-w-todd-mcgowan.

Foster, Hal. “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic.” October 78 (Autumn 1996). jstor.org/stable/778908.

Freud, Sigmund. “Character and Anal Erotism.” In The Freud Reader, edited by Peter Gay, Reissue edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Graveris, Dainis. “Porn Statistics [2023]: How Many People REALLY Watch Porn?,” February 24, 2023. https://sexualalpha.com/how-many-people-watch-porn-statistics/.

Marcuse, Herbert. “Chapter 3: The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive Desublimation.” In One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon, 1964. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm3.html.

McCarthy, Paul, and Mike Kelley. “Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup, Mike Kelley; Paul McCarthy.” Electronic Artists Intermix, 1987. https://www.eai.org/titles/family-tyranny-cultural-soup.

———. “UbuWeb Film & Video: Paul McCarthy - Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987).” Accessed February 22, 2023. https://ubu.com/film/mccarthy_family.html.

What Is Repressive Desublimation? | Herbert Marcuse | Keyword, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShiBoSFsyI.

[1] Sigmund Freud, “Character and Anal Erotism,” in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, Reissue edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 295. [2] Hal Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” October 78 (Autumn 1996), jstor.org/stable/778908, 114. [3] Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, “Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup, Mike Kelley; Paul McCarthy,” Electronic Artists Intermix, 1987, https://www.eai.org/titles/family-tyranny-cultural-soup. [4] McCarthy and Kelley, “Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup, Mike Kelley; Paul McCarthy.” [5] Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, “UbuWeb Film & Video: Paul McCarthy - Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987),” accessed February 22, 2023, https://ubu.com/film/mccarthy_family.html. [6] McCarthy and Kelley, “UbuWeb Film & Video: Paul McCarthy - Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987).” [7] Funnily enough, it’s reminiscent of how Charlie Brown never shows the face of the adults, like many kids shows, and even obscures all adult words to posit the children as the subjects. [8] McCarthy and Kelley, “UbuWeb Film & Video: Paul McCarthy - Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987).” [9] Here I refer to Freud’s analysis in Civilization and its Discontents of the evolution or “erection” of human from four-legged animals to the two-legged human. [10] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 118. [11] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 119. The Essay he quoted from Freud is “On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Eroticism” from 1917. [12] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 115. [13] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 116. [14] O’Shea Breht, “Learning About Lacan w/ Todd McGowan,” accessed February 23, 2023, https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/learning-about-lacan-w-todd-mcgowan. [15] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 114. [16] Foster, “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic,” 122. My italics – L.D. [17] Herbert Marcuse, “Chapter 3: The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness: Repressive Desublimation,” in One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964), https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odm3.html. He refers to the second paragraph: “higher culture was always in contradiction with social reality, and only a privileged minority enjoyed its blessings and represented its ideals.” [18] For example, desublimating your unsatisfaction with your sublimation through the nuclear family and monogamy by turning to pornography, another repressive apparatus, that which subsequently becomes socially acceptable as it is in over 90% of males today, and they can talk about it among comfortable groups. Statistic: Dainis Graveris Over last 4 years Dainis have helped millions of people through his advice on this site His work et al., “Porn Statistics [2023]: How Many People REALLY Watch Porn?,” February 24, 2023, https://sexualalpha.com/how-many-people-watch-porn-statistics/. Desublimation example: What Is Repressive Desublimation? | Herbert Marcuse | Keyword, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShiBoSFsyI.