How do we go from recognition of the work of art to the visibility of personalities ? Sociologist Nathalie Heinich reflects on visibility capital, a social resource characterized by the asymmetry between the number of people who recognize an individual and those she recognizes.
Between Sociology of art (Paris, La Découverte, “ Landmarks », 2001), epistemology of social sciences and crisis of feminine identity, Nathalie Heinich knows how to take risks, such as questioning here the status of people in mass cultures: futile subject, unworthy of the scholarly world ? Let a reader in a hurry not trust the sole title of this beautiful volume published in the Humanities Library of Gallimard, with its dedicated website. Its subtitle better reveals the project “ born twenty-five years ago, in the mid-1980s » (p. 9) to extend in a media regime “ established during the century in which we were born » (p. 10) the study of excellence and singularity initiated during the democratization of XIXe century with The Elite Artist(Paris, Gallimard, 2005). The substitution of performers for creators symbolizes the assumption of visibility which “ has considerably reshaped the social scale, modified the very notion of socio-professional category, reconfigured the elite, reoriented religious practices, affected political mores, created new statuses and new professions, led to significant economic effects, weighed on the legal doctrine and jurisprudence, gave rise to emotional experiences of rare intensity, shook up the relationship with values » (p. 563).
From art to visibility
Since the innovative essay on the anthropology of admiration which shows how post-mortem is constructed The Glory of Van Gogh (Paris, Minuit, 1991), N. Heinich emancipated his Sociology put to the test of artof her former thesis director, of whom she draws an intellectual portrait, neither hagiography nor pamphlet, in Why Bourdieu (Paris, Gallimard, 2007). What art does to sociology (that is to say art in society or art as society) interests it much more than art reflecting society, which would presuppose a dichotomy between art and society. Certainly, Marylin Monroe’s screen prints attest to the value of pop art measured in terms of visibility and therefore its reproductions. How do we go from the recognition of the work of art to the visibility of personalities, as Lady Gaga has understood in a provocative way, or Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with their bad lives ?
Far from being limited to contemporary art and visual artists, the author’s work embraces writers, painters, sculptors, exhibition curators and jurists. Also, her latest opus refers to writers of literary fiction (from Balzac to Sartre via Houellebecq, Henry James or Milan Kundera) or to films, with a predilection for American ones, notably from the 1930s, to an actress who became sovereign (Grace Kelly), to sportsmen (including theExcellency measured by their performances, such as Yannick Noah) or by models (Carla Bruni) converted to singing. He broadens his analysis to television presenters, hosts or announcers, to heroes of news stories, even to antiheroes who have experienced their “ fifteen minutes of fame » (Andy Warhol).
Visibility capital characterized by its asymmetry
The lexicon of visibility associates people with their properties, which make them singularity, (notwithstanding the celebrities who confuse the two): the stars shine with their talent for dancing or their glamor for actresses ; THE stars studied since 1957 by Edgar Morin for their stardom (which etymologically means the fact of being seen) ; the Olympians described in the eponymous work by his wife Violette Morin to their popularity, which is based first on “ visibility on a large scale » (p. 20) as « to be visible is to be recognized » (p. 31) ; THE people in sight who make the headlines Paris Match to their reputation, like the Bordeaux wines ; idols to their luster or to their adoration by groupies and others fanscontraction of fanatics ; THE sacred monsters what are the great actors in their name (while with the notable exception of Johnny, for people television games or for Loft Story, it is their first name that ensures their reputation like Loana) ; the personalities to their fame in the world of entertainment (thus the thinkers are more readable than visible). What they all have in common is an inequality of recognition between the person in the spotlight and their audience. It takes on meaning through identification (putting a name to a face), confirmation “ which relates not only to perception, but also to “communication ceremony” » (p. 36), out of deference to known people and out of gratitude when the idol donates his person or a relic. Visibility is capital “ measurable, accumulative, transferable, interest-bearing and convertible » (p. 46) which is not reducible either to symbolic capital or to social capital “ since this simply measures the extent and quality of “knowledge” or relationships, not the degree of reciprocity » (ibid.). A measure of this asymmetric capital of visibility would be the differential between the number of people by whom a celebrity is recognized and the number of those whom she herself recognizes or, for Twitter users, the difference between the number of recipients subscribed to his own messages (the followed) and that of the senders. Scientists are not exactly “visible”, apart from a very small minority of them, but they are, eventually, renowned. Bourdieu therefore designated, improperly, the capital of notoriety (the fact of being advantageously known), which he then called “symbolic capital” (in a catch-all term indiscriminately mixing “honor”, “reputation”, “consideration” , “greatness”, “value”, “fame”, “visibility”) » (p. 45). This explains both the frequency of pseudonyms (Mistinguett, Arletty, Woody Allen) and the photographs which document the encounter like a hunting trophy. Nathalie Heinich claims an axiological neutrality which challenges value judgments denouncing, like Guy Debord, a society of the spectacle that is too vulgar and the political economy of the superficial and inauthentic sign for Jean Baudrillard (also relevant for the author, and this is revealing, of the document more than of the semiological instrument), but also the miserabilism making the readership of Closer or (it’s the opposite) the populist apology for reality TV. The teenage cult for the heroine of the TV series Helene and the boysor the climb of the steps of the Cannes festival illustrate his words peppered with numerous boxes as well as his own photograph of the spontaneous altar dedicated to Lady Di.
Visibility in the media age of its technical reproducibility
The analysis of this total social fact » in the sense of Marcel Mauss (p. 561) is based on the contributions of Cultural Studies of the Birmingham school (popular culture as culture of the working classes) and a celebrity culture Anglo-American booming since the 1980s (mass culture as that of the greatest number), rights (to name, image and respect for private life) and the economy (the virtuous circle of income fueled by the consumption of reproduced images of stars). Thus, the industry (press and publishing, derivative products and tourism, for example, Graceland, Elvis Presley’s house in Memphis) combines with the characteristic craftsmanship of makeup artists, bodyguards, paparazzi and other lookalikes. The invention of photography at the end of the XIXe century, then means of reproduction and massive diffusion of the image made visibility a new social category involved in the elite. “ Celebrity is, first of all, a material production of the instruments for disseminating the image » (p. 20): performativity (p. of the image (p. 19-20) makes Che Guevara better known as a poster than as a leader (p.18). The iconic portraits of the rock star Patti Smith by the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe reproduced on his record covers play on the infinitely multiplyable image of a non-substitutable original.
What meaning do we give to visibility? ?
The author does not take the opportunity to illustrate her already old thesis that, contrary to the elitist analyzes of Walter Benjamin (who suggested in 1935 that an original work of art would be tarnished by its reproductions), it is good the technical reproducibility of the images of the people who founded their will have. This is evidenced by the music video industry, fanzines or the rise of modern means of often illegal downloading of sounds, which self-sustain the growing success of concerts based on commercial visibility where literally, one pay to see, and even from very far away. The mediatization/globalization/commodification sequence revealed by the economics of sport could have been explained and systematized to explain this pipolisation.
Thus, we expected that this popularizer of The sociology of Norbert Elias (Paris, La Découverte, 1997) mobilizes it to interpret a sporting event as global as the head shot of Zidane, visible live to hundreds of millions of viewers, then made a heritage by YouTube And Dailymotion (chivalrous gesture or, on the contrary, lack of self-control ?) as well as Max Weber to qualify this action as affectionate – a reflex gesture based on emotion in the face of the insult – or traditional: Materazzi would then have confessed to having attacked the honor of Zidane’s sister. Was this bad gesture, on the contrary, rather rational, in value (the scorer playing his last match had to react so as not to tarnish his legend) or in purpose (trying to win on the red carpet a final that was about to be lost? on the ground, after appeal to the authorities of the international federation) ?