We have always been modern

The theoretical and practical issue of the latest book by Pierre-Damien Huyghe is a definition of modern, supported on the relationships that connect in an intrinsic way, according to the author, art and industry, which however remain ignored as much by those who reflect on art in the specialized sphere of aesthetics only by those who pursue a questioning of a sociological, technical or even scientific type on contemporary societies and their post/hyper-industrial development. Pierre-Damien Huyghe therefore continues, to deepen him, his questioning of art conceived as technical conduct, and it is for this reason that he invests in the modern problem of the modern, according to an orientation all the more significant that it is also a question of emerging from the modernity/postmodernity alternative.

Be modern

The tour de force of the meditation of Pierre-Damien Huyghe is to promote a conception of the modern which, on the one hand, is worth for our time and in this against the idea, here fiercely fought, of “ postmodernity »» ; But on the other, to develop a conception of the modern which enrolls in rupture with historical approaches, which see in modernity the contours of an era (moreover dated differently depending on the disciplines) which we would be In one way or another the heirs. If Pierre-Damien Huyghe therefore pursues a criticism of post-modernity, it is also on the basis of arguments which are not based on what we traditionally envisage as modernity, including philosophical. The case is worth in particular for the work of Fredric Jameson, compared to which Pierre-Damien Huyghe is located in a strong way in his book. Because if he pays tribute to this author by saying the debt he has in him, in particular with regard to a methodology proceeding by case (first chapter), on the other hand he implicitly grants that the orientation of the American thinker, linked To critical theory, presupposes a relationship between art and social which cannot completely satisfy its expectations: would lack questioning (but as it will always be the case when you expect the idea of ​​modernity in aesthetics, including in a Critical perspective) on the irreducibility of doing, in art, and thus a differentiated conception of industry which would make possible a theory of devices (last chapter). The thought of the relationships between art and technique, as Walter Benjamin developed it for photography, remains very present, even if little explanatory in the approach, and is worth against Marxist type orientations deemed to link art and social , art and technique, in a way too immediately articulated in terms of representation.

One of the important slopes of Pierre-Damien Huyghe’s book is therefore to restore the idea of ​​modernity, as it is presupposed in the conception of aesthetics as a field of knowledge born with the lights, but also in one More expanded acceptance, in all cases less specified in the field of aesthetics. This would be the meaning that we find in the formula of Bruno Latour “ We have never been modern », To which Pierre-Damien Huyghe opposes another formula, a lapidary condensed of one of the aspects of his own thesis:” We have always been modern (P. 90). The stake is not so much here a detailed discussion with the sociologist, as the position of a conception of the modern, which not only would have broken with the determination of the eras and the presupposition of the philosophy of history, but which could Above all, rest on the idea of ​​the modifying and differentiated power of the technique, that which would belong to man at all times. In doing so, it is also a question of putting an end to the equivalence between the idea of ​​the modern and that of an absolute beginning, not unrelated to the clean table and the refusal of the authority of which Descartes (p. 56), in the field of philosophy, was the great initiator. Such logic, described as “ modernism », Is rigorously distinguished and dismissed from that which Pierre-Damien Huyghe intends for his own account to define with modernity ; Not an era, not the absolute of a beginning, but a way of being in the world: “ modern means in fact “ to modify “, Assuming” modes What is, producing new aspects “(P. 90), the presupposition or hypothesis of such a definition being” the practical affirmation of the incessant work of our essential technicality (P. 91).

Style -style worlds

The thesis of the modern, in this perspective, is linked to a dimension of the human which, to not be an essential quality of order, a fortiori metaphysics, still exists, manifesting itself in what is called “ Technical conduct ». The purpose is not to develop an abstract theory of the latter, but to probe a home deemed particularly privileged, that which concerns art, no longer in the sense of Bel-art according to traditional aesthetics, but in the sense Where art, in its doing, always implies an operational dimension which is irreducible to the image, to representation as well as to meaning. One decisive aspect of the approach is here to reconnect with this operative part of art, linked to the dimension of doing (including and especially in its mechanical and reproducible dimension with regard to devices, with photography, cinema , radio etc.), in that it is precisely evaluated as a participant of “ The power to modify the conditions of human existence (P. 22) And therefore, modern. If Pierre-Damien Huyghe, in his last chapter, is in a concrete way to present this power at work in the Steve Reich system “ Pendulum Music “, From Dan Graham’s comment in” Subject matter », The general intention is above all to insist on the tensions which exist between this dimension of operativity, and all the modalities, in a way inverse, of its recovery and its concealment. There is, first of all, the problem of discourse on art and works, which contribute to introducing and even making sense or interpretation triumph, ultimately the “ say “, Where it would actually be a question of thinking about” TO DO »» ; This tension is particularly tangible at the phenomenal level: technical operativity shows and does not say. But it is especially in the analysis that Pierre-Damien Huyghe offers “ style », In this book, with its spinoffs for the central question of modernity, that the novelty lies in relation to the previous reflections of the author. Because relying in particular on the reflections of Viollet-le-Duc towards the Gothic style, and in contrast From Romanesque architecture (p. 73-81), Pierre-Damien Huyghe proposes to show that the style, in art, is precisely of such a moment of covering: when the logic of the idea or the concept (the style ) takes over, to dismiss it, the logic of doing which has neither representations nor models a priori To organize and develop. Romanesque architecture, in its element of the marquee here analyzed under the category of exergue, would thus be the exemplification of a world without style, marked by “ the rout of conceptions »(P. 85) ; But not poorer, on the contrary: because modern in relation to technical operativity, and open above all to necessarily promising impact to do.

We modern

Pierre-Damien’s book Huygue is committed ; It is a question of making a judgment on our time (p. 87), in the concern of future generations and the possibility, for them, of the new. It is not more interpretation in our time, which is proposed here, but a perspective or resonance with other times, in particular the Middle Ages. If modernity, that of a world without style where the operating scheme dominates, is the good ours, it is therefore necessary to be able to consider it not without some affinity with other experiences. Also the really daring character of the test lies in this perspective with the Middle Ages, included the thesis developed in chapter three (criticism of interest) around homage and loyalty: “ In general, the medieval feal regime is an issue for modernity (P. 55).