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    http://tcs.sagepub.com/Theory,Culture & Society

    http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/21/3/35The online version of this article can be found at:

    DOI: 10.1177/0263276404043619

    2004 21: 35Theory Culture SocietyNiels Albertsen and Blent Diken

    Artworks' Networks: Field, System or Mediators?

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    Artworks NetworksField, System or Mediators?

    Niels Albertsen andBlent Diken

    Introduction: Artwork versus Network

    THERE IS no history of art, Lyotard claims, there is only a history ofcultural objects. As a cultural object, the work of art can be inscribedinto a network of internal and external determinants, and can becomean object for historical, sociological or political-economical inquiry. As awork of art, however, the work cannot be reduced to its network because ithides an excess, an intensity that surpasses the conditions of its produc-

    tion and reception. The work is only art if it is a gesture of and in a materialcreating an absolute surplus, a profusion of sensuous presentations. Thesurplus consists of forms organized differently from the given matter ofnature, as if nature only had used some of its powers to create form. Concep-tual discourse can never capture such material profusion, which cannot besubjected to contextual conditions, formal rules or determination by a peri-odization. The artwork bestows a persisting promise of happiness thatnever ceases transiting intransitively through epochs or styles. However,the artwork invites a commentary that can do justice to its intensity if the

    commentary itself employs a profusion in and of language. Hence thecommentary in a sense repeats the gesture of exuberant profusion whichinhabits the work, without ever being able to say the final word (Lyotard,1992: 23, 1415).

    As a work of art, then, the artwork is open for artful commentary; asa cultural object, it is an object for theory and research. Hence a clean-cut,modern division: commentary versus science, artwork versus network. Thisdivision reinforces the well-known polarization between internal andexternal approaches to art. Bourdieu (1992a), on the contrary, insists,

    alluding to Spinozas intellectual love of God, that positioning the work ofart in the structures and struggles within the field of art, that is, its

    Theory, Culture & Society 2004(SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),Vol. 21(3): 3558DOI: 10.1177/0263276404043619

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    necessitation, intensifies the experience of art. The work then, as well asits commentary, is part of a network. This sociological truth is misrecog-nized through the separation of work and network.

    Both Lyotard and Bourdieu give an account of the love of art, but in

    radically different ways. Lyotard, following Kant, concentrates on the tran-scendence of the work; Bourdieu, following Spinoza, focuses on its historicalimmanence. Lyotard, of course, would never agree with such a focus. Itsnetwork cannot ground the work as a work of art. Indeed, when Bourdieu(1992b: 110) claims that everything is social, this seems to affirm Lyotardssuspicion, and one wonders how Bourdieus science of the work of art(Bourdieu, 1992a: 247) can transcend the internalexternal divide. Hetheorizes the work of art as a fetish emerging from the magic (of the belief-system) of the field of art, in which the work of art itself is a stake in the

    struggle for domination. The work of art thus tends to disappear into itsnetwork and the commentary into magic.

    While such sociologism can be accused of being violent toward art(see Heywood, 1997), Luhmanns (1995) cool sociology of art can escapethis criticism. Describing the system of art as an autopoietic system,Luhmann necessarily accepts the way the system itself observes itself, andcan present a sociological theory of how works of art are produced as worksof art rather than as fetishes. Luhmann achieves this insight by defining thesocial as communication and the work of art as a communicative artefact.

    In this, however, the materiality of the work disappears in communication,the sui generis of sociality. Yet, as Hennion and Latour (1993: 21) argue,the world of art is less a communicative system than a heterogeneousnetwork of human and non-human mediators. Within such networks,fetishism is not a question of belief and magic but rather of mediators thatalways transcend mediators. The world of art is then neither a field nor asystem but an actor-network, and the commentary its mediator.

    In the following, we first present some features of these different soci-ologies of art, remaining faithful to the authors. Then, in the concluding

    part, we assess their strengths and the weaknesses with an emphasis on thepolarization between the internal and the external understandings of art aswell as the materiality of the artwork. Doing this, we establish some hiddensocial-theoretical convergences and mutual implications among theseapproaches.

    The Artwork as Fetish

    According to Bourdieu, Duchamps ready-mades deliver sociology a privi-leged access to art by demonstrating the collective belief that grounds theartistic order (1992a: 261). To understand this, however, one has to consultMausss theory of magic, which, in order to explain the belief in the efficacyof magic, moves from the instruments, operations, representations andpersonal characteristics of the magician to the social universe in whichmagic is developed and enacted (1992a: 400). In other words, one has tounderstand the magical group to understand magic; collective belief gives

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    the magician his power, which is misrecognized as being the magical effectof the magician. Artistic creativity has similar roots. Signing a ready-made,the artist gives it a market price, which is disproportional to the cost of theready-made, and this magical effect is due to the whole social universe that

    recognizes and authorizes him (1992a: 240). This social universe of believ-ers, the field of art, includes everyone engaged in art: artists, art historians,politicians, gallery-owners, teachers, parents, etc. (Bourdieu, 1980: 221,1992a: 318f.). The more people involved the greater the effect of belief andits misrecognition. Consequently, a cycle of consecration emerges; the morecomplicated this is, the more it becomes invisible, which, in turn, makesits structure more misrecognizable, and thus magnifies the effect of belief(Bourdieu, 1980: 206). In combination, then, Duchamp and Mauss demon-strate how the field of art as a universe of belief produces the value of the

    work of art as fetish by producing the belief in the creative power of theartist (Bourdieu, 1992a: 318).

    Basically, therefore, belief is grounded in the field, which resemblesa game. The field presupposes some rules of the game and the presence ofinterested players, both of which further presuppose a fundamental beliefin the value of the game. This primordial belief is what Bourdieu callsillusio: a specific form of belief that is more internal and profound thanexplicit forms of belief (Bourdieu, 1997: 122). Explicit belief is founded inthe collective belief that springs from the field, but the field itself is founded

    in the tacit belief of the illusio. The explicit belief in art and in artisticcreativity is the visible expression of this tacit belief (Bourdieu, 1992a:238). Illusio resides both in the body and in the mind as the seriousness ofplay, demanding that ones libido is invested in the game (Bourdieu, 1994:1513). Which is exactly what reproduces the game, while playing the gamereproduces further investment (Bourdieu, 1992a: 319, 237).

    There is no deeper grounding of the game or of its rules than suchcircular relations. Illusio is a tacit adherence to nomos (Bourdieu, 1997:122), which is the tautological constitution of the game (1997: 116). In the

    case of art, the purpose of art is art, art has no other goal beyond itself(Bourdieu, 1994: 159). Nomos is the grounding point of view that regu-lates access to the field (1994: 310). As a game, then, the field emanatesfrom a self-referential, self-constituting and self-reproducing constitutionsupported by an illusio. In order to exist as a game, however, the field of artneeds competent players endowed with the right sense of seeing things andactions as art (Bourdieu, 1992a: 310). The sense of the game is obtainedthrough social exercise and resides in the habitus; in the embodied dispo-sitions of the player to act according to cognitive, evaluative and practicalstructures of behaviour (Bourdieu, 1994: 22f.). Habitus and field are thusinvolved in an ontological complicity (1994: 151). The game is, however,not pure play but a competitive game of struggle and power. The collusioof the agents in illusio is the foundation of the competition that sets themagainst each other (Bourdieu, 1992a: 316). The competitive game is a polar-ized field of force (1992a: 323) consisting of opposed positions determined

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    by reciprocity in a network of objective relations (1992a: 321), which isrooted in an unequal distribution of different forms of capital: economic,cultural, social and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1983a: 183, 185, 191). The nomosof the field implies the denegation of the economy (Bourdieu, 1994: 160);

    art is for arts sake and not for commercial success. However, the economyis not altogether absent. Hence the denegation produces a division of thefield into two subfields. On one hand, there is a restricted field of artisticproduction, in which art is produced for arts sake, cultural and symboliccapital dominate, and the economy partly functions as a pre-capitalist gifteconomy. On the other hand, there is an extended field of production, inwhich external demand and commercial success have the upper hand. Hereeconomic capital dominates cultural and symbolic capital. The larger theextended field the less autonomous is the field of art as a whole, and vice

    versa (Bourdieu, 1992a: 211, 202, 302f.).

    A Lucid Illusio

    The field of art is created historically in the process of the differentiationof modern society,1 by a multitude of institutional conditions that removeart from political and religious functions and reduce it to its function as art(Bourdieu, 1992a: 4024). In this process, art-producers and art-consumersare socialized into the practice of approaching art as art, while the game ofart is purified and works of art are autonomized. Thus, the invention of the

    pure gaze is accomplished in this movement of the field itself towardsautonomy (1992a: 411). The struggle between orthodoxy and avant-garde inthe restricted field leads to a successive purification of art as form, to theprimacy of form over function and of the enunciation over the enunciated(1992a: 412). In a simultaneously internal and external struggle, the historyof the field accomplishes a veritable essential analysis of art, which doesnot require any reference to transcendent significations (1992a: 411). Theresult is a certain irreversibility and cumulativity of the field. The moreart is purified, the more the practical mastery of the tradition of the field is

    necessary in order to play in the field, both as a producer and as a consumer.Thus the appropriate perception of works of art like Warhols Brillo boxesor Kleins monochromes owes its existence, value and formal properties tothe structure and history of the field, just as does the revolutionary musicalwork of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern (1992a: 413, 335ff.). Paradoxically,and due to the same purification, art also comes to deny its own history anddependency on the field. The more works of art are created on the basis ofpurely formal criteria, the more they disavow their social context. Conse-quently, artworks are increasingly produced for deciphering, interpretationand commentary. The pure production produces and presupposes the purereading, and readymades are so to speak nothing else than the limit for allthose works which are produced for commentary and by commentary(1992a: 421).

    Such pure and internal readings of works of art take a scholastic viewdependent on a situation (skhol), in which players, liberated from practical

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    necessities, can play with meanings and significations, a situation typicalof autonomized social fields. This produces a series of scholastic fallaciesrooted in the misrecognition of the social conditions ofskhol. Among suchfallacies are the ontologization of art as a universal essence and the

    disavowal of the institutionalized limits to the free play of signification anddeciphering. The historical transcendental (Bourdieu, 1992a: 397) of thefield is transformed into a transhistorical essence, and specific viewpointsas well as the privileges related to participation in the field are legitimizedby such universalization (Bourdieu, 1992a: 41824, 1994: 22134).

    What, then, is the status of the work of art in Bourdieus science ofworks? Works of art are fetish objects constituted through collective belief,and they are purified objects emerging from the power struggles of the field.They are objects of false universalization and false transcendence. No

    wonder, then, that the scientific analysis of art is (mis)conceived by artlovers as iconoclastic violence (Bourdieu, 1992a: 261). Bourdieu, however,also talks about art as the sublimated essence of the universal and as thehighest conquerings of the human enterprise (1992a: 15). There is more tosay about universalization than legitimization, and more to say about illusiothan illusion. Bourdieus stance towards this ambivalence is revealed in hisreading of Mallarm (1992a: 3804). First, Mallarm unveils the illusio bydemonstrating the objective truth of literature as a fiction based on collec-tive belief. Second, he defends the salvation of literary enjoyment against

    any objectification. And third, as an elitist, he wants to keep the secret aboutthe literary mechanism of the illusio; only the chosen few should have thisinsight, since widespread understanding of illusio as illusion would threatenthe existence of the game (1992a: 241). Mallarm holds the view that theenjoyment of literature can only be saved from being an illusion, if it isrooted in the illusio. Now, says Mallarm, the sensuous enjoyment of litera-ture has as its motor the idea of something beyond. This beyond, however,does not exist. Hence, enjoyment is driven by something like a fetishismby decision. Only great men should know that (1992a: 3823).

    Bourdieu concludes that Mallarm gives an unsatisfactory answer toa good question: should the secret of the literary mechanism be revealed?What would be a satisfactory answer, then? To tell the truth about illusiowhile expecting that fetishism by decision will keep the literary game going,we think. This would be faith in the value of art rather than belief in thevalue of art (1992a: 384). But is this possible without a certain dose ofillusio? Bourdieu here seems to operate with an implicit idea of somethinglike a lucid art world; a play of the game of the arts, which is founded in alucid illusio. We cannot get rid of illusio because it is at the very root ofsociality (Bourdieu, 1983b: 23). The obliteration of illusio means theobliteration of sociality: there is an originary form of fetishism at the foun-dation of all action (Bourdieu, 1982: 48).2 This is the case even for science,which founds itself on a scientific illusio (Bourdieu, 1992a: 458). Soci-ology, however, can illuminate its audience about the illusio. It cannot andshould not destroy it, as this would bring with it the dissolution of the fields

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    and thus the disappearance of the social. Yet, sociology can bring about thepossibility of a freedom in illusio, of an illusio without illusion. Sociologycan give the actors positioned in the field the freedom based on an insightinto the social conditions of the field, and hence the possibility of domi-

    nating the game and its illusio (Bourdieu, 1982: 3f.). This includes theliberation from misrecognitions, false transcendences, executions of power,and legitimations founded in the illusio as well (Bourdieu, 1982: 56). Inother words, the tacit illusio may become a lucid illusio, something like areflexive faith. One can always enter the game without illusion, by aconscious and deliberate decision (1982: 54).

    Universality is, to recall, not only a category of legitimization. The fieldconstitutes the universal through its rules of the game, that is, through therestrictions and internal and external censorship imposed by the field on its

    members (Bourdieu, 1994: 235). There is a cumulative history of the fieldthat imbues artworks with high accomplishment and, in this sense, univer-sality (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 87). The sociological-political answerto fetishism and universalizing legitimization of the field therefore is evenmore universalization! The universal, that is, reason, resides in the auton-omized fields. Therefore, first of all, autonomy must be defended againstcurrent tendencies towards commercialization (Bourdieu, 1992b: 467f.).And, second, the privileges as to participation in these fields must bebroken; one has to fight to universalize access to the universal (Bourdieu,

    1994: 233). All people should be given the possibility of training toward alucid illusio, and this is, as a political and ethical programme, the Real-politik of reason (1994: 235).

    Necessitation and the Intellectual Love of Art

    The idea of a lucid illusio, which we have found implicit in Bourdieusscience of artworks, closely relates to the amor intellectualis rei evokedfrom Spinoza (Bourdieu, 1992a: 14): an intellectual, not scholastic, love ofart that is aware of the social conditions of the artwork. In future such intel-

    lectual love may become universalized, but it can also be attained here andnow by necessitation, by demonstrating the network of the artwork. Neces-sitation means showing the necessity of the work of art as it is determinedby the position of the work and its creator in the field. The singular workemerges from the singularity of the position as well as the singularity of theperson that takes up the position. Flauberts work is a strong case in thisregard (1992a: 14). Through a positional analysis, one can sense the workof necessitation, a reconstructive process, which takes place not throughcommentary or hermeneutic interpretation but through a distanced, scien-tific reproduction of the production of the work. It is not sympathy that leadsto real understanding, but real understanding that leads to sympathy, or,better, to the kind of intellectual love that [. . .] accompanies the discoveryof necessity (1992a: 418). Hence understanding by necessitation caninclude both the very strange and the antipathetic. The scope ranges fromHeideggers philosophical work (Bourdieu, 1991) to the interpretation of

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    interviews with ordinary profane human beings (Bourdieu, 1992a: 416) aspractised by Bourdieu and his collaborators (Bourdieu et al., 1993: 8, 910,91214). Sensing the accomplishment of necessity is an active submissionto the singular necessity of the work of art. Active because it is a recon-

    struction in the mode of the science of necessitation, submission becauseof the necessity. Hence necessitation resembles the work itself which isproduced through a similar submission. It contains an assimilation of theobject to the subject and an immersion of the subject in the object whichcan turn our love of art into an intellectual love of art (1993: 14).3 If thereis anything absolute about the work of art, then, it is its necessity. If, asLyotard argues, the work transits intransitively through epochs, it isbecause of its necessitation. Here the sensibility towards historical neces-sity replaces the sensibility towards an absolute transcendence (1993: 429).

    For Bourdieu, the science of artworks must render illusio reasonablewithout involving itself in the illusio and without turning it into the illusionit may appear from outside the field of art (Bourdieu, 1994: 241, 1992a:320). How is this seemingly impossible task possible? By way of necessi-tation: through the mode of science necessitation establishes a distance inrelation to the illusio of the field of art and thus renders illusio reasonableby creating the intellectual love of art. The field, then, is the key to the tran-scendence of the internalexternal divide (Bourdieu, 1992a: 288). The fieldprovides the means of taking a viewpoint on the whole of viewpoints

    (1992a: 291). There is no distinction between the analysis of works of artas works of art and as works in social networks. Indeed, Bourdieu reactsaggressively to this distinction:

    It is always the same! I am always surprised that people decline to recognizethis truth:Everything is social! The style, the form, just as well as the rightsof authors [. . .] Saying that everything is social is simply saying that there isno transcendence, and that writing, with all its specificities, remains a socialphenomenon, which cannot be explained otherwise than by the social.(Bourdieu, 1992b: 110)

    The concept of the field enables an integration through re-groupingdifferent scientific viewpoints on art. Bourdieus intention is to provide thoseviewpoints with the means to such a re-grouping (Bourdieu, 1992b: 109).One wonders, however, whether such re-grouping does not have conse-quences for a sociological conception of the social. If writing is a socialphenomenon, what then is the social?

    Art and Communication

    With Luhmann, the sui generis of sociality is communication.4 The under-standing of art as a differentiated social system implies that communicationoperates in the context of art. Such communication should not be merely onart but, rather, through art (Luhmann, 1995: 36). Only on this conditioncan the work of art be understood sociologically as art. Luhmann defines

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    communication as the unity of the difference between information, utterance(Mitteilung) and understanding.5 Information is the theme or content ofcommunication, utterance is the communicative act of addressing others,and understanding is the perception by the other of the utterance as a sign

    of information (Luhmann, 1992: 24). If communication is not understood asa sign of information, there can only be mutual sensation (1992: 38). If, onthe other hand, the difference between utterance and information is under-stood, communication can produce further communication from its ownelements. Such further movement of communication is the autopoiesis ofcommunication (1992: 38). Communication can be both linguistic and non-linguistic indirect communication such as standardized gestures(Luhmann, 1995: 35f.). Communication through works of art belongs to non-linguistic communication even when the form of art is linguistic (1995: 45f.).

    How, then, can works of art communicate the unity of the differencebetween information, utterance and understanding? The utterance springsfrom the artificiality of the artwork. The work is created for others and theartefact addresses others, as artefact. The informational aspect emanatesfrom the forms of the work, that is, from its structure of distinction (1995:70). The formation of works of art consists of making differences in form, aconcept linked to the operation of observation, defined as making a distinc-tion and an indication of one side, as distinct from the other side, of thedistinction (see Brown, 1969). Observation is the smallest unity of the event

    of art which cannot be undersold (Luhmann, 1995: 368). Hence, form followsdistinction, since form is always double-sided, always difference. Even ifonly one side is indicated, another non-indicated side always goes with it.Thus an inner and an outer side of the distinction emerge, and both are theform. In other words the concept of form is a differential concept6 that alwaysincludes a double-sided form (Luhmann, 1990: 10). The creation ofartworks operates with such forms. A distinction and indication trigger aprocess in which connections of form are reworked by crossing the bound-aries of the first form (1990: 14). A first accidental distinction makes it

    possible to investigate what happens on the other side when something isadded to the first side (1990: 11). The sides do not determine each other.Contra to complete arbitrariness, however, there must be a fit:

    The specificity of the forms of art is due to [the fact that] the determinationof one side does not keep completely open what shall happen on the otherside. It does not determine the other side, but it withdraws the determinationof the other side from [sheer] arbitrariness. Whatever happens there, mustfit. (Luhmann, 1995: 189)

    This process goes on until the reciprocal restrictions of the forms enterinto each other. An object becomes an artwork in the process through whichthe forms, of which it makes use, increasingly reduce the domain of possi-bilities (1995: 62) to the point that the forms close circularly, reciprocallycomment upon each other, and confirm that with which one had started

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    (1995: 63). Through connections of form, the artwork arises as a reworkingof accident into necessity dependent on accident. After the accident ofthe first distinction, the work controls its own production and transforms theartist into an observer. The dependence of necessity on the initial accident

    is, on the other hand, what the work of art owes its individuality to(Luhmann, 1990: 11).

    The perception of an artwork, too, is based on an observation ofconnections of form. If the finished work is to be observed as a work of art,the observer must decipher the structure of distinctions of the work(Luhmann, 1995: 70). Communication through art must take place by meansof the distinctions internal to the artwork itself. The information is exter-nalized in the work and the utterance of the information is given by [the]artificiality of the work (1995: 89, 70). Such communication is communi-

    cation by means of sensation, which is rather peculiar to art, since sensationgenerally is not communication.7 Furthermore, just as communicationthrough language does not imply consensus, neither does communicationthrough sensation. What is important in this respect is that the distinctionsof form in the artwork ensure that the communication between the artist andthe perceiver of art does not take place at random (1995: 76). The work ofart is, then, in itself a network of distinctions (1995: 63). But, as part of adifferentiated system of art, the artwork is also part of a more comprehen-sive network of communication. The work only emerges as an artwork

    through a recursive networking with other works of art and with [. . .] verbalcommunication about art (1995: 90). The autopoietic system of art thusconsists of two aspects, communication through works of art and communi-cation on works of art.

    The Function of Art as Weltkunst

    As an autopoietic system, the system of art not only has to (re)produce theelements in its own communicative network but also has to perform a non-substitutable societal function. Modern society is functionally differentiated

    not only in the sense of being divided into interdependent species of labourbut also in the much stronger sense of being differentiated into non-substi-tutable autopoietic systems which take care of individual societal functions(Luhmann, 1995: 215ff.). Modern society is organized according to theprimacy of one-function systems (Luhmann, 1987: 116). In this regardmodern art functions as Weltkunst, world-art (Luhmann, 1990: 15). Worldfor Luhmann means all that exists. However, from a differential point ofview all that exists cannot be observed. For any observer (observing system)Welt is always differentiated into system and environment (Umwelt), and the

    unity of this differentiation is, for the observer, unobservable. Welt is theconcept of this unobservable unity of difference. According to Luhmann, aunity of difference may be observable for another observer operating fromanother distinction, however, there always emerges an unobservable unityof this new distinction which takes over the function of the blind spot

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    (Luhmann, 1990: 15). As the blind spot of any observer, Welt is Welt afterthe Fall (Luhmann, 1984: 284).

    In what sense, then, is art Weltkunst? This cannot mean that the worldas an undifferentiated unity is directly observable in art, since there is no

    such thing as an absolute world (Welt schlechthin) for any observation. Asthe unity of the unmarked state prior to observation (Luhmann, 1990: 15),the world never appears entirely in observation. Rather it goes along withall observations as their blind spot, remaining transcendentally presup-posed (1990: 20). As the artist reworks the connections of form, the unob-servable unity of one differential form is made visible by another form thathas its own unobservable side. In this sense the artwork is a making visibleof the invisible on the condition that the invisible is preserved (1990: 14).The artwork as Weltkunst makes the world visible and invisible. The

    artwork indicates on the one hand that as soon as one form becomes import-ant then there also emerge other possibilities based on other forms and onthe other that the world will only show itself in distinctions of distinctions,that is, never (1990: 20). By pointing at other possible forms while at thesame time being part of the world, the artwork lets the world of the alsopossible appear in the world (1990: 39). Being a reworking of accident intonecessity dependent on accidence (1990: 11) the artwork at the same timeindicates that also in the realm of the only possible can order be found(Luhmann, 1995: 236). The artwork implies that the world is always possibly

    something else (as the unity of some other distinction). In the medium ofthe sensual (painting, sculpture, music) or of the imagination (literature),art creates within reality a fictional reality, splitting the world into animaginary and a real reality. Art realizes a doubling of reality, providing aposition from which something else can be determined as reality (1995:22930).

    So, the function of art in modern society is to create realities withinreality and to show that reality could be ordered otherwise, a function thatlies in the demonstration of compulsions of order in the realm of the only

    possible (1995: 238). Such ordering may be multiple and may include highdegrees of freedom, which corresponds to the condition of modernity. Whatis significant, however, is that art makes the unavoidability of ordering assuch visible (1995: 241). Like science and religion, art also makes theinvisible visible (Luhmann, 1990: 14), but not in the same way. Art neithercompetes with science for a better observation (1990: 40), nor with religionin making visible something transcendent (Luhmann, 1995: 229). Eventhough art may function as religion, the function of art as art is not to makean unobservable God observable in the world. Art explicates the world fromwithin (Luhmann, 1990: 45); art is immanent in the world, which is alsoone reason why Luhmann avoids such concepts as the sublime (Lyotard)in the context of art. Such concepts transform the reciprocal closure of theforms into a divinatory event and replace the observation of the form-orderof the work, turning the form-order into something arbitrary, which only theconcept can account for as necessary. Yet, being itself an ordering of forms,

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    the work of art does not need such further labelling (Luhmann et al., 1990:66). Neither can art be understood through descriptions borrowed fromreligion (Luhmann, 1990: 45). Only as a network of distinctions of form canart constitute a non-substitutable function in modernity. Observed through

    other distinctions (such as those in Bourdieus Distinction) art is notobserved as art in a sociological way: such observation is not concernedwith the social access to the world through art (1990: 21).

    The Objecthood of the Artwork and the Materiality ofMediators

    Regarding art as an autopoietic network and the artwork as a network ofdistinctions, the materiality of the object is not decisive. The reciprocalspecification of forms does not spring from the material properties of the

    medium or from the purpose or utility of the object (Luhmann, 1995: 62).Objects become artworks because of the reciprocally restrictive distinctionsof forms. Works cannot exist, of course, without materials and artists, theirbiographies and struggles of interest, but such structural couplings8

    between the system of art and its environment are not what makes an artworkan artwork (Luhmann, 1995: 131). The artwork and the artist have to existmaterially for communication through art to take place (1995: 86), but thatis not what constitutes the communication. The material realizations ofartworks are excluded from art as a communications-system; they are

    resources for the communicative system but not the communication itself(1995: 131f.).Only the objecthood (Objektheit) of an artwork counts within the

    system of art. Objecthood and objects are repeatable designations withoutcounter-concepts, but they are demarcated against everything else; they areforms with another side that stays undetermined. An object is a concreteobject precisely on the condition that its unity is not determined. In orderto analyse an object, one has to specify its unmarked other side (1995: 80).Objects are conditioned on observation (1995: 56); the reiteration of a

    distinction and an indication are what gives them their stability. What issignificant, therefore, is not the objects material substance or stability. Toclaim this would only be one way of observing it. The durability of object-hood comes from the repeated use of the same distinction, from the reiter-ated distinction of the object from everything else. Stabilized objects givethemselves through the recursive application of communications tocommunications (1995: 81). The material thing may be short-lived, situ-ations may vary, but the object can keep its identity as objecthood becauseit is communicatively determined as being different from everything else(1995: 82). Such objects, or, in Serres terminology, quasi-objects, canretain both variation and recognizability in changing social constellations.The objecthood of the object is determined by the fact that the social fieldof regulation always already is thought of as being part of its sense as object.As an object, objecthood is the object of sensation. The meaning to besensed, however, is not the material substantiality but the social

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    regulations (1995: 81). Art is produced in the realm of the sensuous bymeans of the fixation of forms in things (or sequences of events). The form-decisions which are fixed in things are a guarantee of the possibility ofobserving observations of the same object (1995: 124). So, even if the

    material substratum is important for the object, it is not the guarantee ofthe objecthood of the object, this can only be granted by the distinctions ofform.

    Following Mead and Serres, Luhmann emphasizes that stabilizedobjects have a time-binding function (1995: 80), which is more importantfor the stabilization of social relations than social contracts and communi-cative consensus (1995: 81). Communicative coordination orients itself bythings, not by grounds, and, in this, the identity (Selbigkeit) of the objectreplaces the accordance of meaning (1995: 125, 124). For Hennion and

    Latour (1993), too, things are decisive regarding the stabilization of socialrelations. But there is an important distinction to observe in this context.For Luhmann, the materiality of the artwork is part of the environment ofthe art system. One cannot have an autopoietic communicative system thatconsists of marble and bodies, thoughts and communication, paper andprinting ink (Luhmann, 1995: 131f.). This is surely true from the point ofview of Luhmanns communicative systems theory, but for Hennion andLatour such a claim implies that the conception of sociality as communi-cation and differentiation must be questioned. Human sociality is a social-

    ity that includes material things as well as humans, and this collectivity(Latour, 1993: 107) consists of linkages between elements, which arecommunicatively incommensurable from the point of view of communicativesystems theory. Things interacting with humans localize human interactionby framing it to become sequential and complicated in contradistinctionto the complex sociality based on the simultaneous presence of a multi-plicity of variables found among simians and baboons. Simultaneously,things render action global by mediating the links among actors, which areabsent for one another in time and space. Paradoxically, then, it is things

    that make human interaction specifically human. What is specificallyhuman is sharing sociality with things (Latour, 1996a: 2335).Latour argues that the social sciences have traditionally explained the

    relation between human sociality and things in three ways: as tools, as infra-structure and as projection screens. None of these perspectives present thesocial as something shared between humans and things. First, as tools,things are the faithful transmitters of social intentions. Second, as infra-structure, things establish and interconnect a material base for the flow ofthe representations and signs of the social world. And third, as projectionscreens, things function as the carriers of signs and symbols of social statusor as fetishes, in other words, as things that are conceived of as actingsocially while their action really stems from the human sociality itself(Latour, 1996a: 235f.). There is, however, a fourth possibility, which impliesaccepting a certain dose of fetishism (1996a: 236), namely the under-standing of things and humans as mediating one another. Contrary to

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    intermediaries, which function perfectly insofar as they disappear in themediation and let the mediated pass without interruption, and contrary tofetish, which distorts and hides, the mediator is active and productive(Hennion, 1997a: 12, 14). It performs something by itself, and this perform-

    ance cannot be reduced to the effect or distortion of something else. Amediator is never exactly the cause or the consequence of its associates,of other mediators (Latour, 1996a: 237).9 The performance of the mediatoris an event (1996a: 237), which is partly causa sui (Latour, 1996b: 88),partly mediated by other mediators.

    As an event, the doing of the mediator is action. This event or medi-ation allows the retention of two characteristics of action: the emergence ofnovelty together with the impossibility of ex-nihilo creation (Latour, 1996a:237). This concept of action separates the concept of the actor from relations

    of causeconsequence and human intentionality. An actor is anything thatlets/makes happen, an actant in the semiotic sense (Gomart and Hennion,1999: 226). An actant can be both human and thing, literally [it] can beanything provided that it is the source of an action (Latour, 1996c: 53).Hennion and Latour use as an example the puppeteer surprised by thebehaviour of his puppets. The relationship between the puppeteer and thepuppet can be explained as a causal relation, in which force is merelytransmitted. This is, however, misleading. Why make puppets, if every-thing is in the manipulation except the illusion. Why pass through the small

    figure? Yet, if the puppet is conceived of as a mediator, then the pattern ofexplanation changes. The mediator is an event which disturbs what comesin and what goes out. Speak to a puppeteer and he will tell you about whathis puppets make him do (Hennion and Latour, 1993: 21; cf. Latour, 1994:601, 1996a: 237). It is decisive regarding mediation that the event stemsfrom material heterogeneity. It emerges from the process through which thepassage through another matter, another figure, modifies the relations offorce (Hennion and Latour, 1993: 22). What is translated through media-tion is modified. The objectivity of objects in mediation is, then, no longer

    founded in Luhmanns communicative objecthood but in things, and thisshould be taken literally. The durability of the mediating thing is its materialdurability, its weight regarding the stabilization of social interaction is itsliteral weight (Latour, 1996a: 230, 235, 236).10

    In Luhmanns world, too, the event is a significant concept; acommunication is an event in time. If another communication is not linkedto the event, then communication disappears. Communicative systems aresystems of events that are recursively linked together in time, observed fromthe distinction between future and past (Luhmann, 1995: 37). What is newis a distinction in time, the signal of a transition from an unmarked to amarked state of the world (1995: 55). Hennion and Latour, however, wouldargue that such an event is possible only if material heterogeneity inter-mingles with the difference between future and past. As an actant, themediator makes a difference as to what it mediates. It is, at the same time,also associated with that which it mediates. The mediator itself is mediated

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    and this generates new mediations. When one acts, others proceed toaction (Latour, 1996a: 237). There is, then, no original non-mediated actionand no first operation of a distinction as in Luhmanns world, only media-tors of mediators. The action of the actant is always distributed and shared

    with other actants (1996a: 237). Insofar as network means such a distri-bution and the concept of actor refers to that of the actant, the mediator issimultaneously a network and an actor, an associated event. Actor andnetwork [. . .] designates two faces of the same phenomenon (Latour, 1996c:15, 18f.), an actor-network, or perhaps more precisely, an event-network(Gomart and Hennion, 1999: 225).

    Mediation and Artworks Work

    Works of art emerge and are perceived through a multiplicity of human and

    non-human mediators, and they are themselves such mediators. As amediated mediator, an artwork of course can be an association of marbleand bodies, thoughts and communication, paper and printing ink(Luhmann, 1995: 131f.). The mediation of art invites two central questionsrelated to artworks: how is their production and reception mediated, andhow do they themselves work as mediators? While the first question pointstoward a de-differentiation of art (in contrast to Bourdieus and Luhmannsdifferentiated modernity), the second hints at the possibility of a re-differ-entiation, with a focus on the specific ways in which artworks do their medi-

    ating work differently from other types11

    of mediators.Regarding the first question as to how artworks are mediated let usdwell on Bourdieus concept of the field of art. From a mediator point ofview, this concept theorizes a relational network occupied by mediatorsbetween subject and object, but in a way that is distorted by the theory offetishism and belief (Hennion, 1993: 123). Further, the network of the fieldprimarily relates human mediators. Except for great artists with a stronginfluence on the restructuring of the field, humans seem to operate morelike intermediaries for structural relations of force than as mediators.

    Likewise, non-human mediators show up more as finished works than asmaterial means for the production of works. One may thus wonder how thefield of art is stabilized without non-human mediators. If, however, the fieldre-includes both human and non-human mediators, a different pictureemerges.

    Due to its allographic nature, music is a paradigmatic example regard-ing mediators in art; it has to be executed, that is, mediated.12 One can, forinstance, ask where music is: in the score, in the instruments, in themusicians, in the concert hall, in the recording . . .? Music is, of course, theassociation of these and many other mediators. One cannot find a limitbeyond which music is only music, the work finally a closed object; themusic itself is a mediation (Hennion, 1993: 380). Only through its media-tors can music have any durability (1993: 297). One cannot, regardingmusic, play the work of art against the mediators. Thus for instance thecontroversy over baroque music in the 20th century was highly dependent

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    on the mediators. The decision of the neo-traditionalists (contra to thesymphonic modernists) to use ancient instruments triggered non-traditionalchanges such as the amplification of the resulting sound by modern tech-nology and the diffusion of baroque music by modern media (Hennion,

    1997a). Mediators also have a vital role regarding the differentiation andstruggle between genres. Some mediators are more central in some genresthan in others. To be schematic: the score is central in classical music; thecommunity around instruments is central in ethnic music; the media arecentral in pop music. Often, musical controversies are controversies aboutmediators, for example, reciprocal accusations of deployment of the wrongmediators. A necessary instrument for some is for others the means ofputting music into the service of other interests the market, technique,the spectacle, consumption (Hennion, 1993: 301). Adherents of each genre

    of music naturalize their own activity, while they readily (in a sociologicalway) reduce others to the interests of producers, production processes, orto the illusions of the believers or the fetishism of the consumers (1993:301). Music, like art in general, is polarized into rival domains of purity andpopularity. These domains may seem to be distant from one another, yet asystem of mediators can account for interconnections. Thus, a geography ofthe domains drawn by the distribution of types of mediators (the scene, theinstrument, the score, the disc . . .) can show subterranean connectionsamong the domains (1993: 303). Consequently:

    There are not on the one hand variety theatres, on the other serious music;commercial music, caught in the object relation which fixes it, stereotypes itand transforms it into fetishes, and true music, which is supposed to livebeyond the death of its objects. There are as many discs, media, instruments and [as much] idolatry of human stars in classical music as there areactive mediators, discipline of representation, sacralization of objects andself-submission of fans to abstract genres in the variety theatres and rock.[. . .] Music-for-the-public, or music-for-the-music. [. . .] Each of theseopposed forms borrows from the other. (Hennion, 1993: 314f.)

    Such analyses provide a more sophisticated understanding of thenetworks of fields than Bourdieus approach, and achieve this without losingsight of oppositions. Turning now to the second question of how the work ofart itself works as a mediator, Latour seems to claim that what specifiesmediation in art, in contrast to mediation in science and religion, is thatthere is no (narrow) specification. The specific quality of mediation in art isthe non-hierarchical multiplication of mediators. In a certain way thisresembles Bourdieus claim that the necessitation of the artwork in the

    mediations of the field intensifies the aesthetic experience. Latour argues:The more I read about the intermediary steps that make up the picture of the

    Night Watch, the more I may like it. Constructivism adds to the pleasure,going, so to speak, in the same direction, toward the multiplication of medi-ators. (Latour, 1998: 423)

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    There is no need for a stable hierarchy of mediators in art; on the contrary,the speciality of art history is to deploy mediations without threatening thework itself loeuvre (1998: 422).13 Thus Alpers (1988) depicts Rembrandtas a social actor who produces not only paintings but also, at the same time,

    the criteria according to which the paintings are valued and the networkthat assures their use, transmission and sale. According to Hennion, sheestablishes the artist as a mediator of his art, one among others with whichhe interacts (Hennion, 1993: 210). This is done without denying his great-ness and genius, which should not be opposed to social determinations. Onthe contrary, Rembrandt is at the same time a great artist and a greatmerchant (1993: 214).

    However, Latour also seems to claim that the artworks work asmediator may resemble mediation in religion. Such mediation is person-

    making or, rather, presence-making, re-sensing the event of presencethrough the redirection of attention. Presence, by the very passage of time,is always lost (Latour, 1998: 434). Presence is an event that disappears intime if another presentation is not presented. The repetition of the sentenceI love you has, when uttered rightly, that is, with the right verbal gesture(the trembling of the voice, the tone),14 the virtue of putting both thespeaker and the listener in the presence of one another again and anew(1998: 428, 435). In a parallel way, religious works of art worthy of thedenomination do not represent stories from the Bible or a transcendent God;

    they redirect attention once again towards the presence of life. Seeing suchworks, in the right way, mediated by adequate knowledge, is no longer theaccessing of a substance beyond the present setting, but being designatednow, here, in the flesh, as someone receiving freely the gift of life anew(1998: 431).

    The redirection of attention toward presence is accomplished by thework of art through cracks, shaking, trepidation or discrepancies of thevisual display; in Renaissance art such as the work of Fra Angelico thisoccurs through cracks in the perspectival organization of the picture (1998:

    432, 430, 436). This effect of the artwork can be seen as its presence-making gesture. There is no point in looking beyond or beneath suchgestural redirection of attention. The message is the gesture, the enuncia-tion redirecting attention away from some informative content. Further ques-tions only lead into a spiral of mediators that redirect perception to furthermessengers, to further angels!

    Religious mediators, Latour says, resemble slightly, but only slightlythe mediators of art: there is no stable hierarchy in the spiral of religiousmediators (1998: 435f.). But one wonders whether this is the whole storyabout art and religion. Religious paintings without a gestural quality lacknot only theological but also artistic value, as if mediators of different sortssupported one another and the art ones refused to sit where their person-making brethren had been excluded (1998: 433). Furthermore, even theiconoclasm of modern art shares in common with religious painting theavoidance of information transfer in order to redirect attention to what really

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    counts (1998: 432). Why is there this fit between the mediators of art andof religion, if not because of a close family resemblance? Hennion suggests,more frankly, that we should listen to the theologians in order to under-stand works of art as mediators:

    The mediation which has been theorized by the theologians, the one of graceor plenitude [. . .] is the one that musicians know: the instrument, the score,the playing itself, the presence of the interpreter on the scene [. . .] all thesenecessary links [. . .] are producers of music, all supported one by the other,for making, at times, the music appear in the middle of us. The theologicalknowing, forgotten, incomprehensible for moderns, of the presence-mediationcontra the absence-mediation, that is the ordinary bread of musicians [. . .]we dont search for objectivity in music, but for grace. (Hennion, 1997a: 13)

    This is not to posit an identity between religion and art but, rather, anargument for the adequacy of a convergent vocabulary to talk about ourpresence at a reality. A vocabulary which is adequate to the invisibility ofits object, and which can recognize that mediation is active and produc-tive, it makes the music. A vocabulary which considers music not as anexternal object; music only exists in us, if it transforms us, transports us,moves us. We do not use artworks, we put ourselves at their service, thatis, at their listening; art lovers enter a relation of accepted subjection, inwhich the work [. . .] veritably acts [upon] its taster (1997a: 14). To accept

    subjection to the artworks gesture, to its redirection of attention, oscillat-ing between active and passive, letting oneself be swept away, seized bysome thing which passes (Gomart and Hennion, 1999: 243, 227, 224),abandoning power to the objects and suspending the self; this all brings usback to fetishism. What we have here is the acceptance of a certain doseof fetishism in practice. Which is very much like the deliberate, the decidedfetishism Bourdieu may have wanted Mallarm to universalize. The lucidillusio of the ordinary art lover.

    Conclusion: Artworks Networks

    A certain dose of fetishism is not a recipe which Bourdieu would like toaccept. To be sure, in the field of art one can find institutionalized ritualsand self-confirming circular networks of belief and consecration, which canbe diagnosed as fetishism. If the object of research is restricted to the un-ravelling of such features of domination, Bourdieu has much to offer, butthis is not, as we read him, the main point of his science of artworks. Themain point is to bridge the gap between internalism and externalism; thecritique of fetishism and domination is only a part, even if necessary, of thisendeavour. The bridge is established by necessitation in the artistic field,which allows both the location of the work in its social network and theenjoyment of the work as artwork. According to Bourdieus appropriation ofSpinoza, one cannot have one without the other. The necessitation of theartwork precisely is an active submission to the singular necessity of the

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    work. The more you know about the network, the more you will enjoy thework, which Latour agrees. Here we join company with both Bourdieu andLatour, but in the case of Bourdieu serious limitations distort the approach.Bourdieu wants to liberate artistic enjoyment from fetishist belief, which,

    in our interpretation, implies that a lucid illusio and thus a deliberatefetishism is possible. Bourdieu can only find such lucidity and deliberate-ness among some elitist artists and, in a different way, in his own scienceof works of art, in which lucidity is provided by research. Thus he post-pones the universalization of a deliberate fetishism beyond elitist artists andthe science of works of art to a more rational future, which, for now, reason-able people can fight towards. A lucid illusio, however, is not limited toelitist artists, research or a more rational future. Active submission to theartwork is also practised by the ordinary art-lover, as pointed out by

    Hennion and Latour. It may be that the ordinary art-lover is more immersedin, and less critical of, institutionalized rituals and consecrations, but thisdoes not imply that her love of art can be reduced to such mechanisms. Theart-lover has to do an active work [. . .] to be moved (Gomart and Hennion,1999: 227); she has to prepare herself actively and deliberately for thesubmission to and immersion in the work of art. That is, she has to practisecombining externalism and internalism. Bourdieu seems unable to noticethis. We suggest that this fear of fetishism is a limitation, a fear that doesnot exist in the work of Latour and Hennion.15

    This brings us to another problematic aspect of Bourdieus science ofartworks, which we already hinted at. Bourdieu asks for an integratedscience of artworks that can regroup various disciplines focusing on art.However, he does not explore the implications of such a regrouping for thesociological conception of the social. The claim that everything is social,form, style, writing does not induce a reconsideration of the social workdone by form, style and writing, and the possible contributions of otherdisciplines in this context. Bourdieu is critical of the intellectualism andscholastic fallacies of the approaches focused on decoding and deciphering

    art, but he ignores what these approaches may contribute to the under-standing of the way in which mediators do their social work. In this senseBourdieus sociology still prioritizes the establishment of the viewpoint onthe whole of viewpoints (Bourdieu, 1992a: 291) on the arts. Consequently,the ability of his theory to transcend the internal/external divide remainslimited. Luhmanns theory, on the other hand, seems to be better equippedto meet the challenge of the social work of artworks.

    Both Bourdieu and Luhmann are sociologists of a differentiatedmodernity and both see the autonomization of art as the autonomization ofthe form. Through differentiation of an autonomous field or an autopoieticsystem, art becomes essentialized as form. Except for some remarks on thedifference between literature and science as rhetorical forms related toillusio (Bourdieu, 1992a: 59ff., 455ff.), Bourdieu does not have much thatis sociological to tell us about form as form. Curiously, and contrary toBourdieus basic epistemological position, the concept of form seems to be

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    imported, without problematization, from artistic discourse or other disci-plines. Only the forces and restrictions of the field, working towards thepurification of art as form, seem to be sociological within the science ofartworks. The theory of art as a fetishistic system of belief seems to function

    as a barrier: the creation of form disappears in the circular creation of thecreators. But if form as form is social then it should be theorized sociologi-cally. This is what Luhmann can deliver without creativity and formdisappearing into belief and fetishism. The differentiationalist theory ofobservation and communication can even give a reasonable sociologicalaccount for such fetishistic belief as the submission of the artist to theform-development of the work of art and the submission of the perceiver tothe deciphering of the structure of the works form-distinctions.

    Communicative systems theory thus has an advantage with respect to

    bridging the internal/external divide. However, this is a limited advantage.Much of what, for Bourdieu, remains within the artistic field, belongs, forLuhmann, to the environment of the system of art. Bourdieus extended fieldof artistic production can by and large be considered as a part of Luhmannsenvironment, because demands from the environment (economic demands,demands of taste) function as barriers to the reciprocal fitting of forms intonecessity dependent upon accident. With the extended field thus relegatedto the environment, Luhmanns observation of art as communication throughart seems to be strongly anchored in high modernitys understanding of art

    which conceptualizes the work of art as an autonomous form, emergingthrough the play of the inner law of the form and the free will of the artist(Groys, 1996: 161). Bourdieu might reasonably argue, even if he himselfseems committed to the same understanding, that Luhmanns commitmentis an exclusive one, and as such stands more as a stake in the game of artthan a sociological theory of art. The same applies to Luhmanns ascribingto art a societal function. This functionalism implies that one function hasto be selected as the societal function of art. While such functions, accord-ing to Bourdieu, remain postulates of systems theory that must be rejected

    because they replace relations of force and struggle (Bourdieu andWacquant, 1992: 103), the selection cannot avoid being a stake in thestruggles over the rules of art.

    Luhmanns exclusion of the materiality of the object from the systemof art is of course in line with this modernist narrowness. As Groys empha-sizes, if materiality were allowed, one would find the outside of art withinthe system of art itself as its dim space, in which all possible powerstruggles and intrigues take place, and in which the materiality of theartworks opens the possibility of dealing with art as with non-art (1996:163f.). Bourdieu does not take this possibility seriously either; reluctant ashe is, because of the fear of fetishism, to extend the ingredients of the fieldto non-human actors. In this respect, Bourdieus and Luhmanns works areindeed symptomatic of modern social theory regarding its difficulties indealing with material objects. The inclusion of materiality opens towards acomplexification of the networks of the field (and a loosening and

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    de-structuralization of the concept), in which the pure and the impure mix,and, as a corollary, the modernist stance becomes decreasingly plausible.In addition, whereas for Bourdieu any eventual religious aspect of art as afetishized belief should be fought by a Realpolitik of reason, and whereas

    Luhmann insists that the invisible Welt of the Weltkunst is immanent, notreligious, Hennion and Latour are much less wary of religion. For them,religious forms of knowledge may be informative about art. For Bourdieueverything is social implies that there is nothing transcendent, and thesame goes for Luhmann regarding Welt. For Hennion and Latour, however,the point is rather that the distinction transcendence/immanence is aproduct of mediations, not a point of departure, and in this sense irrelevant.They are, so to say, better Spinozists in that eternity and immanence areone.

    To end with, let us go back to Lyotards art commentary, to his distinc-tion between art and cultural objects, and the intransitively transiting workof art. Lyotards position provides a common enemy against which Bourdieu,Luhmann and Hennion/Latour suddenly unite. Contra to Lyotardsinternalexternal divide, Bourdieu would argue that the idea and practiceof prolonging the work of art in commentary are not outside but part of andconditioned by the field of art (1992a: 471). The practice of creatingartworks for commentary and by commentary (1992a: 421) is produced inthe field of art. The separation of commentary and field is a misrecognition

    of this sociological datum, and the source of many scholastic fallacies.Luhmann would hold the view that Lyotards commentary is thoroughlysocial and part of the autopoietic system of art as communication on art oreven through art.16 Hennion and Latour would maintain that Lyotard merelyassociates yet another mediator with the work of art. As to the intransitivelytransiting work of art, Bourdieu would link this universality to the necessi-tation of the work in the field. If there is something absolute about the workof art, it is a historical absolute founded in the historical transcendental ofthe field. Luhmann would argue that what is transiting intransitively is

    precisely the socially constructed work, which, as Weltkunst, always hasblind spots open to further observations, or commentary (Luhmann, 1995:71). Against Bourdieu, yet recognizing the fecundity of necessitation, Dantohas argued that historical necessitation cannot account fully for the futureof the work. [T]he works power is present in it however much or little wemay happen to know about the field. [. . .] There are autonomous experi-ences with art, which does not entail that art itself is autonomous (Danto,1999: 216f.). Such autonomous experiences, however, do not float freely.Here mediators could help both Bourdieu and Danto. Bachs work surelytransits intransitively across historical epochs. How? Supported andmediated by a multiplicity of mediators (cf. Hennion, 1997b: 4207).

    So, strong arguments multiply against Lyotards salvation of the workof art from the network. The work, rather, is a network within networks, amediator among mediators. It is precisely this notion of the mediator, theactant, that allows the types of relations between elements in a network to

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    proliferate far beyond the usual sociological terms such as influence, power,exchange, domination, conflict, or strategy (Gomart and Hennion, 1999:226). The recognition of actants as being different from actors opens up arange of possibilities not considered by standard social theories and makes

    it possible to find types of mediators in discourses other than those of thesocial sciences. With his insistence on the artwork as a gesture of and inmatter, Lyotard paradoxically contributes to the reticular understanding ofart he fights against: the artwork as a gesticulating mediator.

    Notes

    1. On Bourdieu as a theorist of modernization see Lash (1990: 239ff.).2. The relation to the sacred, whether of a religious or an artistic nature, is only

    one particular and limited case of the enchanted or fetishistic relation to thesocial world, which is the initial and primitive form of the experience of the world(Bourdieu, 1983b: 8).3. On necessitation see further Bourdieu (1986), Bourdieu et al. (1993: 91014)and Karsenti (1995).4. Communication [. . .] is a genuinely social (and the only genuinely social) oper-ation (Luhmann, 1997: 81).5. Communication differentiates and synthesizes its own components, namelyinformation, utterance and understanding (Luhmann, 1992: 24).

    6. And Luhmann is a philosopher of difference (see Luhmann, 1984: 26).7. Art makes sensation available for communication (Luhmann, 1995: 82).8. This is Luhmanns concept for an autopoietic systems adaptation to the neces-sary conditions in the environment without such conditions operating directly inthe system (see Luhmann, 1997: 100ff.).9. Neither, according to Bourdieu, is the habitus exactly the cause or the conse-quence of action or structure. One may therefore pass from Bourdieu to the perspec-tive of mediation by generalizing the mediation of habitus to all actants (Latour,1994: 601).

    10. Luhmann operates with a distinction between medium and form as differenttypes of coupling of elements. Medium refers to a loose coupling and form to a firmcoupling. Forms are made by firm coupling of the elements of a medium (Luhmann,1995: 167, 169). The medium receives forms without resistance which, on theother hand, gives forms a certain instability (1995: 171). In the medium oflanguage, for instance, words can be used to form sentences and sentences againcan become the medium for forms such as myths and narratives (1995: 172). Thusthe medium is significantly different from a mediator. Mediators do their formingwork within and among different media.11. . . . we have to consider heterogeneous associations of mediations plus the

    types of mediations that group or gather the entities in completely different aggre-gates (Latour, 1998: 428).12. The same holds for plastic arts, and increasingly so, as they have become moreand more performative (allographic). This may seem paradoxical at a time whenmusic is striving towards objectivity in electronic forms (cf. Hennion, 1997c:14751).

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    13. Similarly, Baecker states that art can place any distinction at [its] disposal(1990: 100).14. On a similar notion of gesture in Wittgenstein, see Albertsen (2000).15. They, on the other hand, dismiss any critique of fetishism at all.16. Luhmanns theory of communication has certain parallels to Lyotards (seeLuhmann, 1995: 37).

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    Luhmann, N. et al. (1990) Der Kabelkalb. Ein Gesprch ber Kunst, inN. Luhmann, Frederick D. Bunsen and Dirck Baecker, Unbeobachtbare Welt: berKunst und Architektur. Bielfeld: Haux.Lyotard, J.-F. (1992) Gestus, unpublished manuscript; translated into Danish asGestus. Copenhagen: Royal Academy of Arts. References here are to the manuscriptin French.

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    Niels Albertsen lectures in social and urban theory and is Head of Depart-ment at the Department of Urban and Landscape Development, AarhusSchool of Architecture, Denmark.

    Blent Diken lectures in social theory at the Department of Sociology,Lancaster University, UK.

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