JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH VOLUME 8 NUMBER 3 (JULY 2004)

A Withdrawn Vision: Art, Realism and the Scene of Incest

Jane KilbyTaylor and Francis LtdRCUV8305.sgm10.1080/1479758042000264966Journal for Cultural Research1479-7585 (print)/1740-1666 (online)Original Article2004Taylor & Francis Ltd83000000July 2004JaneKilbyj.e.kilby@salford.ac.uk

Via a reading of incest survivor art, this essay explores the possibility of a polit-ical aesthetic based on the unrepresentability of trauma. Key to this essay is theidea that trauma cannot be redeemed by art and it is therefore necessary todevelop a reading of art that does not seek to resolve the horror of incest. Draw-ing inspiration from Hal Foster’s influential notion of traumatic realism, the aimof this essay is to develop a critical language that pushes the question of repre-senting childhood trauma beyond the models of repression and realism but doingso without collapsing the argument into an anti-realist position. Of critical impor-tance to this analysis is a post-repression model of trauma that puts into jeopardythe idea that history can achieve symbolic recognition. Underpinning this essayis a conceptual move from the “return of the repressed” to the “return of thereal” and in so doing I aim to demonstrate the political importance of this shiftin thinking about the reality and representation of trauma.

Introduction

In her book, The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity andDestructiveness, Alice Miller is in no doubt that art has the power to expresschildhood trauma; indeed, she maintains that experiences of childhood traumacan be a spur for creativity, if not actually requiring a creative spur in order tobe represented. Taking as her unlikely point of departure the late work ofPicasso, Miller argues that the power of his final pictures is due to Picasso’s “laststrenuous efforts to express the most hidden secrets of his life” (1990, p. 4),whereupon “He no longer does drawing, he no longer counts on the viewer’scomprehension; there remains only his haste to produce the unsayable, to say itwith colours” (1990, p. 5). Arguing that childhood traumas were motivating hislater work, Miller concludes “that his brush was guided by a compulsion heneither understood nor recognised and indeed could not explain because itemerged from his unconscious” (1990, p. 13). Importantly, here, Miller is notsimply affording art or the artist the power to express the inexpressible experi-ences of childhood but more the reverse, she is promoting the idea that theunspeakable traumas of childhood will always—by dint of their historical force—

ISSN 1479–7585 print/1740–1666 online/04/010317–18© 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1479758042000264966

318 KILBY

find their way into the (light of the) symbolic order. Hence she asserts that it wasonly when Picasso was an old man and therefore only when his defence mecha-nisms were losing their efficiency that he was “free to paint what his repressedexperience dictated” (Miller 1990, p. 13). Advancing the idea that childhoodtraumas have a particularly salient power, Miller is clearly investing in the notionthat while the unconscious has the initial ability to repress trauma, it cannotprevent its eventual return and symbolic expression—whether it is directly orindirectly represented. Hence, she maintains, for example, that Picasso’sprivate, childhood traumas find their expression indirectly via the visual potencyof Guernica, a picture normally understood to derive its emotional impact fromhis feelings of horror over the Spanish civil war. The idea that the seeminglyintractable traumas of childhood can be and will be represented is obviously keyto the theory and politics of Miller and more generally—and partly as a mark ofMiller’s own influence—it has informed the growth of a popular survivor artmovement, which is not only predicated on a psychoanalytical belief in thereturn of the repressed but more broadly on realist notions of authenticity,immediacy, perspective, point of view and transparency.

Needless to say Miller—or at least the ideas and politics she promotes—havesolicited considerable criticism, especially now that the question of trauma andart has far exceeded the relationship one man might have had with his uncon-scious. Roger Luckhurst (2003) for one is deeply sceptical of the popular turn totrauma and in a poststructuralist critique that draws inspiration from the workof Wendy Brown and Ian Hacking he is quick to assert that there is in fact a discur-sively driven investment in the spectacle of trauma leaving the representationalpolitics of trauma distinctly compromised. Indeed, he argues—and not withoutcontroversy—that the contemporary subject finds a melancholic solace (andsubjectivity) in the process of searching for deeply buried traumas and as suchdoes not actually desire any resolution. While Luckhurst’s critique serves as animportant check on the modernist romanticism of Miller’s position, I neverthelessfind his scepticism deeply troubling since it serves to dismiss the question of whatit might actually mean to represent trauma (which at least remains the abidingconcern of Miller). Symptomatically his anti-realist position allows the reality oftrauma to slip from critical view. Based on a reading of popular incest survivorart, the aim of this essay is thus to restore the question of representing traumato the field of artistic vision but doing so in a manner that does not reproducethe conceits of repression and realism that serve to determine Miller’s positionbut doing so without also falling back on the conceits of anti-realism. Drawinginspiration from Hal Foster’s notion of “traumatic realism”, I shall argue that itis time to break the realism versus anti-realism rhetoric informing Luckhurst’scritique in order to ensure that the referent—however nominally this is interpre-tated—is not lost from view. So while Luckhurst cites Foster, he overlooksFoster’s focus on “the return of the real” and how representing trauma reconfig-ures aesthetic understanding. It is the aim of this article to demonstrate how therepresentation of incest might also require a reconfiguration of the politicalaesthetic.

A WITHDRAWN VISION 319

The Limits of Realism

Given that Miller is cited as the motivation for She Who Is Lost is Remembered:Healing from Incest Through Creativity—an anthology of survivor art, poetry andfiction, it is not surprising that the contributing artists repeatedly adhere to theidea that art is perhaps the sole—and hence privileged—medium for representingthe repressed and unspeakable horrors of family life. Kim Newall notes, forexample, that her “pictures tell the secrets” that she had concealed from herselfand her family (1991, p. 2); and Katherine F. H. Heart attests to the fact thatpainting helps her “to capture raw feelings as they emerge from unconscious toconscious awareness” and in so doing allow her to discover aspects of her abusethat she had not previously known (1991, p. 152). Likewise Bonnie Martinez —whohad repressed knowledge of her abuse for over 40 years—maintains that art is apowerful vehicle for “exploring and expurgating the memories” that hauntconsciousness (1991, p. 123). But while all three artists maintain that repressedmaterial was emerging in their art long before they were capable of recognisingits significance, their practice has nevertheless evolved as a much moreconscious effort to retrieve the traumatic scenes of their childhood. Typicallythen Martinez argues that painting has enabled her to bring to memory the trau-matic and radically unknown events of her childhood as if she had been returnedto the original scene; hence she writes that while the precision of her imagesinitially puzzled her, she eventually realised that she was “seeing what happened[…] with the eyes of a child—undimmed by time and the need to not see” (1991,p. 124). Illustrative of Martinez’s miraculous and new insight is Father as FetishFigure, or Din, Din for Baby, a large oil painting of a baby quietly terrorised as ithas a disembodied penis shoved into its yawning mouth. With little in the way ofbackground detail, it is an image that fills the frame, organising without equivo-cation, its visual significance. Via what is taken to be the extraordinary mimetismof art, Martinez insists that by painting this image she is able to recover and see—for the first time—this scene from her childhood, a scene where Martinez wasliterally unable to speak. By placing—and seeing—herself in this image, Martinezis able therefore to finally speak the terror and with it achieve a sense of reso-lution. “In that sense”, she concludes, “it has been a wonderful experience ofclarity. It doesn’t make up for what has happened in any way, but it has offeredme a moment of beauty among all the ugliness” (Martinez 1991, p. 124). Here,then, art redeems the repressed horror of incest by restoring the ugly scenes ofchildhood to plain sight—where they are there for the victim and all alike to see.In no uncertain terms, then, art is understood not only to restore vision but toenhance it to the point where it offers access to a traumatic reality, unseen, atthe time, yet perfectly preserved.

While it might be easy to expose the illusion that this image provides aphenomenal and unmediated access to the past (whether through the terms ofpoststructuralism or via a psychoanalytic emphasis on the distortions producedby a fantasy riven unconscious) it is important, at least for a moment, to stallthis critique, since whatever else it might be, this is a shocking image. By stuffing

320 KILBY

the image of a lifesize penis into the image of an equally lifesize baby there is a(near) shattering of the visual field: it is difficult to accommodate the twoimages within the same frame. Here, then, the introduction of the penis into thebaby’s mouth forces a radical split between the reality of one person’s childhoodand the ideal image of childhood. Despite the transcendent illusions that under-pin it, this image is not meant to be a larger than life representation, but moresimply an image conveying a truth that is hard to grasp. Indeed, as the paintingtitle suggests there is a fundamental impasse separating the language literallysustaining the silence of the child (“din, din for baby”) and the language symbol-ically sustaining the romance of family life (“father as a fetish figure”). The babyis meant to swallow the myth not the fact. It is to this end, then, that Martinezargues that her images provide “Solid visual, irrefutable screaming proof ofincest” (1991, p. 122). This is not to imply, however, that myth and fact areinseparable for as radical (and other) feminists have long since argued the circu-lation and consumption of father–daughter myths work precisely to sustain thepossibility of incest as a “real event” (Nelson 1982). But what I want to suggesthere, is that there remains a difference between living the myths of father–daughter relations (including, if necessary, the unconscious desire to live outOedipal myth), and experiencing incest as a “real event”: a difference thatshould by rights disrupt the field of vision. Importantly, though, I am attemptingto situate the reading of this image and incest art more generally in relation torecent attempts to push the theorisation of trauma beyond positivistic notions ofreality and beyond psychoanalytical notions (of the reality of) fantasy toward anew understanding of trauma as “having happened”. Hence, as Shoshana Felmanargues, “We may not understand what trauma is about or where it comes from.But if trauma is not an event (precisely a concrete and singular historical reality—a blow—we do not understand but have to take in) it is nothing. Trauma is, onemight say, the event par excellence, the event as unintelligible, as the pureimpact of sheer happening” (Felman 2002, p. 179). Significantly, the event isfigured as devastatingly real but as such it remains inexplicable; indeed, to thisend, it is not really experienced—consciously or unconsciously and hence itremains a force forever subverting the powers of representation. It is an “expe-rience” that cannot be symbolically redeemed. It is precisely in an effort tobridge the impasse between the real and the symbolic that Father as FetishFigure screams “Here, this is how it looks. This is the reality of incest. Deny it ifyou can!”

Following the logic of what might be usefully termed a “post-repression”model of trauma the event is not experienced and repressed in the firstinstance as an empirically known reality. Nor is it experienced and repressed inany prior sense as an “idea” (and nor is experienced as an inextricable combi-nation of the both). But rather it is “experienced” at the limits of reality andun/conscious thought whereupon it effectively fails to register as an experienceas such. To this end, trauma escapes experiential recognition and thus cannotbe represented. Consequently, the efforts of Father as Fetish Figure to screamits reality—as a form of personal testimony—will be in vain and indeed, the

A WITHDRAWN VISION 321

image itself can be read as acknowledging its own impotency. To begin, thebaby’s trauma is conveyed by representing the eyes as black holes which arethemselves partially shut by the force of the abuse. Thus the baby is repre-sented as blinded by the horror of what is happening. It is an “experience” ofsuch overwhelming force that it robs the victim of their point of view andthereby the conventions by which to understand what is happening. Indeed,here, the notion of trauma as an “experience” of depersonalisation (“Thiscannot be happening to me; this is not happening to me”) reaches its most radi-cal and logical conclusion in the incredulous belief frequently expressed byvictims of violence, namely “it felt like it was happening/happened to someoneelse”—such that effectively it did happen to someone other. What mightnormally be understood as “deeply personal experience” is experienced as if itdid not happen at all. Here, the objectively brute and overwhelming reality oftrauma is experienced as subjectively underwhelming; perversely traumabecomes that which fails to register as a personally significant experience(except for the fact that it “returns” to haunt the person). In sum, trauma—which is normally understood to count as a deeply and personally held reality—will only be and can only be experienced as a nominally real reality.

Strictly speaking, if Father as Fetish Figure is meant to represent the claritygained through “seeing what happened […] with the eyes of a child—undimmedby time and the need to not see” it can only give the lie to that possibility.Hence, the eyes remain unseeing, unable to contemplate the scene. Symboli-cally, at least, if Martinez is seeing her abuse through this image, she cannotbring herself to see (herself seeing) this scene. To bear witness to her own sceneof violation is an impossible feat. The victim can place herself at the scene butonly at the cost of a repeating blindness. In the final analysis, Father as FetishFigure is an image that does not proffer the insight it imagines for itself, it thusrepresents the impossibility, not the possibility, of beholding the scene of incest.It is ultimately an image without a referent, a simulated scene—although not Ishould stress because representations are always representations of representa-tions (for as I have already argued trauma is not experienced as an idea since thiswould imply symbolic integration) but because the event will never find its wayinto the symbolic order. Father as Fetish Figure is a vivid representation ofincest, but it does not represent (a return to—or the returning of—) the scene ofincest. There was no scene as such. Indeed, to the extent to which the scene isdetermined by the unitary and unifying economy of the penis/phallus (—This is(your) reality—), it becomes perforce a b(l)inding truth, an impenetrable, blackhole of a truth which omits no enlightenment. Here, then, the tyranny of theevent is acted out and replicated at the level of representation, and as a conse-quence the child’s trauma cannot summon or return looks; in sum, it is unrepre-sentable. Politically, of course, the notion of unrepresentablity does not appearpromising but as others have argued (including Teresa de Lauretis (1987) andPeggy Phelan (1993)), the very possibility of a feminist politics might only emergefrom what remains beyond or without representation. Thus the questionbecomes what might this politics look like in the context of incest survivor art?

322 KILBY

The Painstaking Aesthetic of Incest

It is precisely the possibility of a political aesthetic based on unrepresentabilitythat is explored by Janet Marstine (2002) in her recent article on the incestsurvivor and artist Jane Orleman. Inspired by a recognition of the limits ofrealist representations, Marstine maintains that trauma “defies synthesis andtranscendence” (which are the very cornerstones of realism and representa-tion) and as such art cannot resolve the horror of trauma (2002, p. 633); ormore precisely mimesis cannot redeem the radically evasive reality of traumaby reconciling the viewer with its image. Acknowledging the import of TheodorW. Adorno’s oft-cited and widely debated maxim that “to write poetry afterAuschwitz is barbaric”, Marstine seeks to dismiss the pleasures afforded by real-ism and demands instead for “the transformation of art from the harmonic andknowable to the jarring and irresolvable” (2002, p. 631). In pursuit of what Ishall call an anti-redemptive aesthetic, Marstine essentially commits herself tothe belief that there is never and there cannot ever be a complete(d) vision oftrauma, since to imagine or do otherwise would amount to a political and ethi-cal denial of what is essentially traumatic about incest: namely its affront topersonal and collective understanding. Politically and ethically it is a matter ofperserving the power of this affront, since this alone will ensure a perpetualprovocation, working against the desire to settle the account of trauma byexplaining it (away) by reference to an abuse of power for example (or indeedby reference to a primal desire for that matter).

Uniquely, however, Marstine exploits the increasingly familiar idea that artcannot redeem atrocity and that mimesis will inevitably fail to represent it tocounteract a longstanding repudiation of art therapy. Animated by the idea thatit is impossible to symbolically integrate and render immanent traumatic expe-riences, Marstine argues that “representations of trauma would not simply existas art without also referencing the therapeutic struggle” (2002, p. 633). This isa politically significant move that not only renders secular some of thedistinctly sacral readings of Adorno, but also connects the debates generated byAdorno’s pronouncement to the personal testimony politics informing theproduction of incest art. In making this connection, Marstine opens up thepossibility of advancing personal testimony politics without relying on a naïverealism and without turning to anti-realism (which invariably foregrounds andprivileges issues of representation over a concern with the referent—as such);more specifically, she offers a way of reading the limits of realism as politicallyproductive. To this end, then, her argument requires a somewhat attentivereading. However, it warrants this attention because I also think that Marstinefails in her task and as a result there is missed opportunity to demonstrateprecisely why an anti-redemptive aesthetic lends itself to a feminist reading ofincest representation.

To demonstrate what art looks like if it references the struggle to representtrauma, Marstine offers a close analysis of the work of Orleman who, it is noted,depicts her experiences of sexual and physical abuse in “painstaking detail”

A WITHDRAWN VISION 323

(2002, p. 634). According to Marstine, then, My First Memory is typical of Orle-man’s ability to convey the horrific nature of her experiences. Marstine describesthe picture as follows:

Here is a doll house gone awry. The decorative china plates, the yellow flowerson the table, and the old-fashioned screen door, which allows a glimpse of theverdant rural landscape, evoke feelings of nostalgia, only to be interrupted bythe horror of the act of molestation, a tiny diaper thrown carelessly on the floor,and of isolation, as a child-witness turns her back to the scene, unwilling orunable to respond. The three-year-old victim lying on the dining table glazes overand turns inward as the family “friend” masturbates while touching her until sheis raw. (Marstine 2002, p. 634)

Depicting the perpetrator visibly masturbating while penetrating the child withhis finger, Orleman represents the scene of abuse in graphic and shocking detail.But in counterpoint to the shock provoked by Father as Fetish Figure, Marstineargues that My First Memory “shows the power of mimesis” by demonstrating itsinadequacy (2002, p. 634). In what is a quite significant departure from the typeof reading normally solicited by realist representations of incest, Marstine arguesthat, “No matter how closely the painting captures the terror of the moment, thepast is elusive. Through mimesis, Orleman leads the viewer to understand thatrepresentation is a pale reflection of the pain of sexual trauma” (2002, p. 634).Unlike the mimetic fidelity explicitly assumed by the artwork of Martinez, MyFirst Memory is understood by Marstine to reveal that mimesis is no match forthe reality of incest. Thus even if it were possible to mirror the scene of incestdetail for detail, it would still not be enough to convey that reality.

Developing her reading of Orleman’s anti-redemptive aesthetic, Marstinemaintains that Orleman does not offer confessional images since these wouldmerely declare themselves as the truth (by pinpointing the truth in the mannerof Father as Fetish Figure). Indeed, as counterintuitive and provocative as itsounds, confessional images are “easy on the eye” to the extent to which theydemand nothing from the viewer—essentially they perform themselves, or ratherthey require so little from the viewer that they appear to do so. Father as FetishFigure is rhetorical, it has no need for the viewer who is left recoiling in horror,essentially barred from the scene. To this end, realism dispenses with theviewer—or rather it is the classic ruse of realism to appear to dispense with theviewer. In reality, or at least ideologically, the viewer is so completely in accordwith the expectations of the image that they are seamlessly and without knowingor effort part of its meta-framework. There is simply a correspondence on and ofthe relationship between reality, image and viewer. Instead, then, Marstineargues that Orleman offers the viewer testimonial images—images that questionthe constitution of truth (and hence viewing subjectivity), not tell or otherwisescream it. Here, the work of a testimonial image is not complete because itrequires the active engagement of the viewer: it is, indeed, waiting for ananswer. This said, however, it is difficult to establish why or how My FirstMemory functions as a testimonial image, since it appears to require nothing

324 KILBY

different from the viewer than does Father as Fetish Figure for both readilyindicate a shocking reality.

In an attempt, then, to formally distinguish the nature of a testimonial image,Marstine makes a number of claims about Orleman’s aesthetic practice. First, shenotes that Orleman “creates the voice of the testimonial by consciously using achildlike technique” which in turn “enables her to access the insights of her girl-hood and to disrupt the viewer from the voyeuristic pleasure of objectification”(Marstine 2002, p. 639). Second, Marstine argues that Orleman “combine[s] thechildlike technique with a narrative quasi-documentary approach to evoke thetension of mimesis” (2002, p. 639). Leaving aside the question of how or whyadopting a childlike voice provides access to childhood memories (other thanthrough a straightforward faith in mimesis), and putting aside the question ofwhether it blocks voyeuristic interest, it is at this point that Marstine’s argumentstarts to break down when she notes that Orleman frequently combines the child-like and quasi-documentary techniques by “working on a miniature scale remi-niscent of Renaissance alterpiece predella panels”, and “although her attentionto story-telling make the images seem fetishistic, the paintings, when seen as agroup, create a metanarrative of gender and power” (2002, p. 639). Havingalready noted her use of the quasi-documentary and then having conceded thatOrleman’s predilection for miniature detail might be seen as fetishistic—if itwere not viewed through the meta-lens of power and gender—Marstine inadvert-ently attributes Orleman’s work with a truth-telling function. To this end, it ishard to discover how Orleman’s painting “leads the viewer to understand thatrepresentation is a pale reflection of the pain of sexual trauma”. Indeed, ifanything, Marstine reads the power of My First Memory according to the logic of“the return of repressed”, which is to say she affords it a symbolic power. Ananti-redemptive or post-represssion aesthetic does not secure the reality oftrauma by attributing it a symbolic power but rather the converse by refusing tosecure it a place in the symbolic order.

In a bid, then, to shore up her argument, Marstine deploys the concept oftraumatic realism to maintain that Orleman’s imagery is testimonial; in otherwords it is not fully, if ever, symbolic. Taking her lead from Michael Rothberg’sdevelopment of the concept, Marstine argues that traumatic realism forces theviewer to question their relationship to post-traumatic culture preciselybecause there is a juxtaposing of the extreme and the everyday which, since itestablishes a visual tension, “reflects the impossibility of integrating them intounderstanding” (2002, p. 639). To this end, Martine argues that Orleman’simages acquire their power because they highlight “the irreconcilable disjunc-tion between the small voice of the child and the cataclysmic events againstwhich she is powerless” (2002, p. 639). Demonstrating, finally, how thetraumatic realism of Orleman’s images work in practice, Marstine argues thatOrleman’s Deep Dark Secret:

elicits in us feelings of comfort only to arrest them with the horror of the atroc-ities committed. The image of the child, chained naked in a coal cellar, is made

A WITHDRAWN VISION 325

more shocking by the quotidian environment in the living room above and byglimpses of a pleasant landscape beyond. Details on the main floor such as awhite doily on an armchair and a man’s hat hanging from a mirror overwhelm uswith their ordinary nature. These details force us to ask ourselves how abuse mayhave invaded our own seemingly ordinary lives and the life of our community.(Marstine 2002, p. 639)

It is at this point, however, that Marstine’s anti-redemptive argument finallycollapses. To begin, Marstine argues that the power of Orleman’s images lies inthe fact that they question (which is to say that they cannot and do notcompletely organise the visual field for the viewer). But judging by Marstine’sreading, My First Memory and Deep Dark Secret do, indeed, provide theanswers to any questions they might pose. Put simply, the viewer does not haveto look any further than these images to know the truth of incest since thesepictures alone provide a complete, if painstaking, vision. The problem withMarstine’s application of traumatic realism and her attempt to forge a politi-cally informed anti-redemptive aesthetic is that she makes the details of theimage do the work of truth-telling despite acknowledging that the trauma ofincest cannot be captured by the mimetic powers of realism. Indeed, in what Itake to be her attempt to do justice to the images, Marstine’s own reading isitself painstaking in its detail. Here, then, Marstine fetishes the details of theimages as indices of truth that if read cumulatively will express the largerpicture. They are meant as concrete details that secure the visual significanceof the image. Here, then, the detail serves as the referent of the visual field inprecisely the same way that the penis is meant to organize the visual signifi-cance of Father as Fetish Figure. Indeed, like Martinez, Orleman repeatedlyrelies on the shock provoked by showing it all in its explicit detail. Without real-izing it, then, Marstine reinvests the detail (such as the diaper) with a transcen-dent and synthesizing power; likewise Martinez and Orleman (re)invest thepenis with the same power. Put differently, the details—including the visiblypresent penis—are understood to mediate a relationship between the real andthe symbolic and in so doing they figure a traumatic truth, where, in fact, asMarstine has attested, trauma cannot be attributed a symbolic or metaphoricalvalue. No matter how empirically “accurate” the representation, it does notmirror the reality. The details are shocking, but they are details that alone donot establish or guarantee solid meaning. The truth cannot be calculated froman empirical detail. Once again, the detail is freighted with the power of therepressed returning, but to reiterate the theory of repression implies symbolicrepresentation, whereas the debates that have inspired Marstine constitute apost-repression or as I have argued before a post-Oedipal theory of trauma(Kilby 2004).

I should add, however, that I am not looking to simply dismiss the politicalsignificance of “the detail”. Indeed, as Naomi Schor (1987) has argued, thedetail has undergone a political transvaluation due to the influence of post-structuralism whereupon it has changed from being the abject particular ofWestern idealism to becoming a vital tool for disturbing its unmarked gloss. But

326 KILBY

Schor also fires a note of caution when she suggests that the detail is enjoyingits new found critical status at a point when it might have lost its historicalequation with the feminine for as she queries “has the detail achieved its newprestige by being taken over by the masculine, triumphing at the very momentwhen it ceases to be associated with the feminine, or ceasing to be connoted asfeminine at the very moment when it is taken up by the male-dominatedcultural establishment” (Schor 1987, p. 6). In light of this observation, I wouldlikewise caution feminists (such as Marstine) to be careful when adopting theinsights of Holocaust scholars (such as Micheal Rothberg) since concerns aboutthe represenation of the Holocaust are not simply parallel with concerns overincest imagery.

Looking in From Beyond the Outside

Recognising that it might not be possible to image the truth by simply attachinga politically symbolic weight to the detail is key to the work of Linda Ness, whois the only artist contributing to the anthology who can be read as querying thepromise of realism to provide a window on the reality of incest. To this end, BibleReading (Figure 1)—a brightly coloured acrylic painting depicting a father and hisdaughters praying at a dinner table while another daughter stands by him readingthe bible—is an exception among the images in the anthology. What distinguishesBible Reading is that it serves as a shocking representation of incest and as acommentary on the ability of the viewer to see the details of the scene. Here,the shock of this image is not placed centre frame for all to immediately see (asit is in Martinez’s Father as Fetish Figure) but is held in the bottom of the image,particularly in the left-hand corner where it takes a moment or two before itssignificance is taken in. However, because the eye is formally swept away fromthe detail of abuse, it is, in fact, difficult for the viewer not to find that they areoutside and beyond the scene of incest. Indeed, it is hard not to resist the desireto keep looking beyond the details of violation at the window which itself revealsnothing but darkness. Unlike Orleman’s images there is no content to this outsidebeyond, hence it does not serve as a context or contrast by which to illuminatethe significance of the interior; it is an unenlightening darkness. In other words,the darkness does not symbolise anything, contrary also to the black holes ofFather as Fetish Figure (which are meant to represent the depths of trauma). Inkeeping with Marstine’s original insight, trauma evades symbolic representation.There is no way of seeing in darkness/or what is in darkness. Structurally, then,this image queries whether it is possible for the symbolic to contain the traumaof incest (and the viewer).Bible Reading, 1990, 22″ x 24″, acrylic on canvasThe fact that the viewer of the image finds that they are outside and beyondthe realm of representation is significant for two, inter-related, reasons. First,there is a visual delay at work that means that the viewer does not experiencean instant return when looking at the image. Father as Fetish Figure is explicitlypremised on the idea that the viewer will immediately absorb, almost without

A WITHDRAWN VISION 327

knowing, the significance of the image, hence the viewer is afforded instant, ifblinding, access to the horror it depicts. Indeed, it is predicated on the beliefthat the viewer cannot fail but to take it in: you are looking directly at it and in“return” you will also achieve a stunning insight. To this end, Father as FetishFigure promises Martinez and the viewer the “beauty of seeing” whereuponseeing the truth is rendered a (seductively) sublime experience. Indeed, what isimportant about Marstine’s reading is precisely her attempt to disrupt thissuggestion of sublimity by focusing on the details. Bible Reading, however,attempts to do the same, but it does so by offering and denying this satisfactionor return on seeing. The attention of the viewer is drawn away, interrupted if notterminally delayed by the studiously blank window. This works to structurallyoffset—or at least complicate—the desire of the viewer to imagine that they can

Figure 1 Bible Reading, 1990, 22″ x 24″, acrylic on canvas.

328 KILBY

easily contemplate the image. Bible Reading thus cautions against the promiseof an instant, interior (if bottomless) view. Of course, there is a risk here thatthe viewer’s satisfaction is simply heightened by the labour of seeing, but thiswould be to deny the extent to which the viewer’s attention is being constantlydirected to a point beyond the abuse. The point of fascination is the window notthe abuse, and the window itself says little. The window does not provide a pointof entry or insight, but likewise it does not allow the viewer to escape. In sum,the viewer is kept within the scene but without any pay-off.

Second, and relatedly, there is also a sense in which there is no access for thevictim either. Indeed, symbolically, none of the daughters, including the daugh-ter standing by his side, see the abuse, but rather they are depicted with theireyes shut or otherwise distracted by the acts of praying and reading. Their blind-ness is underscored, moreover, by the fact that the actions of the father arehidden from their view by virtue of the domesticity of the scene (represented bythe table); the trappings of femininity (represented by the skirt); and by his law(provocatively represented, here, by the Bible). Here, then, the trauma itselfdestroys vision, producing as Laub and Felman (1992) have argued, “an eventwithout a witness”. No-one, then, has or possesses the inside view, perhaps,least of all, the victims since they cannot bear to witness the horror of what ishappening to them. This reading is confirmed by another of Ness’ images, Out ofBody, an aerial view of a child’s bedroom where a distraught anthropomorphic“object” lies on the bed in an otherwise empty room. According to Ness (1991),this picture represents the fact that when she was being abused by her father shelearnt to leave her traumatised body whereupon she would view the abuse from“the corner of the ceiling”—which is to say from a perspective beyond herself.Once again, the viewer’s visual interest is drawn away from the scene of violationto the window of the room, although this time the viewer is attracted by thevisual energy of curtains blowing wildly in a window that is thrown open to theelements. This shift to the window, however, works structurally (rather thansymbolically) to ally the viewer with the position assumed by the trauma victimas she views herself from the ceiling corner and as such opens the possibility ofa mutual view, if not indicating the mutuality of any view.

Out of Body suggests, then, that the survivor and viewer are always forced toview the trauma of incest from beyond—or from a point outside of—the “literal”details of abuse. Of course, I am aware that it is the aim of a therapeutic artpractice to overcome the objectification implied by having to see oneself from adistance. But what I am trying to argue here is that there is no (inner) reality towhich viewer and survivor might return. So contrary to the idea endorsed bymany of those contributing to the anthology that incest art takes the survivor toa place that cannot be occupied without the body, I am suggesting that there isno-body (or scene) to return to—it is petrified and as such cannot be magicallyreturned to life. If there is a return then it is purely abstract, or performed by abody that has surpassed the trauma. Importantly, the body is not the location oftrauma for as Out Of Body demonstrates the victim withdraws from the scene ofabuse. The experience of trauma thus defies location; it is an experience that

A WITHDRAWN VISION 329

cannot be located within the empirical, if fictional, strictures of Renaissanceperspective. Trauma “cannot be collapsed into empirical anatomy–visible fact”(Pollock 2001, p. 116). But this does not negate the possibilities of witnessing thetrauma, rather it is to suggest that the very typography of inside and outside;past and present; visible and invisible; proximity and distance; here and now; tosay nothing of reality and beyond is radically altered by the traumatic event. Putdifferently, truth is not understood to simply reside in the body or at the sceneof abuse whereupon truth becomes a function of returning to the interior, nor istruth figured as beyond reach as a radical exteriority (since both of these aremutually constitutive conceits) but rather this is to suggest an economy of truthor reality that operates at the limits of this meta-design.

What is significant about the window (of viewing) in Out Of Body is that itestablishes the point of perspective at “the very threshold of a visibility that isborderline of what we can bear to watch” (Pollock 2001, p. 153). Insight can onlybe found at the borderline of inside and outside; visibility and invisibility, andmost importantly at the point where victim (self) and viewer (other) meet, suchthat “Art may lead us to discover our part of the shared responsibility in theevents that are not “inside” the Other-self” (Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger citedin Pollock 2001, pp. 144–145). Importantly, though, this is not the sharing of apious responsibility, for as Bible Reading emphatically asserts a pious respect forthe law is itself implicated in the reproduction of trauma: a certain blasphemyand disrespect is the order of the day. To this end, the not-quite-void left bytrauma cannot function as a sublime experience or the unfathomability ofanother’s trauma. Reaching for the depths of horror and breaching the impasseis a necessary transgression, precisely because “none of this is emptiness; it isnot-yet signified, or rather, it hovers at the limits of signification awaiting somefilter for its affects to traverse that threshold without ever being able to becontained with existing signs” (Pollock 2001, p. 116).

The Withdrawn Aesthetic of Incest

How, then, to filter the experience of trauma? According to Jill Bennett (2002,2003) the appropriate filter for representing the experience of incest is anaesthetic of “sense memory” an aesthetic that develops from and privileges thesubjective experience of trauma, which is to say it is an aesthetic that serves toregister those subjective experiences “that exceed our capacity to ‘represent’them” (2003, p. 28). To this end, she maintains that “The imagery of traumaticmemory deals not simply with a past event, or with the objects of memory, butwith the present experience of memory” (Bennett 2003, p. 28). Importantly thenBennett is arguing for an aesthetic that stays in the present and close to the bodyof trauma thus refusing the transcendent and synthesizing move of representa-tion; moreover she maintains that this is an aesthetic “moving outside a repre-sentational practice that aims to ‘comment’ on its subject matter, treating theevent of abuse as a completed past action, towards a practice which sees artwork

330 KILBY

as regenerating sensation so as to produce an encounter in the present” (2003,p. 30). In keeping with Marstine’s demand for an anti-redemptive aesthetic,Bennett’s call for an aesthetic of sense memory is one that also refuses the fore-closures of mimesis and aims instead for what might be called an incompletevision of incest.

Taking her lead from Gilles Deleuze, an aesthetic of sense memory does notthen aim to “reproduce the world (the Renaissance conception of art as repre-sentation)”, but rather it aims to register and produce affect; “affect, not asopposed to or distinct from thought, but as the means by which a kind of under-standing is produced” (Bennett 2003, p. 32). To this end, then, Bennett main-tains that “the conveyance of suffering through imagery […] is possible onlyinsofar as images have the capacity to address the spectator’s own bodilymemory, to touch the viewer who feels rather than simply sees the event, drawninto the image through a process of affective contagion” (2003, p. 32). Bennett’spromotion here of what is essentially an anti-realistic or poststructural aestheticof incest art represents a notable effort to identify an art practice that is peculiarto the representational demands of trauma, not least because she readilyacknowledges the implication of the viewer: an artwork of sense memory “canbe ‘read’ only in reference to the viewer’s bodily sense” (2003, p. 30). Moreover,it is a careful attempt not to promote this economy of affect as a form of empa-thy, hence she is keen to stress that while the aesthetic of sense memory has thepower to move the viewer, they do so “not in the sense that narrative engendersan emphatic response through identification with characters, but in the moreliteral sense of inciting affect” (Bennett 2003, p. 32).

Despite the virtues of her analysis, I nevertheless find Bennett’s effort toestablish the power of images in relation to the sensory nature of experience(and reception) problematic. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not an econ-omy of sense memory can avoid the discursive pull of empathy, I have alreadyargued trauma is the experience of non-experience, hence it is not the sensatereality that it is imagined to be here. With no experience of trauma, the sensoryand the subjective cannot serve as the aesthetic foundation for representingtrauma. It remains the case, then, that an image of incest trauma must seek tofilter the experience of trauma where that experience is essentially missing.

To this end, I want to suggest that The Evil One (Figure 2) is such an image.What is significant about this image by the incest survivor and artist, Regina Lafay,is that it differs in terms of content and form from the images by Martinez, Nessand Orleman. While the shift from representing the event to the aftermath oftrauma accords with Bennett’s understanding of the importance of the ongoingnature of the traumatic event, it is an emphasis turned inside-out by Lafay’ssurprising use of pop art. Of key importance is Lafay’s use of a method that contra-dicts the very principles and signatures of trauma art (authenticity; experience;immediacy; presence). At the level of technique, it is an image variously markedas inauthentic, mass, mechanical and rote and as such it is referential working ina formal manner to represent trauma as an abstract form of experience. Whereasat the level of content, it is obviously incapable of representing the unrepresent-

A WITHDRAWN VISION 331

able, since it is only possible to access the horror of incest through the symbolicorder, in this case through the iconography of evil, or more specifically, here,through the Hollywood theatrics of The Exorcist (director: William Friedkin, 1973).In terms of what we see, The Evil One is a simulacrum, endlessly referencing otherspectacles of trauma; although without doubt The Exorcist provides the most spec-tacularly apt iconography for representing what it is to be possessed by somethingthat cannot be possessed in turn. If an artist wanted to represent the sheer traumaof being possessed by the actions and designs of another (whether they are realor symbolic) then there is no better example than The Evil One. On this score, itis a powerful representation of what it looks like to be possessed by a traumaticevent. But if it touches the viewer, it does so symbolically, not literally. If theviewer is moved by this image, they are moved in concert and complicity withthe symbolic order. The Evil One is a formal demonstration of the paradox thathaunts the depiction of trauma: its represents (at the level of invisibility/form)the unrepresentable (at the level of visibility/content).The Evil One, 2003, 18.8″ x 15″, mixed mediaIn keeping with Foster’s development of traumatic realism which is based onhis reading of Andy Warhol’s Death in America series, this image can be read“as referential and simulacral, connected and disconnected, affective and

Figure 2 The Evil One, 2003, 18.8″ x 15″, mixed media.

332 KILBY

affectless, critical and complacent” (Foster 1996, p. 130). In other words in theregister of a popular realism and in the register of poststructuralism. This,then, is the critical advance of traumatic realism, one missed by Marstine whoultimately restricts her reading to the register of realism. Traumatic realism isa way of reading a referent that insists on being there, even if it cannot beseen. Key here and axiomatic to Foster’s understanding of traumatic realism isthe role and function of “repetition” in pop art. According to Foster, the repeti-tions of pop art, whether actual or inferred, are typically understood to drainthe image of significance and thus defend against affect. They occupy thevisual field by exhausting themselves of authentic meaning or by demonstratingthe exhaustion of authentic meaning and in the process leave little for theviewer to feel or think. Thus, on one level, as Foster argues, the repetitions ofpop art perform the work of mourning where the point is to repeat the trau-matic event until it is stripped of affect in order that it can be integrated intothe symbolic order; once there—at a remove—it can be understood and thus nolonger experienced as traumatic.

While it could be possible to end the reading here (in the register of realism),Foster continues to argue that, “the Warhol repetitions are not restorative in thisway; they are not about a mastery of trauma. More than a patient release fromthe object in mourning, they suggest an obsessive fixation on the object inmelancholy” (Foster 1996, pp. 131–132). To this end there is no passing on fromthe scene of trauma but a “desire” to remain blindly and steadfastly attached tothat scene; and indeed, Lafay does attribute a melancholic beauty to her workthat might indeed confirm this reading. Indeed, there is a sense in which art hasnot provided the resolution desired by Martinez and Lafay who appear caught bythe frame of repetition. But Foster does not stop his reading here for as hecontinues to argue the “Warholian repetitions not only reproduce traumaticeffects, they also produce them. Somehow in these repetitions, then, severalcontradictory things occur at the same time: a warding away of traumatic signif-icance and an opening out to it, a defending against traumatic affect and aproducing of it” (Foster 1996, p. 132). Here, as Foster points out, something elsedoes happen, the repetitive nature of pop art—which I would argue also repre-sents the popular culture of trauma art per se—does something other than simplyreproduce simulations of trauma. Critically, then, Foster writes:

repetition in Warhol is not reproduction in the sense of representation (of areferent) or simulation (of a pure image, or detached signifier). Rather,repetition serves to screen the real understood as traumatic. But this veryneed also points to the real, and at this point ruptures the screen of repeti-tion. It is a rupture less in the world than in the subject—between theperception and the consciousness of a subject touched by an image. (Foster1996, p. 132)

Importantly, here, the critical force is not an empirical function of the image(—“less in the world”—) as I have argued throughout this essay, than it is to befound in the subject (victim and viewer) who is touched by the image. Of

A WITHDRAWN VISION 333

course, I have already problematised the idea of the viewer being touched bythe image, but here I want to argue that Foster is suggesting an economy oftouch that does not belong to the realm of perception or cognition; it is neitherpurely phenomenal nor purely conceptual. The image does not seize hold of theviewer in a violent or possessive way (it does not shock or otherwise over-whelm), but occupies a place somewhere beyond perception (the image hasbeen formally registered) and consciousness (but it fails to register enough forthought to hold it fast). It is an experience with uncertain feeling. So while theviewer is touched by the image they, nevertheless, remain unsure whether theyhave or have not; they are implicated without fully knowing it; always alreadyresponsible for images that do not mean much to them. Here, then, the imagestops short or pulls short of consciousness; the sense of the image is not orcannot be fully redeemed by thought. The net effect is that the viewer sees (ina limited fashion) but does not (fully) comprehend what they have seen. Insum, there is no personal attachment. But this “lack” of commitment is, infact, politically vital, precisely because it quietly agitates thought. Here thereis a productive recognition of the limits of sensation and consciousness not theend of thinking. Indeed, if anything the images of trauma ask the viewer to askthemselves again and again “have I thought (about this image) at all”. Thus theviewer experiences the image as full of questioning but empty of answers(which need to be sought elsewhere). To this end, The Evil One is perfect testi-mony to the look of incest. Silently, it speaks volumes. Defiantly, if inaudibly,The Evil One asks what do you want to feel when you look into my eyes? Whatthoughts will you bring when looking? The eyes are “deep” with these questionsbut they do not provide enlightenment, simply a burning desire for it. Thepossibility of insight is not on view as such, which is not the same as saying thatit is invisible, but rather it appears and disappears at the same point. It doesnot circulate then as a potent, resolute image but as an impotent hope, whichis not to say that hope, like any abstract notion, cannot bring forth personalinvestment, but it is a commitment made in thought alone when looking back atwhat has been withdrawn from sight.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the reviewers for their incisive comments. I am also in the debtof the generous support of the editors of this collection.

References

Bennett, J. (2002) ‘Art, affect, and the “bad death”: strategies for communicating thesense memory of loss’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28,no. 1,pp. 333–351.

Bennett, J. (2003) ‘The aesthetics of sense memory: theorising trauma through the visualarts’ in Regimes of Memory, eds S. Radstone & K. Hodgkin, Routledge, London andNew York:

334 KILBY

De Lauretis, T. (1987) Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction,MacMillan, London.

Felman, S. (2002) The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Trauma in the TwentiethCentury, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Foster, H. (1996) The Return of the Real, Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.Kilby, J. (2004) ‘To wish this on no-body: The reality and representation of rape’, Inter-

national Journal of Critical Psychology, vol. 11,no. 3, pp. 68–86.Laub, D. & Felman, S. (1992) Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis,

and History, Routledge, London and New York.Luckhurst, R. (2003) ‘Traumaculture’, New Formations, vol. 50, pp. 40–61.Heart, F. H. K (1991) ‘Womon throwing off rage’ in She Who Is Lost Is Remembered: Heal-

ing from Incest Through Creativity, ed. L. M. Wisechild, The Seal Press, Washington.Marstine, J. (2002) ‘Challenging the gendered categories of art and art therapy: the

paintings of Jane Orleman’, Feminist Studies, vol. 28,no. 3, pp. 631–654.Martinez, B. (1991) ‘Incest: “show and tell”’ in She Who Is Lost Is Remembered: Healing

from Incest Through Creativity, ed. L. M. Wisechild, The Seal Press, Washington.Miller, A. (1990) The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and

Destructiveness, Virago, London.Nelson, S. (1982) Incest: Fact and Myth, Stramullion Press, Edinburgh.Ness, L. (1991) ‘The art of survival’ in She Who Is Lost Is Remembered: Healing from

Incest Through Creativity, ed. L. M. Wisechild, The Seal Press, Washington.Newall, K. (1991) ‘My body’s language’ in She Who Is Lost Is Remembered: Healing from

Incest Through Creativity, ed. L. M. Wisechild, The Seal Press, Washington.Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, London and New

York.Pollock, G. (2001) Looking Back To The Future: Essays on Art, Life and Death, B&G Arts

International, Amsterdam.Schor, N. (1987) Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine, Methuen, New York.Wisechild, L. M. (ed.) (1991) She Who Is Lost Is Remembered: Healing from Incest

Through Creativity, The Seal Press, Washington.