Relation and Truth: Marey, then and now

Though there is much to say about the incredible work of Etiene-Jules Marais as well as of Erin Manning's interpretations and reflections thereof, there is one particular aspect of this text that has been foregrounded in my mind above all the others; that of relation in perception. 

Though, in the scientific community, as well as in the social sphere in general, this view would seem obvious and banal, I am always frustrated at the self-imposed perceptual limitations that the scientific paradigm promotes. Generalities are stated as obvious and unquestioned givens accepted as fact. 

For example, considering the "defective capacity of our senses for discovering truths" (Marey in Braun 1992: 12-13) would seem to suggest as a given that a camera lens or microscope is superior to our senses. The fact that we can't "see" as effectively as a camera, makes me wonder if the camera thinks it is inferior due to it's inability to autonomously decide when or where to shut its eye. I understand that it is difficult to think outside the dominant paradigm of the times, but sometimes also wonder if it is even possible.

In the times (or places) where the religious paradigm (as opposed the scientific of today) ruled and all knowledge was measured up against concepts of God it was similar. In fact we still have the moral remnants of those paradigms even though the dominant mode of thought is now a scientific one. Just the concepts of good and evil are enough to show us that with or without the ageless battle between God and Satan, we could still believe in the anthropomorphic spirit of their essence.

What is interesting in Erin Manning's piece is what is afforded due to the change in times and shift in dominant paradigm. Being able to see Marey's work in a new light doesn't change what what was done, but allows a new creation to be born of it. This would seem implausible (or perhaps undesirable) if the scientific view was strictly upheld. If there where truths that needed discovering, divorced from their relations to "imperfect" tools for measurement (human senses) then it would stand that something could be true or not. There would be nothing to learn from the various inter-relations that we start to discover in Marey's work and which take expanded importance when viewed in new contexts, such as those Manning proposes. 

Already we can intuitively understand that everything is based on relations to other things; that nothing exists in a vacuum. Yet, when discussing just about any subject, from religion to politics, art or television, we seem to always revert to a simple subject-object machine that allows for simple communication and closed systems which in turn lend themselves to the formation of easy truths. 

"We see not an object but its activity of relation" (Manning). One can't help but wonder if observations or concepts such as this are the result or the cause of investigations such as those undertaken by Marey. One, also can't help but wonder what would come if we took this paradigm of "relations" to heart when observing the so-called givens of our social, moral and political world? Easy answers that just feel "true" might give way to the type of creative discoveries that Marrey's experiments have concerning movement and perception. 

Father Time: The Liar

In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” Nietzsche puts forward the idea that, considering the non-linear and multiple nature of language, the very desire for truth is in fact astounding. Nietzsche explains that the best-suited activity for the evolved human intellect is lying, since this assures the survival of weaker-bodied but intellectually stronger people in face of stronger-bodied but intellectually weaker forces. The powers of deceit – of hiding, of fooling, of the illusion – guarantees the life of the thinking agent more than any desire to express truth about a situation. This shocking appraisal of human language and intellect (the beautiful parallel brought between vitality and illusion) brings Nietzsche to conclude that truth is something supported by the powerful in a society and used in order to pass judgment on, and thus lessen the vitality of, their fellow creatures. This is a far cry from the idea that truth is liberating (the truth will set you free!) and noble. “The truth is the illusion that we have forgotten is an illusion – it is a used and senselessly powerless metaphor, like coins used too well, it has lost the image stamped on it and so we forget where it came from and from where it receives its value” – namely from the State, “society,” the policy-makers, the structure of capitalism – whatever you want to call it, the truth in Nietzsche’s sense is nothing encompassing or non-human or, well, true.
Deleuze takes up what Nietzsche begins in his own sober way. Narration is often deemed the truthful retelling of a story ‘as it was’, or, in terms of fictitious narration, the telling of a story in such a manner that the mode of telling gives the impression that it ‘could be true’ – the minimum conditions for truth are fulfilled – chronology, non-contradiction, etc. Deleuze, however, picks up on methods of narration that “[falsify] narration…[which] frees itself from this system [of judgment]; it shatters the system of judgment because the power of the false…affects the investigator and the witness as much as the person presumed guilty,” (133). Narration is no longer about passing judgment about what it true (i.e. who is guilty of non-conformity), but rather can tap into the creative, artistic power of the false, and its intimate relationship with “irreducible multiplicity,” (ibid). The power of the false is to allow for incompossible worlds and, in so doing, to display a direct image of time. Time in its directness, says Deleuze, is exactly what disallows truth – what today may be a battle tomorrow, tomorrow will indeed be no battle and the once-possibility of that battle becomes a lie (see 130). Time makes liars of us all.