The present chapter examines the normative constructions of the gaze and corresponding normative representations of vision in Paine’s The Age of Reason and Emerson’s Nature. I pay attention to those characteristics of the gaze which render it both rhizomatic and panoptic in the descriptions of both authors. I first trace the manner in which the gaze functions as the main expression of connectivity between the constitutive elements of the natural sphere in both texts. In the second section, I go on to examine the depiction of such a connecting vision as fundamentally reciprocal. This chapter’s final section subsequently focuses on the mediation and negotiation of the ideal of equality between the constitutive elements via the construction of the rhizomatically panoptic gaze.
Connectivity
Both authors use similar strategies to highlight the importance of connectivity between different elements of any structural arrangement, the chief of which consists of the depiction of visual perception in, at its most general, positive terms, or as a capability with an ulterior benefit that the authors then explicate. By way of contrast, the absence of such a visual connection between these respective elements is represented as a state in need of amends. The elevation of sight and the visual connection with one’s surroundings that it fosters to a principle capable of explaining the motivation behind creation is one specific instance of this strategy and decisively determines Paine’s argument in The Age of Reason.
Elaborating on the didactic mission of God in his function of the “Almighty lecturer” (Paine 694), Paine asks the following:
Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were, on an immense desart (sic!) of space glittering with shows. (The Age 695)
Paine elevates the capability of exercising vision to the leading experience determining his perception of the world and his metaphysical assumptions. Particularly interesting is the function which Paine constructs the capability of exercising vision to have in this context:
The mere fact that the individual can visually perceive objects that are located at an
“incomprehensible distance” presupposes, as Paine gives to understand, that there must exist a very specific and purposeful relation between the individual and those objects. This specific relationship is expressed as being chiefly one of “use,” which operates as an opposite to “waste.” To rephrase, the sole fact that objects are visible to the sighted human being suggests, according to Paine, that there must exist a connection between that human being and the perceived object that in its purpose and function supersedes mere vision or visibility. Vision thus mediates a connection that goes beyond itself, but remains the chief signifier thereof. In that manner, vision becomes quasi synonymous with connection.
Referring to this passage, Walter Woll writes regarding Paine’s conception of the divine that “[t]o his mind, God not only created the universe with its different worlds, which, to Paine, were identical with the planets, he was even ready to give away a share of his knowledge” (155). Evidently, this construction of the relationship between the human being endowed with “the power of beholding” or the “power of vision” (Paine, The Age 695) and the far-away objects upon which this power is exercised follows an expressly Deist logic:
Paine reiterates the Deist tenet that the heavenly bodies and astronomical phenomena are visible from the vantage point of the human being located in his terrestrial existence in order to foster an understanding of the principles and laws that determine natural processes, which in their turn explicate divine provisions to the human being as the deity is only to be accessed via its manifestation in the natural sphere. This Deist principle finds expression in Paine’s conditional construction of the universe as it is visible and the didactic purpose conditioning and motivating its visibility. This grows clear when Paine formulates the rhetorical question “[o]f what use is it, unless it be to teach man something […]?”(The Age 695). It is of special importance, however, that it is the very visibility of the universe and the astronomical bodies that it contains that lead Paine to reiterate the Deist tenet: The didactic purpose is not the first link in the chain of reasoning which leads to an imperative of scientific observation in order to arrive at a better understanding of the deity. Much rather, vision and visibility are the first elements that lead Paine to project unto these features a
purpose beyond themselves, namely the purpose of preconditioning and facilitating learning about the natural sphere and, concomitantly, about the godhead. Vision as the capability of the human being and visibility as the characteristic of material objects are the primary features that induce Paine to further semanticize this kind of connectivity between sighted human beings and the material world surrounding them.
Emerson, too, postulates the natural sphere in general, and astronomical phenomena in particular, to be imbued with a distinctly didactic purpose. However, the chiefly Deist notion he espouses on this matter does not vest itself in distinctly Deist formulations. Much rather, Emerson uses theologically less specific vocabularies of admiration, while not shirking references to the deity and its supreme authority. In this vein, the proposed affinity between a natural phenomenon and the relations of individuals to appear first in Nature is that of encouraged replication: “Nature” in its denotative, “common sense” (Emerson 8) is constructed as an ideal to be finally embodied by the other implied components of this definition, namely by “all other men” (ibid.). This grows evident when considering that the first description pertaining to the broadly defined concept refers to a particular and rather common natural phenomenon, namely the nightly sky, which is depicted in its impact on the individual observer and his relation to his environs:
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. (Emerson 9)
In this passage, the ideal, natural sphere’s asserted superiority in relation to the beholder’s situation is redundantly marked. For example, the narrator employs a hyperbolic conditional construction invoking a scenario in which the stars are visible only “one night in a thousand years” to highlight the outstanding meaning of this natural occurrence. He further presents
the supposition that the air’s translucence has the sole end of facilitating the beholder’s gaze onto the stars, making him aware of the “sublime” or, expressed differently, the unsurpassable and noble. This representation indicates the implicit directive of replication of the ideal. Directed at the readers and inducing them to encourage the individual’s observation, the imperative presents the required activity, namely the exercise of the gaze, to grasp the essence of the ideal and experience its positive impact as a consequence.
The observation’s result described first is the observer’s altered relation to his material surroundings: The beams of light sent out from the stars and perceived by the onlooker “separate between him and what he touches.” Since the verbalized motivation of beholding the sky at night is to achieve by “a gesture of philosophical seriousness” (Dolan, Emerson’s Liberalism 80) a state of veritable solitude, the separation effectuated by the stars’ light spoken of in this passage can be read as a condition of detachment from the social sphere, necessary for critical reflection and learning from the ideal. However, understanding the verb “to separate” in its meaning of “to occupy a position between”
(“separate”), the stars’ “rays” can be read to function as mediators between the beholder and his environment. In other words, the light emitted by the stars and noticed by the observer transforms, rather than curtails, his connection to his material context. The specific kind of the transformation is pointed towards by referring to the stars as “heavenly worlds”
metaphorically and, further, by likening their array to “the city of God” (Emerson 9). Both these references to “worlds” and “city,” as general terms for spheres inhabited and organized by humans, indicate the presence of a particular structure and civic arrangement.
In this function of a signifier of the presence of sociopolitical structures, Emerson’s “city of God” is reminiscent of Paine’s “society of worlds” (The Age 710), a term he uses to describe the solar system and the visible stars later on and to which he also ascribes the purpose of
“instruction” (ibid.). Since the adjective “heavenly” (Emerson 9) not only indicates the stars’
location, but primarily carries the religious connotations of the exemplary, just as the reference to God designates the authoritative, the implied civic arrangements exemplified by the star’s organization are presented as mandating to follow their example. To sum up the narrator’s description of the observer’s relation to the nightly sky, two elements are thus of importance: First, the nightly sky represents an ideal to be replicated as far as the connection between the individual and his material environs as well as an ideal structure of
political arrangement are concerned; second, this ideal can only be known and reproduced by actualizing the faculty of the gaze.
While not as explicitly as Paine proceeds, Emerson too marks the exemplary character of the natural and particularly the astronomical sphere. However, he does not relate its didactic role, as Paine does, in a causative manner to its very visibility. For Paine, the instructive mode is secondary to the feature of visibility as well as the capability of vision and in many ways is consciously projected onto it. For Emerson, on the other hand, visibility is not antecedent to the projection of a didactic purpose on the natural sphere. In contrast to Paine, Emerson seems altogether unaware of the process of his own projection of purpose onto the natural sphere. While both authors cast vision as the chief signifier of a vital relation between elements within a system, Paine sees the relation or connection as primary and then deduces from it a specific purpose, while Emerson sees both, visibility and vision on the one hand and the status of nature as an ideal intended to be emulated as not related by strict causality.
I put forward that this awareness of a self-conscious projection of purpose on already existing relations is an indicator of the self-reflexive mode of Paine’s deliberations on the institution of political systems and corresponding dominant narratives. Rather than postulating the purpose as a fact, he marks it as the result of his deductive thought process, thus implicitly conceding its contingent and circumscribed character. This cannot be said of Emerson, who seems more comfortable with the presentation of his observations in terms of universal truths. I relate this distinction in presentations of the natural sphere to a distinction in the conceptualization of human sociopolitical associations. Paine represents the pre-existing relation as primary, while the ideal is a secondary and even, to some extent, a consciously projected construct growing out of the necessity to imbue the pre-existing relationships with meaning. The representation of the ideal is a conscious effort, conspicuously based on particular points of view. In Emerson’s case, however, relations and the ideal space seem coexistent, and to acquire knowledge of the ideal, existing relations have to be momentarily cast aside to foster the necessary state of being “solitary” (Emerson 9). In that manner, the ideal even acquires ascendance over existing relations. Emerson’s guiding question of “to what end is nature?” (Emerson 7), which prefaces the tract, is not conditional upon the acknowledgement of a primacy of relations or connections. Much rather, the ideal operates as an eternal presence that stores answers to the human being’s
questions. When Emerson notes that “[w]e must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy” (Emerson 7), his assumption regarding the self-evident character of nature’s “perfection” grows clear. Rather than regarding this assumption as one such, or as the product of a human necessity, Emerson constructs nature’s “perfection” and therefore instructive function as a pre-existing fact to the human being’s inquiry. Paine, to put it another way, is thus more aware of the narrative and constructed character of any ideal, even the one he sets out to propose himself. The narrative presenting that ideal is therefore in need of some logical justification, presented in the form of a logical deduction.
Emerson, however, is not in need of justifying that a particular structural organization is an ideal.
I understand this difference chiefly in terms of the different ideological markers that determined both texts’ respective historical contexts. Paine understood social structures as consciously created in order to make sense of already existing relations and also in order to consciously bring particular kinds of order to those relations. Certainly, the revolutionary circumstances Paine witnessed in both America and France honed his understanding of the precarious character of ideals as contingent constructs in need of constant justification in order to persevere. Emerson, on the other hand, wrote in a historical and national context chiefly marked by the increasingly consolidating hegemonic narrative of the desirability and ascendance of a particular kind of sociopolitical structure, namely democracy. In this manner, reading across The Age of Reason and Nature with a concern for the representations and uses of the gaze can yield a better understanding of its potential for explicating conceptions of the interdependence between existing sociopolitical connections and the conscious imposition of both hegemonic and oppositional narratives upon them in order to semanticize them.
In the same vein, another feature of relations and connections to which Paine calls attention in a self-referential manner, more so than Emerson, is that of the motivation behind them. Paine does so by drawing on the Deist tenet of the didactic imperative patent in the natural sphere: The concern that Paine repeatedly displays when it comes to dissertating on the topic of the visibility of astronomical phenomena is the possibility of a lack of motive or purpose behind it. Paine rules out this possibility as he equates a lack of purpose with “waste,” both of the “immensity of worlds” (The Age 695) on the plane of
matter and of the “power of vision” (ibid.) on the plane of human physical capacity. This denial of the futility of vision and the visibility of astronomical phenomena receives further attention when Paine explains in even more specifically Deist terms the didactic purpose of both:
It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing. (Paine, The Age 695)
As stated before and as once again grows patent in this passage, Paine insists that the mere visibility of astronomical phenomena and the human being’s capacity of sight are indicative of the didactic purpose of the visible structural features of the universe. Therefore, observing such phenomena becomes tantamount to reading in the Creator’s “book […] of science.” Assuming that this didactic, or in fact any other purpose is absent from the capacity of vision and the property of visibility is to negate the evident and compelling implication of vision and visibility according to Paine. This strong tie between processes of vision and the concepts of motivation or purpose allow for another specification with regard to the characteristics of the particular kind of vision constructed in this instance: It predisposes the sighted subject toward a reflection concerning the motivation of processes and also of other perceived entities, objects, and phenomena. Just as structures do, motivations and rationales informing the establishment of connections, according to Paine, also require analytical attention and critical reflection. This requirement, once again, extends to both the already dominant and his own motivations, as he poses the question regarding the possibility of the absence of such in an unprompted and voluntary manner. The contingency of the construction and identification of rationales once again comes to the forefront and marks the self-reflexive manner of Paine’s thought on the creation of structures in general.
Rather than allegedly self-explanatory constructs, they appear as in constant need of justification and analytical reflection.
To return to the texts, it is necessary to once again call to mind that the mere presence of vision and visibility condition the presence of an important and meaningful connection according to Paine, and that, in addition, this connection can be actualized with
objects, entities, and phenomena that seem disparate, overpowering, and multitudinous. In other words, rather than being limited to objects that resemble the observers and put them at ease in terms of shape, scale, and number, the vision described by Paine establishes connections between a veritable multiplicity of markedly variegated objects, entities, and phenomena seemingly erratically arranged across a vast and extensive space. While it is the reciprocity of the gaze, analyzed further below, that renders this described quality of vision truly rhizomatic, even the as of now un-reciprocated vector of vision is not one-directional, but rather acknowledges the multi-centered structure of the space which it engages into a relation. This variegated character of the phenomena with which Paine’s construction of vision establishes connections is expressed in the rhetorical question which consists roughly of an enumeration of constellations of stars and planets visible to the individual: “What has
objects, entities, and phenomena that seem disparate, overpowering, and multitudinous. In other words, rather than being limited to objects that resemble the observers and put them at ease in terms of shape, scale, and number, the vision described by Paine establishes connections between a veritable multiplicity of markedly variegated objects, entities, and phenomena seemingly erratically arranged across a vast and extensive space. While it is the reciprocity of the gaze, analyzed further below, that renders this described quality of vision truly rhizomatic, even the as of now un-reciprocated vector of vision is not one-directional, but rather acknowledges the multi-centered structure of the space which it engages into a relation. This variegated character of the phenomena with which Paine’s construction of vision establishes connections is expressed in the rhetorical question which consists roughly of an enumeration of constellations of stars and planets visible to the individual: “What has