How can creative practice be effective politically?

Politics

The author of the essay ‘The Language of Flowers’ Michael Taussig, approaches the issue of violence enacted by humans through the way we analyse visual information.
Taussig shares his experience of being overwhelmed by the beautiful and elaborate plant illustrations by Celestino Mutis from 18th Century Columbian expedition. Taussig recalls his memory of being thrilled when he first opened the book containing Mutis’ illustration, marvelling at the beauty of nature. But then moments later he tells us about being overwhelmed by the realisation that the illustration of flowers directly resembles the display of real human anatomy which had been ‘spread-eagled’ dissected as in medical textbooks fashion. (Taussig194) Here through re-telling of his own experience Taussig is ultimately articulating the concept of visual forms having powerful capacity to outsmart us. In this case within Taussig’s article the discourse surrounding flowers directly stand in for human body. It is interesting that at times visual forms that are so familiar to reality conceal and other times reveal information to us if we choose to pay attention.

However after being informed by Taussig about how Mutis’ flowers are signifying Columbia’s violent political history especially learning about our desire to humanise violence I experienced a strange phenomenon myself. I was drawn to the illustration even more so and simultaneously disgusted. Taussig articulates this oscillation from repulsion to attraction is also what lies behind the logic of mutilation (198). Just as what separates the subliminal beauty of the botanical renderings and violent connotation difficult to describe, ultimately pain and pleasure are not mutually exclusive either. This very phenomenon is what Jacques Lacan calls ‘jouissance’; the sensation of excessive pleasure leading to be overwhelmed and disgusted yet continuing to provide source of fascination (Fink 12). Slavoj Zizek, a cultural theorist with roots in Lacanian psychoanalysis, explains the reception of the September 11 spectacle as a manifestation of this jouissance (Zizek 11). As the disturbing image played repeatedly again and again at a global scale, we experienced satisfaction from being horrified and fascinated as we were transfixed before the television screens (17). So again the fine line between humour and violence operates just like the logic of jouissance does.

-Michael Taussig’s background as a medical doctor and an anthropologist produce a dialectical criticism involving human body and culture and this is done through his distinctive narrative style in essays.


Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Princeton University, Princeton 1995.

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, The University of Chicago Press, 2006

Zizek, Slavoj. “Passions of the Real”, Welcome to the Desert of the Real. London: Verso, 2002