1

Minor Vices; OBSERVING DISDAIN.

1

Anthony Stavrianakis
I. Non-Entities.
A recent series of essays and letters by TJ Clark and Malcom Bull in the London Review of
Bookshas led me to return to a low lying anthropological commonplace, disdain: to not treat as
worthy; to regard with contempt.
Malcom Bull reviewed TJ Clarks book Picasso and Truth (LRB 20 February 2014), leading to a
series of letters from the two art historians, perhaps a little more precisely they were public
exchanges or ripostes rather than letters in either epistolary or correspondence form. The
character of these ripostes and essays, as well as their position within the ongoing work of both
Bull and Clark intrigued me. Subsequent to the review of Picasso and Truth, Clark published an
essay on Veroneses Allegories. After the publication of the latter, Bull pushed the argument
further. He wrote, in the reply to Clarks essay on Veronese, that he had thought that comparing
Clarks rhetoric in Picasso and Truth to the words of the Italian fascist J ulius Evola might be
pushing it a bit, but, he conceded, the talk of higher beings at the end of Clarks otherwise
magnificent essay on Veronese makes me wonder (LRB, 3 April).
The specific passage from Picasso and Truth that Bull compared to Evola is the following:
There is a wild outside to existence, certainly, but it is threaded through the life that we have, as a
reality we shall never be master or mistress of. And that reality too can be represented, as sleep
and dream, shadows, the night. Or better as blue. Blue is regularly the figure in life of
indifference, apartness, infinite distance, non-humanness. But it is here with us, inside the room.
We can dance it. We can wrap ourselves around it. We can dance it to death.
Bull cites Evolas evocation of Shiva and the sensation of the world as a sacrificial act from
hisPagan Imperialism (1928), in order to give a mild (yet provocative) whiff of the parallel
between the Fascist and the (ex) Berkeleyan. What is of interest here, specifically, is Bulls
acknowledgement that he had thought he had been pushing it a bit. It is almost as though he
were saying, I didnt reallythink TJ was of the cult of Mithra.
There are reasons, Bull indicates, to wonder. Clark turns at the end of his essay on Veronese to
capture in figural terms the ethical work and world of Veroneses four Allegories :
I still think the figure that crystallises Veroneses worldview is the knight.
The knight figure is praised, by way of Ruskin, as: good, stout, self-commanding, magnificent.
Insofar as this is all a question of characterizing Veronese, very well: so far so art historical. And
yet, Bull has a suspicion that Clarks support for Ruskins characterization, in Clarks own turn to

1
Citation: Anthony Stavrianakis, Minor Vices: Observing Disdain, http://anthropos-lab.net/bpc/2014/05/minor-
vices-disdain
2
Nietzsche, says a little more about his own worldview than he is willing to describe in the
essay. Clark writes:
I look for a further voice to amplify Ruskins argument, and come up with Nietzsche, from The Will
to Power
So I have guessed to what extent a stronger type of human being would necessarily have to
conceive the elevation and enhancement of the human as taking place in another direction:
higher beings, beyond good and evil, beyond those values which cannot deny their origin in
the sphere of suffering, the herd, the majority I sought in history the beginnings of this
construction of reverse ideals (the concepts pagan, classical, noble, newly discovered and
expounded).
Clarks finale is worth quoting at length:
That there are dangers to Nietzsches enhancement of the human we hardly need to be
reminded. But Veronese in the Allegories, I have been arguing, provides us with a way to think
heroism think elevation without the dangers necessarily overwhelming us. Look back look
up at Disinganno. We are the ecstatic and foolish man on the ruined architrave; but also the
woman on the hill, pivoting and rebalancing as she looks, one breast exposed by the movement,
her face a study in inquisitiveness and calm. She takes the measure of the human comedy. The
woman in Infidelity is her cousin. These are higher beings, we recognise, but higher here means
the opposite of pitiless or invulnerable. The same things, the same logic and illogic of
entanglements. More of Man, more of awful and inconceivable intellect. I am with Nietzsche and
Ruskin, those necessary madmen, in thinking such a reverse ideal more than ever what we need.
Clark is focused on the ethical subject he is: we are the ecstatic and foolish man the woman
on the hill taking the measure of the comedy.
Bull is focused on the other pole, far away from those higher beings: Higher than what? Bull
asks. He replies to his own question: Non-entities, presumably. What he asks, is the political
complexion of a society so divided?
II. Pathos of Distance & The Negligence of Contempt
I think I understand Bulls concern; Clarks claim to pity and vulnerability notwithstanding, a
pathos draped in past political credentials, his Nietzschean rhetoric reeks of disdain for the non-
heroes.
I would like to take a counter-strategy to Bulls own: to cite Nietzsche against Nietzsche, in order
to then show how Clark does not live up to his own Nietzschean ethos and to indicate that he is
not sufficiently attentive to the parameters of excess and deficiency at play when engaging in
ethical differentiation (high/low is Clarks recurring theme).
Here is Nietzsche from On the Genealogy of Morality:
Instead it has been the good themselves meaning the noble, the mighty who saw and judged
themselves and their actions as good, I mean first-rate, in contrast to everything lowly, low-
minded, common, plebeian. It was from this pathos of distance [italics in original] that they first
claimed the right to create values
3
Clark of course would like to claim that he is attentive to just such a pathos of distance. after all
he says it:
higher here means the opposite of pitiless or invulnerable.
Clark is on the side of the noble. He forgets, however, one of the shortcomings of this pathos of
distance:
When the noble method of valuation makes a mistake and sins against reality, this
happens in relation to the sphere with which it is not sufficiently familiar, a true
knowledge of which, indeed, it rigidly resists: in some circumstances it misjudges the
sphere it despises, that of the common man, the rabble; on the other hand, we should
bear in mind that the distortion which results from the feeling of contempt, disdain, and
superciliousness, always assuming that the image of the despised person is distorted,
remains far behind the distortion with which the entrenched hatred and revenge of the
powerless man attacks his opponent in effigy of course. Indeed, contempt has too
much negligence, nonchalance, complacency and impatience, even too much personal
cheerfulness mixed into it, for it to be in a position to transform its object into a real
caricature and monster.
Contempt and revenge are two way streets for the nobility and the rabble. In both cases they
are excessively pathetic to the degree that they are negligent with respect to reality.
III. Disabuse, or Observing Scorn?
Infedelita; Disinganno, Ripetto Unione felice: Clark tells us that these four titles for
Veroneses Allegories of Love have been passed on to us from eighteenth century
France. Whilst there is no archival evidence, he says he sees why the names have stuck:
There is something about the visual organisation of all four scenes that seems
premised on their being seen from below; and this creation of a view from lower
down this construction of an above-ness for the figures and the worlds they
inhabit is fundamental, you will see, to my sense of Veroneses achievement.
Clarks question, to give it a slightly different form, is to ask who is looking up and down at
whom? From how far below? And with the plane of the picture in what kind of relation,
exactly, to the viewer looking up? The longer I look, the more I think just underneath
most probable. Clark would like to share the grounding with the allegory, even if the
figures are (thankfully) elevated with respect to him.
He offers a reading of the importance of the visual orientation and position from which the
action is observed. Of the painting titled Disinganno, he writes:
We feel the mans abjection his lowness because we get to it from somewhere tangible
even lower down.
Clark offers a thought about the title,
4

Disinganno, I should say in passing, is the hardest of the four traditional titles to translate.
The English Scorn, which has come to be attached to it, is surely wrong, both visually and
in terms of philology.
Clark is sure of himself. He is after all a world famous art historian. I dont however think
he is right. Scorn I think is close.
He gives his reason.
Disinganno is a strong Baroque term. It is the moment of being robbed of ones illusions
and seeing the actual state of things.
Why then no mention of the fact that the woman furthest to the left cannot bear to look at
what is happening? I am a mere anthropologist, and this is a mere observation.
Always in the Allegories we are looking up, not into an utterly sublimated, superior space of
the gods, but into a great construction: a clearing or a portico whose scale and logic are
slightly (meaning decisively) beyond us.
But again, it does not follow from this that the Allegories put us out of touch with the
world just above us.
It is possible that she, on the far left in the picture, is out of touch, indifferent, a lack of
pathos; or else so pathetic that she cannot bear to look.
IV Dreary Plebs.
5
Clark himself gave an answer to Bulls own questionWhat is the political complexion of a
society so divided?in late 2012. Clark gave a lecture at the University of Chicago,
entitled, Capitalism without images? The lecture took up the theme of the present conjuncture of
capitalism and its crisis through a diagnosis of the waning power of images. The lecture took
up the riots in London from the summer of 2011.
Much of the old machinery of mediation in the UK, the press, the TV, the House of Commons,
didnt know what else to do with the events of a year ago except try to reconcile them with the
rhetoric of long past disorder: the mob looter the shame of society as if we lived in a society
where anywhere the notion of shame carried much remaining weight. They even tried out the
word anarchy as though Godwin had come back in hoody and trainers. The point it seems in
retrospect is the extent to which they could not allow themselves, could not expose themselves
to the real emptiness and triviality of crisis in its contemporary form.
What is trivial is not the social situation, depravation, disenfranchisement and so on, but rather,
triviality here understood as internal to the actors sense of themselves. Politics was absent
from the actors self-understanding of their action, in Clarks reading of the events.
The rioters, who spent three nights breaking into shops did not believe in the eschatology of
shopping.
The nihilism of the looters went deeper. They consumed for want of anything better to do, in the
moment of social breakdown and in full knowledge of the activitys essential drearyness and
pointlessness. Looting was a job they took on like the vicious small violence and futile arson that
accompanied it.
The market was these actors world. I believe, and this is what drives my lecture ultimately, that it
is deeply difficult to decide whether the parody of its order the enacted, the drab nihilism, the sight
of consumerism devouring its own tail, is a matter for hope or despair.
We have, in the lecture, a counterpoint to the knightly figure of Veronese: the unrelated looter.
No one image will do to capture the real nature of the event. It is not enough to show the
desolation of the actual social world of the looters, the hopeless urban fabric, the dreary
generational uniform. For what counts just as much is the desolation of the image world they are
smashing the plate glass to get to.
Clark may wish to be the woman on the hill taking the measure of the human comedy, but it
seems to me that in fact there is no place for a comedic narrative in this lecture. Rather his
ambivalence, the nonchalant deep difficulty as to whether the rioting was a matter of hope or
despair, is more characteristic of a negligent disdain.
In order to introduce the riots through the exemplification of modernity as the manner in which
crisis is made livable, Clark present the following image.
6

The cameraman, I first thought, must have thrilled at the J ustin Bieber detail. He no doubt
anticipated the photographs role in some future media studies meditation, like this one. And then
I discovered, we are dealing with the image world remember, that he didnt just thrill at the Bieber
detail, he photoshopped it in.
Clarks discovery permits him to contrast an image-creation with the raw footage: the Bieber
detail which makes crisis livable is a narrative artifact, interminably substitutable. Clark offers no
comment on this narrative artifactuality and instead offers a brief contextualizationthe raw
footage is Peckham High Street (London)and a judgmentthe rioters anticipated the world in
which their action would be mediated.
It is diagnostically significant of Clarks narrative mode and form of observation that he does not
say anything about the materiality involved. Photoshop, it seems, is merely part of the (dreary)
technics of the current image regime, unimportant for the real political work of thinking about the
colonization of everyday life:
the thin and standardized social texture into which the image bombardment is launched. What is
new is the isolated and marketized individual whose parody of freedom offers him or her fewer
and fewer counter-languages, counter-images with which to speak back to the world on the
screen.
It is precisely a counter-language, a language of comedy, with which people are actually
speaking, that Clarks judgment-from-afar missed.


7
V. This is Payback A Comedy.
On the banks of the River Thames, in Deptford, South London, journalist Tom Parmenter has
managed to find a group of teenagers who are willing to speak about their participation in the
London riots of 2011. They stand in a semi-circle, hoods up and covered with scarves
Youth 1: Oviously I saw an opportunity and I went to it, innit.
Sky News: And what did you get, then?
Youth 1: Oh, whadI get? Tracksuits, a couple electronic stuff.
Youth 2: I did dis, basically, to provide for my family, innit like. I got some stuff for my son,
yeah, and I got some stuff for me, like, some cloves, trainers.
Sky News: You are sixteen years old, but you were getting clothes for your son?
Youth 2: Yeah, I had to get some stuff for him.
Sky News: What did you get for him?
Youth 2: I got him cloves, I got him nappies, powder, da whole J ohnsons set.
Sky News: You were all out together?
Youth 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got some, couple, TVsplasmasPSFree, laptops an stuff,
innit.
Sky News: And how much money do you expect to make from all that?
Youth 3: At least couple grand. At least two grand, somein like dat.
Sky News: And how much is two grand to you? What does that mean to you?
Youth 3: Das nice achally, for not payin for nuffin, its all free innit, two grand in a couple a
days a week, das nice, das good pay.
Youth 1: I know people, who know people, whos got a van.
Sky News: So you were going around in a van, going around filling it up in different locations
from different stores?
Youth 1: Yeah, but we also dropped it off, cos the van got too full (laughing) so we had to
drop some stuff off, empty the van and go back out.
Sky News: You went to the stores where youd applied for a job at?
Youth 1: Yeah, I even went to Clapham! To go where I handed out a CV. Yeah, you dont
want to reply back to my email, or I come up here, with my CV, yeah, I was like, dis is
payback.
Sky News: Which store did you go to in Clapham where youd applied for a job at?
Youth 1: Comet [an electrical appliance store].
Sky News: Do the punishments that are being handed out so quickly now, does that deter
you, do you think, I could be next because Ive been out looting, does that worry you at all?
Youth 1: No.
Youth 3: No, youre like one in a thousand people who could get caught.
Sky News: So the odds are good and youre prepared to take the chance?
Youths Together: Yeah
8
Sky News: Are any of you, have kind of, bad feelings or remorse, about what youve done?
Youth 2: No. It feels like a normal day to me. Its nuffing.
Sky News: And what about you? Any bad feelings at all, have you ever thought about it at
night, when youre sleeping in your bed?
Youth 1: No cos Im watching my plasma which I just got.
It feels like Christmas came early.
Sky News: A lot of people wouldnt see any sense in what youre doing, because it was
outrageously wrong, in a lot of peoples eyes. The government are saying it is utterly
unacceptable and there is no reasoning behind it. Do you think there is any reasoning
behind it?
Youth 1: Every time I go out, yeah, when I go Bromley, West End, Ill dress smart, smartest I
can, I even beg my mum for a new pair of trainers, a pair of shoes, smart shoes, go out,
hand out my CV, you know, talk the politest I can, but no, they aint noticing me, so obviously
if dey aint noticing me from that, Im gonna have to start doin it a different way.
Sky News: Generations of people have worked hard and come from all sorts of
backgrounds with nothing and worked hard to get what you guys went out and took. Do you
not think that thats a better way of doing it, a more respectable way of doing it, than just
going and stealing?
Youth 3: We work hard, but dey aint givin us any jobs.
Youth 1: They aint giving us the opportunity to work hard and show dat we can do dis, we
can be as wealfy as you, we can do exactly what you can do.
Youth 2: Right now, it looks like dere aint a future for young people, das how I see it.
Because the government, dey aint helping no one out except for the rich people, they dont
care for us, they just leave us on the block to do what we do.
Sky News: There is a lot of wealth in this city. You only have to look over there [gesturing] is
Canary Wharf behind us. In this city there is a real focus on celebrity and money and
materialism.
Youth 1: And das who the government is looking out for, dem people [gesturing to Canary
Wharf], up there yeah. Theyre not thinking of us, theyre thinking of that one pocket, not
ours, the one up there [the Wharf].
I had first seen this interview at the time of the riots. It struck me, then, how closely the language
of the young guys mirrored that of the financial district that the interviewer was at pains to point
out. A couple grand in two days is quite nice. It has a tint of the smarmy drawl of a city
banker. Curiously a grand a day is the average salary at Goldman Sachs in London.
The youth is, among other things, funny, and unrepentant.
The young guys are looking up.
The problem is that Clark is as well.