Abstract
This article explores the “Circe” episode of Ulysses in the light of recent debates on hallucination in neurosciences and the philosophy of mind. Bridging the gap between these two fields, it offers an alternative to the traditionally vague definition of hallucination as an intuitively grasped experience which deviates from ordinary perception. Arguing that the technique of the episode is similar to phantasmagoria, a pre-cinematic genre whose deceptive nature foreshadows the shifting viewpoints of “Circe”, and drawing on the works of Lev Vygotsky and Charles Fernyhough, it arrives at an integrated definition of the status of “hallucination” in art, which does justice to both its epistemological and narrative implications.
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Notes
- 1.
For the schema which Joyce produced for Gilbert , see Gilbert (1930).
- 2.
See also the dialogue between the scientific and the philosophical approaches to the study of the functioning of the mind proposed by Changeux and Ricœur .
- 3.
In his article, Dorsch proposes a theory that not only requires the cooperation of philosophy and cognitive sciences, but also aims at providing a philosophical view applicable to both perceptual (i.e. subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions ) and non-perceptual hallucinations (Dorsch 2010). See also Dorsch’s article in Fiona Macpherson and Dimitris Platchias eds. (2013), a collection of essays which represents a first attempt at analysing hallucination from the point of view of both philosophy and cognitive sciences. The volume adopts the perspective of Disjunctivism (see n. 10 below) and features several scholars that I will come to quote in this essay (Bentall , Fernyhough , Macpherson ).
- 4.
The focus has been mainly on the relation between “Circe” and early cinema : see especially Keith Williams (2003), Carla Marengo Vaglio (2007), Maria DiBattista (2010), and Philip Sicker (2010). I have already proposed an analysis of the features which link “Circe” to phantasmagoria in Prudente (2015).
- 5.
For instance, Briggs’s seminal study in the field mentions this device when stating that “cinema —child of the Phantasmagoria and the Magick Lantern […]—is even more suggestive than is pantomime of the technique of ʻCirce,ʼ Hallucination, and the art of ʻCirce,ʼ Magic” (Briggs 149).
- 6.
One very recent example is Catherine Flynn’s examination of the surrealist elements in “Circe,” where the phantasmagoria is employed in the way Benjamin used the term to describe urban experience (see Benjamin 2002).
- 7.
The Belgian Etienne Gaspard-Robert claimed to be the inventor of the phantasmagoria , but, as Mannoni demonstrates, he drew for his shows on devices already employed by others, mainly by Philidor (Mannoni and Brewster 1996, 390–3).
- 8.
“The Argument from Illusion” and “The Argument from Hallucination” are the founding elements of the opposition between the perceptual theories of direct or “naïve” realism and those of indirect or “representational ” realism . While the first argues that in perception the subject establishes a relation with “real,” mind-independent objects, the latter maintains that what we experience is an internal representation or replica of the world. The two mentioned arguments—which emerged in the eighteenth century (BonJour 2013)—were brought forward by representationalists so as to prove the existence of sense-data testifying to the mediate quality of our perception . Representational realism argues that since hallucination is subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perception , these two experiences share common qualities which render them equally real to the subject, thus undermining direct realism’s belief into the subject’s perception of the object itself, “real” and mind-independent. For an overview of the issue, see Lowe 102–58.
- 9.
As opposed to previous interpretations of the cinematic medium as based on “transparency” (Cavell ), “illusion” (of Derridian matrix ), “imagination ” and “recognition” (deriving from cognitive analysis). Allen (1999) associates the four theories with the causal theory of perception (see n. 9 below).
- 10.
In the history of philosophy , causal theories of perception (CTP) have been attributed to thinkers like Descartes , Locke , Kant , and Russell , although obviously not in the form of unified theories, but rather as inscribed in their different theorizations. In the twentieth century, Grice has revived the argument by proposing what has been defined as a “stronger” version of the founding principles of this theory. In general terms, the CTP maintains that the condition to perception is not that the perceiver establishes a relation with the percept, but rather that the percept causes the sense-datum which the subject perceives. In this sense, the CTP is directly connected to representational realism , and objections to this theory stem mainly from philosophers belonging to naïve realism (see especially Hyman ). As for the implications in film studies, Allen’s confutation is directed towards the CTP intended as comprising all the filmic theories implying the act of seeing as caused by the seen object.
- 11.
Hallucination’s indistinguishability from veridical experience is another central concern of the debate between naïve and representational realisms . The most recent outcome of this discussion has been the founding of Disjunctivism , a specific current of direct realism that maintains the non-equivalence between genuine and hallucinatory perceptions on which Allen’s film theory is grounded. Disjunctivism has argued this principle from two different perspectives, one related to an epistemic and the other to a metaphysical conception of hallucination. The first holds that veridical and hallucinatory experiences do not share common qualities, as the only quality that can be attributed to hallucination is precisely its being indistinguishable from veridical perceptions (Martin 2004, 72). For an overview of Disjunctivism see Macpherson and Haddock (2008).
- 12.
On the nature of subjective shots in early cinema , see also Gaudreault .
- 13.
Gregory Currie (1995b) has analysed how unreliability works in cinema and narrative by focusing especially on the figure of the implied author which, in his view, is always present in narrative, but absent in cinema (for a more recent elaboration of his theory of point of view in narration, see also Currie 2009). Also in relation to this issue, the unique form of “Circe” proves a significant case study, where the boundaries between the two media are blurred and give rise to a representational technique escaping categories.
- 14.
See also Ferrer’s emphasis on how “the theatricality makes real the hallucination, and, reciprocally, hallucinates reality ” (Ferrer 1984, 141).
- 15.
For a study of the narrative consequences of inserting a hallucinatory point of view in narration, see also Ferrer’s analysis of the episode of the “solitary traveller” in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (Ferrer 1990, 130–9).
- 16.
- 17.
See, for instance, “The Sun Woman,” a phantasmagoria slide held at the “Cabinet of Physics,” Helsinki University Museum.
- 18.
“Hallucinatory and related perceptual experiences are essentially private and subjective . That is, at the instant in time at which the experience occurs, no other person shares the same experience” (Slade and Bentall 16).
- 19.
- 20.
Although his position as a naïve realist continues to be debated, Wittgenstein is considered a landmark opponent of representational realism . In addition, Allen’s film theory proclaims its debt to Wittgenstein’s argument against the causal theory of perception (see Allen 1999, 2001). For an overview of Wittgenstein’s theory of perception see Good (2006).
- 21.
- 22.
Vygotsky’s theories have long been debated, with both praise and criticism of the relevance given to social interaction in his developmental approach. Recent rediscussion has proposed to reformulate Vygotsky’s “segregational” theory (language seen as a self-contained and stable system) in the form of a more “integrational” view (Jones 2009). As for narrative theory, Vygotsky’s conception of inner speech has been related to Bakhtin’s dialogism (Emerson 1983).
- 23.
Significantly, in his Language and Thought, Vygotsky largely employs examples from Russian authors (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky ) to show the interplay between internal and external speech.
- 24.
“The effect is the most extreme version of discontinuity in the novel between an apparently empirical world, existing in real space and time (created by infinitesimally painstaking mimesis) and a self-contained ‘elsewhere’ with its own physical rules, just like the screen” (Williams 100).
- 25.
In Slade and Bentall’s “working definition,” hallucination is “[a]ny percept-like experience which (a) occurs in the absence of an appropriate stimulus , (b) has the full force or impact of the corresponding actual (real) perception , and (c) is not amenable to direct and voluntary control by the experiencer” (Slade and Bentall 23). Interestingly, as Liester , drawing on McNichol’s work for a history of the concept, underlines, “the Ancient Greek originally employed a single word, phantasia, to describe both hallucinations and delusions. Later, this was divided into two terms, one involving misperception of an object (illusion), the other describing the hearing or seeing of things that others do not (hallucination)” (Liester 308). This coinciding was still present when the term was first employed in English in 1572 “deriving from the Latin allucinatio (wondering of the mind, idle talk) […] at this time no distinction was made between ‘hallucinations’ and the phenomenon now subsumed by the word ‘illusion’ (derived from Latin illusio meaning mocking, jeering, or bantering)” (Slade and Bentall 7).
- 26.
Not only, as underlined, did phantasmagoria work by concealing its projectors, but also the settings of the screenings (“into the most lugubrious of rooms,” Robertson quoted in Castle 34), the darkness, and, above all, the aerial pictures approaching the viewers represented an innovatively involving experience for spectators, which did not entail separation between themselves and the screen (which was concealed): “The Phantascope could move towards or away from the screen on wheels that rolled smoothly along polished brass rails. Combined with new controls that made adjustments in focus easier, such movement caused the projected image on the screen either to enlarge or decrease in size. Since these movements and adjustments could be done both rapidly and invisibly, and since the spectator was placed in darkness without any visible spatial reference, the rapidly enlarging image appeared to be charging out at the audience (or, if the lantern were rolled backwards, withdrawing)” (Gunning 2004).
- 27.
As underlined by Mannoni , the very etymology of the word “phantasmagoria ” entails exchange between the ghostly figures and the spectator: “From the Greek phantasma, phantom —deriving from phantazo, I produce an illusion; and agoreuo, I speak—as the etymology suggests, a dialogue may take place between the audience and the spectre resurrected by the magic lantern” (Mannoni and Brewster 1996, 390).
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Prudente, T. (2018). Hallucination and the Text: “Circe” Between Narrative, Epistemology, and Neurosciences. In: Belluc, S., Bénéjam, V. (eds) Cognitive Joyce. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71994-8_12
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