invention of hysteria

8/4/2019 Invention of Hysteria

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p o n^r-Invention of Hysteria

Charcot and the Photographic lconography ofthe Salptrire

Georges Didi-HuberrnanTranslated by Alisa Hartz

The MIT PressCambridge, MassachusettsLondon, Englmd


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Chapter 3was marked by this effort and anxiety. only a few years rarer, Albert Londe,s

hy, with a capitl ..p,,_I mean rhetrn e Trace, incontestablyfthfirl, durable,hadorydurable rrace ofall perhologice_lmodi$' the exterior form ofthe pariatricude, or special facies upon him. These impartial arld rapidly collectedto medical observations insofaras theyunder study before everyonet eyes.,'36

ist before,,37). quence ofthe illness ad did not ex-Photography had to crystallize rhe ce into a Tbleau: nor en ex_terxive tableau, but a tableau in which the Type was condensed in a uniquermage, orin a univocal series ofimages_thefaces.Determining the facies appplacing it before everyonetto do. In cetain doubd:lprints taken in variow places or at distant times provides the assur_ance that the illness in difrent subjects who were not on hand at theseme dme is indeed one and the same. This work has been accom_rco, and the facies belonging tonters is now well_known. .Withe easy to repeat Galtons experi_ition, a composite print provid_rions disappea bringing to light

A facies is that which is bound and determined to summarize andgeneralize rhe case, determjned to makeJoresighr possible: and this, in theaspect of afa.

Legends ofPhotograPhY

The Legend of ttre Surface, the Facies

\\\\))he face the corporeal surface makest* Iof the soul, ideally. This also holds for | '

the Cart and PerhaPs alsoe]lains took the form ofen drt of the pofint.In any case, this portraiture was a very Perticular art, in which "face"wes nnderstood as ,.facies." It was an art ofsr rface teritoies, yet elways seek-ing a more intimate localization, the concomitant convolution in thebrain. Doubtless, this was a legcy of that strange territoriel or configure-tive science, if I may Put it like that, of Gall's phrenology' Gall w pas-sionately interested, for instance, in a certain woman's face; he even tookher delicate head in his han&-but his caressing fingers were on-ly seek-ing the region, bump, or cePhalic fold corresponding to the lady's mono-mania. And in his other hand, opposite her' he held a death's head-Imean e skull-for comparison (frg. 21). I speak of a legacy because phre-nology lost no time in positing itself as the theoretical basis of all psychol-ogy under the ensign of positivism;{ charcot's cerebral localizations areaffiliated, as it were.It was also an ert of the detailed, the tenuous, the agmentedof the commissule ofterritories, but always in search ofa law prescribing theirminuscule differences. Bourneville photographed idiots and, on the basisofhis portrait galery sought a concePt of ldiocy in the minute anatomi-cal pinpointing ofbuccal oPenings, the comnissure of che lips' the formof .n..rc, the roof of the mouth, gums and teeth, uvulas' soft palates'a1

ofevery Ieme research to animrt tingdom, used it as thebis for his great phylogenetic history of the expression of emotions'43The face subsumed under e facies thus allowed for a logic and etiol-ogy of its own eccidenrs. It did so through a subtle and constant art oftherecouung of surfaces, always seeking depth-conceptual depth-in thefilmy fabric or stratum he constructed: the depth of the Type' Galton wasa virtuoso ofthis art ofrecovering: h e Prolueel the Type through the reg-ulated superpositibn of portraits he had collected. If rhe faces obtained

sousht the differerrtial muscular corrrrris-


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Chapter 3

3'i.i.,t:fS1fA

3.J-i.!.-lf f)_ o 9J3,


a bit blurred, what did ic matter; it scill constiruted a figurative prob-, rigorous in itself, and thus a "scientific" portrait4r (fig' 23) 'lU-.rt fo.t., at the Salptrire, was searching for exacdy that: the

figurative probabiliry that would find its law in time and the dif-of aface:.

Fisure 2lPhrenology, print (Muse diHistoire de la Mdecine, paris).

for diagnosis-46In this way the espect of the face, sub e

amenable to a codifiable, recordable state olant inquiry into forms, it opened the wayThe Legend ofldentity and its Protocol

rure de police in their efforts must also be interrogted)'


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IEC TRO-PHYSIOTOGIE PHOTOGRAPHIQUN.

SPECIIVIEND'$N I'XTR tECE LDCTRO-I)HISIOLOGIQU[,tih l,luJTntT. . ,, . . , :; .,. :-iii,lr,::::FDuchenne de BoElecro-physiologicah"^,,'p;y;i;s":;; oJ

Iiat fll[cnhersof tunr fuwalg l[e*Ftde.CRIMINAII

ot{suMPTlOI'l AND OTHER MALADI'ESq

Cr, mqryletutIf

DDc[r\B (do Bonlon), phot:


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Chapter 3In any ce, the development of psychiauic photography in thenineteenth cencury emerged om the same general *o.r.*..r, as foren_sic photography.aT Moreover, the pivotal discipline ofcriminal anthropol_ogy occupied an eminenr strategic position in this movem..rt; it tooi.,much interest in rhe phorogaphic portrais ofcriminals and t}le insane it did in their skulls (fig. 2a, 25).A certain Lacan, rakin stock ofphotography,s miraculous progress,did not hesitate to equete "the accusatory i*g"" of criminars *rtrr1,pr.Diamond's erudite work":

'What convicted criminal could escape police vigilaace? For even ifhe escapes the wa.lls where punishmenirestrains him; even i{ onceliberated, he breaks the order that prescribes him a residence; eventhen his portrait is in the hands of the authoricies. He has no escape.He carnot bur recognize himselfin his accusatory image. And, fioma physiognornic point of view, whet srudies are these collections inwhich the narure of the crime is inscribed along side the culprit,sface! One could reed the history ofhuman passiots in this book w.itheach face a page:_and each feat re an eloiuent line! .What a phlo_sophical treatise! What e poem, which light alone can write! If wepass from illnesses ofthe soul to those ofthe body, we again find thephotographer ready to play an imponart role. Before mj, eyes I havea colleccion offourteen portreirs ofwomen of diferenias. Someare smiling, others seem to be dreaming, and all ofthem have some_thing strange in their physiognomy: ne understads rhis at fintglance. Ifoae consides tem longe one is saddened despite one_self all these faces have an excaordinary expression that g;ves pain.A single word sufces to explain everything they are madwomen.These portraits are part of a scholarly work by Dr. Diamond.4that in this subtJe complicity berweendendry was necessarily elaborated onc or forensic petitions and their tech_'What's more, photography w the

This having-to-read foun hy,,,under the pen of its own practitioners: I am thinking of Alpho.rr.Bertillon, creator of Signaleric Anthropomerrics, who died in tgi+, nwhose "system" w adopted by police forces across the western worldstarting in 1888. He was the director of rhe phorographic service of

Lends ofPhotograPhY

de Pais (the first in the world' created as early t872by:lse Bertillon's "theoretical considerations of signalment"soa reflecdon on the nature of end meansfor-a

"deslietiv anal-fr"r*t nt"*;' on the "mathematical rules" of the "mysterrous- "ir""" and the "distribution of dimensions in nature'"sl'."1i*i.r".io* then opened the way to estblishing the technicalfor the identifi cation and antluoPometric clssifr cation of individuals'

dangerous rePeat offender con-^me]or an unknown cadaver de-

PhotograPhY's2

Figure 23 revious page)Galton, Inquira tto Human Faculti ff Aj (ontispiece plate).

Thus this having-to-read was above all the commandeering of the;;; *nl dened in photographic procedures' tntt;' -T:::1'#;"i|':';;;'-"';*dl'dlio" orthe pose and shooting or.portait,(theuniformicv't':::.11'::--'.Tj.:::::"'iiti;'ff;ff

overleaf)portrits , collected bY Lo:ntrosoand nne oninel (7878)'

tJffi .at*ffi;.;l;ti.):53..Anditisturthermoredesirablethtpho-tography coupled with signent come as close as possible to the weU-defined unifor- typt, "aoptta' ""totdittg'o *y indic-atiors' by the cenualArchives ofthe teotific"tiott Sttuice'"* Bettillon had a number ofdgten.i"""ding a "posing c t uniformiryof ."do.tio., benveen fill-face iil;|l;phYsiognomic-. nd ttre onlYthing left to do was to archive' "::t^-t:":::1":ltli.iry ofimages and clues e certarn sus-pect of a ceftein crime from amon raptrs taken bythe Identificaon Service of the Pr and 1889's in;.;;""" with the well-named proces of"Bertillonage'"Let us return tt '", '"it' Albe't Londe who' in his own orbit (theSa1ptrire, a quasi-ciry, toplttt with its own seedy are and surveil-


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CBNES DE CRIMTNELLES.


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Chapter 3

..Bertilo: Figure 26nage" at police Headquarten in paris (1g93).lance services), w posi,rg analogous questioru and inventing analogousrocedures so as to regulate ,ir. lo'aio* o*ro*., of symptomacicodies' so thev would-proar"r .ig*iJtJ*."u. He regulated theondirions of rhei exhibitio., -a".rr.r, il;", of diferences, so as toerive a unique con,:rt*"xiuli trffi..:

at rhe level ofth. .ro port such that he is placedtio.rs b.".ing on rh. mcally where modifica-to phorog*ph, -.o,..rr". at the same *., "'."i:*'jr"*',.1:fa normal person. ," g * ". ."*n;;" *" be all the more rell_^ . iil,fi,fl:i:ff: - ror the race' ;il;;; to be raised to the rever[\,',#il'J:'::i;:".:iiili$i:il'trff :,,'.'.'rit\

doubtless, this happened despite their intentlons'Bourneville, for one, later compensated for such hesitations regrd-both Bertillonage and wardership, by photo-measuring the childrenhis service at the Bictre hospital (figs. 27-30)'But whjle at the Salpuire, Rgnard and Bourneville were still ex-to the ruk of a more intimate paradox of photographic practice'were searching for the facies in faces and they awempted to deny allxical effect, of course;but they were only partially successful' Thiswhy their images, more than others, are still enigmatic and disconcert-g.The facis not yet the policing of the image, not quite a subject de-for observation. It still offers itsel{ I would say' as e speetacle (alsosigrrifiedby..facies''inLatin),neverwhollycloisteredinfixedstage-

scenes. The facies still offers irselfas an act, efacttive (rhat which "gives"-Jaa-t-something)-an event of the portrait'

Paradox ofEvidenceThe paradox of photography is what I would call a paradox oJ spectaculareuiilenee.It is, in the edge that ljps awayomitself, despite its '-tyttt tt t:bj3tt;;r-;nrt;Ao"n-ru.ltdeteinedforob"t*tio",fi *@t-tivicy. It is also,is not the essenthe end, was ]4-gil&sis.effect, and temPoral drama ofits rePeated

to hysterics, was still marked by somethts they took still left room for the aara, Irges that were so much more comPlex,

- Err.ry image summoned to appear n the leonographie photographiquede la salptrre confronts us with this paradox. But I will be somewhat


But let us return to my subjects, Bourneville and Rgnard, who' abefore Londe, were-still hesitating. They confined themselvesthat were more aleatory; their predation of images, rn re-

more specific, in reviewing its principles'Exactitude?

Baudelaire ws ware of a paradox when he railed against photographicexactitude, treating it not as a material effect, a "pure effect" of che pho-tographic act, but as the credo of a "multitude" for whom Daguerre w


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Auns

Contacts of DistanceBut in the nineteenth cenlury dra fso designated one ofphotography's,**.rt problems, and not the let ofthem: a problem that fundamen-"t;;;t rathea obliquely, concerns precisely what Benjamin wanted to;i.". This was the problem of aureoles and "veils": all these luminousor paraluminous Phenomena thcertain PhotograPhed subjects' \)the "weave" and of revelation beyond the veil; that is' the magical char-acter, already diabolical and blasphemthe problem of contact at a ilistarce' thetorrr.d, since in PhotograPhY toucheswords. Let me illustrate this by dwelliHippolYte Bareduc' For his oeuwe' qe sense, strikes me as exemplary-but madly exemplary-of the move-menr I em quesdoning ir, .g.d Eo the Iconographie photographique de laSatp ^ge to the lirrt' in which med-lcar figurative invendon' thanks tothat With Baraduc, there was someHe was, nonetheless, a very serious'illness." He w interested above allimitation, or even a PsYchic ePideBaaduc called it contact-endtht sThis Passion for contact can befection of an intravaginal method of ovrian compression (inuoducing

the index and middle finger into theattack, to "grasP the ovary," he said' aPar, thus stopping the "painful statfor hysteria, he began recornmendisuch electriciry and magnetism'euto-suggestion, as well as what heelectrotheraPY and hYPnotism'O.t thi, basis he cooked uP some "cerebral" or "luminous statrcshowers," little mechanized p"t'"tt* for brain illnesses'2a Was he a madscientist, making bachelor achines?-No' he was working in a direc-tion near parallel to the one Charcot had taken but a few years earlier'

Chapter 5

Aura: Risk of Distance

the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This iswhat constirutes their melancholy, incomparable beaury,,ls And Ben_jamin speaks of images enveloped in silence, bearers of ,.ominous dis_cance,"t6 but also, before a by"something that cannot be roknow what her name w ennow is s :ll real and wilr never consenr to be wholly absorbed in,ertl,'l.And this is at the very heart ofmy own quesrion.Tfounds sounds, and dumb_calls an s to what Benjaminspoc of m caecum' the blind


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Chapter 5Moreover, he estabrished quite cordiar if not professionar relacioru withthe most eminenr members of the so_called School of the Salprrire,such Charles Fr.

I I - Why was Baraduc interesred in hysteria?_Because, and in this sense// :.: "0"1":riquet's definition, hysteria is en Ilness of contact, an illness of rmpression.25IVeil, Revelation

In this image, the psychiatrisr Baraduc saw the veil and wind of asrate of mind, graphed on the plate by some other light_rtris is how theaura wes revealed to his eyes for the first time. From that day on, Baaduccould not rest so long as the aura w not fi:lly unveiled.He eriperimentally disringuished the aura om.,elecrric winds,,andother magnetisrru prone to leave arr impression on the plate.26 He ttemptedto describe it according to the form ofits trace. He called it a.,curvedforce," He recogrrized it as the explanation ofeoccult influences, mystical visions, nimbuses, .and so on.27 He idenrified it with Hippocrates

out trajectory thus distance without separetion, thus contact at a dis_tance;2' light of the soul because its intrinsc, shailoweir, anir invsibre-butgraphable!2e (provided that a very sensirive plate is presented to it).Let us rerurn to the veiled print. It was by no means the effect of the

Vented-by virrue, indeed, of the photograpi sclirn_in the case of

' Prri"on : OI). forc itale attire par l'ctat tl'irrneattendrie tl'tru enfant'rreil photograyhique' sans la ruain')(Saos dleotricit, arec aPPa

Figue 35pparition ofthe "vital force"laura) on the photograph ofa child'uken by Dr' Baraduc' IIAe hunaine (7896)'

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invention of hysteria

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