Published in: "Un-Splitting the Subject/Object: Laurie Anderson's Phenomenology of Perception." Phenomenology and Popular Culture. Ed. Michael Carroll. (currently seeking a publisher).
One of Laurie Anderson's favorite performance strategies is to question boundaries, whether between art and culture, music and dance, or the musician and her instrument. One of these boundaries, that between subject and object, stems in part from her study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Merleau-Ponty argues that perception operates such that everything perceived is interpreted as objects (even the perceiver's own body). At the same time, the perceiver considers him or herself as different from his or her perceptions, as somehow more-than-object, or as a subject. Furthermore, the mechanism of desire suggests that (at least some of) the perceived objects are also more-than-objects. In fact all objects, Merleau-Ponty claims, have qualities of subjects, and vice versa; all are subject/objects. Anderson develops this idea in her art through self-objectification (wearing masks or goggles, or transforming her head or her body into a musical instrument), and by giving subject qualities to objects (such as making her violin 'speak' human language).
One problem of perception, Merleau-Ponty's theory implies, might occur when a subject/object refuses to recognize the subject qualities of another subject/object. At the same time, a way out of this problem seems to lie in the objectified subject/object reasserting its subjectivity. This is Anderson's strategy in "Object/Objection/Objectivity," a series of photographs Anderson took of men who gave her 'catcalls' on the street. Anderson's documentation of the photos shows she planned to use the camera to counter the men's aggressiveness. This work, however, suggests Anderson is interested in more than a simple gender reversal. She reveals that she was motivated to make these photos when she was objectified by a woman. Furthermore, she returns a significant degree of subjectivity to the objectified men by recording their reactions to her photographing them. This work (along with the videos featuring her male 'clone'), in light of Merleau-Ponty's theorizations, suggests that objectification of humans is more than just a gender problem.
I want to suggest Merleau-Ponty's theorization of the subject/object as a useful method of analyzing the problem of human (both male and female) objectification. This theorization grounds its analysis in intersubjective relations rather than in a relation between humans and a non-human, inaccessible gaze (a la Lacan). Simultaneously, I want to reflect on my suggestion as, perhaps, an instance of my objectification of Anderson. I have taken her (work) as the 'object' of my study, claiming that her work 'embodies' (like an object?) the theories (a mental and therefore 'subject' quality?) of a male philosopher. Furthermore, I want to recognize that while Anderson's work may indeed suggest that both males and females may suffer the experience of objectification, it further suggests that in our culture women are more frequently objectified than men are.
In other words, I want to offer Merleau-Ponty as a tool for theorizing, while simultaneously pointing out his limitations.
Référence: http://minerva.pom.devry.edu/~smcbride/abstract/and-phen.htm