korda objectivity

8/3/2019 Korda Objectivity

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Objectivity

“The history of the various forms of objectivity might be told as how, why, and when

various forms of subjectivity came to be seen as dangerously subjective.” (Daston and

Galison 1992, 82) So begins Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s history of objectivity, in which

they describe a new form of “mechanical objectivity” that emerged in the 19th century in

response to new understandings of the subjective self.

The danger to which mechanical objectivity responded was that of a more active

conception of the self. Daston and Galison address the ways in which this shift affected 19th-

century scientific image making across diverse fields from anatomy and physiology to botany

and astronomy. An active and willful self could not be relied upon to record information from an

external referent in a direct and reliable manner, with the result that manual images, filtered

through the experience and psychology of an author, were considered increasingly

untrustworthy. Achieving a reliable and accurate image appropriate for scientific study required

that the maker’s subjectivity be suppressed, and that his or her manually-produced records be

replaced by mechanical means of representation. In this context, it was the mechanically-

produced photograph that became a guarantor of neutrality. (See Vanscoy on “Guinness.”)

Daston and Galison describe the pursuit of mechanical objectivity as follows: “the fact

that the machines had no choice but to be virtuous struck scientists distrustful of their own

powers of self-discipline as a distinct advantage. Instead of freedom of will, machines offered

freedom from will—from the willful interventions that had come to be seen as the most

dangerous aspects of subjectivity. If the machine was ignorant of theory and incapable of

judgment, so much the better, for theory and judgment were the first steps down the primrose



path to intervention. In its very failings, the machine seemed to embody the negative ideal of

noninterventionist objectivity, with its morality of restraint and prohibition.” (83-84) However,

once divorced from the translation and mediation of the maker, images become increasingly

amenable to individual interpretation. Responsibility for “selection and distillation… now were

removed from the authorial domain and laid squarely in that of the audience.” (110)

The discourse of mechanical objectivity resonated throughout 19th-century Western

culture, with objective images conscripted to attest to the neutrality of an imperial and positivist

worldview. (See Marsh on “Archive 1.”) When the world’s first illustrated newspaper, the

Illustrated London News, was launched in 1842, the editors were unable to reproduce

photographs due to technical and financial constraints. Nevertheless, the newspaper assumed the

discourse of mechanical objectivity, and readers were assured that the illustrations were

transcribed based on the objective evidence of pre-existing photographs. One example,

“Khangaon Cotton Market, West Berar, India” (May 21, 1870), demonstrates both the strengths

and limitations of Daston and Galison’s historical argument. Claims to objectivity – whether

made in the name of science or for any other purpose – always work to suppress what is seen as

“dangerously subjective,” not just in terms of the subjectivity of makers and viewers, but also

in terms of the subjectivity of the image’s subjects. When confronted with any apparently

objective image, we must always ask: whose subjectivity is being suppressed, and why?



The illustration of the “Khangaon Cotton Market” accompanied an article on a railway

constructed to deliver cotton from the market, portrayed in the image, to Bombay, from where it

would be shipped to Europe. Both the article and the illustration are a celebration of British

achievements and control, inviting readers to imagine Indian resources as the rightful property of

the British Empire. The article reports on the event of the railway’s opening as a milestone in the

improvement of the Empire, praising the British administration in India for Khangaon’s “past

and present prosperity.” (538) In the illustration, the market appears prosperous and well-

ordered, with the middle distance of the image filled with a sea of uniform bundles of cotton.

The Indian figures in the foreground add variety to the illustration, and remind viewers of the



exotic character of this otherwise unremarkable scene. They lounge around and appear generally

unproductive, suggesting to readers that the cotton on view is not a product of local Indian labor,

but both the product and property of British industry. This view of India was necessary to the

continuing stability of the British economy, which depended on cotton among other Indian

resources.

Insisting on the illustration’s proximity and fidelity to an actual photograph was a way of

providing evidence of the image’s objectivity. The author of the accompanying article made this

claim in no uncertain terms, announcing that “when the photograph was taken, there were only

400 boojahs or bullock loads of cotton in the market, which is hardly more than half what may

usually be seen there on a day in March. But the Illustration will serve to convey an idea to our

readers of the busy scene which occurs there daily.” The author does not tell us that the

illustration is based on a photograph, but simply inserts this piece of information while also

eliding the differences between the illustration and the photograph that was presumably its

source. He refers to what are now called the indexical properties of photography, explaining

that the photograph could only capture what was actually present in front of the lens; then

proceeds to assume the same properties for the illustration. The smaller amount of cotton thus

attests to the restraint of the illustrator, the objectivity of the image, and the overall truth of the

narrative.

The illustration of the cotton market also demonstrates how the threats posed by

subjectivity potentially multiply when we consider images outside of the domain of Daston and

Galison’s analysis. Objective images of inert scientific specimens required the disavowal of the

images’ creators, who always remained outside the final representations. In contrast, the

“Khangaon Cotton Market,” which includes living subjects, was not only the product of multiple



subjective creators external to the representation, but also included additional subjective

viewpoints recorded within the image. The viewer could be tempted to identify with any one of

the many subject positions available within the image, seeing the scene through the eyes of one

of the Indian traders rather than through the machine-like viewpoint offered up by the image’s

suppressed makers. (See Sturm on “The Portrait’s Look.”) The process of selection and

distillation that is left up to the audience thereby becomes even more precarious. The textual

frame must work harder to situate the reader appropriately, making sure that the subjectivities

within the image do not intervene and compromise the objectivity of the illustration and its

ideology.

Numerous disjunctions between the text and image attest to the author’s efforts to guide

his audience’s view of the Khangaon cotton market. He completely ignores the most prominent

and legible features of the illustration: the Indian people in the foreground. Instead, he repeatedly

refers to European presence, mentioning the courthouse in the distance on the right, ornamented

with classical columns; the European buyers that visit the market daily; and the European factory

buildings, one of which is described as a “prominent object.” Yet the newspaper reader would

have trouble identifying such European influences in the illustration. No European buyers are to

be found, and even the so-called courthouse can be read as a sign of Indian presence, because its

architectural features do not signal anything exclusively European. In this way, the author sought

to direct attention away from the threatening subject positions found within the image.

Significantly, the sole European presence in the illustration, a young boy dressed in

European clothing who leans against the cart-load of cotton on the left-hand side, goes

unremarked in the article. His place in the scene is a curiosity, since European boys were sent

back to Europe by the age of seven in order to ensure proper education and socialization.



Whether this is a European boy, or a child of one European and one Indian parent, his

unsupervised presence among the native population suggests not only an alternative viewpoint,

but also, to contemporary eyes, a lack of British order and control.

The contradictions between the text and image puts into question the seamlessness of the

narrative of British control. The multiple Indian subject positions found within the image, and

particularly that of the unsupervised European boy, may hint to the reader that India is not just a

sterile resource to be mined for British advantage, but that it is filled with Indian people, each

with their own subjective point of view, who will inevitably put pressure on the culture and

ethnicity of the English nation and cause substantive changes to the social order from the

periphery. To contain these unmediated subject positions that enter the objective image, the

author of the article attempts to mediate the viewer’s interpretation through the text. The

“Khangaon Cotton Market” therefore not only stands as an example of mechanical objectivity,

but also represents the power of the image to subvert textual interpellation – if the reader is

prepared to look beyond the frame. (See Gordon on “Frame.”)

Andrea Korda

korda objectivity

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