Three Lectures on the Rhetoric of the Image

 

Faculty of Humanities, Primorska University, Koper / Capodistria

May, 2008

 

This page is intended principally for students attending the lectures and participating in the seminars in Koper in May, 2008. It may be used in a collaborative fashion: for posting questions, for submitting papers and paper topics, for bibliographical references, and for related dialogues.

 

The basic outline of the lectures, along with readings and bibliograhical information, is posted below.  (This on line, pre-lecture outline and forum replaces the older web page, which can nonetheless still be consulted here.)  The principal contents of that page are also reproduced below:

 

General Description and Outline

These lectures will concentrate on the rhetoric of the image in three vastly different historical contexts, all crucial to the Western tradition:  Classical Antiquity, the Early Modern age, and the contemporary, post-modern moment.  With reference to Classical Antiquity, we will concentrate on presuppositions and misconceptions regarding the relationship between image and truth in Plato.  In the Early Modern Age we will focus on the establishment of a regime of the image through the rhetoric and techniques of artificial perspective.  And in the contemporary moment we will concentrate on the spectacle as one example of the image within mass culture.  An optional fourth set of readings on “Image and Text” is suggested for students who may wish independently to explore those issues.

 

Two further introductory points:  that the concentration will be on the rhetoric of the image, which is to say that the lectures, discussion, and analysis are intended to be text-based.  This is because the written record of dominant ideas and controversies about the image is richly reflected in texts of major importance.  (We will nonetheless leave room for questions about the relationship between text-based arguments and the practice of image-making in various historical moments.)  A text-based approach means that students must come prepared for the lectures, having read and thought about the materials well in advance.  These are not uncomplicated texts.  The second is that I will be spending a considerable amount of time talking about the rhetoric of the image in pre-modern (and therefore pre post-modern) cultures.  Though I will be staying within the framework of the West, I will not be wholly within the framework of the modern/postmodern.  This means that students will have to engage concepts, examples, and arguments through a historico-conceptual lens that predates conemporary experience.  I recognize that there is intense interest in the image as it is conceived now, in the postmodern moment, but we do well to frame those interests in light of a historical understanding.  Among other things, this requires an engagement with the fundamental question of the relationship between image and truth.

 

 

Some Logistics

As a point of departure for participation, students are expected to have read all the indicated materials prior to each meeting.  The lectures are intended to lead to active engagement and dialogue.  Eaach lecture will include an overview of the main issues and texts, a treatment of the salient points, and a commentary on the relationships between the selected texts and the overarching topics of the lectures.  We will then proceed to an open discussion and commentary of the texts and related issues.  Finally, students will then be asked to present their research topics and papers, with the expectation that they will relate in some direct way to the lectures and readings.  Each student presentation should be at least 30 min. and should be directly related to the topic of the seminar.  Papers can be on any topic that is aligned with the topic of the lectures.  Visual and other non-textual materials are welcome, though presentations must be coordinated with the technical staff in advance.  

 

 

Requirements 

Students are required to attend all sessions and to bring the texts for reference.  The expectation is of an engaged dialogue around the topics of the lectures.  The "keywords" indicated below are a good place to begin in advance with this.  Studentgs shoulkd come prepared with something to say about these.  (The Keywords can be taken as mini "assignments" for all.)  The creaton of a dynamic envi1ronment will depend on students being ready to speak on these topics in the connest of the seminars following the lectures. 

Papers are due, in electronic form posted on the "papers" section of this page either in MS Word, WordPerfect or .rtf file format, no later than July 1, 2008.

 

 

Outline of Lectures and and Readings 

The lectures will be designed to draw out three large themes.   Bear in mind that the overall subject is the rhetoric of the image (in rough terms, both how we talk about images and how our conception of images inform the way we construct questions sof truth andd value) in three distinct historico-philosophical moments:  classical antiquity, the early modern age, and the contemporary world.

 

The first constellation of themes revolves around the relationship beteen image and truth.  With this is the question of  true and false images and of iconoclasm as the attempt to break through the realm of images altogether.   Especially in relation to Plato, we can see the formation of philosophy as a discourse that has a paradoxical and sometimes contradictory relationship to images.  The self-identity of philosophy is predicated not so much on the suppression of images as on the insight into the truth of images.

Keywords:  Image, idea, icon, iconoclasm, eikastic, phantasm (and phantasmatics), intuition, philosophy (the philosopher), sophism (the sophist), mimesis.

Thesis:  The image as a semblance of the truth.

 

The second constellation revolves around the construction of the metaphysical notion of a world in relation to the capacity to transform it into a "picture."  In the early modern age there is a confluence between the development of single-point, "artificial" perspective and depth of field, and the perspective on truth associated with the subjective "ego."  Artifical perspective is one way of responding to the "problem" of infinity presented by Cusanus.  We will discuss this as well as the theoretical and technical importance of mathematial (geometrical) construction.  We will approach this metaphysics and this practice as "naturalizing" perspectice and, eventually, as enabling the processes of commodification and objectification.

Keywords:  perspective, cogito, metaphysics, representation, infinity, modernity, construction, iconoclasm, natural attitude, composition, historia

Thesis:  The image as world-representation.

 

The third constellation revolves around (a) the development of new image-making techniques (photography and cinema) and (b) the transformation of the world into a form of "spectacle."  These are among the defining features of late modernity and the beginning of the post-modern age (also:  the age of the simulacrum).  In the world of the spectacle the image is not static.  It circulates.  And that process of circulation in turn has a velocity that is subject to change.  The features of the society of the spectacle are associated with the world of globalized, late-capitalist production, a world in which desire is not so much for the Real, but for the image "itself."  This last constellation suggests some themes that we shall link back through to the first constellation of ideas:  spectacle as one root of theoria in classical antiquity; spectacle as the product of detached observation in the early modern age; and spectacle as the site of image-formation in the age of mass culture.

Keywords:  spectacle, apparatus, aura, production, reproduction, commodity, circulation, simulacrum, appearance, desire

Thesis:  The image as what is left when nature is gone for good.

 

 

I. Image and Iconoclasm

Readings

W. J. T. Mitchell, “What is an Image?” from Iconology (pdf)

Plato Republic Books 3, 6, 7, and 10 (pdf)

Plato, Sophist (pdf)

Stanley Rosen, from Plato’s Sophist, ch. 7, 10 (pdf)

 

II.  The Age of the World as Picture

Readings

L-B Alberti, On Painting

Heidegger “The Age of the World View” (pdf)

Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting (concentrate on chapters 1, 2, 6 , and Epilogue)

Karsten Harries, from Infinity and Perspective ( 2 chapters, in pdf)

 

III. Image, Ideology, and Spectacle

Readings

W J T Mitchell, “Image and Ideology” from Iconology (pdf)

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (pdf)

Jean-Louis Baudry, “The Apparatus” (pdf)

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (also available digitally by clicking here)

Recommended:  Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

 

IV. (Optional)  Image and Text

Lessing, Laocoön

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

W.J.T. Mitchell, “Space and Time” from Iconology (pdf)