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Chapter 1: Unfolding the Question: An Excentric History
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cHapter 1 unfoldIng The QuesTIon: an excenTrIc hIsTory as soon as one begins to speak about an image, one is entangled in complications. this is the case no matter how one approaches the image: critically, theoretically, appraisingly, admiringly, confusedly—it does not matter, since the problem is rooted in the difference between words and images. Philosophy is no exception and does not escape these complications . Quite the contrary, philosophy seems to have a special difficulty in confronting the image, since philosophy lives in and is oriented to and by the logos, by words, and since it tends to take the legitimacy of this orientation as self-evident. the authority of the logos defines the very idea of philosophy and, since it is invariably assumed that the logos cannot be grasped by an image, the superiority of the logos over the image also belongs to this definition of philosophy. the logos is understood, but never seen. even if there is a sort of “seeing” involved in philosophy, this “look” to what we call the “idea” is not the same as the look to the image. Consequently, if one is self-conscious, if one is honest, then one must hesitate before this difference between the image and the word so that once one raises the question of the image from the perspective of philosophy, the peculiar presuppositions that govern and define the project of philosophy themselves come into question . the question of the image recoils back upon philosophy and its own presumptions. once this happens, one learns that one needs to be careful about presuming that words and images translate into one another so that one can indeed speak of images and still do justice to them such that the nature of the image shines through the words. despite this need for hesitation and self-reflection that should emerge right from the outset of any philosophical engagement with the question of the image, what is striking is just how easily the differences between words and images are effaced, how readily we are persuaded of the gifts of language and the power of language to articulate something true in what is said. this means that the first task of any effort to speak of images is to turn language back upon itself such that its own character begins to become a question. in order to unfoldIng tHe QuestIon | 13 begin, it is necessary to understand that the question of the image is not simply a question for philosophy but rather a question that goes straight to the heart of the very possibility and idea of philosophy. and yet, the “blindness ” of language before itself remains its first and foremost trait: language is always poorest at speaking and articulating itself. this “blindness” of language, this poverty of its own nature, is what the encounter with the image can bring to light. one of the most telling ways in which we can understand what this poverty of language means is found in the way that the word conceals within itself the enigma of the image. insofar as it can be written—one might even argue that it needs to be written—the word exposes its own concealed iconographic nature. it is no accident that the question of writing, of script, is almost entirely absent from the history of philosophical reflections upon both word and image. Philosophy is a discourse wedded to the ideality of language, that is, to its capacity for abstraction and concept-formation. as such, it has an inherent tendency to suppress the iconographic element of the word in which the ideality of language is tethered to the concretion of the image. hegel calls the kinship of the word and ideality upon which philosophy is founded the “divine nature” of language.1 Plato, emphasizing the other side of this philosophical coin, calls writing “the corpse of a thought”2 and so warns against the peculiar death that awaits thinking once it is translated into script. of course, Plato’s hesitations about writing and his rejection of painting as a way in which we learn something of the world both emerge out of this impulse to suppress the inscription of this iconographic potential of the word. the legacy of Plato is, in this case as in so many others, strong: though the history of philosophy is a history of written texts, there has been virtually no effort to confront the iconographic character of the language of those texts. But without writing, without that translation...