Hopefully, all those who are interested in participating in the online reading of _Le destin de l'image_/_The future of the Image_, have managed to get their hands on a copy. As I've mentioned before, I'm working from the French Edition, which will present a few problems (pagination, and translation). I'll quote everythign in the original, and then offer a quick translation; where my translations wildly diverge from the english edition, perhaps folks could flag this, and we could figure out f I'm just translating badly, or if there's a point in the english verions that's wonky. I'll cite both the French edition's pagination, and the section + paragraph number in order to ensure that we're all roughly on the same page.
So, here goes my opening salvo. In what follows, I'll take up the first subsection of the first Chapter (Fr. pp. 9-11, "The fate [or, i guess according to the english version, Future] of the image" to "From one regime of Imaging to another"). Anyway, in these three sections Ranciere attempts to characterize the notion of 'image' in a manner that neither falls into the contemporary 'traps' of representationality-cum-resemblance nor reduces the notion of 'image' to a technical, material, mode of presentation. An image, to pull out a distinction that's very much alive, -- at least for me, since I'm more familiar with German philosophy -- is not to be characterized as either Vorstellung (i.e. as a form of [re]presentation which can be subsumed by our conceptual, linguistic capactities -- think of Kant here: intuitions are subsumed by concepts in the form of propositional judgments; intuitions are roughly Vorstellungen) or Darstellung (i.e. a concrete, material presentation of content which is not subsumable by concepts). In fact, Ranciere will claim that the image is precisely that which skirts, or plays within this 'ecart' (gap, unbridgeable break or canyon) between the "sayable" ( i.e. representable in french, 'dicible,' perhaps awkwardly translated as 'articulable') and the "visible" (in French, "visible," perhaps translated as 'seeable'). The sayable and the visible, the representational and the presentational, thus become two of the four coordinates needed to situate Ranciere's discussion. So, what is the other pair? It would seem to be nothing less than the relationship between art and non-art. That is, between two modes of presentation, which are sayable or visible. But this axis remains implicit in his discussion at this point and it may be better simply to bear it in mind, until it becomes thematic. For now, let's concentrate on how Ranciere teases out his notion of image, which is neither strictly sayable nor strictly visible, and how this conception stands in sharp contrast to our typical conceptions of the image. Ranciere begins his discussion by noting two bad approaches to the notion of the image: "il n'y a plus de realite mais seulement des images ou, a l'inverse, qu'il n'y a desormais plus des images mais seulement une realite se representant incessement a elle-meme" [there is no longer a reality, but only images, or, conversely, that there no longer are images, but only a reality, which incessentently represents itself to itself] (Fr p. 9; 1st section, 2 para). although his formulation sounds so simplistic to be utterly wrong, Ranciere's claim characterizes two approaches which I'm sure e're all familiar with. (1) captures folks like Beaudrillard and the various appropriations of Lacanian Pyschoanalysis (e.g. the former's theory of Simulacra, and 'representation overtaking the real,' etc. and the latter's claim that 'The Real' is a noumenon-like posit subtending the symbolic functions of subjectivity -- there is no Real, only the empirically valid presentations of things, which can be accounted for through the psychological mechanisms of an absolute or transcendental subject); (2) captures folks like Goodman, who take images to be some kind of epistemological index Images create the world, since it is through them that we express our understanding of it. Moreover, whereas (1) falls within the Vorstellung-camp of the image (with the further stipulation that reality is noumenal, non-existent and unknowable, and hence all we have are represenations), what is sayable," (2) falls within the Darstellung-camp: reality is made through images, which refer to other things, or express universal properties, etc. Ranciere's quick demonstration that (1) implies (2) and (2) implies (1) is thus a reductio ad absurdum of the two prevalent schools of thought, which stem from -- indeed are embodied by -- Kantian philosophy. (1) there are only images, and no reality (2) there is only reality and no images. (think of this as a reformulation of Kant's dictum, "Transcendentally ideal, empirically real"). But what accounts for this stance? how is noumenon to be separated form phenomenon? Or, to reformulate, how is the artistic image to be separated from the mundane image, the commercial image, how is the Film to be separated from the Gameshow? If we are to show that this Kantian stance is false, we need to identify a difference, something that shows the image, whatever it might be, to be the other of reality. But what is the status of this notion of "Other"? The typical, and useless, answer is to say that what differentiates the (artistic) image from reality is its mode of production. The former has a self-contained essence, something that is unique to its mode of production, something valuable in-itself. Again, this characterization might seem facile, but notice that it bears a rather strong likeness to Greenberg's claims concerning the essence of painting. Ranciere illustrates the meaninglessness of such a characterization by appeal to the difference between film and television. There's nothing essentially different between the technical means of producing a game show and the technical means of producing a film. As Ranciere puts it, "Il se fait passer pour plus qu'une tautolgie en identifiant, par le jeu rhetorique des propositions independent telescopees, les propriete des universaux avec les caracteristiques d'un dispositif technique. Mais les proprietes techniques d'un tube cathodique sont une chose, les proprietes estetiques des images que nous voyons sure l'ecran en sont une autre" [He exchanges this tautology for something something more valuable by identifying, through a rhetorical play of telescoped and independent propositions, universal properties with the characteristics of technical device] (Fr. p 10, 1st section, 4th para. NB: there's a very nice allusion to monetary exchange in the French: propriete also means something like household estate, and ownership; disposotif can also be applied to coin-money; so by buying the tautology, you're exchanging the homeland of truth, we might say, for the technical/mechanical coin of appearances). So, in this first section of a few pages, we've seen that the Kantian paradigm is, as it were, on trial, and that neither isolated attitude towards the image (i.e. either there's only images, or there's no images) gets us anywhere. We've also seen that a n emphasis on the technical proprieties of a medium will not generate an essence either. Simply put, technical elements do not exhaust the aesthetic concerns.
