On Images, Visual Culture, Memory and the Play without a Script

Matthias Smalbrugge

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501358883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Matthias Smalbrugge compares modern images to plays without a script: while they appear to refer to a deeper identity or reality, it is ultimately the image itself that truly matters. He argues that our modern society of images is the product of a destructive tendency in the Christian notion of the image in general, and Augustine of Hippo's in particular. This insight enables him to decode our current 'scripts' of image. As we live in an increasingly visual culture, we are constantly confronted with images that seem to exist without a deeper identity or reality – but did this referential character really get lost over time? Smalbrugge first explores the roots of the modern image by analysing imagery, what it represents, and its moral state within the framework of Platonic philosophy. He then moves to the Augustinian heritage, in particular the Soliloquies, the Confessions and the Trinity, where he finds valuable insights into images and memory. He explores within the trinitarian framework the crossroads of a theology of grace and a theology based on Neoplatonic views. Smalbrugge ultimately answers two questions: what happened to the referential character of the image, and can it be recovered?

1

Introduction: The cultural predominance of the image and its multilayered nature

Imagine! Pronounce this simple word and the effect on your interlocutor will be surprising. First, he will be eager to know what he must imagine. Although he does not know what he will have to imagine, his imagination will already be ahead of his thinking, imagining what he should possibly have to image. Then, once you have continued and said ‘Imagine a car’, this imagined car will cause an explosion of cars: small ones, red ones, modern ones and second-hand ones. We will not dwell any further on cars, but the word ‘imagine’ has many layers we are hardly aware of. It is on these layers that we will focus first. Let us imagine ourselves watching an election debate on television. Looking at our screen, we watch politicians discussing problems as well as the solutions they will apply once they are elected. Looking at them, we try to determine their underlying vision and how they might act, negotiate and compromise in the near future. We listen attentively because what they discuss is nothing else than our world, our society and our lives. At the same time, however, it is of course no less their world and their society. In fact, these politicians are speaking about our common world, the reality we share. We hear them constructing and reconstructing this common reality as if reality is something one could change and mould as one could wax models, something that must befit one’s expectations. What we are watching, therefore, is a huge and endless construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of our common reality. It is an avalanche of images,¹ only because a journalist asks about, for instance the National Health Service (NHS). This comes down to evoking the inner structure of ‘imagine’.

Yet there is more to our common reality than this construction and reconstruction. Admittedly, the politicians we are looking at seek to picture the actual reality as well as the future one they intend to realize, using various images. However, it is not only the outside world of which they speak. They are also speaking about themselves, even if it is not done explicitly, evoking once again a reality that is composed of images. Is it not true that when one speaks about the future society one wants to construct, one also speaks of the man who will realize it all? Indeed, one speaks about oneself. Therefore, we also hear these politicians constructing images of themselves, what they want to be and what they will be once they have entered office and are in charge. However, both elements – the image of what they currently are and the image of what they want to be – are images destined to show us how they want to be seen by the public.² What we are looking at is politicians practising self-fashioning in order to achieve certain goals.³ The images they present are not meant to give us a precise rendering of reality; on the contrary, they only represent certain pictures of reality, allowing us to ‘model’ our world and present it as a flexible one. These images, therefore, are meant to meet certain expectations, convictions, hopes and fears. Hence, although we were aware of it unconsciously, we come to realize that the so-called actual reality these politicians are speaking of is not something objective, something that exists outside them, but rather a multitude of concepts, flexible images, created according to a specific goal. Likewise, this ‘imaginary’ world in turn produces new images, produced by the first images evoked. An image may seem an enchanting one and new images will easily come forth. It may also be a frightening image, yet it will produce no fewer new images. Many reactions are possible and, depending on whether we feel aroused, attracted or disgusted by the images conjured, different ones will follow. Images thus act as instruments used to bridge the gap between language, thinking and reality.⁴ They allow us to express our thoughts without moulding them too strictly into a pattern of words and phrases. They allow our thoughts to look for the right words. A perfect example of such flexibility is Exercices de style by Raymond Queneau,⁵ in which the author pictures a man he met in a bus in Paris. Depending on whether the author considers this an aristocrat or a parvenu, images will pop up that will produce other images. In the end, there will be ninety-nine stories of this incidental meeting where words create images and images create words. Thus, in the case of the politicians, the visual elements of a broadcast programme perfectly reflect the images evoked by words. Look at this politician, hear him speak and realize that the images he uses can make the difference. Either we believe him, or we do not.⁶ We believe him because of the strength of certain images – nothing less, nothing more.

What we discover is a world that seemingly only exists of images – images of politicians and images of the world that surrounds us – and we might even wonder whether there exists something we could call reality. Alternatively, is there only the image, a performative reality, a performative identity? Imagine if there were only images. Would there be anything behind them, and where would the series of images stop? When I imagine images, I imagine myself imaging images, and so on; yet the chain cannot be infinite. Logically speaking, an image must be the image of something that is not an image. Otherwise, the image would become the original and it would represent, at an ontological level, a very different being. The image, to remain an image at an ontological level, must obey its nature; that is, it must reflect a reality. This reality, however, is not graspable without it being caught in images that allow us to make such a reality visible, understandable and manageable. It is the image that points at the reality and that allows us to speak of it. There is no reality without images, and therefore, images can be considered the cultural structures we use to reveal what we call ‘reality’. These images may be dreams, visions, political programmes, nightmares, fears and hopes; they are the elements that allow us to look at ourselves, the outer world, our neighbours, our society, our past and our present. Yet as cultural structures, they are paradoxical. They are not reality; however, to get in touch with reality, we cannot do without them. They must be considered the narrative structures we use to understand the world around us.

Now, what interests me is the image as a concept, a cultural structure we meet in different settings. The narratives, in the widest sense of the word, that we use. This book, therefore, intends to concentrate on the images we create of our lives, of our convictions, beliefs, loves and professions. I do so by focusing mainly on St Augustine, who developed a theory of image, although this theory functions itself as an image and a multilayered one. What struck me most is that image is perhaps no longer an element pointing at the reality and henceforth referential;⁷ perhaps today it rather refers to itself, and the classical distinction at the ontological level between image and original seems to have been abandoned. However, this can only be, at this very early stage of the book, a hypothesis, and to make it plausible, much work remains to be done. Suffice it to think, at a conceptual level, of the analysis of narrative structures such as mimesis, imitation, reflection and representation.⁸ Therefore, I first attempt to analyse in more detail the multilayered nature of the image. Next, I turn to Plato and his idea on images and then the main part of this book deals with the Augustinian concept of image. Finally, the conclusion brings us back to modern times.

The first narrative on image: Echo and Narcissus

This time, imagine yourself not watching a debate on television but taking a selfie. No type of photo is popular in our era as the selfie. Since smartphones offer these possibilities of portraying ourselves, we seem to be irresistibly attracted by this continuous mirroring of ourselves. This mirroring offers the possibility not only to have a real mirror in front of you but also to keep the image for as long as you want. A traditional mirror loses the image it reflects once the person in front of it has stepped away, and this has definitely changed. The ‘mirror’ can preserve the image a person was just looking at, and this image can even be ‘corrected’ in the sense one wants to adjust it. The selfie, once it has been photoshopped, is like a mirror storing your image even if you are no longer in front of it. Finally, a possibility exists to keep the ideal image in the mirror and to love it – love it until the next selfie shows you even a better image. Moreover, this image is one you can show to others, and hence, it is a short story about yourself. What, then, is this story you are telling about yourself? How do you relate to the image you pictured?

This question is magnificently treated in the myth of Echo and Narcissus, related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses,⁹ though one might perhaps not immediately link this myth to the question of images and selfies.¹⁰ However, upon closer examination, we can see that Echo ultimately became nothing less than the eternal image of Narcissus, and perhaps also the inverse, implying that they mirror each other. The story is a well-known one: Echo is a nymph who was punished by Hera for covering up the escapades of Zeus.¹¹ She is no longer capable of speaking like all other human and divine creatures; she can only repeat what she has heard – and even that only imperfectly; that is, she can only repeat the last words of what was said. Alas, she falls in love with Narcissus, a beautiful young man who is only interested in hunting. He is totally uninterested in women and even feels frightened by them. Therefore, once he becomes aware of Echo’s love for him, his only desire is to flee, to flee as far and as soon as he can; however, the more Narcissus flees, the more Echo follows him and the more frightened he becomes. Once Echo becomes aware of the fact that he does not love her and that he constantly flees from her, she becomes a cry of despair, an emptied body, petrified, still only capable of repeating what she hears. Indeed, at the very moment that Narcissus cries out to his comrades ‘let’s go together’, she repeats the last word ‘together’, defining exactly what an image is: a reflection of an original that has no means to exist individually. The original and image, they must ‘go together’.¹² At the same time, being capable of only repeating what she has heard imperfectly, Echo shows that the image is not a kind of perfect reflection of reality, but rather that it has its own dynamics and structure. For example, there is a gender aspect that strikes the reader. We are looking at a woman repeating the mere words of a man and being completely dependent on what he says. Indeed, Echo is completely dependent, but this striking dependency does not impede her from reflecting a gender that is the opposite of her own. Therefore, what she reveals is that identity is something fluent, though at the same time bound by fixed structures. On the one hand, she is capable of reflecting the opposite gender, whereas on the other hand, she must stick to his words. Indeed, original and image go together, but although they create a certain identity, this will always be a different one. Image and original create a performative identity. This might be characterized as a positive element in the story, yet there is also a less positive element. Echo also reveals that an image can become something void, a void that is not only created by the dependency already noticed, but also by the absence of a living relationship that must exist between the original and the image. Otherwise, the image becomes a petrified element that can only serve as a fixed identity with some essentialist traits. Hence, it is clear that there is also a destructive element in the relationship between reality and image. In other words, because Echo’s only desire consists of cleaving to Narcissus, she loses the flexible character of her own identity and ends up as a mere petrified echo of her beloved one.

There is yet more to be attentive to. Narcissus from his side rejects Echo without any hesitation. It is fear that drives him without knowing what this fear is about. Yet one might reasonably suppose it is the fear of being captured and swallowed by Echo, who can only imperfectly reflect his being. It is the mere symbiosis he fears, as he does not want to be identified with an image that in no way reinforces his identity but only weakens it. Certainly, it is not identification in itself he rejects – he would love such a symbiosis, but only if the image he is looking for increases his self-confidence. This implies that he is fleeing reality and only looking for some sort of ideal that never will come true. Echo represents, so to speak, the reality principle confronting Narcissus with the scattered structure of a real identity. That, however, is very far from what Narcissus longs for. What he is longing for is the ideal image of himself: an image that would be nothing else than repetition and that could be completely identified with the original, thus enhancing the original. In that case, however, is there still an image? Or is this particular longing a longing for an original that is deeply unsatisfied, and that therefore only strives towards an image that would calm its fear by showing a more or less perfect image? If that were true, Narcissus would be characterized by a desire that does not speak its name nor reveal its depth, but that might indeed swallow him. He could be drowning in this unknown desire. In the end, this is what happens to Narcissus, but we are not yet there. Now, having escaped from Echo, he rests beside a pond and suddenly discovers a beautiful image in the pond looking back at him. The effect is an astonishing one: he falls in love with the image. However, when he reaches out to touch this miraculous image, it vanishes as soon as he touches the water. He does not understand what is happening. The beloved one also seems in love with him, as is clearly shown by his gestures and movements. If Narcissus stretches out his arms, the other repeats the movements exactly. Yet although he also seems to be in love with Narcissus, he flees at the moment of embrace. Once the water is touched, he is gone. He echoes all Narcissus does, but this time the roles are reversed. It is no longer Narcissus who flees, but rather this enigmatic image, this unseizable second Echo. Unexpectedly, the author warns him against the fallacy of the image: ‘Why are you trying to capture fugitive reflections? These are only shadows of an image that reflects; it has nothing of itself, it comes with you and stays with you.’¹³ Notwithstanding this warning, Narcissus only slowly comes to realize, in the confrontation with his own image, that he has fallen in love with himself and, to a certain extent, he did not know who he was.¹⁴ Now, though, he does; he realizes that he is looking at an image of himself, but unfortunately he cannot reach himself. This is despite his image being nothing less than the exact reflection of the original, which...