Sartre’s phenomenology of the image in L’Imaginaire includes analytical distinctions between the mind’s comportments towards perceptual objects, images, and signs, which he refers to as different forms of consciousness. Sartre denies any possible convergence between imaging and sign consciousness, arguing that there are essential differences in the way they relate to the notions of resemblance, positionality, and affect. This essay argues against his phenomenological distinctions by stressing the continuity of imaging with sign consciousness: between images and words. In particular, it (...) argues that his understanding of the sign as affectless is questionable and that there is no reason to believe that images and signs cannot elicit similar affects or perform the same functions. Consequently, it is possible to interpret Sartre’s physical images or “analoga” as pictorial signs: his phenomenological descriptions of physical images may indeed be recast in the language of the sign and reformulated as acts of consciousness that involve pictorial signs. (shrink)

This essay analyzes key aspects of Heidegger’s critique of the picture (Bild) based on an objection to world-pictures as well as a negative understanding of two other related concepts: Gestell and Vorstellen (representation). The restrictive frames of world-pictures, Heidegger claims, must be opposed by instances of thinking and language use associated with poiesis. For him, the revelation of the world in poiesis results in a subject-less experience of things and words, akin to the experience of art and literature, and presumably (...) outside the representational hold of pictures. I argue against Heidegger’s repudiation of the picture by underscoring the inescapability of Vorstellen. Heidegger’s world may be seen as a world-picture as well as a particular system of representation that we associate with affective uses of language, i.e., a literary system similar to the one discussed by Wolgang Iser. (shrink)

This essay analyzes key aspects of Heidegger’s critique of the picture based on an objection to world-pictures as well as a negative understanding of two other related concepts: Gestell and Vorstellen. The restrictive frames of world-pictures, Heidegger claims, must be opposed by instances of thinking and language use associated with poiesis. For him, the revelation of the world in poiesis results in a subject-less experience of things and words, akin to the experience of art and literature, and presumably outside the (...) representational hold of pictures. I argue against Heidegger’s repudiation of the picture by underscoring the inescapability of Vorstellen. Heidegger’s world may be seen as a world-picture as well as a particular system of representation that we associate with affective uses of language, i.e., a literary system similar to the one discussed by Wolgang Iser. (shrink)

Seemingly a minor part of L’Imaginaire, Sartre’s literary examples therein are of great significance especially in the way they highlight the implicit yet crucial role of linguistic signs and words in his psychology of the image. While commenting on the act of reading a novel, he views literary words practically as images, endowing them with both an affective and representative status and illustrating the word-image through the figure of a drawing or dessin. The novel’s word-images or dessins solve an important (...) problem in his phenomenology: in order to represent, they do not need an original perception as other, more typical images do. While the dessin suggests the opportune possibility of representation without presentation, it also introduces ambiguity in meaning, running counter to Sartre’s demand that linguistic signification be clear and transparent. Sartre attempts to contain such ambiguity by ascribing the image-like, representative use of words to poetry in What’s Literature? but I argue that the dessin indeed allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the linguistic sign and representation that covers both poetry and prose. (shrink)

The most interesting example of all the physical images that Sartre examines in L’Imaginaire concerns a female performer’s imitation of a male performer. The example is a unique instance in which Sartre deals explicitly with the possibility of ambiguity and hybridity in consciousness. Sartre’s introduction of the sign into the consciousness of imitation ties the perception of Franconay with the imaged Chevalier, but it also leads to the dissemination of the sign across the entire consciousness, a consequence that runs against (...) Sartre’s analytic tendencies. I argue that, despite Sartre’s endeavor to keep the sign separate from perception and the image, the sign is a diffuse property of the entire consciousness of imitation, penetrating and contaminating its every instant. Sartre’s account of Franconay’s imitation contains the germs of the destruction of his clear-cut analytic distinctions, revealing the irreducible hybridity of the sign with both perception and the image. (shrink)