Images and mediation

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question of mediation via images. Its point of departure is the work of Kant on the mediation of human reality by the faculty of reason, including imagination and the forms of space and time, as well as the categories of the understanding, all of which combine to render an intelligible, spatiotemporal world, as opposed to the inaccessible realm of ‘things-in-themselves’. This is followed by a scrutiny of Gombrich’s claim, that artistic schemata comprise an elaboration, by the artist, on the commonly human, rational structuring of the manifold of experience, according to Kant. In other words, artworks mediate the world in a different, more nuanced manner than reason does in the ordinary course of events – something intelligible in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of ‘style’ as ‘coherent deformation’. With the work of Lacan on the image one comes across an intimation of something paradoxical at the heart of the image, as shown in the infant’s identification with its own mirror-image as ‘itself’, notwithstanding the fact that it is a ‘misrecognition’, for Lacan, and therefore mediates identity as a fictional construct. The exploration of images in relation to mediation culminates in Nancy’s radical phenomenology of the image, which uncovers it as being distinct from, and simultaneously intimately conjoined with, the thing in terms of resemblance. This paradoxical status of the image explains why such diametrically opposed interpretations of the image can exist, ranging from conventional representationalist theories of mediation, to Baudrillard’s denial of mediation with his notion of ‘hyperreality’.

Hierdie artikel fokus op die vraag na bemiddeling via beelde. Met Kant se werk oor die bemiddeling van ‘n menslike werklikheid (in plaas van die ‘dinge-in-sigself’) in terme van rede (insluitend verbeelding en die vorme van ruimte en tyd, asook die verstandskategorieë) as uitgangspunt, word aangetoon hoe Gombrich daarop uitbrei met sy opvatting van ‘kuns-skemata’, waarmee kunstenaars ‘n alternatiewe strukturering van die gemeenskaplik-menslike werklikheid teweegbring. Hierdie nuansering van die gegewe werklikheid via kuns kan ook aan die hand van Merleau-Ponty se begrip van ‘styl’ as ‘samehangende vervorming’ verstaan word. Lacan voeg egter ‘n moment van paradoks hierby waar hy die spieëlbeeld, waardeur die kind ‘sigself herken’, as fiktiewe bemiddeling van subjektiewe identiteit blootlê – ‘n insig wat die weg voorberei op Nancy se radikale fenomenologie van die beeld. Laasgenoemde toon aan dat die kenmerkende eienskap van die beeld daarin bestaan dat dit duidelik onderskeibaar of afsonderlik is in verhouding met die ding, maar dat dit terselfdertyd intiem daarmee vervleg is in terme van ooreenkoms. Hierdie paradoksale status van die beeld verklaar waarom soveel teenoorgestelde interpretasies van die beeld kan bestaan, vanaf konvensionele representasionalistiese bemiddelingsteorieë tot die ontkenning van bemiddeling in Baudrillard se idee van ‘hiperrealiteit’.