HomeBetween philosophy and psychoanalysis: the image
Between philosophy and psychoanalysis: the image
Entre philosophie et psychanalyse : l’image
Published on Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Abstract
Le développement contemporain d’une civilisation de l’image compris comme développement d’une civilisation de la technique, prend une signification toute particulière aujourd’hui, alors que l’essor des technologies numériques et maintenant de l’intelligence artificielle donne au simulacre consistance matérielle et technique, et réciproquement à l’image une dimension virtuelle, voire spectrale, décisive. Qu’entend-on alors exactement par image ? La notion même de civilisation de l’image, du point de vue de l’analyse des médias et des intermédialités, comme du point de vue psychanalytique de l’analyse du sujet et de son rapport au monde, comme dans la prise en compte phénoménologique de l’empreinte que le monde laisse en nous, suppose que l’image aurait pris la place de quelque chose, ou aurait occupé un territoire qui ne lui était pasprimitivement dévolu. C’est cette place, ce territoire, que ce numéro de la revue Rubriques se propose d’aborder.
Announcement
Guest Editor
Nicolas Robert, Aix-Marseille University, LPCPP
Scientific Committee
- Jacopo Bodini, Collège des Bernardins
- Anna Caterina Dalmasso. University of Milan
- Nicolas Guérin, Aix-Marseille University.
- Laetitia Petit, Aix-Marseille University.
- Jean-Jacques Rassial. Aix-Marseille University
Argument
The presence of the image in psychoanalytic theory
The Freudian revolution in psychoanalysis is generally thought of as establishing the primacy of discourse over all other forms of representation: it is through discourse that the patient communicates with the analyst, it is through discourse that something of the unconscious is revealed during analysis, and it is to a grammar and therefore a discourse of the unconscious that analysis refers. And yet, whether as an object (pictorial, graphic,material) to which it applies its investigation, as a notion and register (imaginary, specular, scopic) from which it conceives its metapsychology, or as a discipline (artistic, aesthetic) possessing knowledge that it questions, psychoanalysis has never ceased to be interested in the field of the visible and its productions. Moreover, the insistent presence of the image in both Freudian and Lacanian metapsychology is almost as insistent as that of language and speech, despite the significant impact of structural linguistics on Jacques Lacan's thinking. It enabled Freud to think about the unconscious in terms of both its manifestations and its structuring; it runs through the thinking of Jacques Lacan, for whom the scopic constitutes an essential leverin his exploration of the nature of the unconscious, the sexual and the subject.
Phenomenology of the image and rehabilitation of the simulacrum
The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899. At the same time, "Bergson wrote Matière et mémoire in 1896: it was the diagnosis of a crisis in psychology", which Bergson intended to resolve through the discovery of what Deleuze would call the "image-movement" (Deleuze, 1983, p. 7). Phenomenology, which took off at the same time as psychoanalysis, rethought the link between logos, traditionally a guarantee of rationality and method, and the deceptive illusion of images, always suspected of being deceptive in appearance. Indeed, for Greek philosophy, the image was both εἰκὼν, material image, picture, εἴδωλον, simulacrum, phantom, εἶδος, form, appearance and ἰδέα, idea, with a circulation of meaning between the terms. Plato's position on the image is not easy to pin down: while Socrates, in the Gorgias, fights the trap of language set by the sophists against the search for truth, and promotes the idea, in The Republic, as visual contemplation, it is as an overcoming of the simulacra of the cave, i.e., one form of image replaces another (Deleuze, 1969, p. 296). Absolutely rejected in the first Plato, the simulacrum fascinates in The Sophist, and plays an essential role in the reasoning by division through which the last Plato introduces a revolutionary logic of difference and repetition: a similar logic can be observed in Lucretius,based on the ballet of simulacra generated by the clinamen.
In contemporary philosophy, there is a whole movement to rehabilitate the simulacrum, starting with the rapprochement initiated by Merleau-Ponty with psychoanalysis: his commentary on Lacan's mirror stage highlights the articulation between specular image and consciousness of one's own body (Carbone 2013, p. 7), which gives the image the consistency of a truesimulacrum. Lacan develops histheory of the scopic from a close reading of The Visible and the Invisible, then advances the notion of semblant in discourse, against the linguists (Lacan 1971), but also as a counterfire, from a theory of discourse, to the irresistible advance of a thought of simulacra: he undoubtedly dialogues with Deleuze, just as Baudrillard and Lyotard would later dialogue with Deleuze and Lacan, in a reflection that extends to a critique of a society of simulacra (Baudrillard, 1981; Lyotard, 1994), itself insome way prefigured by Debord’s society of the spectacle (Debord, 1967) and further upstream by the dissolution of discourse and the abolition of the subject towards which Wittgenstein's Tractatus was tending (Wittgenstein,1921, 2. 1).
A civilization of the image ?
The image, understood as a simulacrum informing society as a whole, in a sense repeats the sophist revolution of the Greeks. But it is also a modern invention, made possible by “the era of its technical reproducibility” (Benjamin, 1939). In a world where images can be endlessly repeated and falsified, Benjamin proclaims “the decline of the aura”, which is the effect of authenticity and uniqueness of the singular work of art and of the historical object. But doesn't the aura begin to exist precisely through and in the feeling of its decline ? All the effects of haunting, conjuration and spectrality (Derrida, 1993) associated with the image emerge at the very moment when representation becomes trivialized and slips from the sphere of art into that of technology.
The contemporary development of a civilization of the image (Gusdorf, 1990), understood as the development of a civilization of technique, takes on a particular significance today, when the rise of digital technologies and now artificial intelligence gives simulacra material and technical consistency, and conversely the image a decisive virtual, even spectral, dimension (Stiegler, 1994-2001). So what exactly do we mean by the image? The very notion of the civilization of the image, from the point of view of media analysis and intermediality, from the psychoanalytical point of view of the analysis of the subject and its relationship to the world, and from the phenomenological point of view of the imprint the world leaves on us, presupposes that the image has taken the place of something else, or has occupied a territory that was not originally assigned to it. It is this place, this territory, that this issue of Rubriques proposes to address.
Topics of study
The theoretical, historical and/or contemporary issues related to the image can be addressed in the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy and media studies, or at the intersection of these fields.
Psychoanalysis: Presence of the image in psychoanalytic theory (from pictorial reference to the scopic drive).
Psychoanalysis and phenomenology: Interactions between Freud and Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Lacan on questions of image, simulacrum and semblant.
Aesthetics and politics of the image: the repercussions of a society of the spectacle, of a civilization of the image, on the metaphysical and metapsychological constitution of the subject, on the social bond, and on the mechanisms of representation.
Subjects
- Psyche (Main category)
- Mind and language > Thought > Philosophy
Places
- Aix-en-Provence, France (13)
Date(s)
- Thursday, February 29, 2024
Keywords
- image, semblant, simulacre, scopique, psychanalyse, philosophie, phénoménologie, esthétique, média
Contact(s)
- Nicolas Robert
courriel : nicolas [dot] rey [dot] robert [at] gmail [dot] com
Reference Urls
Information source
- Nicolas Robert
courriel : nicolas [dot] rey [dot] robert [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .
To cite this announcement
Nicolas Robert, Stéphane Lojkine, « Between philosophy and psychoanalysis: the image », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1cdc
