tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post3682183366378044667..comments2023-09-29T02:49:02.989-07:00Comments on An Emphatic Umph: Towards a Pedagogy of the ImageDaniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-1319335522705267672013-12-28T18:17:21.547-08:002013-12-28T18:17:21.547-08:00You make beautiful sense.
I love this phrase you...You make beautiful sense. <br /><br />I love this phrase you use, "an image is creating itself continuously by the people who interpret it." I'd say yes but that's not quite right. Of course an image is an expression of the socio-cultural-historical world. How could it be any other way? It's just that those things don't determine meaning. I think again of Merleau-Ponty talking about Cézanne. He finds people looking at the man to understand the work — Cézanne was crazy, for instance. But Merleau-Ponty flips that around: he reads the art and finds the man. Because both are born at the same time, necessarily.<br /><br />Having info about people, objects, etc is great. Often, it's essential to understand what the heck's going around us. But it doesn't determine the person right in front of you; that person determines and is determined at the same time by this "background." As you suggest, background and foreground blur (something John Searle ignores).<br /><br />I come back to repetition (or go forward to repetition?) and the restructuring of the relationship between concept/idea and things/phenomena. I am as much an example of "Jew" as I (re)define "Jew." We all know people who perform their cultural heritage so perfectly; I, for one, often feel like a parody of Philip Roth's Alexander Portnoy — and I find it humiliating. But these people, at these times, bore the shit out of us (I bore myself); there's something creepy about them. <br /><br />What's interesting, what we enjoy, is the way a person takes up all that "background" and makes a new image with it and, in so doing, (re)creates the background. Ergo, my last entry about the role of critique.Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-31205229433971606752013-12-27T16:41:14.674-08:002013-12-27T16:41:14.674-08:00"Every image is a metabolic engine: it takes ... "Every image is a metabolic engine: it takes in the world, makes sense of it in its own way, then produces affects and effects. An image is akin to a person in that sense: we take in food, books, ideas; process them in our own way and time; then play them back."<br />Hmm…interesting! So, wouldn't you say that an image plays back/reflects the social, political, economic situation of the time in which it was created? Or would you say that an image is creating itself continuously by the people who interpret it? And since different people have different realities/situations, an image always speaks in multiple voices/languages to those different people? I don't know if I make sense. See, that's something that challenges me. Whenever I meet people, I want to know where they are from, how they were raised, where they studied, what they studied, etc. Learning more about their background helps me make sense of why they behave the way they behave. Peoples' background is reflected in their foreground (maybe I'm using this word in the wrong way here), i.e., in the way they interact with you or the way they are in the present. But then one can also say that our interpretation of someone's background changes in relation to our always-already-in-motion thoughts and interpretations. So knowing about someone's background doesn't give me a concrete understanding of why someone is the way he/she is (if there is an is-ness at all; Maybe a temporary is-ness). Maybe psychics get it right - they try to read you by just looking at you, leaving aside your history and background, etc.<br />αληθειαhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07693374621360594481noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-46152637064212129722013-12-25T18:24:42.762-08:002013-12-25T18:24:42.762-08:00Yes! Exactly! And we are all students and all teac...Yes! Exactly! And we are all students and all teachers and so on and so forth. Yes, thank you. Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.com