“… since the disaster always takes place after having taken place, there cannot possibly be any experience of it. ” (Maurice Blanchot)
Electracy is changing the ways in which we experience ourselves. We are entering a new realm of subjectivity, one that is mostly defined by and through images. But before we think about how this new sensibility is affecting our identity, we have to bare in mind that “images” are not images anymore. Images turn into emblems – emblems which are up for grabs in the experience economy, ready to be (com)modified into brands.
Electracy is not only changing the way we perceive and process images: it is changing the very ontology of images through its apparatus. If we think of ourselves as images, and if we cannot define images as “images” anymore (at least not digitally generated or manipulated images), then we are in the midst of an existential crisis.
Our society might be typically thought of as a primarily visual one. We could even entertain Lev Manovich’s notion of “information culture” to orient ourselves in today’s [Western] world. But, our perceptions of the world still contain a certain dose of logocentricity. The constant addition of neologisms to language (e.g. in response to the shifting apparatus, and to the fluctuating relationship between media producers and consumers) suggests that, at least in part, we still understand our society – and our place in it – through words and definitions. *
Thus, the ontology of the “image” as we have come to perceive it is inevitably evocative of its definition. That definition is, of course, subjective and constantly revised/ deconstructed, but we still conduct our image-related inquiry under the name of the image.
New media has made us aware of the “fact” that there is no image. “Image” functions as a shorthand… but a shorthand to what? It is an allegory to an untraceable void. A void that language has not yet possessed… a void that perception has not yet filled. Perhaps the emergence of compound terms such as “digital image”, “image-interface”, and “image-instrument” are a step in that direction; a step towards filling the hermeneutic void. Or perhaps they misdirect us back to into the vicious cycle of metonymy.
If the essence of the image is in a state of flux due to the apparatus shift, then our identity is in a state of flux as well…
* Blanchot: “The written word: in it we no longer live.” Oh, but we do, at least to some extent.If it is not written in a material sense, it is still “written” in some other sense (i.e. blogged, digitized, simulated, image-conveyed). Why is this a negative thing? Blanchot’s writing is inciting us to break free from the confines of logos, but his very act of writing (the permanence in print), to some degree negates this imperative. Saying the unsayable, even if it is a futile task, still indicates that the unsayable must be somehow conveyed. Why are we compelled to reach the unsayable through writing/ blogging/ ….. ?
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