【列维纳斯研究】构型列维纳斯与图像.pdf

PHILIPPE CRIGNON Figuration: Emmanuel Levinas and the Image The problemthat concerns us hereis figuration.Not the image, andnot art, even though, of course, these themes are not unrelated to the ar- guments that follow. My initial hypothesis is that our currentunder- standingof all these phenomenawould benefit fromouradoptinganew perspective, from our yielding neither to an aesthetic line of inquiry, full of preconceptions about the beautiful, the work, and its meaning, nor to the more recent promotion of the incarnatedimage, which bril- liantly summarizes a certain history but appearsincapable of dealing with the new images producedduringthe last century (cinema, for ex- ample) and their anthropological,technical, andpolitical stakes. This is why it seems necessary to ask a simple question:What is it that fun- damentally drives man to produceimages, to leave traces that arenot readbut seen and that touch us-to producenot signs, but figures? Returning to the act of production-to the compulsion to figure- we can expandourfield of analysis beyond the narrowsphereof artand include childrens drawings,graffiti, and techniques of image produc- tion video, etc.). We can also depart,historically, from (photography, the tradition of the Christian image, of the icon and its incarnational model, so that the Lascauxpaintings are as much at issue as Boltan- skis installations or FritzLangsfilms. To orient ourselves, let us take as our point of departurea famous image on which Georges Bataille-and not Emmanuel Levinas, who will be the focus here-has extensively commented.2 It is the image 1. See MondzainsImage,ic6ne, economie. Lessourcesbyzantines de Iimagi- M.-J. naire Seuil, which retracesthe constitution andde- contemporain(Paris: 1996), carefully velopment of this tradition. 2.