Word and image

W. J. T. Mitchell, excerpt from chapter "What Is An Image?", Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp. 40-46.


In Picturing the Invisible, Mitchell-a professor of English and Art History at University of Chicago, spurs up that age- old chicken-egg debate of the 'war of dominance' between word and image in this relatively short article. The main assumption is that word and image is fundamentally different in its nature. Those 'differences' do not call for a unity nor a 'healing' between the two- for that would only be mere reflection on the ways of our own 'culture', which, amidst its constant flux of interactions in all its diverse forms, over exaggerates the differences between the two to be ever so far apart, when really word and image are inextricably contaminated by one another in its volatile dialectics. What is proposed, then, is that this relationship of 'subversion' should instead be maintained at interest and observed for all the powers it may serve, forsaking the potential inconveniences in taxonomy. Word and image, in other words, as signs are polar opposites in all its innateness. But signs of what?

I agree with Mitchell's view that image and word, in this contest of diverse 'verbal character of imagining the invisible' be examined not as discrete, intrinsic chunks but as signs that are context-relative, as a 'territory for struggle'. I say this because no image or word is ever intrinsic in itself. My disagreement lies in the author's insistence on the supposed totality of the dualist hostility between the two. What about the ways in how we think? If words and images (I do realize I sound awfully biased here) are only man-made constructs that functions as a sign, as carriers of information- is it not plausible to assume they are merely divergent instrumental means of representing knowledge, of the underlying 'mentalese', rather?

My nemesis Steven Pinker mentions that physical manifestations of the invisible- be it verbal or pictorial, are tools that function to represent the semantic and episodic knowledge encompassing our thoughts- Suppose that you and I were asked to visualize the sentence 'Liz is going down' -I may be imagining the actress Liz Taylor making a spatial movement, you may think that your friend Lizzy's future is in worrisome hands. Neither image nor word necessarily constitutes all of thought, it is only a partial reflection of thoughts, of the systems of knowledge that individuals possess.

Interestingly, I coincidentally happened to stumble upon a recent fatalist ranting on contemporary art published in the so-called Liberalist journal The New Republic, aptly titled "Postcards from Nowhere", lamenting the dumbing down of the contemporary art thanks to the likes of Jeff Koons, whose lazy efforts at verbalizing his pictorial life is nothing but an insult to the fine masters of yesteryears: like klee, you know. Despite the author's eloquently put ramblings drenched in the ideals of modernist aesthetics, one thing seemed evidently clear: preferences aside, it was the matter of engaging with the varying hieroglyphic manifestations within an image that was of importance, however effortless or cerebral they may be- revealing 'the necessary verbal character of imagining the invisible'.

The tangible linguisticity of these means, in all its diverse forms, to me seems to be all in all just a 'natural' manner of verbalizing, really. The diverse possibilities of configuring different standards of visible and testing the extent of its intelligible loquacity, could potentially prove to be interesting in an artwork. Perceiving a hostile relationship between the two by positing a binary assumption, seems rather unnecessary in my view and fails to see the 'bigger picture' I reckon. Perhaps what I am advocating here inadvertently affirms way too much favorably towards simplified 'theoretical unity' that Mitchell warns against in subsequent chapter. But I tend to be extremely biased when it comes to manipulating texts and pictures for my own use.

We are all cunning linguists afterall.