Picturing vision The interconnectedness of mental and visual images NJ Eva Schürmann Abstract • Kant taught us to think of the faculty of imagination as an ingredient of perception. Vision, thus, is not only opened to the present but also to the absent, for instance through expectations or mem- ories. Our ways of seeing are literally formed by normative presumptions and culturally predetermined ideas. This makes visual perception a sort of an image-making activity in the context of a practice. It is the practice that regulates what can be perceived in which way or what is overlooked. As an activity it is neither solely a pure construction of individual viewpoints, nor a pure representation of the physically present world. Rather, it is the result of the reciprocal tension between the perceiver and the perceived. A holistic notion of seeing I proposed in my book on seeing as doing In this article I propose a holistic rather than (Schürmann 2008) a notion of practice that a naturalistic approach to philosophy of per- owes a lot to two very different thinkers, namely ception. In the philosophical tradition seeing French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau- is treated mostly in terms of an epistemological Ponty and Ludwig Wittgenstein, in order to framework. The idea of perception as an activ- explain perception as action in situated cultural ity re-emerged in the context of enactivism and collective contexts. embodiment studies. My claim is that we have to It may be fruitful to remind ourselves that go into further details here by qualifying the type the capacity of imagination is deeply connected of activity as an image-making practice. By image, with vision, as it is related to interpretation, though, I do not mean mimetic representations, judgement and discernment. By conceiving of and by representation I certainly do not mean it as cultural practice, I mean that seeing is an copies. Pictorial representations are the result of activity through which we disclose the sensually the mind’s capacity to imagine something that is perceptible world. As I intend to show below, not necessarily physically present. the interconnectedness of impressions, ideas, Causal conceptions of visual perception can- perceptions and images characterises the way not explain why perception is not determined the mind deals with the world and the other. 1 by the perceivable world but can function in a Mental images start with visual images and very individually different manner. Scientific visual images are informed by mental activities. and naturalistic explanations of the capacity of vision leave unexplained the vivid experience how visual perception involves mental activities 1 For a recent overview on the mental imagery such as normative attitudes, expectations and debate from a transdisciplinary perspective see emotions. Visual perception cannot be reduced Sebastian Gerth (2016) and Klaus Sachs- to sensory experience. Hombach (1995). 1 Nordisk judaistik • Scandinavian Jewish Studies | Vol. 29, No. 1 3 Neither an understanding of retinal impulse expressed in a sensibly perceptible way. What reception nor of neuronal information process- gets represented is how the artist saw what he ing helps to explain the curious paradox that or she saw. For their part, representations are seeing is, on the one hand, a proven means of ways of seeing that have become objects. Like orientation, of acquiring information and inter- a personal style of handwriting, an individual acting with others, while being, on the other perceptual style and a personal visual ethos could hand, a personality-specific way of perceiving explain the space of free choice and the pos- reality dependant on individual and cultural sibilities of seeing differently without which variations. In general, a type of assertive seeing perception would not be world disclosure. The that is regarded as a non-problematic instance of aspect of style is not a mere formal determin- epistemic perception, whereas all more complex ant, it is a moral factor, which is manifested in cases of seeing something as something are labelled the ethos and habitus of the seeing individual, interpretative deduction, or, worse still, thought whose biography and mentality structure the of as mere metaphorical talk about vision. possibilities of perceiving something creatively A philosophical notion of vision has to or conventionally. For vision’s capacity for world explain why we all have divergent perceptual disclosure the decisive characteristic is its iconic experiences, although the same physiology and nature. We can take recourse to Immanuel Kant, the same physical visibility in a certain time and who posited the imagination, conceived as the at a certain place should determine what we see. ‘faculty of images’, as an ingredient of perception At the same time, we do not live in perceptually (Kant 1999: A121). No theory of perception can private worlds either. It has to follow that see- do without such an image-making element. The ing is neither pure representation of a physic- strange thing here, though, is that something is ally present world nor the pure construction of at the same time found and invented. individual viewpoints, although it nevertheless Now, images are not to be construed as rep- contains portions of both. licas of data otherwise present, but rather as This can only be explained by admitting indefinitely prolongable interactive processes that seeing takes place in the context of cultural enacted between mirroring and creation. In this customs and personal preferences. In seeing, the in-between space, what can be seen and how it particular dispositions of the individual as well can be seen is decided by a variable and presum- as social and historical circumstances transcend ably never entirely determinable combination of seeing itself and make it the constitution of a perception and imagination, seeing and blind- viewpoint. ness, addition and subtraction, look and view. Iconicity Mediality Yet, the ways of seeing are at first immanent Seeing as purpose-serving means to an end to consciousness and free from objectification. implies the use of the eyes as an object-like tool How perceivers represent something to them- like a telescope or a magnifying glass – classic al 2 selves still has to be represented outwardly, instruments for mediating perception. This through language or through pictures. This type of seeing is entirely different from those occurs paradigmatically in art, where a painter may bring a view of something into an image, 2 Interesting material on this topic can be that means: a way of looking at the world. In this found in the anthology by Erika Fischer- way an otherwise invisible movement becomes Lichte et al. (2001). 4 Nordisk judaistik • Scandinavian Jewish Studies | Vol. 29, No. 1 cases where we see other persona and are our- The concept of practice provides an alterna- selves visible as we move around in the world, tive to the scheme of subjectivity versus objec- looking involuntarily around. Perception in this tivity by clearly showing the way both are medi- case is less active and more like the element we ated by their situation in contexts and forms of 3 find ourselves in than a tool we make use of. As life. Practice means being visible to oneself and medial occurrence, seeing is a way of relating to to others, acting and speaking in the world as something that at the same time absorbs us. a place we inhabit collectively, not infrequently There is a striking similarity to the way lan- fighting about its sense as a whole. We have inci- 4 guage is constituted. Where language is some- dentally seen that seeing can largely be divided thing we move about in and at the same time into a functional-pragmatic and a self-purposive the means by which we communicate, so too is dimension, whereby the many and varied appli- perception characterised by a thoroughly para- cations of visual perception can be systematic- dox duplicity. Neither the world nor the other ally classified. is immediately given but rather mediated and generated by language and perception. Negativity While the concept of action requires an actor, the notion of mediality rather expresses To claim that seeing is a performative practice the character of something happening. Now also implies taking into account the negative seeing always entails something of both. It can side of the process. Seeing something entails be both functional and directed at ends and also blocking out other things. A figure can only be casual and involuntary. It can focus on some- focused by making the background vanish. The thing or be captured by something. Practice is practice of seeing systematically involves types itself the umbrella term for these logical para- of habitual blindness; no longer seeing familiar doxes. In practice, the medial character of seeing things or overlooking things we are accustomed can interact with its character as action. The odd to interpret schematically as well as overlooking medial location of practice between subject and things. The negativity of vision is what makes its object is precisely its specific feature. essential creativity comprehensible. If someone, Because seeing is always a movement for instance, enters a room where they are used to between two poles, between consciousness and seeing a piano, the piano is no longer perceived world, the sensory and the mental, reception and in the fullness of its sensory apparition. What spontaneity, it must itself be a mediating move- is thus no longer perceived might still present ment. It always proceeds as a balancing act that to echo in every act of vision. The same applies can lean towards at least two different sides, or to peripheral vision. This helps explain how our rather originate from two different sources. The perceptions can diverge from what is given to paradox of perceptual practice is that the phys- visibility.