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Violence and image

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Abstract

Our most current experience of violence is not predominantly violence “given in the flesh,” but violence given through the mediation of the image. The phenomenon of real violence is therefore modified through the imagistic experience, involving first of all its emotional, embodied and intersubjective dimensions. How is the emotion constituted in the face of depicted violence, in contrast to the lived experience of real violence? Is the intersubjectivity modified when (symmetrical or asymmetrical) violence appears pictorially? What specific embodied dimensions are particularly engaged when violence is lived as an image, and not as a real phenomenon? The phenomenon of imagistic violence can also be understood in contrast with the experience of violence lived in phantasy, memory, or dreaming. Also, since each type of image puts into play certain possibilities of depicting violence, making possible various subjective experiences of violence, it crucial to explore how this experience fundamentally depends on the type of image by which the phenomenon of violence is depicted, be it painting, photography, fiction film, documentary or media image.

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Notes

  1. Eastin (2013), Newton (1996), Carter and Weaver (2003), Weaver and Carter (2006), Lewis (2013, 2016), Anderson (2004).

  2. See Bacon (2015), Prince (2003), Cantor (2008), Hanich (2010, 2014), Horeck and Kendall (2011), Palmer and Young (2003), Boyle (2004), Burfoot and Lord (2006), Linfield (2012), Appelbaum (2013), Buch (2010), Sheehan (2013), Goldstein (1988).

  3. Husserl (1980, 2005).

  4. Sartre (1986), Fink (1966), Marion (2014), Wiesing (2009, 2010, 2014), Lotz (2007), Ferencz-Flatz (2009), de Warren (2010), Aldea (2013), Mion (2016), Eldridge (2018).

  5. See Waldenfels (2011a, b, 2019), Mensch (2008, 2013, 2019), Staudigl (2007, 2011, 2015, 2019), Dodd (2009, 2017), Breyer (2017), Ó Murchadha (2019), Ciocan (2018, 2020a, b).

  6. See also the recent issues published in Studia Phaenomenologica (vol. 19, 2019: Phenomenology of Violence), Human Studies (vol. 43/2, 2020: The Modalizations of Violence) and Continental Philosophy Review (vol. 53/3, 2020: Phenomenologies of Religious Violence), as well as the collective volumes edited by Staudigl (2014), Lauwaert et al. (2019).

  7. See Vorobej (2016), Rae and Ingala (2019).

  8. Staudigl (2013), Breyer (2017), Ciocan (2018).

  9. See Delhom (2019).

  10. See Ciocan (2020b).

  11. See Heidegger (1996, p. 140).

  12. See Staudigl (2006), Mensch (2008), Rogozinski (2020).

  13. Such, for example, in DAESH’s visual rhetoric analyzed in a recent article by Emmanuel Alloa (2017). See also Rogozinski (2020).

  14. See Ciocan (2020a, pp. 154–156).

  15. See Eldridge (2017), Steinbock (2014) and Bellini (2019), La Caze (2018), Marion (2020).

  16. See Marinescu (2020).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Christian Ferencz-Flatz and Paul Marinescu, as well as to the anonymous referee, for their remarks on this paper. Funding was provided by UEFISCDI (Grant No. PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0273). This article was revised during a short research stay at the University of Freiburg funded by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and kindly hosted by Prof. Oliver Müller.

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  1. Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Bucharest, 1 Dimitrie Brandza St., 060102, Bucharest, Romania

    Cristian Ciocan

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Ciocan, C. Violence and image. Cont Philos Rev 54, 331–348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09528-x

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