Images and Language
I hadn't thought about Bakhtin as I was reading Bergson, but I think Dahliani's instinct to put the two theorists in conversation might help me understand Bergson a little better. For example, Bakhtin is concerned with the utterance as an act toward another speaking subject. Bergson sees perception as a possible action of the body on others. In a way, then, Bergson is suggesting a social dialogic relationship between beings in the world that could be compared to Bakhtin. THe body is an image like all matter in the world. It impacts itself as well as other images/matter/bodies. Like Bakhtin then, Bergson breaks the traditional Aristotelian chain of cause and effect. Rather, bodies/matter/images in teh world impact each other and themselves reflexively and non-linearly. For both Bakhtin and Bergson, interiority and exteriority are non-issues. Dialogism is within bodies and between bodies. Of course, and I'll rant about this at the end of this post, Bakhtin is concerned with langange and Bergson is concerned primarily with materiality and motor perception. What is the relationship between language and image for Bergson? What is his understanding of language in the first place?
I'm trying to connect these thoughts to digital media and, to do so, I'm making the assumption that images are texts broadly conceived-language, pictures, things that can be read, selected, perceived. I'm thinking of the spectator (what is the term for the internet surfer?) as an active being, an image like that of the web pages, impacting, contributing, changing the web as she herself is changed in the process, following hyperlinks based on Bergson's theories of selection in the process of perception. We select, apparently, certain images, certain hyperlinks for example, from the subjective realm of the spirit which is constructed of memories, which are constructed from previous actions of selective perception(???) (235).
What's interesting here is Bergson's conception of space. He talks of "distance" as a crucial factor in the urgency of the action of our perception. The closer we are to the matter we perceive, the more the "possible action tends to transform itself into real action, the call for action becoming more urgent in the measure or proportion that the distance diminishes" (233). What is distance in cyberspace? I was really confused about Bergson's distinction in the valuation of space versus time but can't help but assume this question has something to do with the relationship between Bergson and digital media. Maybe?
In all of this talk about images, what is language? Dahliani's question about the social constructionism of Comp studies strikes me as imperative. There's a lot of talk in comp about the ethics of teaching certain discursive conventions because we subscribe to a socio-linguistic theory of language as constitutive of the self (Gee's idea discourse as "identity kits" for example). In Bergson, the image of the body can impact itself self-reflexively. Is it purely motor? Arent' our memories, Bergson's nebulous realm of the spirit, actually largely composed of language? Is language an image? If so, how can it possibly be a "difference in degree not in kind" (i paraphrase his constant use of this phrase) from material bodies?
On a final, unrelated note: in the introduction, Bergson says that images are somewhere in between the representation and the thing. But the rest of the book seems to equate images with representation, even using the words interchangeably. Yet,in a shocking moment, the page of which escapes me at the moment, Bergson declares that images exist without being perceived. The tree falls in the forest, in other words, no matter who's there to see it. The observor perceives the image based on a intricate system of selection based onmemory and motor perception. If they're looking for a tree to fall based on memory or shocked into seeing the tree fall based on physical sound waves, for example, the image of the tree comes in contact with the image of the body. But--and this is, I know, a fundemental premise of Bergson, so I might just be quite confused--how can something an image without being perceived/represented by an active being? Is it because it has the POTENTIAL to be perceived by the active being? Wha...?
I'm trying to connect these thoughts to digital media and, to do so, I'm making the assumption that images are texts broadly conceived-language, pictures, things that can be read, selected, perceived. I'm thinking of the spectator (what is the term for the internet surfer?) as an active being, an image like that of the web pages, impacting, contributing, changing the web as she herself is changed in the process, following hyperlinks based on Bergson's theories of selection in the process of perception. We select, apparently, certain images, certain hyperlinks for example, from the subjective realm of the spirit which is constructed of memories, which are constructed from previous actions of selective perception(???) (235).
What's interesting here is Bergson's conception of space. He talks of "distance" as a crucial factor in the urgency of the action of our perception. The closer we are to the matter we perceive, the more the "possible action tends to transform itself into real action, the call for action becoming more urgent in the measure or proportion that the distance diminishes" (233). What is distance in cyberspace? I was really confused about Bergson's distinction in the valuation of space versus time but can't help but assume this question has something to do with the relationship between Bergson and digital media. Maybe?
In all of this talk about images, what is language? Dahliani's question about the social constructionism of Comp studies strikes me as imperative. There's a lot of talk in comp about the ethics of teaching certain discursive conventions because we subscribe to a socio-linguistic theory of language as constitutive of the self (Gee's idea discourse as "identity kits" for example). In Bergson, the image of the body can impact itself self-reflexively. Is it purely motor? Arent' our memories, Bergson's nebulous realm of the spirit, actually largely composed of language? Is language an image? If so, how can it possibly be a "difference in degree not in kind" (i paraphrase his constant use of this phrase) from material bodies?
On a final, unrelated note: in the introduction, Bergson says that images are somewhere in between the representation and the thing. But the rest of the book seems to equate images with representation, even using the words interchangeably. Yet,in a shocking moment, the page of which escapes me at the moment, Bergson declares that images exist without being perceived. The tree falls in the forest, in other words, no matter who's there to see it. The observor perceives the image based on a intricate system of selection based onmemory and motor perception. If they're looking for a tree to fall based on memory or shocked into seeing the tree fall based on physical sound waves, for example, the image of the tree comes in contact with the image of the body. But--and this is, I know, a fundemental premise of Bergson, so I might just be quite confused--how can something an image without being perceived/represented by an active being? Is it because it has the POTENTIAL to be perceived by the active being? Wha...?
posted by Jn at
3:58 PM
3 Comments:
Jean--your questions about language seem really important and interesting, and while I haven't thought much about Bergson's potential thoughts on language, I noticed that Deleuze approaches this issue in his essay. Apparently Bergson analyzes language in another of his texts in the same way that he analyzes memory (57 in Deleuze's essay). Deleuze writes, "The way in which we understand what is said to us is identical to the way in which we find a recollection. Far from recomposing sense on the basis of sounds that are heard and associated images, we place ourselves at once in the element of sense, then in a region of this element" (57). So deciphering language requires a lot of maneuvering in our past recollections of language. After we access the right recollections, sense can be actualized in the sounds of language that we perceive psychologically and in the images associated with those sounds (57). I wonder how much of this process is habitual. I am reminded of Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry (1757), in which he argues (based on sketchy anecdotal "evidence") that we don't associate images with language. His philosophy suggests that we wouldn't analyze language in the same way as we would analyze memory.
I too found Bergson pretty opaque, partly because I don’t think I have a very good sense of what’s at stake in arguing about the nature of perception (that would be the lack of philosophy training coming to the fore, I guess). But it was interesting to read about Bergson’s argument that dissociation rather than association is the fundamental mechanism of perception – for me that recalled our conversation in the first class, when we touched on the issue of how literacy or skill with digital media might be characterized by extricating information from the great mass of what is out there, as opposed to some (analogue?) notion of constructing information. I also thought about this issue when Bergson writes about perception as “choice” or “discernment” (46). Making this link is problematic, I’m sure – to begin with, how should we think about perception in relation to textual information, or to knowledge (however we would define “knowledge”)? Bergson seems invested in not talking about less immediate kinds of knowledge, restricting his discussion to ideas “that are founded on what we have called the perception of similarity” (202). And, from the beginning, he disputes any straightforward equivalence of perception and knowledge (17), instead seeing perception as oriented toward action. Without really knowing how to think through this, I’m guessing it speaks to how digital media can be understood as extending the range or changing the apparatus of perception, by calling into question bodily limitations? At any rate, I would echo Jean’s questions, when she asks “What is the relationship between language and image for Bergson? What is his understanding of language in the first place?”
On to Deleuze …
Yeah, I wrote my post before reading the two articles. I noticed as well when I read D. later that Deleuze broaches the issue of language, arguing something about Bergson's confluence of language and memory. Now i just need someone to decipher Deleuze's deciphering of Bergson and maybe I'll get somewhere :)
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home