{"id":7074,"date":"2006-11-09T18:32:25","date_gmt":"2006-11-09T18:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/09\/mitchell-wjt-wh\/"},"modified":"2006-11-09T18:32:25","modified_gmt":"2006-11-09T18:32:25","slug":"mitchell-wjt-wh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/09\/mitchell-wjt-wh\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want?<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 6<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>\n

Mitchell, W.J.T..
\n What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images<\/i>. Chicago:
\n Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What Do Pictures Want?<\/i> is divided into three sections, each devoted to
\none of Mitchell’s key concepts for explaining pictures<\/b>: image<\/b>,
\nobject<\/b>, and medium<\/b>. The book achieves a certain coherence, but
\nbecause several chapters were published separately<\/b> as articles, there is
\nsome repetition<\/b> of central ideas. <\/p>\n

Mitchell pursues a broadened concept of pictures<\/b> (xviii), first by
\nworking through a thought experiment<\/b> that accepts their aliveness<\/b>.
\nHe suggests the animism<\/b> and vitalism<\/b> of images through the ideas
\nof cloning<\/b> and destruction<\/b>, idolatry<\/b> and iconoclasm<\/b>,
\nDolly the Sheep and the World Trade Center. Rather than fitting neatly with the
\npolarized responses to images, however, Mitchell wants us to get beyond the
\nmystical\/skeptical dyad<\/b> (they’re alive; they’re dangerous, defeat them), to
\na kind of criticism that makes images resonate<\/b> without smashing them.
\nAcknowledging the peculiarity of the move to presume that images have a
\nlife-force, Mitchell asks us to entertain the fiction<\/b> so that our
\nencounters with pictures might be enlivened (ultimately, his arguments jibe with
\nposthumanism<\/b>).<\/p>\n

In the second chapter, Mitchell answers the title’s question in a variety of
\nways, eventually, however, proposing that a possible answer is "nothing<\/b>"
\n(50). The emphasis here is not on a method for reading<\/b> images but
\non a richer understanding of their relationality<\/b> in a complex skein of
\ndesires<\/b>; rather than locating desire in consumption<\/b> or production<\/b>,
\nwe should locate it in the images themselves<\/b>. This attribution of desire
\nto images seems like a kind of agentic shift<\/b>, although I suspect Mitchell
\nwould complicate this. His criteria for the living is that it can die. In
\na Q&A with readers of his manuscript, Mitchell explains that images have a
\nverbal and visual life<\/b> (55).<\/p>\n

In the other chapters on image, Mitchell explores the idea of desire<\/b>
\nthrough the double entendre of "drawing<\/b>" and in connection with Freud’s
\ncategories of desire (72-74). He also uses idolatry<\/b>, fetishism<\/b>,
\nand totemism<\/b> to classify object-relations<\/b>. With totemism, we
\nmight revalue the image<\/b> relative to its hypervaluation<\/b> in the idol
\nand the fetish. Totemism affirms the life of the image and also introduces the
\nidea of scale<\/b> as it comes between idolatry (large) and fetish (small) [to
\nconnect this with networks, see p. 92]. Mitchell discusses each of the
\nterms–idolatry, fetishism, and totemism–more carefully in chapter 9 (188).<\/p>\n

In the final one-third of the book, Mitchell addresses media (c. 10.),
\nexplaining that image and picture are distinguished by medium<\/b>. He
\npushes beyond a strictly materialist reading of media, however, instead
\npreferring to define it as "material social practice<\/b>" (203). In chapter
\n10, he introduces and explains ten theses on media (211):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Media are a modern invention that has been around since the beginning.<\/li>\n
  2. The shock of new media is as old as the hills.<\/li>\n
  3. A medium is both a system and an environment.<\/li>\n
  4. There is always something outside a medium.<\/li>\n
  5. All media are mixed media.<\/li>\n
  6. Minds are media, and vice versa.<\/li>\n
  7. Images are the principal currency of media.<\/li>\n
  8. Images reside within media the way organisms reside in a habitat.<\/li>\n
  9. The media have no address and cannot be addressed.<\/li>\n
  10. We address and are addressed by images of media.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Mitchell argues that images<\/b>, not language, are the principal
    \ncurrency of media<\/b> (215). I need to spend more time with the chapters in this
    \nsection. <\/p>\n

    Other returns: C. 9 discussion of terms; ^Perceian triad of symbol, icon, and
    \nindex (73); ^Consider Butler’s Excitable Speech<\/i>, speech act, and image
    \n(135); ^Networked image (92, 105, and totem, 191).<\/p>\n

    Key terms: poetics of pictures (xv), pictorial turn (5), metapictures (6,
    \n10), magical attittudes (8), studium and punctum (9), double consciousness (10),
    \nvisual trope (10), living images (14), animated icons (14), biotechnology (15),
    \nglobal capitalism (15), living symbols (15), iconoclasm (20), creative
    \ndestruction (21), Benjamin’s dialectical image (25), modern attitude (26),
    \npersonhood of things (30), Medusa effect (36), violence of male "lookism" (45),
    \nvisual culture (47, 337), dead metaphor (life of tropes) (53), drawing desire
    \n(59), magnetism (60), ascesis (63), scopic drive (72), symbolic, imaginary, and
    \nreal (73), totemism (75), image’s surplus value (76), image science (77),
    \nmaterialist hype (77), criticism (81), picture versus image (85), species and
    \nspecular (86), dead media (90), images at the center of social crisis (94),
    \nimage as immaterial (97), idolatry, fetishism, and totemism (97), found objects
    \n(113), picturesque (114), totem (122), offending images (125), objectionable
    \nobjects (125), paleontology of the present (124), speech act (135), Foucault’s
    \nOrder of Things<\/i> (155), object relations (188), totems of the mind (190),
    \nmedium theory (198), medium as material social practice (203), medium and
    \nboundary (204), mystical empiricism (208), new media (212), visual studies
    \n(337), showing seeing (355), vernacular visuality (356), interdiscipline (356).<\/p>\n

    "The book as a whole, then, is about pictures<\/b>, understood as
    \ncomplex assemblages of virtual, material, and symbolic elements<\/b>" (xiii).<\/p>\n

    "A picture<\/b>, then, is a very peculiar and paradoxical creature<\/b>,
    \nboth concrete<\/b> and abstract<\/b>, both a specific individual thing<\/b>
    \nand a symbolic form<\/b> that embraces a totality" (xvii).<\/p>\n

    "The philosophical argument of this book is simple in its outlines: images
    \nare like living organisms<\/b>; living organisms are best described as things
    \nthat have desires<\/b> (for example, appetites, needs, demands, drives);
    \ntherefore, the question of what pictures want is inevitable<\/b>" (11).<\/p>\n

    "Now we see that it is not merely a case of some images that seem to come
    \nalive, but that living things<\/b> themselves were always already images<\/b>
    \nin one form or another" (13).<\/p>\n

    "Computers<\/b>, as we know, are nothing but calculating machines. They are
    \nalso (as we know equally well) mysterious new organisms<\/b>, maddeningly
    \ncomplex life-forms that come complete with parasites, viruses, and a social
    \nnetwork of their own. New media<\/b> have made communication seem more
    \ntransparent, immediate, and rational than ever before, at the same time that
    \nthey have enmeshed us in labyrinths of new images, objects, tribal
    \nidentities, and ritual practices<\/b>" (26).<\/p>\n

    "In short, we are stuck with our magical, premodern attitudes <\/b>toward
    \nobjects, especially pictures, and our task is not to overcome these attitudes
    \nbut to understand them, to work through their symptomology<\/b>" (30).<\/p>\n

    "What is the moral for pictures<\/b>? If one could interview<\/b> all the
    \npictures<\/b> one encounters in a year<\/b>, what answers would they give?"
    \n(35).<\/p>\n

    "The question of what pictures want certainly does not eliminate the
    \ninterpretation of signs. All it accomplishes is a subtle dislocation<\/b> of
    \nthe target of interpretation, a slight modification in the picture we have of
    \npictures (and perhaps signs) themselves. The keys to this
    \nmodification\/dislocation are (1) assent to the constitutive fiction<\/b> of
    \npictures as ‘animated’ beings, quasi-agents, mock persons; and (2) the
    \nconstrual of pictures<\/b> not as sovereign subjects or disembodied spirits but
    \nas subalterns<\/b> whose bodies are marked with the stigmata of difference,
    \nand who function both as ‘go-betweens’ and scapegoats in the social field of
    \nhuman visuality" (46)<\/p>\n

    "What pictures want from us, what we have failed to give them, is an idea
    \nof virtuality adequate to their ontology<\/b>" (47).<\/p>\n

    "Pictures want equal rights with language<\/b>, not to be turned into
    \nlanguage" (47).<\/p>\n

    "What pictures want in the last instance, then, is simply to be asked what
    \nthey want<\/b>, with the understanding that the answer may well be, nothing at
    \nall<\/b>" (48).<\/p>\n

    "There is simply no getting around the dialectics of life and death<\/b>,
    \ndesire and aggression<\/b>, in the fundamental ontology of the image<\/b>"
    \n(68).<\/p>\n

    "Images are also, in common parlance, mental things<\/b>, residing in the
    \npsychological media of dreams, memory, and fantasy<\/b>; or they are
    \nlinguistic expressions (‘verbal images’) that name concrete objects that may or
    \nmay not be metaphoric or allegorical" (84).<\/p>\n

    "Images are ‘kinds of pictures,’ classifications of pictures<\/b>. Images
    \nare, then, like species, and pictures are like organisms whose kinds are given
    \nby the species" (85).<\/p>\n

    "We live in the age of cyborgs, cloning, and biogenetic engineering, when the
    \nancient dream of creating a ‘living image’ is becoming a commonplace" (96).<\/p>\n

    "Totemism<\/b>, in fact, is the historical successor to idolatry and
    \nfetishism<\/b> as a way of naming the hypervalued image of the Other. It also
    \nnames a revaluation of the fetish and idol. If the idol is or represents a god,
    \nand the fetish is a ‘made thing’ with a spirit or a demon in it, the totem is ‘a
    \nrelative of mine,’ its literal meaning in the Ojibway language" (98).<\/p>\n

    "My main point is simply to suggest that the question of images and value<\/b>
    \ncannot be settled by arriving at a set of values and then proceeding to the
    \nevaluation of images. Images are active players <\/b>in the game of
    \nestablishing and changing values" (105).<\/p>\n

    "Totemism<\/b> allows the image to assume a social, conversational, and
    \ndialectical relationship<\/b> with the beholder, the way a doll or a stuffed
    \nanimal does with children" (106)<\/p>\n

    "For another key to the found object<\/b> is its tendency, once found, to
    \nhang around, gathering value and meaning like a sort of semantic flypaper or
    \nphotosensitive surface<\/b>" (118).<\/p>\n

    "If images<\/b> are life-forms<\/b>, and objects<\/b> are the bodies<\/b>
    \nthey animate, then media<\/b> are the habitats or ecosystems<\/b> in which
    \npictures come alive" (198).<\/p>\n

    "The difference between an image and a picture, for instance, is precisely a
    \nquestion of the medium<\/b>. An image only appears in some medium or other–in
    \npaint, stone, words, or numbers. But what about media? How do they appear, make
    \nthemselves manifest and understandable? It is tempting to settle on a rigorously
    \nmaterialist answer to this question, and to identify the medium as simply the
    \nmaterial support in or on which the image appears" (203). [A medium is more: "material
    \nsocial practice<\/b>"]<\/p>\n

    "Media can fit on both sides of the system\/environment divide<\/b>: they
    \nare a system for transmitting messages through a material vehicle to a receiver;
    \nor they are a space in which forms can thrive[…]" (208).<\/p>\n

    \n
    Related sources:<\/dt>\n
    Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life<\/i>. 1912.
    \n Trans. Karen Fields. New York: Free Press, 1995.<\/dd>\n
    Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes<\/i>. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,
    \n 1993.<\/dd>\n
    Latour, Bruno, and Peter Weibel, eds. Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars<\/i>.
    \n Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 6<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>Mitchell, W.J.T.. What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[176],"tags":[184,1425,294,400,457,1579,467,1408,405,1133,682,1580,1581,1578,1485,1582,1583,1584,1585,441,968,1586,1568,489,1587,1588,1589,1503,1148,478,525,1590,1499,1591,1504,1430,1592,1098,1593,1594,1027,1063,1229,391,417,1421,1595,1596,1597,1432,136,596,1598],"class_list":["post-7074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-visuality_and_n","tag-agency","tag-animism","tag-art","tag-barthes","tag-benjamin","tag-boundary","tag-clone","tag-criticism","tag-culture","tag-desire","tag-drawing","tag-fetishism","tag-fossils","tag-freud","tag-homeostasis","tag-hype","tag-iconoclasm","tag-idolatry","tag-idols","tag-image","tag-index","tag-interdiscipline","tag-lacan","tag-latour","tag-lives","tag-magical","tag-making","tag-material","tag-mcluhan","tag-media","tag-medium","tag-metapicture","tag-mimesis","tag-moderns","tag-newmedia","tag-object","tag-ontology","tag-picture","tag-picturing","tag-relationality","tag-representation","tag-seeing","tag-symbol","tag-systems","tag-theory","tag-things","tag-totem","tag-totemism","tag-trope","tag-uncanny","tag-visual","tag-vitalism","tag-vocative"],"yoast_head":"\nMitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want? - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/09\/mitchell-wjt-wh\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want? - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: 6 minsMitchell, W.J.T.. 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In this oft-cited essay, Diana George accounts for the vexed relationship between composition studies and visuality or visual studies. Only in rare cases does one find imaginative curricula that engage with visuality as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Visuality and New Media"","block_context":{"text":"Visuality and New Media","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/visuality_and_n\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7141,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/15\/and-does-tricks\/","url_meta":{"origin":7074,"position":3},"title":"And Does Tricks","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"September 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's reference to \"photos and only photos\": an unnecessary constraint. After all, Y., too, lives in an age of moving pictures, videocy, extra special effects, etc.","rel":"","context":"In "Perrito"","block_context":{"text":"Perrito","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/perrito\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6568,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/07\/dusted\/","url_meta":{"origin":7074,"position":4},"title":"Dusted","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"June 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"We snaked back to Phoenix from Whiteriver this afternoon, after a morning of sports clinics and closing ceremonies for this year's camp.\u00a0 I had the chance to get a few pictures with new friends, and on the return trip we pulled over at the winding Whiteriver canyon to pose with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travelog"","block_context":{"text":"Travelog","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/travelog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7072,"url":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/07\/wysocki-awaywit-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7074,"position":5},"title":"Wysocki, “Awaywithwords”","author":"Derek Mueller","date":"November 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Wysocki, Anne F. \"Awaywithwords: On the Possibilities in Unavailable Designs.\" Computers and Composition 22 (2005) 55-62. In this brief article, Wysocki complicates the dichotomy between image and word, a division reinforced in the work of Kress, who partitions words and their \"temporal and sequential logic\" from \"image-presentations\" and their \"spatial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Visuality and New Media"","block_context":{"text":"Visuality and New Media","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/category\/visuality_and_n\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}