Iconology-Image, Text, Ideology: What Is an Image?

In chapter 1 of W.J.T. Mitchell's Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, the question of "What Is an Image?" is answered using a multi-faceted argument that focuses on the central role of imagery and language in society. Mitchell first provides a brief history of the conflict between imagery and language noting the evolution of the concept of an image from a medium that is used to represent reality to a object that is used to represent a deeper understanding of a certain idea. He continues by introducing the “family of images” which is composed of five characteristics; likeness, resemblance, and similitude, which create five subcategories; graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal. Mitchell describes what types of images fall under each category and furthermore, discusses how each is perceived in society. He then talks in more detail about the mental image and describes Wittgenstein’s critique. Basically, Wittgenstein believes that mental images are not anymore abstract pictures that pervade individual minds any more than real images are. To demonstrate this point, Mitchell, purposes that if human consciousness were destroyed the physical world would still exist but if the world were destroyed, consciousness would not still exist. Therefore, the mental image is dependent on the real world to form its images. Mitchell then moves on to verbal imagery describing it as “public expressions that belong right out there with all the other kinds of material representations we create”. He continues to note verbal imagery’s figurative and literal functions which serve as the cornerstone in the debate of whether the written word can spur an image. One argument purports that specific descriptions of an object can produce a more vivid image than the image taken from the actual object. He then moves into the realm of image as likeness. This section discusses the religious connotations of the word “image” as representing a more mental or spiritual image rather that a material one. Mitchell continues by discussing that ability of an image to represent the “invisible” or contain more than meets the eye. There is a brief analysis of Mark Twain’s and Lessing’s criticism of the aforementioned ideas. Twain and Lessing believe that it is the written title or description rather than the picture itself that evokes the underlying sentiments of the viewer. Mitchell continues by exploring the relationship of the written word and imagery. This relationship is analogous to those between “symbols and the world” and “signs and their meanings”. Although the debate between imagery and language still continues Freud suggests that it is through analysis of real or mental images that the hidden verbal message can be brought to the surface.

Mitchell includes a short section on the “tyranny of the picture” and purports that the invention of the camera has surreptitiously turned the resulting image into a pseudo-representation that society has accepted as true. Does the popular use of photography in the creation of images detract from the image itself and falsely represent the original image?