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June 12, 2007
We need to reckon with images. They change the way we think and dream. They refunction our memories and imaginations, bringing new criteria and new desires into the world. In this interview with W.J.T. Mitchell in Image and Narrative it is stated that In What Do Pictures Want? Mitchell describes a critical practice in which one strikes images “with just enough force to make them resonate, but not as much as to smash them” Mitchell spells out what he means:
I derive this strategy from Nietzsche's preface to Twilight of the Idols, where the greatest philosophical iconoclast of them all proposes a method of dealing with idols that sounds at first like traditional image destruction. Nietzsche tells us that he will “philosophize with a hammer,” striking not at temporary idols, but at the “eternal idols” that have mystified the entire philosophical tradition. What is sometimes forgotten is that he goes on to elaborate the metaphor of the hammer, depicting it not as an instrument for destruction, but for “sounding the idols.” In case we miss the point, he even goes on to elaborate it further by trading in the figure of the hammer for that of the “tuning fork” as the instrument for striking the idols. In case we miss the point, he even goes on to elaborate it further by trading in the figure of the hammer for that of the “tuning fork” as the instrument for striking the idols.
Mitchell says that this approach to doing philosophy has two implications:
the first is that Nietzsche does not aim to destroy the eternal idols (how could he, since they are eternal?) but only to “sound” them—that is, to make them speak, to divulge their secrets. He aims, in other words, to break only the silence that is so characteristic of idols. The other implication is that the sounding is dialogic or dialectical: by exchanging the hammer for a tuning fork, Nietzsche suggests that it is not only the idols that are sounded, but the critical discourse that is brought to them.
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