[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 14:39:49 -0500
Eric writes:
"I didn't say we were better off without defining images, as if we could
suddenly shed them, but they are a means of shielding us from the
complexity of life."
It makes no sense to talk about the complexity of life without some
reference to topoi, places or contexts which identify what is important
and what is not and why each is what they are. Put differently, how is
it possible to know that life is complex? As I said before, without
defining images life is an undifferentiated blur. It seems to me that
my one year old daughter's experience of the world would be a good
example of what Eric's 'unshielded complexity of life' might look like
and I just don't see that as something to strive for.
Eric continues:
"True, these images orient us by creating frames of identity. But they
also simplify. Like maps, they are static but the world is not."
It is incoherent to claim that images qua images simplify. If images
are too simplistic then one should look for better images. If images by
definition can never be adequate then they are not 'more simple'. One
might as well claim that language simplifies the world because words are
not the same as things. Furthermore, like language, maps are not static
since they operate by virtue of relations. (My sister-in-law, a
cartographer, gets very upset when people talk of maps as if they were
pictures.) As topoi, defining images place things in relation to other
things so that understanding is possible. The cognitive value of
defining images lies, not in fixing what things mean, but in orienting
things in relation to other things. Nothing static here.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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