Author/Editor		Kompare, A
Title		Subjekt med podobo in besedo
Translated title		The subject between image and word
Type		članek
Source		Anthropos
Vol. and No.		Letnik 27, št. 1-2
Publication year		1995
Volume		str. 26-38
Language		slo
Abstract		The prevailing and uniform characteristic of popular culture is the obsession with image, that is, with what one sees and is seen as. Seeing (watching) is, therefore, the main sensory modality in human operation, while the seen is the dominant which structures the feld of inter-subjectivity. In the Aext, this predominance of the imaginary field (seeing, image) over the symbolic field (speaking, word) is questioned and analysed. In this way, popular culture is "read" through and along with psycho-analysis which takes the subject's division between image and word as its object of investigation. Psycho-analysis is in radical opposition to any "culture of image" where it is important how one present oneself to others and where, individuals are caught up in a vicious circle of imaginary identification, a double and narcissist relationship, the "cultivating" of ego (concern for the maintenance of a personal(!) image and "good shape") and the impossible attempts to reach the artificially constructed and marketed models and patterns. The whole structure of psycho-analysis eliminates the seeing and creates distance from the imaginary field. According to Freud, "nothing other than the exchange of words between the analyst and the subject is happening in psycho-analysis". Only by following its "tell everything" rule can we arrive at the truth (the subject of the unconscious), since the truth is constituted through language; by itself and independently of language, the truth does not exist. The individual overlooks the truth by the very fact of lingering in the feld of the visual and by equating the seeing with the knowing. We have classified the seeing in the register of belief and we claim that the reason why the individual wants to see is because he does not want to know. Based on Descartes, we also analyse the consequence of equating the seeing and the knowing (the search for the "lost" wholeness, fullness and undisturbed harmony).
Descriptors		IMAGINATION PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATION SYMBOLISM CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS ATTITUDE