The Seduction of the Image and the Status of the Secret in Our Times

Sarah Birgani

 “[T]he image you behold is the reflection of an image that does not exist.” [1]

 So writes the Austrian poet, Semier Insayif, emphasising the deceptive character of the image. In contrast to this, we dwell in an epoch which I would deem a cult of the image. The image presents itself as a seductive promise to grasp a truth that defies any need for interpretation, a knowledge that can be seen and omits the position of the one who looks. The modern sciences in the Psy-fields let themselves be taken in by the splendour of images and place their cards on the colourful shades of the brain, in the context of neuroscience, in order to explain in a transparent way the phenomena of the enigma of a subject’s suffering, under the manner of “it can be seen.” A transparency that yearns to displace the enigmatic, the “incommensurable,”[2] that was so dear to Goethe, with crystalline images. Transparency, the word origin of which comes from the Latin pārēre (to appear, to be visible, to show oneself), is the great demand of the 21st century. Transparency in all official and social matters that affect speaking beings in their everyday lives goes hand in hand with the increasing call for evaluation, an evaluation that is based on what can be seen. In this context, Jacques-Alain Miller speaks of the 21st century as “the epoch of surveillance.”[3]

Surveillance today is one that the subject voluntarily submits to. In the growing importance of social media, especially for young ones, the prevalence of images becomes increasingly pronounced: moving images, colourful images, images of the own body, placed in recurring positions, provided with filters, embellished, distorted, altered. In the realm of images, there is an inherent that beckons one to endlessly scroll, inviting a perpetual metonymic repetition – seeing another and another and another… – no stop, no difference. The era of addiction, the zenith of which we have perhaps not yet reached, is seen particularly in the modern use of the image. Daniel Roy writes in his presentation of the theme for the upcoming Congress: “today, the object of our gaze […] it’s in the hand, inseparable from the body, which can say quite rightly: io sono sempre visto!”[4]

So, is everything seen? Or in other words: what is the status of the secret in an era where the seduction of the image is ubiquitous? How does it alter the gaze when everything is open to be seen?

In Freudian times, the analyst’s position was connected to deciphering the secrets of his hysteric patients, spoken by their enigmatic bodies which contained a hidden message, one-by-one. Nowadays, the place of psychoanalysis might be more about constructing a secret, each time new, where everything seems so crystal clear – from deciphering, to a new form of tailor-made ciphering?

Psychoanalysis is one of the few practices where the secret,[5] particularly the secret of an opaque jouissance, continues to finds its sanctuary.

References

[1] Insayif, S., Ungestillte blicke oder vom bebildern eines kopfes und beschriften desselben, Vienna: Klever Verlag, 2022. Extract available here: https://www.semierinsayif.com/buch-ungestillte-blicke/

[2] Cf. Eckermann, J.P., Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahres seines Lebens, Hofenberg, Berlin, 2018, pp. 79, 117.

[3] Cf. Miller, J.-A., “The Era of the Man without Qualities,” Psychoanalytical Notebooks 17, pp. 7–44.

[4] Roy, D.: NLS 2024 Congress, “Clinic of the Gaze,” Presentation of the Theme: https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ARGUMENT-ENG.-CONGRES-NLS-2024.pdf

[5] Brousse, M.-H., “Chronicle of Malaise: The Secret,” Lacanian Review Online, No. 332, 2022:  https://www.thelacanianreviews.com/chronicle-of-malaise-the-secret/.