Читать книгу Vol. 1(1). 2018 - Сергей Анатольевич Дзикевич - Страница 11

A characteristic of modernity is the fact that the world is opposite to man and is perceived as an object and an image. In ancient times, people, animals and the environment were part of living nature, the Physis. They were generally perceived as similar to each other. They were stimulated by the power, the dynamis of nature, the Physis. This relationship of people to the world was retained in the Middle Ages. Animals, people and world are created by God and have a common creatureliness. In the modern era this relationship of the (Western) human being to the world, to other people and to themselves changes. Nature is no longer experienced as animated. It becomes the object. The people are no longer part of nature or the world created by God, but are opposite it; they measure it and register it as «object». In this process the world becomes an image. With the development of new media this trend increases. Not only the world and the other people are perceived as images, we ourselves are also increasingly perceiving ourselves in the mode of images. The widespread use of digital photography in everyday life and especially the sefies are proof of this (Kontopodis, Varvantakis, and Wulf 2017). Using electronic photos or films we create all important events, and ultimately create an image of ourselves (Wulf 2013a, 2013b).

Human images show the central role images play, and with them the imagination and the imaginary world, for the constitution of the person and his education. They also make it clear how strongly the images are defined by their respective historical and cultural character and how important their research is within the framework of anthropology. Human images are images which the person creates of himself, and whose significance must be understood for his perception of the world, his memories and his future projections. They are generated by social and cultural practices of everyday life and by the arts. Human images become part of the collective and individual social and cultural imaginary world and thus play a part in shaping human activities. The creation of images is a feature, which we share as human beings, whose form, however, is very different in history and in different cultures. As the images and the imaginary world visualise something, which would otherwise remain invisible, their research is an important area of anthropology.

What we describe as an «image» is different, meaning that the spectrum of the term is broad and requires a range of further clarification. Sometimes we mean the result of visual perception processes. Under the influence of neuroscience and its visualisation strategies, the results of the perception with other senses are often even described as «images». We then speak about mental or «inner» images, which bring to mind something which is not actually present. These include, for example, souvenir pictures, which differ to the perceptions due to their vagueness. The same applies to sketches or drafts of future situations, to dreams, hallucinations or visions. Many aesthetic products also take the form of images. They are products of a process aimed at the creation of an image. As metaphors, they are ultimately a constitutive element of language. Creating images, recognising images as images, dealing with images using one’s imagination, is a universal capability of humans (Wulf 2014, 2018). However, it varies depending on the historical period and culture. Because which images we see and how we see images is determined by complex historical and cultural processes. How we perceive images and deal with them is also influenced by the unique nature of our life history and subjectivity.

Like all images, human images are the result of energetic processes. They transform the world of objects, actions and other people into images. Using the imagination they are imagined and become part of the collective and individual imaginary world. Many of these processes are mimetic and result in an assimilation to other people, environments, ideas and images. In mimetic processes the outer world becomes the «inner world», which is a world of images (Gebauer and Wulf 2018. 1998). This world of imaginary images plays a part in shaping the outer world. As these images are performative, they contribute to the emergence of actions and to the production and performance of our relationship to other people and to our surrounding world. The imaginary world is the place of the images as such, the destination of the imagination process generating the images. At the same time, it is the starting point of the mimetic and performative energies of the images.