The problem of two iconic turns
3.3. Suggestions
3.3.2. Problem of pre-‐reflexive experience
Bartmanski notes that the unresolved questions that should be answered by iconic theory are “How exactly does the visual inform what we know and shape what we be-‐ lieve? How contingent is its elusive power on other aspects of social life?” (2012b: 13). The underlying assumption of these questions, namely that images condition our en-‐ tire worldview (Weltanschauung) and that they not only conserve and transmit it, but also help to mediate and negotiate it (Przyborski and Slunecko 2012: 40), is shared also by recent sociology influenced by Boehm’s iconic turn and dealing with images. The problem is that one cannot directly ask people about their perception of images, for such a question would be based on the assumption that they are able to formulate their habitualized knowledge (ibid.: 47). Put differently, iconic experience is pre-‐ reflexive, i.e. below the level of explication (Bohnsack 2009: 299)—this assumption corresponds to the notion of sensual iconic experience, which is based on understand-‐ ing by “feeling” described by Alexander (2010a). According to Becker, such emotional effects of works of arts are produced by shared, social conventions and customs (Beck-‐ er 1974a: 771). Belting calls this a phenomenon of period eye, by which he expresses the
fact that the way how people view works of arts41 is closely bound up with conventions of perceiving of our own time that cannot be explained by mere physiological vision42 (Belting 2000: 161). However, different conventions of perceiving are limited not only temporarily, but also culturally, for people from different cultural contexts do not share the “way of viewing” (e.g. reaction of the Arab world to Mohammed cartoons compared with Abu Ghraib photographs (Binder 2012: 114)). In order to achieve under-‐ standing in a communication via images, there is a necessary condition of being “able to read visual images in roughly similar ways” (Hall 1997: 4). People use conventions for understanding images unreflexively, “just as we may not know the grammar and syntax of our verbal language though we speak and understand it” (Becker 1974b: 6). The unreflexive character of understanding is recognized also by Alexander, when he writes that iconic knowledge is based on experience—one “simply knows”. However, he grounds the ability of “simply knowing” in one’s disposition to be moved and does not address this issue any further. By that he rather evades the issue of atheoretical, aesthetic experience, which thus remains a challenging question iconic theory in its cultural sociological form.
3.3.3.
Bohnsack’s documentary method
The point of departure formulated by Bohnsack is congruent with the basic assump-‐ tions of iconic turn: social reality is constituted by images that have the capacity to provide orientation for action and everyday practice, since typification is based on mental images that depend on iconic knowledge (2009). However, the understanding “through the medium of iconicity is mostly pre-‐reflexive,” and therefore belongs to the level of atheoretical or tacit knowledge, which is imparted by iconicity, text and prac-‐ tice (ibid.: 299). On one hand, the access to tacit knowledge is provided by the transi-‐ tion from iconography to iconology in Panofsky’s analysis that enables us to reveal the instrinsic, documentary meaning—Wesenssinn (i.e. characteristic meaning that docu-‐
41 The reference to art does not, however, prevent us from assuming that the same hold true also for
viewing in general.
42 The period eye phenomenon reminds of Boehm’s distinction between seeing (as a physical process)
ments itself), or habitus. The problem with Panofsky’s method is that it was not meant exclusively for analyzing images but rather aimed at different media. On the other hand, if we want to analyze only images, we can proceed from the pre-‐iconographical description in a way suggested by Imdahl (3.1.1) and transcend the iconographical level by analyzing the composition and formal structures in a medium of picture. Imdahl’s iconic treats images as self-‐referential systems and avoids explaining pictures by texts, while the main focus lies on formal structures of images, which are considered docu-‐ ments for “the natural order” produced by actors themselves (Bohnsack 2009: 316). The goal of Bohnsack’s documentary method remains the same as the one of iconology—it aims at the level of tacit knowledge and documentary meaning and endeavors to gain access to the space of experience of picture producers. A central element of this space is then individual or collective habitus.
Panofsky’s “habitus could be defined (...) as a system of internalized schemes that have the capacity to generate all the thoughts, perceptions, and actions characteristic of a culture, and nothing else,” wrote Bourdieu (2005: 233). With the concept of habitus one can then explain both the reception and the production of images, for it emerges on the underlying principles characteristic of a given culture and epoch. A similar view expressed Boehm by claiming that “images are bodies that are subject to historical de-‐ terminants and effects as well as forces generating images and claiming recognition,” (2012). The assumption that reception is part of habitus confirmed Michel in his study (2006). Since images are open and contain no inherent meaning, the meaning emerges in the process of understanding, during which the form and the content are put in a relation. This understanding is directed by a convention of a specific group and thus socially embedded he concludes (Michel 2006: 20).
The problem with Bohnsack’s method is that the search for habitus through the analy-‐ sis of surface qualities of an image leads us to the sphere of tacit knowledge, which is informed by images and its central element habitus. Asking how the visual shapes what we believe thus seems to lead to pre-‐reflexive experience (reception), conven-‐ tions and production of images (photographs, to be exact, since Bohnsack’s method is aimed at them), which all stem from atheoretical knowledge and are part of the habi-‐ tus. The genuinely social aspect of icons as defined by Bartmanski and Alexander, the
power to generate strong collective feelings and catalyze action while having impact on collective identity, is then left out. At this point, the approach to icons suggested by Werner Binder (2012, 2013) seems promising.
3.3.4.
Binder’s secular icon
First of all, Binder pays attention to the origins and meanings of the word icon. On one hand, it denotes pictures and images, i.e. it is connected to vision, and on the other hand it is a religious symbol, an object of modern rituals. Further he shows that visual-‐ ity and sacredness were fused not just in the religious icons of past time; quite the con-‐ trary, he finds a fusion of the same elements in contemporary secular icons (Binder 2012: 101–102). That leads him to define and treat icons as visual representations of the sacred43.
The notion of visual character of icons allows Binder to adopt methods of image analy-‐ sis suggested by art theory and Bohnsack, which take into account the pictorial aspects of an image. “The prerequisite of iconic depth is of course the iconic difference. Only because the image has the power to reveal something else is the emergence of an icon-‐ ic depth possible.” (Binder 2012: 107) Thus, special qualities of the surface allows for the creation of immaterial depth, which is “created by an interaction of spectator and ma-‐ terial surface, by the dialectic of ‘immersion’ and ‘materialization,’ informed but not determined by discourses” (ibid.). To sum up, there are two important elements to this understanding of secular icon. The visual surface allows us to employ the methods for image analysis based exclusively on formal and compositional qualities of an image, which suppresses the textual-‐based knowledge of context. At the same time, the analy-‐ sis of iconic depth takes discourses and rituals into consideration and allows for em-‐ bedment of meaning of the secular icon in the context made up by narratives and prac-‐
43 The use of cultural sociological master binary of sacred and profane is by no means consistent in the
literature. Alexander (1990) interpreted sacred as good and profane as evil, which does not correspond to Durkheim (1976) who distinguishes between pure and impure sacred (good and evil) in opposition to profane. Elsewhere (2010a), he uses the same distinction translated into aesthetic terms, when the sa-‐ cred-‐good is thought of as the beautiful and the profane-‐evil becomes the sublime. However, Binder interprets Durkheim’s binary as the opposition between sacred as collective versus profane, mundane as individual. Contrary to that, Alexander’s understanding is always collective, distinguishing between sacred as extraordinary, transcendental, auratic etc. and mundane, everyday (2008).
tices. Thus, in this approach the aesthetic qualities and the social aspects of a secular icon are separated for the sake of respective analysis, but combined and intertwined in interpretation.
“Secular icons, due to their specific visual surface, create an iconic depth that allows them to become symbols in modern rituals. To be sure, it is always the properly socialized spectator and the civil discourses that endow an image with deeper public meanings. However, the emergence of iconic depth is never completely arbi-‐ trary, but rather tied to the iconic properties of the surface.” (Binder 2012: 102)