Seeing-as, Seeing-in, Seeing-with: Looking through Images

Abstract

In the constitution of contemporary image theory, Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy has undoubtedly become a major conceptual reference.Rather than trying to establish what Wittgenstein's own image theory could possibly look like, this paper would like to critically assess some of the advantages as well as some of the quandaries that arise when using Wittgenstein's concept of 'seeing-as' for addressing the plural realities of images.While putting into evidence the tensions that come into play when applying what was initially a theory of the gaze to a theory of the image, the paper shall subsequently discuss three modes of iconic vision: the propositional seeing-as, the projective seeing-in and the medial seeing-with. Seeing-asDespite their disparities, most contemporary image theories seem to agree on the fact that the constitution of an image's meaning is fundamentally codetermined by the gaze directed toward it.Images thus do not have a single sense, but can have plural meanings, depending on the perspective from which one looks at them.To illustrate this fact, one image example has been frequently invoked: the rabbit-duck-picture of which Wittgenstein makes use in his later philosophy (Wittgenstein 1993, 204 sq., § § 118 sq.).The ambiguous picture, taken from the Polish-American psychologist Joseph Jastrow's Fact and Fable in Psychology ( Jastrow 1900), either shows a duck or a rabbit, but never both at once (see fig. 1, overleaf).

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