Les paysages : espaces sans nom

Abstract

Landscapes : spaces without a name Landscapes have recently been promoted to the rank of objects protected by the power structure, therefore cut up, identified and labelled. Their obviousness is thus almost taken for granted and is proportional to the degree of cultural elaboration which they enbody. Every landscape is an image and its creation is closely related to writing and the written text, as demonstrated by the example of Chinese painting. The concept of the landscape — an overall view from a faraway point, and its figuration on a static plane, as a portion of framed space — emerged concomitantly with the techniques of space figuration during the Renaissance in Western Europe. The space thus appears objectified by its figuration. But the landscape images of European culture transcend language and express a silent meaning. The perception and visualization of a landscape cannot be reduced to a static reading in any univocal language, but summon the imagination. What then is the status of the landscape-image, the object of such solicitude on the part of the authorities, who — by their measures of protection and accomodation — valorize the concepts of «unity of style», «coherence», «legibility». These landscapes are so conceived as to create ideal images, «unitary paintings» detached from the modern urban and rural context. Do the «ideological windows» of these conventional landscapes reveal the images of a social body finally unified in its reference to a mythical past ? The perception of the figuration (representation) of space in landscape images and the perception of real space do not coincide, and this discrepancy supposes a double relationship to space. Do the images — by their polysemy, their ubiquity (proliferation and circulation), their silent references for perception — lend themselves to the dissemination of social values more insidiously than by the written text or language ? Does the silence of the images create a new form of social link, a «speechless order» and a consensus beyond language ? Such questions necessitate new epistemo-logical positions for sociology and the resort to phenomenology in order to grasp the process of perception and its relationship to memory and to truth.