What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images by W. J. T. MitchellIconotropism: Turning toward Pictures by Ellen Spolsky

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 473 allows an equation to be made between an experience of limitlessness and an ex perience of nothing, not even when Slocombe asks us to accept that 'the nihil (as Das Unform) may be considered as an object' (p. 43). The problems associated with thismake forunhappy reading tillSlocombe reaches thepostmodern, where the is sues are restated in terms of Lyotard, seen to be adding Levinas to his Kantianism (p. 6I). Here the concept of 'unrepresentability', as basic toLyotard, is 'at the heart of Lyotard's definition of thepostmodern thatdemonstrates its relation tonihilism' (p. 64). To Lyotard isadded Baudrillard on the 'hyperreal', and discussion follows as towhether Baudrillard could be considered nihilistic (as opposed to the conditions of which hiswork is a critique, and as opposed, too, to the idea thathismode of critique may be seen as a formofAdorno's 'negative dialectics'). Slocombe argues thatpostmodern theorycannot escape nihilism, whether inLyo tard,Baudrillard, orDerrida, andwith thispoint established, itseems that theconcept of the sublime disappears, save with Zizek (p. I69) and in a discussion ofKristeva on abjection (p. I57). The emphasis ismore on nihilism in a postmodernism which isvariously defined. Here, much ofwhat iswritten is suggestive and sometimes very interesting, as when discussing 'blank fiction' (pp. I4I-52), Beckett, or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. None the less, there is something about the emphases which are placed throughout that seems problematic; even if it may be agreed that 'every text somehow contains nihilism in it' (p. I32), theword 'somehow' there leaves toomuch room forambiguity. Slocombe wishes to see the 'trace' inDerrida and inLevinas as thatof nihilism (pp. I35-36), but thisdoes not seem inevitable fromhis reading of Jill Robbins (inAltered Reading: Levinas and Literature (Chicago: University ofChicago Press I999)), and Iwant todistinguish the 'trace' from thehardly discussed Levinas idea of the ily a, the 'there is'which contests individual identitybut, being the source of horror, isnot nothing. He quotes Pynchon: nihilism is 'the ideology of theZero' (P. I27); but this reminder thatnihilism ispart of ideological thinking-at theheart of Nietzsche's reading of it,as the last line of The Genealogy of Morals indicates-seems also compromised by another argument which seems to see nihilism as an absolute, outside ideological thinking, which seems part of a differentbook from much ofwhat is here, and part of a belief which itseems thatSlocombe's Afterword gestures towards. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER JEREMY TAMBLING What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. By W. J.T. MITCHELL. Chicago and London: University ofChicago Press. 2005. xxi + 380 pp. ?24.50. ISBN 978-o-226-53245-5. Iconotropism: Turning towardPictures. Ed. by ELLEN SPOLSKY. Lewisburg: Bucknell UniversityPress. 2004. 2IOpp. ?39 50. ISBN 978-o-8387-5542-6. A grainy reproduction ofPoussin's TheAdoration of the Golden Calf stands at theheart ofW. J.T. Mitchell's latestbook, a collection of essays which orbits elliptically about thequestion 'What do pictures want?' For him, theGolden Calf is a keymotif since itconcentrates themind sowonderfully on the second commandment-that 'perfect expression of a jealous God who wants not only exclusive worship but exclusive custody of the secret of life, which means exclusive rights to theproduction of images' (pp. i6-I 7)-and also on the 'reigning cliche of contemporary visual culture', that is, 'the idea that images have a kind of social or psychological power of theirown' (p. 32). Mitchell argues that, just like someMadison Avenue ad exec, so theOld Testament God knew that some images, 'touse the trade jargon, "have legs"-that is, they seem tohave a surprising capacity togenerate new directions and surprising twists J.. .]as if 474 Reviews the agent ofGod's wrath, invitesAaron to explain himself,Aaron insists: 'I cast the gold into the fireand there came out this calf' (Exodus 32. 24). As Mitchell gently points out, thatverb is ambiguous, making the process sound chancy and accidental, like the casting of a die, rather than thepouring ofmolten metal into amould; and, further, 'came out' implies that the calf has the look of 'a self-created automaton', and might easily have emerged as something quite different. In any case, the scene that Poussin depicts isnothing less than thatof 'modern art at itsconception' (p. I89...