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Abstract
A stain is the evidence of something that was. It is a trace. A stain may be something quite ordinary: the ink stain on my index finger; the mark of your fingers on this book. A stain may also be embarrassing: lipstick on a cheek; sweat rings under the arms; a bloody discharge. A stain may be forensically incriminating. A stain may be kept for sentimental reasons. Moreover, every stain has its own particular texture. Texture denotes the consistency of a surface and the sensory, often tactile imprint that is left on it. The stain may be absorbed in the thing that supports it; then again, it may stay on the surface, something separate. Every stain is unique.
In this article the author deals with seven factors that make the stain into a powerful model for rethinking the visual: the stain as prototype and prefiguration; the stain as relic; the stain of Veronica; the stain as a psycho-energetic symptom; the stain as pars pro toto for the womb; the stain and le désir mimétique; and finally, the stain as an image paradigm of the residue.
Acknowledgements
A shorter version already appeared in Baert (Citation2016a). I am grateful to Stephanie Heremans (KU Leuven).
Notes
1. In her manifesto Mondzain defends the iconophile image: the figurative image embraced by mankind. I will come back to this issue in the section: Veronica’s Stain.
2. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) calls “color” a precondition of Darstellbarkeit.
3. (Didi-Huberman Citation1985, 136) “Le sang christique démontre les vertus structurales au point même où l’informe coulée (le jet d’humeur) se relève en fantasme originaire (la plaie christique).”
4. Until well into the seventeenth century in Rouen it was customary for brides to make offerings of phallic symbols in the local St Veronica chapel.
5. According to Plato’s (427–347 BCE) Timaeus, Chora (Khora) is a place, an interval.
6. The author is acquainted with the matrixial borderlinking psychoanalysis and art theory of Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. The matrixial space is a space that may be characterized first and foremost as containing an energy or potentiality that has not yet manifested itself at the phallic level, only at the feminine, internal, uterine level. So-called insight is located in a liminal zone where transfer between the “I” and the “Other” are able to originate; it is a locus of a certain transformational potentiality. This conception could be said to correlate to, or be a concrete and culture-specific expression of, what was psychoanalytically (or, even better: from the perspective of a correction on classical, orthodox Lacanian psychoanalysis) identified as “matrixial borderspace,” a transsubjective psychic sphere, that can be grasped according to the model of the maternal womb (matrix) and its co-emergence-in-differentiation (fusion nor separation) of an I and an uncognized non-I, and their “borderlinking” as a nonfusional transmission, connectivity. In the matrixial perspective, frontiers become co-poietically transgressive and limits become thresholds. A matrixial borderspace is as such a mutating co-poietic net with a co-poietic transformational potentiality, where co-creativity (“metramorphosis”) might occur. As such, it equally entails a particular mode of meaning and knowledge production, and is able to describe certain aspects of human symbolic experience.
7. The image and phantasm of radiating energy is a formal and content-related archetype of the psycho-energetic type found on early Christian sarcophagi (although it also occurs on ceramic utensils of that period), namely the strigil motif. Strigils are curving lines that fan out from a central point in the composition (often a void or a mandorla) in a concentric-symmetric way. Strigils occur so frequently and persistently in the early Christian period that the motif must have had an inherent meaning. The form of its meaning coincides with the khōra (the underworld of the dead) in giving expression to the sub-symbolic impulse to create meaning: a fluid invisible power that bounces back and forth between objects and people—the energeia or dunamis.
8. (Renger Citation2014, 55) “I cannot devote too much time to Girard's patriarchal bias in his mimesis model. The mirror paradigm is innately phallocentric. The author pays no attention to the matriarchal aspects in the mythology and religion.”
9. Bachelard (Citation1942) offers us a provocative “positive” relationship between Narcissus, Echo and the pool. Echo is loyal: she is always with him; she disappears in him. Moreover, Bachelard develops the idea that the water surface launches a paradigm of the image as sublimated caress or the almost touch. This reminds me of the semantic association in the Italian language: sfiorare. The almost-not-yet-touch is derived from the stamens in a flower that dispense pollen, touching other flowers in a breeze. In fact, Narcissus transforms into the well-known narcis flower.
10. Nepesh—the life principle—is the substance that allows a person to live. Nepesh uses the medium of blood (which is why the consumption of blood is taboo), but is also associated with breathing in and out, like ruach. Nepesh resides in the heart, along with the blood. The very earliest texts, such as Assyrian writings, place nepesh in the throat. Nepesh survives a person’s death and remains underground in the deceased. The nepesh (blood) of the dead “weeps.” In the translations, nepesh comes closest to the Greek thumos and the Latin animus, according to Onians.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Barbara Baert
Barbara Baert (1967) (www.illuminare.be) is Professor at the University of Leuven. She teaches in the field of Iconology, Art Theory & Analysis, and Medieval Art. In 2006 she founded the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images (www.iconologyresearchgroup.org). In 2016, Barbara Baert was awarded the prestigious Francqui Prize for her bold approach to and pioneering work in medieval visual culture and the worship of relics. [email protected]