THE PEOPLE-IMAGE

Abstract

This article explores the work of Didi-Huberman as both an “art historian” and a “philosopher of art.” In particular, Schwarte examines the political turn that Didi-Huberman’s recent works have taken, for example in relation to the ethics of “looking” developed in Images in Spite of All, and to the political philosophy expounded in works such as Peuples exposés, peuples figurants and in the Soulèvements exhibition. Schwarte questions why Didi-Huberman, instead of delivering a more systematic political philosophy, prefers to analyse specific cases. Moving beyond these, Schwarte seeks in Didi-Huberman’s work possible criteria for distinguishing between emancipatory uprisings of the people, on the one hand, and what might be categorized as reactionary or even fascist uprisings, on the other.

Keywords:

• Georges Didi-Huberman
• uprisings
• political philosophy
• philosophy of art
• the people

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Editors’ note: the translator has chosen not to follow the existing English translation of the Soulèvements catalogue here but to provide his own. This is the case throughout the article.

2 The Italian word lucciola (etymologically a “little light”) has several usages. It is the common term for the Italian firefly (Luciola italica), but it is also a slang term used to refer to the prostitutes who used to station themselves with small lanterns at their feet at the sides of roads leading out of Italian cities. The same word was also used to denote the flashlight-bearing usherettes, who well into the 1970s were employed to show cinema-goers to their seats.

3

Les lucioles ont disparu, cela veut dire: la culture, où Pasolini jusque-là reconnaissait une pratique – populaire ou avant-gardiste – de résistance, est elle-même devenue un outil de la barbarie totalitaire, confinée qu’elle se trouve à présent dans le règne marchand, prostitutionnel, de la tolérance généralisée … Mais une chose est de désigner la machine totalitaire, une autre de lui accorder si vite une victoire définitive et sans partage.

4

Les images – qu’Agamben réduit ici à la “forme médiatique de l’image” – assument ainsi, dans le monde contemporain, la fonction d’une “gloire” nouée à la machine du “règne”: images lumineuses contribuant, par leur force même, à faire de nous des peuples asservis, hypnotisés dans leur flux. Le diagnostic n’est pas faux, sans doute. Il correspond aux sensations d’étouffement et d’angoisse qui nous prennent devant la prolifération calculée des images utilisées tout à la fois comme véhicules de la propagande et de la merchandise. Mais ce diagnostic apparaît, dans le livre d’Agamben, comme vérité dernière: la conclusion de son livre aussi bien que l’horizon apocalyptique dont il relève. En sorte qu’il finit par dédialectiser, déconflictualiser, appauvrir, et la notion des images, et celle des peuples.

5 In his “Notes on Gesture,” Giorgio Agamben states that “prior to laying claim to the status of acts or actions, uprisings arise from human psychology as gestures or bodily forms of desire” (58).

6 He is referring here to Michel Foucault’s “What is Enlightenment?” [Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?].

7 What is well known is the influence of Johann Most on the anarchist-led workers’ demonstration of 4 May 1886 in Chicago, which culminated in armed rebellion, when the anarchists threw a bomb at the police.