Abstract
Georges Didi-Huberman's image theory maintains strong sensitivity to current social politics. Since his exhibition “Uprising”, Didi-Huberman has been making visual anthropological analysis of people's gestures of rebellion and considering images as an endowment of human desire. Pathos and imagination are two key perspectives through which Didi-Huberman's image theory enters politics, but Jacques Rancière questions his interpretation of the pathos dimension of images. In turn, Didi-Huberman clarifies Rancière's misunderstanding by tracing the philosophical origins of the concept while emphasizing its traumatic nature of passivity. In addition, he rethinks Rancière's key concept of the politics of aesthetics, “the distribution of sensible,” from the perspective of the fusion of imagination and politics, pointing out that the fusion of imagination and politics is key to the evocation of pathos. Through the viewing and political reflection of images, he obtains the “eye of history” to confirm the readability of history.
Keywords
Georges Didi-Huberman, gesture, pathos, imagination, Jacques Rancière
First Page
124
Last Page
132
Recommended Citation
Jiang, Xueyang. 2024. "Georges Didi-Huberman's “Politics of Images” and His Debate with Jacques Rancière on the Pathos of Images." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 43, (5): pp.124-132. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol43/iss5/13
