An object without a name
1. We perceive the world around us because of the various objects which compose the world. For example the room where we live is empty space occupied by us and some furniture. Thus the room is defined by its inhabitants, their possessions and, of course, by the walls of the room.
2. But an object on its own is nothing more than a meaningless thing if we don’t find a context to attribute to that object. Such a context consists of all the object’s properties, and can be summed up by a name unique to the object. Thus we use a name to define the object, unique to that object, representing the object thereafter as a matter of speech, instead of the real, concrete thing out there.
3. Still our own process of thought which we use to discover and name things can create an object not to be found in the environment, but which can only be found in the mind which created the object. In fact such an object can be so innovative and unique that we may find it hard to describe by giving to the object just a name.
A name without an object
4. Consider this painting: “Here the painter foregrounds and problematizes the way that we attribute significance to images, as well as the complicated relationship between the verbal and the visual. The painting challenges the ‘correspondence’ or natural theory of the image, the idea that an image stands unambiguously for (or in relation to) the object which it represents (or re-presents) or that the image can have a stable semantic or spatial relationship with the verbal sign.
5. The image of the pipe alone isn’t especially interesting, and there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about that sentence or the script. The dominant contrast in the painting is the pipe, so we might initially think, “That sure does look like a pipe.” Then we read the sentence that tells us it is not a pipe. What is it then? Magritte offers us the image of the pipe, then tells us that it's not a pipe. This seems to be a case when it really does matter what the meaning of it is.
6. Magritte highlights for our consideration the idea that an image of a pipe is not the same thing as the pipe itself (or the letters p-i-p-e). It is a representation of a pipe, once removed from its referent, the object to which it refers. He also forces us to consider our own reaction to the painting by suggesting that our compulsion to call the image a pipe reveals our predisposition to confuse the image with the thing it represents.” [1]
7. Is a pipe drawn in a painting real or not? As long as we cannot smoke that pipe it’s a name without an object. But as soon as we find a real pipe and we begin to smoke it then we have a match between the image of the pipe in our mind and the real pipe we hold in our hands. This is the case where the name of the object can be identified with the real object.
Can an idea be the object?
8. But how many ideas do we really have in mind which cannot be identified with any real and tangible object, while we are desperately trying to find a name for them so that they can be expressed and communicated?
9. For example right now I have an idea in my own mind, probably referring to the image of the pipe depicted in the painting, while I am also thinking about smoking the same pipe.
10. How strong an idea can be so that it becomes powerful enough to give us the impression that we are dealing with something we can hold in our hands?
Is the written word the object?
11. This is an explanation of the painting by Michel Foucault: “What misleads us here is the inevitability of connecting the text to the drawing, and the impossibility of defining a perspective that would let us say that the assertion is true, false, or contradictory. The sorcery here lies in an operation rendered invisible by the simplicity of its result, but which alone can explain the vague uneasiness provoked. The operation is a calligram that the painter has secretly constructed, then carefully unraveled. Each element of the figure, their reciprocal position and their relationship derive from this process, annulled as soon as it has been accomplished. The calligram is thus tautological.” [2]
12. If we say “This is not a pipe,” then is the previous sentence, referring to the painting, true or not? If we say “This is a pipe” then this sentence is false because there is no real pipe, except from the drawing of a pipe. But if we say “This is not a pipe” the latter sentence is ambiguous, if not false, because even if there is not any real pipe we can hold in our hands, still there is an image of a pipe.
13. But as soon as the name of this object, the word ‘pipe,’ is drawn or written down then the impression becomes so powerful and everlasting that, although we are still dealing with an imaginary object, we are beginning to treat the object as something real- after all a painting itself, whatever it may represent, is real.
Is the object real?
14. What triggers our imagination in the first place is the contradiction between the image of the object (the pipe) and the assertion “This is a pipe,” which provokes us to treat the image as real.
15. However on second thought we can suppose that the object could be real- a real pipe on the table next to us, waiting for us to smoke it. Still that pipe, even if we hold it in our hands and begin to smoke it, will keep on being an imaginary pipe in our minds- perceived by thought through the senses- compensating for the real pipe, which ultimately becomes an elusive object existing on its own and which was never meant to be fully understood.
16. But if finally all the objects which compose our reality are mere representations of ‘elusive things’ lying beyond our own mind, having thus an existence independent not only from our preconceptions and desires but also from the properties which our own senses attribute to objects, then what is more real? The object per se (which is elusive) or the object as it appears in our mind, filtered by our subjective physiology, psychology, and mental ability?
Bringing the image of the object and the true object together
17. The aforementioned calligram is a symbol. This can be either a shape or a word. Such a symbol stands for the true object, while it describes and defines the object as we know it. What the true object is beyond our own perception and conception is a rhetorical question. Our only hope can be that our mental, also artistic, powers are strong enough that we can bring together the image of the object ‘inside’ with the true object ‘out there’ as closely as possible.
18. Thus what is real is neither the image of a pipe in a painting or in our mind, nor the pipe as an independent object found out there. Instead it is the relationship between what an object could be and what we think it is. Such a relationship, remarkably enough, gives existence both to the object and to our thought.
But this again is not the real thing, is it?
[2]: [https://monoskop.org/images/9/99/Foucault_Michel_This_Is_Not_a_Pipe.pdf]
16/8/2018
Painting: This continues not to be a pipe (Ceci continue de ne pas être une pipe), Rene Magritte
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