Profanations by Giorgio Agamben

Author:Giorgio Agamben
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Zone Books
Published: 2020-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

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First of all, the image is not a substance but an accident that is found in the mirror, not as in a place but as in a subject (quod est in speculo ut in subiecto). For medieval philosophers, being in a subject is the mode of being assumed by what is without substance, that is, what exists not in itself but in something other than itself. (Given the proximity between the image and the experience of love, it is not surprising that both Dante and Cavalcanti were led to define love in the same way: as an “accident without substance.”)

Two characteristics are derived from the insubstantial nature of the image. Since the image is not a substance, it does not possess any continuous reality and cannot be described as moving by means of any local movement. Rather, it is generated at every moment according to the movement or the presence of the one who contemplates it: “Just as light is always created anew according to the presence of the illuminator, so do we say that the image in the mirror is generated each time according to the presence of the one who looks.”

The being of the image is a continuous generation (semper nova generatur), a being [essere] of generation and not of substance. Each moment, it is created anew, like the angels who, according to the Talmud, sing the praises of God and immediately sink into nothingness.

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