Ten Theses for an Aesthetics of Politics by Davide Panagia

Author:Davide Panagia [Panagia, Davide]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: PHI019000 Philosophy / Political, POL000000 Political Science / General, SOC008000 Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General
ISBN: 9781452953823
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2016-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Thesis 6. On the Noli me tangere

The handling of an advenience resists the kind of penetrative touch that wants to expose the truth of an object. Rather than expositive, an aesthetics of politics is in the mood of the noli me tangere: the “do not touch me” or “do not withhold me” of the appearance. The noli me tangere regards an intangible hapticity that discomposes the expectations of possession.

LET US HANDLE SOME IMAGES. The figures below are famous and taken from a biblical iconography of the story of Jesus. Their theme is that of the hapticity of the image—specifically, the image of a deity—and they depict two instances of touching (or not touching) the figure of Jesus in his role as the resurrected divinity.

Both works are remarkable.

In Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas (Figure 1), the doubting disciple thrusts his hand into the side of Jesus in order to perforate his existence and confirm his resurrected actuality. Thomas’s touch at once wants to expose and possess evidence of Jesus’s resurrection. Here the extended hand that handles the wound penetrates the source of the sensation of belief so as to confirm that the image of god is indeed present. Such confirmation promises to relieve the pangs of doubt. Thomas’s touch clutches the wound; it is an ostensive touch (like the one above described by Wittgenstein in his account of the philosopher’s “this”) that wants to point to the source of the sensation in order to hold on to one’s faith. And notice, too, Caravaggio’s subtleness in presenting us with two tears in the painting: Christ’s wound and the seam of Thomas’s torn garment (upper left shoulder). They are perpendicular to each other, they are painted along the same axis, and they are practically identical—and yet completely different. It’s almost as if Caravaggio wants us to believe that one wound is real while the other is decorative—which would be completely in line with the thematics of the painting: here is the real image of god, Jesus Christ the mediator of truth and falsity. All you have to do is thrust your hand in the wound in order to look and see for yourself. Of course, the point of Caravaggio’s painterly tear is not to prove the difference between a real and an ornamental wound, but to put on display the urge—and the temptation—of indexicality and verification. Thus, through Thomas’s gesture of adhesion to a lesion, conviction is transformed into belief and a sensation is given a legitimating ground. Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas, in other words, dramatizes a desire to know the image, to touch it in such a way as to penetrate its externality and possess the source of its sensations so as to nail firmly in place the relation between sensation and reference.

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