Phenomenologies of the Image

Images have been a remarkably constant preoccupation for the phenomenological tradition. Beginning with Husserl’s early investigation of image-consciousness, with its threefold conceptual articulation of material Bildding, appearing Bildobjekt, and referential Bildsujet (Hua’XXIII), phenomenological accounts of the image can be found in the classic works of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Eugen Fink, all the way to current phenomenologically inspired approaches such as those of Jean-Luc Marion or Georges Didi-Huberman. The plural in « phenomenologies of the image » stresses the diversity of the aspects that these analyses have addressed : the relationship between image and perception, image and imagination, image and embodiment; the issue of the world-image; and the question of the dialectics between the visible and the invisible.
The texts gathered here for this special issue bespeak the relevance of the topic of the image both for classical phenomenology and for contemporary phenomenology.