Como é que é 'ver através' uma fotografia

A exposição do argumento de que as fotografias são transparentes, por Kendall Walton, está longe de ser simplória e envolve carga conceitual sofisticada, dentro do campo analítico-cognitivo. Mas podemos ir além disto. O fato da imagem-câmera fotográfica de ser transparente, conforme exposto por Kendall, não implica consequência sobre matéria do mundo ser manipulada, alterada ou fatiada. A transparência apenas indica que é ‘vendo através’ que percebemos o que nos é indicado. É deste patamar que emerge o campo da subjetividade que abriga o que chega de lá, pela transparência. É coisa própria do mundo, ser-aí que habitamos em nossa intuição ou percepção, ao interagirmos com outras coisas e seres. A conformação imagética da imagem-câmera interage sobre a radical indeterminação da presença na tomada, conforme ela transcorre grudada no fluxo da duração. A encenação na tomada, sua mise-em-scène, é um modo de ‘morar’ na indeterminação radical do acontecer que nos habita como existência. Ela, encenação, potencializa assim a exterioridade num ‘de-fora’, num aderir ao mundo que, neste modo, a conformação maquínica fotográfica/audiovisual inaugura. Encontra-se nesta imagem, uma espécie de recuo de mim no estar-aí do ser.PALAVRAS CHAVE: Teoria da Fotografia, Imagem-Câmera, Tomada, Transparência, Cognitivismo, Fenomenologia.

Films, Recordings, and Screendance Works

The chapter begins by noting the significance of the development of audiovisual recording technology for how dance works are conceptualised. Distinctions between different types of dance film are drawn, building on typology developed by Noël Carroll. The chapter discusses ontological and epistemological issues raised by these different types of dance film and video. It argues against sceptical views of recording that maintain the unreliability and undesirability of restaging dance works from film as distinct from notation. And the chapter develops an argument in support of the view that dances can genuinely be seen or experienced through film, drawing on the transparency thesis elaborated by Kendall Walton. The question of what kinds of things screendances are is also addressed, in the context of the ontological positions already explored in the book.

The Implied Fictional Narrator

The role of the narrator in fiction has recently received renewed interest from scholars in philosophical aesthetics and narratology. Many of the contributions criticise how the term is used – both outside of narrative literature as well as within the field of fictional narrative literature. The central part of the attacks has been the ubiquity of fictional narrators, see e. g. Kania (2005), and pan-narrator theories have been dismissed, e. g. by Köppe and Stühring (2011). Yet, the fictional narrator has been a decisive tool within literary narratology for many years, in particular during the heyday of classical literary narratology. For scholars like Genette (1988) and Cohn (1999), the category of the fictional narrator was at the centre of theoretical debates about the demarcation of fiction and non-fiction. Arguably, theorising about the fictional narrator necessitates theorising about fiction in general. From this, it follows that any account on which the fictional narrator is built ideally would be a theory of fiction compatible with all types of fictional narrative media – not just narrative fiction like novels and short stories.In this vein, this paper applies a transmedial approach to the question of fictional narrators in different media based on the transmedial theory of fiction in terms of make-believe by Kendall Walton (1990). Although the article shares roughly the same theoretical point of departure as Köppe and Stühring, that is, an analytical-philosophical theory of fiction as make-believe, it offers a diametrically different solution. Building on the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths as developed by Kendall Walton in his seminal theory of fiction as make-believe (1990), this paper proposes the fictional presence of a narrator in all fictional narratives. Importantly, ›presence‹ in terms of being part of a work of fiction needs to be understood as exactly that: fictional presence, meaning that the question of what counts as a fictional truth is of great importance. Here, the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths is crucial since not every fictional narrative – not even every literary fictional narrative – makes it directly fictionally true that it is narrated. To exemplify: not every novel begins with words like »Call me Ishmael«, i. e., stating direct fictional truths about its narrator. Indirect, implied fictional truths can also be part of the generation of the fictional truth of a fictional narrator. Therefore, the paper argues that every fictional narrative makes it (at least indirectly) fictionally true that it is narrated.More specifically, the argument is made that any theory of fictional narrative that accepts fictional narrators in some cases (as e. g. suggested by proponents of the so-called optional narrator theory, such as Currie [2010]), has to accept fictional narrators in all cases of fictional narratives. The only other option is to remove the category of fictional narrators altogether. Since the category of the fictional narrator has proved to be extremely useful in the history of narratology, such removal would be unfortunate, however. Instead, a solution is suggested that emphasizes the active role of recipients in the generation of fictional truths, and in particular in the generation of implied fictional truths.Once the narratological category of the fictional narrator is understood in terms of fictional truth, the methodological consequences can be fully grasped: without the generation of fictional truths in a game of make-believe, there are no fictional narratives – and no fictional narrators. The fictionality of narratives depends entirely on the fact that they are used as props in a game of make-believe. If they are not used in this manner, they are nothing but black dots on paper, the oxidation of silver through light, or any other technical description of artefacts containing representations. Fictional narrators are always based on fictional truths, they are the result of a game of make-believe, and hence the only evidence for a fictional narrator is always merely fictional. If it is impossible to imagine that the fictional work is narrated, then the work is not a narrative.In the first part of the paper, common arguments for and against the fictional narrator are discussed, such as the analytical, realist, transmedial, and the so-called evidence argument; in addition, unreliable narration in fictional film will be an important part in the defence of the ubiquitous fictional narrator in fictional narrative. If the category of unreliable narration relies on the interplay of both author, narration, and reader, the question of unreliable narration within narrative fiction that is not traditionally verbal, such as fiction films, becomes highly problematic. Based on Walton’s theory of make-believe, part two of the paper presents a number of reasons why at least implied fictional narrators are necessary for the definition of fictional narrative in different media and discusses the methodological consequences of this theoretical choice.

At the end of the debate about canons: Categories, evaluation and the nature of aesthetic value

The public opinion in philosophy is guided by a multitude of factors and sometimes an idea gets general recognition but is systematically studied only after a few decades have passed. There aren?t many papers in contemporary aesthetics that can match the originality and influence of Kendall Walton?s ?Categories of Art?. It is unsurprising, then, that contemporary aestheticians often expand upon its main theses. Nevertheless, even after almost half a century from its first publication, an exhaustive and comprehensive interpretation of Walton?s paper is still lacking. Moreover, even Walton himself doesn?t provide a detailed elucidation of his ideas, many of which are merely outlined in his seminal paper. Furthermore, he doesn?t apply his view to evaluative aesthetic judgments, even though such an attempt could today, when the debate about aesthetic canons is on the wane, might help us understand the nature of aesthetic evaluation. The goal of this paper is to once again shed some light on the significance of Walton?s approach and on its reception in contemporary aesthetics.

Fictionality

Fictionality is a term used in various fields within and beyond literary theory, from speech act theory through the theory of fictional worlds, to theories of “as if.” It is often equated with the genre of the novel. However, as a consequence of the rhetorical theory of fictionality developed from the early 21st century, the concept has gained ground as an autonomous communicative device, independent of its relation to any genre. Theories of fictionality have been developed (1) prior to the establishment of fiction as a genre, with Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney, and Pierre Daniel Huet; (2) with the establishment of fiction by Blankenburg and some of the first novelists, such as Daniel Defoe and Horace Walpole; (3) after the establishment of the novel, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hans Vaihinger, John Searle, Kendall Walton, Dorrit Cohn, Richard Walsh, and others. From the 1990s, the debates on fictionality have centered on questions of whether fictionality is best described in terms of semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic approaches. This includes discussions about possible signposts of fictionality, encouraged by the semantic and syntactic approaches, and about how to define the concept of fictionality, as either a question of text internal features as argued by the semantic and syntactic theorists, or as a question of contextual assumptions, as held by the pragmatists. Regarding fictionality as a rhetorical resource, among many other resources in communication at large, has a number of consequences for the study of fictionality and for literary theory in general. First, it contributes the insight that literature is similar to other acts of communication. Second, overtly invented stories do not have to follow the rules of non-invented communication. Third, a rhetorical approach to fictionality makes visible the ways in which fiction interacts with and affects reality, in concrete, yet complicated ways.

Immersive play

Summary Deze bijdrage onderzoekt het gebruik van een groep laatgotische devotionalia uit de Noordelijke Nederlanden, in buxushout gesneden microsculpturen. Het merendeel van deze privédevotiekunst betreft zogenaamde gebedsnoten – bolletjes ter grootte van een pingpongbal – die in twee helften kunnen worden geopend. Elke zijde bevat een uiterst minuscule religieuze voorstelling, waaromheen verklarende of introducerende Latijnse inscripties zijn aangebracht, die de gelovige aanzetten tot meditatie. Sommige gebedsnoten nodigen de gebruiker expliciet uit tot deelname aan een speelse, meditatieve speurtocht in hun binnenzijde, andere impliciet door middel van ingebouwde spel- en puzzelachtige elementen. Door hun minieme schaal en grote detailrijkdom bewerkstelligen deze onvoorstelbaar kleine taferelen dat de gebruiker zich gemakkelijk kan verliezen in de ontrafeling van deze visuele puzzel en, al mediterend, in een staat van mentale verzinking (‘immersion’) kan belanden waarbij het gevoel voor tijd verloren raakt. Psychologische experimenten hebben inderdaad het verband aangetoond tussen schaal en ervaring van tijd: de tijdsbeleving blijkt te worden gecomprimeerd ten opzichte van ‘real time’ met een ratio die gelijk is aan verhouding van de schaal tot de werkelijke ruimte. Als een persoon zich concentreert op een voorstelling in een ruimte met schaal 1:6, worden dertig minuten werkelijke tijd ervaren als slechts vijf minuten. Het volledig opgaan in de esthetische illusie van het devotietafereel in de gebedsnoot vraagt van de gebruiker deelname aan een ‘game of make-believe’, zoals Kendall Walton dit proces beschreef. Het is een vorm van psychologische overgave in een rollenspel waarbij de gebedsnoot rekwisiet is. Tijdens dit spel van ‘make-believe’ wordt het religieuze tafereel even ‘werkelijkheid’, net zoals een pop dat kan zijn voor een spelend kind. Het hier gesuggereerde verband tussen devotie en spel lijkt verrassend, maar in de Middeleeuwen waren beide nauw verbonden. Ludus creëerde een vrije ruimte met eigen regels – een tovercirkel, aldus Huizinga in zijn Homo ludens – om ongedwongen te mediteren, memoriseren, reflecteren. Huizinga’s spelconcept en Walton’s ‘game of make-believe’ liggen dichtbij elkaar: beide beschrijven een mentale en fysieke staat van verzinking die wordt veroorzaakt door zich over te geven aan het spel. Recentelijk werd bovendien overtuigend betoogd dat er ook een biologisch verband bestaat tussen spel, mentale verzinking en esthetische illusie. In het gebruik van de hier beschreven devotionalia komt dit drietal elementen effectief samen.

Ephemeral Vision

Vision is organized around material objects; they are most of what we see. But we also see beams of light, depictions, shadows, reflections, etc. These things look like material objects in many ways, but it is still visually obvious that they are not material objects. This chapter articulates some principles that allow us to understand how we see these ‘ephemera’. H.P. Grice’s definition of seeing is standard in many discussions; here I clarify and augment it with a criterion drawn from Fred Dretske. This enables me to re-analyse certain ephemera that have received counter-intuitive treatments in the work of Kendall Walton (photographs), Brian O’Shaughnessy (light), and Roy Sorenson (occlusions).

Umbrales de transparencia en la imagen producida por artefactos de registro mecánico de la realidad

En este artículo se revisa la hipótesis sobre la transparencia de las imágenes de Kendall Walton y sus diferentes críticas. Propongo que la imagen fotográfico-cinematográfica solo puede ser potencialmente transparente. Debería, así, hablarse de grados de transparencia. La transparencia de la imagen se divide en umbrales que dependen de la fase de producción en la que esté. De esta forma tenemos transparencia en el registro, de representación, de enunciación y epistémica.