Filosofia trascendentale e teorie dell’immagine

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between transcendental philosophy
and visual studies, which only apparently is an irreducible one. A ‘genealogical’
analysis of the current notions of image finds in Kant’s doctrine
of image and in the later idea of reality as “fluid” reality (Maimon and
Nietzsche) some theoretical structures that offer the visual studies an
unknown point of view: the image as ‘reification’. This negative meaning
of image exceeds the idea of an ‘iconic’ or ‘pictorial turn’ and supports
a particular kind of sight, that overrides the images and gives priority to
the sign, not only inside the images, but also in the reality. Roland Barthes
calls this sight “punctum”, the only way to avoid the reifying power of the
images and to be able to see and ‘read’ the reality.