On the Sight of the Berlin Wall

This book, above all else, is concerned with the role of images in critical thought, but takes as its focus images of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What I take to be revealing and indeed challenging about the Berlin Wall as a case study is its relationship to critical engagement, the way in which it situates questions of history, politics, human action and freedom, as well as the media, or more broadly visual culture. However, rather than simply develop and apply theory to this 'object' or case study, the intention is that both theoretical ideation and a thematic interest of the Berlin Wall interlace, and in the interstice between the two a critical perspective can emerge. Thus, to make clear from the outset, I do not offer here a straightforward hermeneutic or historical analysis of visual representations of the Wall. I am not concerned with working through specific images or sets of images of the Wall, nor overly concerned with what others have said about them; though inevitably many such materials are incorporated in one form or another into the discussions which follow.

My primary interest is to present an idea of what I term 'image critique': a double procedure of both a critique of images and their critical engagement. The aim, then, is to consider how images, and more specifically how a whole way of thinking with/through images, might bear upon the way we think critically about socio-political events and representations. In broad terms, I hope to remain faithful to traditions of emancipatory critique (informed as they are by the so-called grand theories of both Marxism and psychoanalysis), but more specifically, I engage with the contemporary issues and dilemmas that visual culture and image studies have helped bring to attention. My approach can be understood as being thematic, pondering over the case study of the fall of the Berlin Wall to explore issues relevant to debates of the image and visual culture. In this respect, I take on board a recommendation that in viewing philosophizing today we should not necessarily be looking to 'import the next grand Continental paradigm', for indeed, 'it is no longer a question of worshipping a series of proper names, but of doing something with what they left behind; doing creative, inventive thematic work' (Critchley 2001: 125). In part, then, I hope to do something here in the pages which follow, a consequence of which is that the book builds up an increasingly complex approach to the images in question and their theorizing. Hence, not the sort of study in which it is possible to lay out from the start a theoretical framework against which different bodies of material can be assessed. Instead, as suggested, it is through the interaction of both theme and theory that a critical approach is to be adjudicated. Realistically, I can perhaps only really put forward the idea of an image critique as an active, creative form of enquiry/writing; for this is a form of critique that I will suggest is more likely to come only in another writerly manifestation. Nevertheless, I hope something of the effects of an image critique can be felt in what follows, at least in that my 'line' of argument is rarely ever linear in fashion and that the various illustrations which accompany (and/or cut into) the text help keep our eyes open to all sorts of other possibilities.

It is actually only as a form of shorthand that I first began to describe my study as that of 'images of the fall of the Berlin Wall'. To my surprise, whenever I discussed the topic with others in this relatively ambiguous manner the response was almost always a genuine nod of understanding, even enthusiasm – 'what a good topic', many would suggest (without necessarily holding firm views as to why it might make such good subject matter). Frequently, these conversations prompted an anecdote of some sort, perhaps about how the person I was talking to had been 'there' in Berlin when it 'happened', or having known someone who was. All too often it transpired the person I was speaking to actually owned a piece of the Wall (however small), tucked away somewhere in their office or home. It is startling just how easy it is for the Wall (and its related images) to be conjured into conversation, seemingly to bear indisputable meaning for many different people.

Furthermore, after a minor blip in the conversation in which my interlocutor would invariably challenge me on what I meant by 'images' – how I intend to define or delimit the image (a 'small' matter to which I shall come to below) – the discussion would generally move quickly on to a specific interest (generally of their choice) regarding one of a whole host of image-types including, for example, photographs, paintings, film, installations, literature and, perhaps most frequent of all, graffiti. Of course, not all of these aspects necessarily relate directly to the actual fall of the Wall, nonetheless, it is by extension that they become components of it, for indeed all of these 'lost items' are what people want to talk about when broaching the topic of images of the fall of the Wall. It seems we are very well versed in talking (or writing) about visual culture and that we are clearly confident about what we take these things to be and mean. With respect specifically to images of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one reason for this confidence and awareness would seem to relate to the nature of the iconic image, which not only endures, but also enables further representations. It is as if there is something almost 'democratic' and transparent about the images of fall of the Berlin Wall, both as they first appeared (and continue to circulate) in the global media networks, as well as in our everyday conversations and incantations. I aim, however, to disrupt this confidence, though not as an iconoclastic gesture, but in order to assert a greater complexity in respect of these images. I do not want to interpret too soon, but instead find ways to keep the process of critical enquiry open longer. And I wish implicitly to keep coming back to the question of what is actually meant when we think of images, or 'image-events' such as the fall of the Wall. Overall, my point is not so much to find an answer or final definition to these images, but rather to keep the mind open to what we regard images to be, how we experience them in different ways and to what ends we can put them.

There are two important underlying concerns to mention from the outset. Firstly, this book has evolved following specific engagement in contemporary theoretical debates about visual culture, the initial terms of which I stake out at length in chapter two. I acknowledge the importance of these debates in providing a suitable intellectual discourse in which to place my thoughts. Nevertheless, I have been somewhat disappointed overall with what has arisen by way of a 'visual critique' and in effect I...