CFP: Studia Phaenomenologica vol. 23 (2023): Phenomenologies of the image

Editors: Emmanuel Alloa and Cristian Ciocan

The 2023 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica will be dedicated to the question of the image and its phenomenologies. Images have been a remarkably constant preoccupation for the phenomenological tradition. From Husserl’s early investigation of “image-consciousness” on, 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 (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, or the dialectics between the visible and the invisible. Besides such epistemological or metaphysical implications, the image has also been considered from an aesthetic point of view. In its application to visual arts—especially to painting, photography, or to the filmic image—phenomenology has made decisive contributions to visual studies and to the “iconic turn.” The contemporary metamorphoses of imagineering technologies and of its correlated visualities, which profoundly modify the very experience we have of images, nevertheless ask for a renewed phenomenological reflection on this matter.

What does it mean for the image to be considered as an act rather than as a thing? What does it imply to think of images in terms of correlations between an appearance and a viewing subject? Is the space of images a space of freedom or of capture? Can phenomenological resources help us to understand what it means to be absorbed, provoked, or injured by images? What does it mean for an image to be moving, both in temporal and in affective terms? What is the difference between “thematic” images that are contemplated for their own sake and “operative” images that serve other purposes?  These are some of the many questions that could be addressed in the papers of this issue.

We invite submissions that either offer refreshing readings of classic texts in the history of phenomenology with regard to the topic of the image or explore new venues with regard to the shifting realities of an increasingly visual society. Connections to other current debates and methodological paradigms are more than welcome, provided the focus lies in the specificity of a phenomenological, that is, experience-based approach to the domain of images.

Deadline: 1st of June 2022

Submission Guidelines: https://zetabooks.com/library/journals/studia-phaenomenologica/

The papers should be sent to: [email protected] (subject title: Studia Phaenomenologica 2023)