Konflikten mellem diskurs og figur

Konstituering af et politisk ubevidste i visuel retorik

Resumé

In this article, the author seeks to show how an ontologically conditioned conflict between discourse and figure defines a fundamental controversy over how an audience should and can view a rhetorical matter. Inspired by J.-F. Lyotard’s Discourse, figure (French 1971, English 2011), the author emphasizes that the figurality of an image in its primary appeal to the senses always already will have constituted the emotional disposition (pathos) with which an audience may feel called to identify. The author distinguishes sharply between the internal differences that constitute the ontology of an image and the external, dichotomously determined differences that a discourse produces between itself and an image. As an example of how this conflict between discourse and figure can manifest itself in the relationship between word and image in a political statement, the author analyzes a campaign poster published by The Danish People’s Party in 2009. The author further argues that the rhetorical critique of visual rhetoric in its prioritization of discourse typically overlooks the peculiar indeterminacy of images and its constitutive and thus unconscious influence on an audience.