After briefly reviewing the perspectives of philosophers like Bergson, Sartre, Levinas and Deleuze we shall focus on the question of the relationship between Image and Violence as discussed in the more recent works of Jean-Luc Nancy and Marie José Mondzain. Unlike language, Nancy notes that image is immediate, but with a direct and inevitable spatiality. In its sacred distinctness from the mundane things, the image ‘comes from the sky’ and is ‘detached’ as well as ‘cut off’ from the ground, and thus gathering its own ‘force.’  Mondzain, on the other hand, emphasizes the imperative of a discursive and deconstructive approach to the seemingly fatal power of the image.

(Image: Jean-Luc Nancy  -  Franson Manjali Strasbourg)

Franson Manjali is Professor in the Centre of Linguistics and English, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, (SLLCS) Jawaharlal Nehru University (J.N.U.), New Delhi, India. He has published widely in the areas of philosophy and linguistics, and is the author of Language, Discourse and Culture: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. New Delhi: Anthem Press, 2007.