The image is constituted by a nihilating structure, not by revived perception

Evidence

Now I have attempted to show elsewhere16 that if we posit the image first as a renascent perception, it is radically impossible to distinguish it subsequently from actual perceptions. The image must enclose in its very structure a nihilating thesis. It constitutes itself qua image while positing its object as existing elsewhere or not existing. It carries within it a double negation; first it is the nihilation of the world (since the world is not offering the imagined object as an actual object of perception), secondly the nihilation of the object of the image (it is posited as not actual), and finally by the same stroke it is the nihilation of itself (since it is not a concrete, full psychic process.) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 230

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the image’s essential structure as triple nihilation — of the world, of its object, of itself — the core of Sartre’s phenomenology of imagination.
• XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity and her treatment of the imaginary; also explains Whyte’s terror of being merely repackaged perception of reality. — connects to: Photography reveals vision’s materiality, displacing the spiritual ideal of perception. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 315; Perception of bodies differs in original structure, not merely enrichment, from inanimate perception; The observing gaze is constituted by being set apart from its object — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The power to not-see is constitutive of seeing itself #expands (0.90)
• The observing gaze is constituted by being set apart from its object #expands (0.82) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70
• Photography reveals vision’s materiality, displacing the spiritual ideal of perception. #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 315
• Photographs distort body parts because they lack the perceiver’s synthetic totality #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 903
• Perception of bodies differs in original structure, not merely enrichment, from inanimate perception #expands (0.75)