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The Image Dispositif


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Franco Berardi


Imagination is a magic act. It's a spell which can make the things appear, so that you can
hold them." (Sartre: L'imaginaire)

What is interesting is not the Image as a representation oI reality, but its dynamic power,
its ability to stir up and build projections, interactions and narrative Irames structuring
reality. What is interesting in the Image is its ability to select among inIinite possible
perceptual experiences, so that imagination becomes imagin/action.

Let's think oI the Image as a narrative dispositif (a disposing or structuring device). The
Image as a stratum oI consciousness able to modiIy the projection oI the body in space, in
turn metamorphosing the meaning we attribute to our experience. Edmund Husserl says
that "consciousness is consciousness oI` something". It means that consciousness is
intentionality, a projection oI a space, temporal continuity where movement is made
possible. Movement in time. Time in consciousness. Consciousness oI` something.

Representation presents again` the thing to the consciousness, as iI things already exist
immodiIiable. In contrast, limage mouvement that Deleuze is talking about provokes
eIIects in consciousness, and pre-disposes consciousness to produce eIIects in the world.
What we are interested in is the dynamic eIIect oI the Image, the action that Image is
producing on the body, on the world where the bodies meet and desire, and modiIy each
other.

The technomedia mutation is inducing disturbances in the relationship between bodies,
because it is producing disturbances in the elaboration oI images, and pathologies in the
intimate processing oI the world and in relational projection. The main political task oI
our time, in the age oI video-electronic media, is the creation oI video-poetic strategies
in short, the creation oI narrative Irames Ior action, mithopoiesis, dispositifs Ior
constructing new realities.

The Electro-CruciIixion

When on April 30
th
I saw the newspapers the picture oI the Iraqi detainee with a black
hood and under threat oI electrocution, I suddenly thought: Bush has lost his war`.
Certainly since that moment, global perception oI the war has changed, and something
very deep cracked in the Western mind. The narrative broke Iree Irom the grip oI the
American military media system. Over the Iollowing month it became crystal clear that
the process oI global political and cultural transIormation pivots on the production and

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1he Image Dispositif, bv Franco Berardi is part of a text that first appeared in the e-maga:ine
www.rekombinant.org

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transmission oI images: the InIosphere is producing narratives which move the
consciousness oI billions, aIIect the economy, investment, and demand, as well as
politics and electoral shiIts, the explosions oI violence, and the Iormation oI alliances.

The concept oI public opinion seems inadequate to explain what is happening. It is not
exactly opinion which matters (i.e. doxa, critical discrimination between rational
enonciations, consent and dissent and logical motivation...). Instead I preIer to speak oI
Imagination.
Imagination is the dynamic space where the countless images which reach the collective
consciousness are disposed in narrative Iormations. It is through the stratiIication oI
images on the changing surIace oI collective memory that dispositiIs are built which can
project reality; here psychic dispositiIs model the attention to events, Iiltering the input oI
news, shaping emotional reactions, and Iinally inIluencing the choice oI people.


The Mediascape and the crisis oI advertising

In the second halI oI the 20th Century advertising became the general process Ior the
production oI the Imagination, and it has sustained, motivated and directed most media
production. TV has been a tool oI advertising, Iinancing the bulk oI its huge production
costs. The Iunction oI advertising is to expand and IluidiIy the market Ior the
consumption oI commodities. In order to do so, it has built a global narrative centered on
consumerism and security. The American middle class, Iollowing Oliver Zunz, has been
shaped by the diIIusion oI a narrative Irame that is saying more or less: "your liIe is
trapped in the cage oI endless work, but capitalism guarantees that in the leisure time you
can buy gadgets and enjoy a relatively saIe liIe."
This narrative Irame has Iallen apart in the new millennium. AIter the crisis oI the new
economywhich destroyed the illusion oI a mass capitalism destined to boom
endlesslythe 911 shock arrived.
Television has always shown catastrophes and violence. But in TV`s narrative Irame,
violence is a spectacle which takes place aIar, something that does not touch you
personally. Sitting in your armchair, you enjoy the show. TV horror once provoked a
reassuring eIIect. What happens on TV does not happen to me` the global middle class
once thought.
Suddenly this all changed on 911. On that day the screen did something unpredictable,
shocking the global psyche in an irremediable way.
The screen showed what might be called Iiction squared`.
First, you see a tower which is smoking, because oI an event we neither knew the cause
oI or understood. Second, a scant twenty minutes later, just the time needed Ior TV
stations across the globe to tune in, a revelation: an airplane is entering the second tower,
destroying it. In that moment the IiIty year-old TV Ontology was shattered. Was what we
saw Iiction or real inIormation?
In the Iollowing Iew minutes, everyone murmured or shouted that question. When we did
understand that it was not Iiction but inIormation in the traditional sense, we knew the
advertising loop had ended. The pact between message and receiver was broken.
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Since then the Mediascape initiated its divorce Irom advertising to enter a new marriage
with Terror. The narrative Irame is no longer reassuring, each day promising a new dose
oI horror. OI course TV showed horror beIore 911, but it was spectacular, distant horror,
with no eIIect Ior those in the armchair. Now the spectator has become a part oI the
show.

The asymmetric psychosphere

May 2004. We can now understand something more about the war oI images in the
global InIosphere. What happens in the InIosphere is not determinable in linear terms,
because it involves the Psycho-sphere.
The cognitive eIIect oI a message depends neither solely on its explicit content or its
redundance. It also depends on Iactors which are diIIicult to determine in a conscious
manner. There is always aleatory and aberrant decodiIication in the relationship between
the mediascape and its social eIIects.
War is now a problem oI inIluencing and controlling the global mind, with this control
becoming increasingly aleatory and unpredictable. The war shakes not only ground on
the earth but provokes heartquakes and conIlicts in zones oI social cognition which
exceed conscious ones. The Western nervous system is under a permanent stress whose
eIIects cannot be predicted because they increasingly involve the collective
Unconsciousness. The good American boys and girls who have been sent to Iight a war in
the name oI Good are going crazy. Their actions reveal an abyss oI psychic misery. The
Western mind mirrors itselI in this abyss, and is on the verge oI collapse.

The relationships inside the Mediascape (the colonisation oI mental time by the inIo-glow
emanating Irom big corporations) inIluences the InIosphere. However, the InIosphere
acts asymmetrically and thus unpredictably on the social mind (behaviour, the choices oI
people) via the Psychosphere, the Iilter between the InIosphere and the human mind.
And the Psychosphere is unstable; it is Iragmenting and recombining the Ilow oI images
coming Irom the InIosphere in a way which can be neither programmed nor predicted.

Black hoods in the city

In the piazzas oI Bologna a group oI activist have organised a perIormance: some black-
hooded youth were singing a children`s song mixed with the distressed American
national anthem Iamously played by Jimi Hendrix. This kind oI perIormance has been
spontaneously repeated in many places across the world, in London, New York, and
Rome. What is its meaning? This action has been perIormed in order to draw out the
horror, to put it on display Ior the urban citizenry oI the West. You can take Ior granted
that the black hood will be part oI the mise en scene oI antiwar demonstrations. What are
the eIIects we want to provoke in the collective unconscious?
What kind oI eIIects will be provoked by the campaign oI culpability initiated with the
publication oI the pictures Irom Abu Ghraib?
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The image dispositiI

We must learn to target the eIIect oI any action on the social imagination.
We must be aware oI the Iact that images are today the basic political
dispositif.
By the word dispositif I reIer to a semiotic engine able to act as the paradigm oI a series
oI events, behaviours, narrations, and projections modeling social reality.
What eIIect may be produced by the black hood? I have not a unambiguous answer, but I
know that a possible eIIect oI the culpability campaign oI the West could be a cynical
assumption oI racism.
You accusing us oI being racists? Well, we`ll don the white hoods and start hunting,
burning, hanging and killing Blacks and Muslims`. Remember the Ku Klux Klan
emerged in 1862 as an eIIect oI the culpability ascribed to the Southern liIe and ideology.
And the KKK spirit is Iar Irom being extinguished in American culture.
The culpability and insularity oI the American people could produce very dangerous
eIIects. Only in November we will know iI democratic Iairness will prevail over the
cynical and murderous compensation oI selI-hatred. The mise en scene oI the black hoods
is somehow related to Artaud's idea oI theatre oI cruelty: the ritualisation oI violence can
help to overcome the horror and need Ior revenge. But the path oI therapy is not at all
linear, and can give way to perverted outcomes. We must develop a scientiIic
consciousness oI the process oI psycho-social consciousness, in order to improve our
media action.
We must think oI the image as an interpretative and narrative dispositiI.

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