Metaphoric Images as Signifiers
In an image culture like ours, we are all so awash in images that we can overlook the need to think about them. This was my claim in Chapter 5. Yet the deeper problem is not that we look at images ceaselessly; it is that we look at reality through images. Here I am making an important distinction between the images we see and look at, iconic images, and those through which we see, metaphoric images. There is a function of the imagination that goes beyond the faculty of picturing absent objects and recombining them into fantastic forms. Through this imaginal function, a person seeks analogies and metaphors by which to understand and name reality. Images in this sense provide us analogous referents for knowing what things are like. In particular cultures, certain images provide the lenses through which to view reality. As with any kind of lens, we can easily forget that we are seeing through it. We do not see the lens because we are so busy looking through it. Understanding this matter is crucial for cultural agency.
In a perceptive essay, theologian Charles Davis points out how metaphoric images "are the constitutive elements of the world of human meaning." The specific example he uses to illustrate such an image "through which we see" is the image of woman.
The image of woman we have determines the social order and affects the lives of all of us. Image in this sense is not just knowledge, such as is retailed in anatomy, physiology, psychology, sociology or history. In some respects it precedes knowledge and guides the knowing process. Again, an image selects items of knowledge and arranges them into a pattern. An image also includes a