Chiasmus
Just brief notes to self:
The relationship between word and image is usually encountered as a power relation. Hence, the vocabulary of such discussions usually includes such concepts as paragone— Leonardo’s term for the “battle” between literature and painting— or parergon Derrida’s appropriation of Kant’s concept of the frame, or remark. The problem with the latter term is the question of what constitutes the content, and what constitutes the frame.
Another approach is to look at the relationship between text and image is to view one as a translation of the other. This is problematic, because in many usages the combination is superadditive. W.J.T Mitchell’s contention that works, such as those of William Blake are composite is little better. This suggests that they may be atomistically studied in their constituent parts. With Blake in particular, this seems to be “murdering to dissect.”
Close to the concepts of translation or composite, Victor Burgin suggests another way of viewing the intersection of different signifying system— they might also be viewed as a sort of chiasmus. I’m not sure what I can do with this right now, but it seemed interesting enough to note.
Translation does suggest, indirectly, a sort of power relation. Usually, it is the linguistic constituent (explanation, remark) that takes precedence over the visual. However, it is an odd relation because this suggests that people are deficient in visual literacy. This rests uneasily next to the commonplace that pictures have greater popular appeal. In a chiasmus, there is no power relation and its sum is greater than its constituent parts. It is a trope of amplification, not of comment or translation.
It also marks an intersection, rather than the parallel course suggested by translation or remark.
I don’t follow why you connect a lack of visual literacy to popular appeal of pictures (e.g. imagery). Is it possible for us as to lack(or have) visual literacy at different levels of societal organization? Is there a universal (or close to universal) visual vocabulary that all humans are able to communicate in?
As someone who often stuggles with language, and prefers expression in the visual, I identify with and believe that Leonardo was most on target… but that is purely emotional reaction, whether it is most accurate in fact or not…
I connected the lack of visual literacy to the popular necessity of the remark (not the picture, which is often hailed as being “universal”). The position of most early editors was that pictures needed verbal explanations, which suggests that people, though they liked pictures, didn’t understand them.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear.