of the Quranic text limits hermeneutic interpretation: humanity can never
resolve the boundary between the definite and the indefinite.
Within this pseudo-photographic textual surface functioning as astu-
dium–a seeming backdrop of‘average effects’from a set of photographs
or, in this case, divine utterances–understanding of the Quran might be
compared to Barthes’punctum, a detail or moment in the image which, in
affecting the observer, affects the passage of a void such that the observer
(or reader) moves beyond oppositions such as truth or falsity, love or
indifference, knowledge or ignorance, into a realm penetrated by under-
standing, love, and immediacy.^32 Like Barthes’photograph, the Quran
offers aflat surface of equally valid meaning selectively enacted by the
recipient in the moment a passage hits home, conveying meaning through
insight exceeding hermeneutic analysis.
Rather than indicating the permissibility or prohibition of the image, the
Quran frequently delineates the parameters of human apprehension of the
divine through material perception. The emphasis is less on the object, or
even on visuality, than on the perceptual act. In this understanding, the
limits of human sight addressed by a physical image do not set the
boundaries of perception. Rather, vision functions among multiple
modes of perception within which faith enables awareness of God. This
engenders not an immaterial, iconoclastic, or aniconic religion, but one in
which the relation to materiality mediating between the sacred, the mun-
dane, and the profane is performative rather than representational.^33
Meaning emerges as a function of reception at least as much as from the
context of production and intentionality of human authorship emphasized
in the empiricist episteme of art history. Ibn Arabi expresses this in
describing visual perception as“a meaning that God creates in the eye
according to what the viewer intends to see of visible things.”^34 What
matters is not the object, but its internalization. Beauty cannot be objective,
because it is constituted by interest. Art history derived from Kantian
aesthetics is useless in this context.
This emphasis on perception over analytical meaning complements the
Quranic emphasis on the heart, before the eyes and ears, as the primary
sensory organ hindered in disbelievers, unable to“believe in the unseen”:
“As for those who disbelieve, it makes no difference whether you warn
them or not: they will not believe. God has sealed their hearts and their
ears, and their eyes are covered”(Q2:6–7).^35 Likewise, when verifying the
(^32) Barthes, 1981 : 25. (^33) Elias, 2012 : 102. (^34) Akkach, 2005: 79.
(^35) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 :5.
Perception and the Quran 113