An act that aims in its corporality at an absent or nonexistent object, through a
physical or psychic content that is given not as itself but in the capacity of an
“analogicalrepresentative” of the object aimed at.
(Imaginary 20 , repeated on 52 )
Since it is the matter, not the form, that specifies the images, Sartre can
distinguish images that borrow their matter from material things (illus-
trations, photos, caricatures, actors’ imitations, and the like) from those
whose matter is borrowed from the mental world (consciousness of
movements, feelings, etc.). And he acknowledges intermediary types that
synthesize the external and the psychic such as a face in the flame or the
case of hypnagogic images, which, he will explain, are based on “entropic
lights” (Imaginary 20 ).
Moving through these various forms, and reserving extended discus-
sion for the aesthetic object, let us note a couple of distinctions Sartre
introduces that refine his remarks about the analogon and the image in
general.
First, he distinguishes between the portrait and thesignon three
counts. Citing Hume as an example, Sartre insists that classical psych-
ology often confuses sign and image. But the matter of the sign, of the
word, for example, he claims is completely indifferent to the object
signified. He seems to be agreeing with structural linguistics that the
meaning of verbal signs is arbitrary. But then he adds that the matter
of the physical imageresembles it. He slips into the metaphorical mode
of which he is a master when he describes my relation to a portrait of
someone I know: “The person in the paintingsolicitsme to take him for a
man. Likewise, if I know (connais) the subject of the portrait, the portrait
will have, before any interpretation, a real force, a resemblance.” As he
explains, “The portrait has atendencyto give itself as Pierre in person.
The portrait acts upon us – almost – like Pierre in person and, because of
this fact, solicits us to make a perceptual synthesis: Pierre of flesh and
blood.” In such a case, one has to resist that tendency in order not to see
Pierre’s portrait but simply a physical object.
Next, whereas the word functions as a milestone (jalon), “it awakens a
signification and that signification never returns to it but goes to the
thing and drops the word. In the case of the image with a physical
base, “intentionality constantly returns to the image-portrait” that
enriches it. This contrast between the word-sign as transparent window
The Imaginary 111