observation approximates with what he will later criticize as the
structuralist (in that instance, Foucauldian) approach to history: history
calls for the metaphor of cinema, Sartre believes, whereas Foucault offers
us a slideshow.^10
Thirdly, imaging consciousness posits its object as anothingness.We
have noted Sartre’s introduction of “nothingness” (ne ́ant) into his
discussion of the Husserlian “noema.”^11 But now it serves to contrast
with perception and theconcrete concept. Searching for that additional
feature that distinguishes imaging from perceiving or conceptualizing, he
finds it in the “irreality” (irre ́alite ́), not the “unreality,” of the manner in
which its object presents itself. I posit or “intend” the object, not as
present (as in my perception of Pierre) or as an essence or nature that
need not be instantiated (as in the “concrete concept” of Pierre), but as
existing elsewhere or in a neutral mode that abstains from considering its
mode of existence at all.^12 It is this negative aspect of imaging that Sartre
wishes to underscore: “To say ‘I have an image of Pierre’ is equivalent to
saying not only ‘I do not see Pierre’ but also ‘I do not see anything at all’”
(Imaginary 13 ). The imaging consciousness aims at Pierre in his “cor-
poreality,” again, hisLeibhaftigkeit–the individual that I could see, touch,
and so forth were he physically present and were I in the perceptive
mode. In sum, the imagined object presents itself as “intuitive-absent,”
as “present-absent,” as “out of reach.” These are so many ways of
(^10) “What Foucault offers us is...[not an archaeology but] a geology: the series of successive
levels that form our ‘ground’...But Foucault doesn’t tell us what would be the most
interesting, namely, how each thought is constructed from these conditions or how men
move from one thought to another. For that he would have to allow praxis and thus history to
intervene, and that is precisely what he refuses to do. To be sure, his perspective remains
historical. He distinguishes epochs, a before and an after. But he replaces the movie with the
magic lantern, movement with a succession of immobilities” (“Jean-Paul Sartre re ́pond,”
L’Arc 30 [ 1966 ]: 87 ).
(^11) See above,Chapter 3 , note 22.
(^12) “The positing of absence or of nonexistence can occur only wherequasi-observationis
concerned. On the one hand, indeed, perception posits the existence of its object; on the
other hand, concepts and knowledge posit the existence ofnatures(universal essences)
constituted by relations and are indifferent to the “flesh and blood” existence of
objects...To think of Pierre by a concrete concept is only to think of a collection of
relations. Among these relations can be found determinations of place (Pierre is on a trip to
Berlin, is a lawyer in Rabat, etc.). But these determinations add a positive element to the
concrete nature ‘Pierre’; they never have that privative, negative character of the positional
acts of the image” (Imaginary 13 ).
108 Consciousness as imagination