georges didi huberman, confronti... - lensbased.net

148 Confronting Imagesrelations will generally become spatial ones. 18 Likewise, writes Freud,‘‘The dream has no way at all of expressing the alternative ‘either . . .or.’ It usually takes up the two options into one context as if they hadequal rights’’—in other words, again, as if they were co-presented orcollocated: it will present all of the alternative possibilities together,despite their being ‘‘almost mutually exclusive’’ from the logical pointof view. 19 Finally:The dream has a very striking way of dealing with the categoryof opposites and contradictions. This is simply disregarded.To the dream ‘‘No’’ does not seem to exist. Inparticular, it prefers to draw opposites together into a unityor to present them as one [in einem dargestellt]. Indeed, it alsotakes the liberty of presenting some random element by itswished-for opposite, so that at first one cannot tell which ofthe possible poles is meant positively or negatively in thedream-thoughts. 20So the ground of certainty crumbles. Anything becomes possible:co-presentation can mean agreement and disagreement, simple presentationcan mean the thing and its opposite. And simple presentationcan itself be an effect of co-presentation (through the process ofidentification), even an effect of antithetical and unnatural co-presentation(through the process of composite formation). Along with certainty,then, there crumbles another section* of mimesis: ‘‘The possibility ofcreating composite images [Mischbildungen]† stands foremost amongthe characteristics that so often lend dreams a fantastic aspect, for itintroduces into the dream-content elements that could never havebeen objects of actual perception.’’ 21 All contrasts and all differenceswill be crystallized in the substance of a single image, whereas thesame substance will ruin all philosophical quiddity in the splitting upof its subject. Such are the disconcerting poetics of dreams: time isoverthrown in them, rent, and logic along with it. Not only do conse-*pan.†SE: ‘‘composite structures.’’ Bild can accommodate both renderings.