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

Image as Rend 211either recognizable ‘‘or healthy from the soles of his feet to the top ofhis head.’’ 144 The hypothesis of the Incarnation had from the startaltered the Same, the sameness of the transcendent God. Here is thegreat operation. Here is what would give Christian images the categoricalimperative—rather: the fantasy imperative—always to alter theSame.Now we can better grasp how the Incarnation required an ‘‘opening’’of imitation, as Longinus in the legend had opened the beautifulbody of Christ. To open imitation: this was not to exclude resemblance;this was to think and to make resemblance work as a drama—and notas the simple successful effect of a mimetic technique. The great traditionof biblical anthropology bears the most massive testimony to this,having constructed its famous models of origin, its famous ‘‘economyof Salvation,’’ wholly through a drama of image and resemblance,divine as much as human. Everyone knows at least its generalschema: at the beginning of history (in principio), God created man inhis image and after his appearance; just a few verses of Genesis willsuffice for one to see the devil tempt man, man fall into sin, andbe—for quite some time, almost forever—‘‘rejected from the face ofGod’’; in the middle of history, the Son of God, his ‘‘perfect image,’’is made flesh and sacrificed for the Salvation of humankind; his threedaydeath will have provided the surety for Salvation, and the firstchance for man to regain his original lost status of being in the image;at the end of history; the Last Judgment definitively separates thosesouls who remain dissemblant from their Father, and from those whoregain the perfection of their resemblance. Then the ‘‘saved’’ againbecome the first and true sons of God their creator. And in this momentall eyes see: no further need to imitate, everything is perfect.So it is not surprising that a number of church fathers and medievaltheologians should have formulated this immense saga in terms of adrama of resemblance. It would be said, for example, that at the startAdam, in the image of God, was in a relation of ‘‘humble resemblance’’;that Satan proposed the infernal temptation of an ‘‘equalresemblance’’—a prerogative of the only divine Son—that hid, in reality,the mad ambition of a ‘‘resemblance of contrariness’’ or rivalry,which the Father had every reason, one understands, to find gravely