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

268 Appendix: Detail and Pantension—in the picture; this would be not a detail of colored thread,but, to continue with our example, a filet of red paint, in other words,an event more than an object. A detail is definable: its contour delimitsa represented object, something that has a place, or rather hasits place, in the mimetic space; its topographical existence is thus specifiable,readily located, like an inclusion. A pan, by contrast, does notso much delimit an object as produce a potential: something happens,gets through, extravagates in the space of representation, and resists‘‘inclusion’’ in the picture because it makes a detonation or intrusionin it.This phenomenology already wholly engages, through Nachträglichkeit,the semiotic status of these two categories. The detail is discernible,therefore divisible from the ‘‘remainder,’’ and, as such, nameable:thread, needle, knife, corkscrew, navel . . . It pertains to descriptivefinesse, which parses and names the visible. The discovery of a detailcomes down to seeing something that is hidden because minuscule,and to naming what one sees. By contrast, the pan does not requirebeing seen; it only requires looking at: looking at something ‘‘hidden’’because self-evident, there before us, dazzling but difficult to name. Apan does not ‘‘detach itself,’’ strictly speaking, like a detail; it stains. Adetail admits identification*—this is a needle—and thus allows itselfto be mastered, as a pervert knows how to master a fetish object(which indicates just how great is the fantasy content of the detail).The pan is related to Barthes’s intractable; it is what tyrannizes eyeand signification, just as a symptom tyrannizes and invests a body, ora fire a city. One looks for a detail in order to find it; whereas onecomes upon a pan haphazardly, unexpectedly. A detail is a piece ofthe visible that hid itself, and that, once discovered, exhibits itself discreetlyand allows itself to be definitively identified (in the ideal): thusthe detail is envisaged as the last word of the visible. The pan, bycontrast, leaps into view, most often in a picture’s foreground, frontally,assertively; but it still does not permit of identification or closure;once discovered, it remains problematic.The seeker after details is a man who sees the least thing, and a*admet la déclaration.