It occurred to me this morning that visual thinking/dialogue was what was needed when trying to complete an argument given the challenge of getting through the little-picture obstructions in the mind of the reader; that too often it is the minutia that de-rail, disallow the reader/writer easy access (much less profound revelation) to the big picture of what we mean to convey. A visual synthesis displays more at once perhaps the elements, allowing the reader to put it back together again themselves if this is at all possible given the success or failure of the argument.
The graphic figures accompanying a text in these circumstances then can even take on the primary role of meaning-conveyance. A textual work perhaps concluded in such a way might better allow for alternate conclusions for the reader and therefore the so-called published work becomes a more collaborative and decisively inter-textual process being that it looks to an open future of thinkers rather than closing the door with a simple re-cap and finalization of past intent.
The text itself in this way at times might be discarded. Consider for example Wittgenstein’s ladder image at the end of his Tractatus. Or perhaps the foreboding image of the apple in Mishima’s Sun and Steel. In each case “fact” is an objective. In the former we manage to see that what we were after was in ”fact” unutterable. In the latter the objective was quite unknowable for having had to destroy it in the process of exploration. These truths if we might call them that, are better understood for the very visual images that were provided us. While the certainty of the visuals are difficult to deny --- it might be said that the text is open to us visually, offering us the opportunity to put Humpty-dumpty back together again.
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