SEBASTIAN BOROWICZ Smeared reliefs Things and images in ancient Greek culture Kraków: Wydawnictwo UJ (Jagiellonian University Press), Figurae 2020 series (ISBN 97883-233-4901-3) The book deals with an extremely important fragment of ancient Greek culture (9th-4th centuries BCE) in which not only things were transformed into images, images into ideas, but iconicity, hitherto a form of interactivity, became visuality. The analysis of this complex process which occurs at the intersection of research areas such as anthropology of things and anthropology of images is the main objective undertaken in this study. The relationship between things, iconicity, imagery and visuality is a specific, yet paradoxically little recognized feature of ancient Greek culture that determines the entire EuroAtlantic world that followed. The research I am undertaking is positioned in the specific area of tangency of things, images, and meanings; it is oriented not so much towards monument but rather their cultural habitats. They are analyzed above all from the perspective of philosophy of culture and anthropological history, which tells the story of how much human thinking and perception change, and how little the very production and visual forms of things themselves change. I treat iconicity as a non-obvious phenomenon that is not permanently associated with imagery and visuality, acts of representation, or making things visible. In Smeared reliefs the name of Fidias is mentioned only once. His totemic works were left out. In the case of Polyclet, the figure of Dorifors becomes not so much an object of analysis in the field of art history, iconography or aesthetics, but a pretext for discussing the entanglement of the iconic dimension of the canon in social games of exchange. I avoid approaching iconic production as a special type of activity such as art. For issues related to iconicity, imagery, and visuality, a small statue of Mantiklos, a scene on an amphora from Eleusis by an unknown painter, or anonymous relief pitos from Mykonos turn out to be much more important than monumental chryselephantines. Thus, it is a kind of cultural history without names, or at least one that tries to avoid the attributionism typical for classical archaeology. This book is also an attempt to “step out of the museum”, out of the cultural space perceived as an apothēkē – a “repository” of monuments. I try to bring the ancient Greek culture closer not so much through physical objects, but rather through processes involved in their production and use. This is mainly the result of the concept of culture that I have adopted, i.e. that it is not a collection of things but rather a set of competencies and skills formed under the influence of various social interactions as well as a way of processing information maintained and transmitted within a specific community. Conceptual Apparatus Iconic facts or artefacts I use the term iconic fact (artefact), thus avoiding the notion of an image, plastic object, or work of art that is a product of metaphysical thinking. Unlike archaeological artefacts (most often interpreted as finished objects having measurable physical properties and a practicaltechnical function or purpose), artefacts (e.g. agalmata, anathēmata, andriantes, korai) are not only objects, but also activities, practices, and social games associated with them, as well as their worldview motivations. Such an understanding of iconic facts as complex entities is related to the notion of transduction by Gilbert Simondon, affordances by James J. Gibson, assemblages by Manuel DeLanda, image-objet by Jérôme Baschet, or image-act by Horst Bredekamp. Eikotopias Eikotopias are dynamic “artefact places” and their cultural habitats. The place in this case, however, is not a space, a capacity, but rather a mode of production and use of the iconic. Eikotopias are a concept related to Theodor Adorno constellations, in which learning about objects always involves learning the processes these objects have accumulated in themselves. Their status is thus constantly (re)constructed by the variability of human thinking. Eikonomy Eikonomy is a cultural space of exchange that encompasses those games and social practices whose essential element is iconicity; thus, it is not the modality of artefacts as such, but rather their cultural configurations that are being studied. Heidegger’s handiness (Zuhandenheit), the state of being an object for something (Um-zu) is also a part of the space of culture understood actionally. Therein iconic facts are perceived agentively, as tools, things at hand or at one’s disposal. The culture of chōros Chōros culture is the culture of bonding and making something common, that is achieved through spontaneous and practical thinking. An element of that kind of thinking is, first of all, measuring that is construed as merging and likening, admiring – it is the Telemachian attitude and orientation to states of things and actions (the verbness of culture). The culture of diakrisis Diakrisis culture is the culture of separation that develops within the framework of metaphysical and theoretical thinking. It is associated with Socrates’ discursive attitude, the orientation toward instrumentalization of the world, and reification (the nounness of culture). Visual reduction Visual reduction is a state in which iconic elements are subordinate with regard to other elements, non-iconic factors and aims. Such reduction is based on the manipulation of iconicity: displaying and concealing, acting and affecting. Thinking in pronouns Thinking in pronouns is a way of orienting oneself in the world, characteristic of a discursively oriented diakrisis culture, which manifests itself in the formulation of essential questions such as “what is it?”, “what does it mean?” (e.g. “what is a painting?”). Tangents Tangents constitute “common places” in which tools developed to analyze specific phenomena of postmodern culture become, to some extent, productive in bringing a new insight into ancient Greek culture. Image device The image device is the concept of the image (εἰκών) as a container (τεῦχος) for the meaning formed within the culture of diakrisis. The image device constitutes a kind of a discursive and cognitive tool oriented toward the process of sēmēiōsis. Iconic facts perceived through the lens of the image category serve to acquire and generate knowledge, among other things. Table of Contents Foreword: “The archaeological manufacture” Telemachus and Socrates Nounness versus verbness of culture Iconic facts Chōros culture and diakrisis culture Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes Eikotopias Chapter I: Contingency and polymathy. Humanistic contexts of research of things and images Chapter II: “Argos looking with a thousand eyes”. The critical attitude and multivector analysis Chapter III: The possibility of the image: tracing the “nothing” beneath the apparent continuity of meaning Thinking in pronouns Traces of incisions The iconic fact as a set of microtemporalities “Into the future, we step backward”. Postmodernity as an opportunity to approach the status of iconic facts in chōros culture Sense of participation and the polyenergidal model of the image Chapter IV: The cultural work of seeing Visual reduction – since when did the Greeks see images? From θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι to κάλον θέαμα Kinesics and proxemics in the visual perception process of iconic facts Iconic realizations problematizing primordial spatiality, mobility, and vision The iconic fact as a close-up Chapter V: Eikonomy as a part of the cultural mentalité of the Greek world Games and social practices Tool-being: the world of “things at hand” Exchange as the basis of eikonomic games and practices in chōros and diakrisis culture Chapter VI: Medial bodies. Iconic facts in light of selected names of things and eikonomic practices The world of new media Iconic modalities in light of selected artefact names Cultural configurations and interchangeability of names Medial bodies as an element of socio-eikonomic practices Iconic realizations problematizing iconic facts’ media status Chapter VII: The tribe of the living and the tribe of the dead. Democratization of iconic facts in the culture of diakrisis The aestheticizing gaze Things with a human face: anthropomorphization as the primary iconic strategy of the Classical period The time of essentialists: intellectual foundations of transformations in the area of iconic production The time of images – statuae atque imagines multis modis Chapter VIII: Semiurgies. Iconic facts as meaningful facts in the perspective of cultural games and exchange practices The spectacle of sense and rattling significants The critical attitude of Euripides’ era Image device – the image as autoikon and mēchanē Modi of the proper and the improper Signification mechanisms Signification strategies Metafigures Afterword: The dragon teeth. From representations to magical states of affairs Flat and geologized Postscriptum Foreword “The archaeological manufacture” The starting point of my book is a specific dichotomy of Greek iconicity outlined in the “Telemachus and Socrates” subsection. It is expressed by the aforementioned protagonists, the Homeric young man and the Athenian sage. In the opening quote from Plutachrus’ diatribe On Richness, they reify different, but complementary figures of seeing and dealing with things. The former admires and absorbs with his eyes what is luminous, full of splendor, shining, while the latter appreciates in things their compliance with function and usefulness. I transpose both attitudes, assessed by Plutarch as improper and proper, into two ways in which artefacts functioned in archaic and classical culture. This division also becomes one of the conceptual axes of the whole book. In the “Nounness versus verbness of culture” subsection I introduce another, corresponding distinction, the division into two aspects of Greek culture: verbness and nounness. I associate the former with pre-philosophical thinking and its orientation towards states of affairs and actions, while the latter with theoretical thinking, the culture of naming, and conceptuality. In the latter view, perception is oriented towards objects, instrumentalization, and reification. I emphasize that being able to speak of ancient Greek culture requires a reversal of the process of deverbalization of culture, since pre-philosophical Greece is, above all, a space of active influence, embodied, participatory, causal, and performative existence. In the “Iconic facts – the protagonists of the book” subsection, I define the object of research, which, in my perception, is not nouns themselves (things and images in the scientistic view characteristic of archaeology), but rather their combined actions, practices, and social games, as well as their worldview motivations. I put archaic, iconic facts as relational entities, states of affairs, and image-objects within the framework of gignetical perception characteristic of early Greek philosophy. In the “Chōros culture and diakrisis culture” subsection I put the mentioned distinctions into two cultural models – chōros and diakrisis. In the case of chōros culture, the artefact remains in a dynamic relationship of adjacency and participation to a particular place and activity – it is never an independent, autonomous phenomenon, for example a purely visual one; it is a part of a particular topos, a landscape or a habitat. On the other hand, within the culture of diakrisis, not only iconic facts are disintegrated into objects and images, images and concepts, there is also a disconnection of space from the original spatiality, which becomes the basis for the development of visual culture and the representational strategy of perception of images based on the geometric illusion of perspective. It should be emphasized that both distinguished modi of culture rather intermingle than result from one another, with the culture of diakrisis beginning to develop after the nature breakthrough in Greece (from the 6th century BCE). On the other hand, the elements of magical and practical thinking characteristic of the chōros culture are present in Greek culture until modern times. In the “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” subsection I point out that the clues as to how we can replace the scientistic perspective on the ancient past inherent for archaeology with a culturalist perspective can be found in a rather unexpected place, i.e. in postmodernity. Together with its characteristic fluidity, indeterminacy, blurring, quasi-images, post-images, nomadic, digital or nested images, we are given a chance to come closer to archaic forms of handling artefacts. Postmodern tangents simultaneously mark another of the structural axes of the book (see infra 3.4). The last axis – as discussed in the “Eikotopias” subsection – comprises the habitats, spaces and networks of social interaction in which iconic facts exist, act, transfer, establish, influence, make visible and, finally, delight, terrify or arouse desire. Chapter I Contingency and polymathy. Humanistic contexts of research on things and images The chapter is a synthetic review of the most important research concepts, trends and paradigms in humanities from the mid-twentieth century to the present, in which imagery, objectivity, iconicity and visuality remain an important (though often not self-contained) element. The review focuses primarily on philosophical contexts, ways of thinking about images and things as discursive categories. It is also meant to be a useful, convenient “toolbox” to outline relevant contexts for analyses undertaken in the core section of the thesis. Chapter II “Argos looking with a thousand eyes”. A critical attitude and multivector analysis This chapter is a presentation of the methodological approach adopted in the work, which I describe as a critical attitude and multivector analysis. With regard to the historical aspect, I refer to the achievements of the Hamburg School (Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek) and the Frankfurt School (Frankfurter Studien zur Religion und Kultur der Antike and Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung). However, in the case of more recent research, I use Gottfried Boehm’s Iconische Kritik and the cultural archaeology project formulated in Polish circles, based on the achievements of the so-called Poznań School. The profile of iconic criticism, of which sociology is an important plane of reference, remains oriented towards the fundamental question “Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen?”, which is also an important element of this thesis, especially in relation to diakrisis culture (chapter 8). The reflection of the Poznań School, on the other hand, is important for me because of the socio-regulatory concept of culture developed in this circle that emphasizes the fundamental difference between spontaneous and practical thinking (pre-philosophical cultures) versus metaphysical and theoretical thinking. It is associated with „handiness of thinking”, the know-how, and the performative model of experience inherent for the archaic world based not that much on things but rather on assemblages, states, and actions. The project of cultural archaeology becomes important for me because of the negativist discourse it postulates, especially with regard to the awareness of the utter otherness of archaic cultural experience (the names of things available to us are already understood by us at the level of relevant, modern European cultural definitions, and thus we see artefacts as inanimate, physical, technical, material objects; see chapter 3.2). A critical attitude is “handy”; it is a kind of a panoptic gaze, a multiperspective outlook. However, it does not pertain to the ability to see the world comprehensively – it is rather about the possibility of a multivector analysis, looking at cultural facts available to us from different angles, using many tools, categories or theories that illuminate the iconicity of things from many possible co-existing points of view. As vectors of view, the critical attitude uses many of the approaches cited in the previous chapter, including the semiotic approach, genealogical interpretation (culture as a social project), elements of phenomenology (instrumentality,”handiness”), ecological optics and James J. Gibson’s theory of affordances, Gilbert Simondon’s individuation, philosophy of technology or ontology of things. At the same time, this approach does not pretend to be a metatheory explaining the whole complexity of ancient Greek culture. Instead, it makes it possible to bring out the specificity of iconicity, its temporal variability, differentiation, and coupling with other important cultural and social phenomena. Chapter III The possibility of the image: tracing the “nothing” beneath the apparent continuity of meaning [3.1] In the “Thinking in pronouns” subsection I show that the category of the image is productive only under certain specific cultural conditions for which, among other things, thinking in pronouns is appropriate. Maurice Blanchot’s reflections on the relationship between objectivity and imageivity in his essay Two Versions of the Imaginary are my point of reference. I situate the philosopher’s question “What is an image?” within the category of essential questions. Most importantly, it has a functional, tool-like dimension; it is a way of creating access paths across the globe, a way of classifying, ordering, and assigning meaning. The question about the image becomes a kind of a projection of our ideas onto unknown, archaic phenomena, that is performed from the already defined perspective of cultural familiarity. [3.2] In the “Traces of incisions” subsection I point to the contemporary tendency to think of artefacts as a collection of related entities bound together with a buckle of pictorial kinship. This denominator gives a false sense of a possibility to compare often distant cultural entities, which I illustrate using the example of a linguistic analysis of the word “image”, which triggers a completely different cultural definition across the Indo-European horizon. The modern scientistic way of perceiving ancient images as three-dimensional objects, wooden or stone figures processed using a sharp tool should be replaced by construing them as dynamic entities that have the power of real influence – “striking around”. [3.3] In the “Iconic fact as a set of microtemporalities” subsection I work out a definition of an artefact that would be potentially productive in pre-philosophical cultures. First, I consider the relation of iconicity to visuality. I perceive the latter as the result of a particular iconic action, e.g. cutting, pricking. In many cases it was not as much about a desired final “product”, but rather it was about a part of the process of using, a sequence of technological activities that made it possible to achieve something through activities such as kneading, carving, or molding. I propose, therefore, defining the iconic fact within the framework of Simondon’s notion of transduction as a set of microtemporalities that consists of a series of equal activities – starting with acquisition of the material (clay, stone, metal, pigments), through various activities defined as technical or aesthetic (remelting, carving, smoothing, painting, smearing), gestures and incantations performed during production and use, and finishing with other operations taking place in orders other than purely technical (magical, ritual, religious – washing, rubbing with spices, ganōsis, kosmēsis). From that perspective, iconicity turns out to be not so much a result, but rather one out of numerous operations that make up the significance of a given statue, figurine, painting as a state of affairs and assemblage. [3.4] The “‘Into the future, we step backward’. Postmodernity as an opportunity to approach the status of iconic facts in chōros culture” subsection shows postmodernity with its processes of technicization, a departure from representationalism and interpretive fluidity as an opportunity to reflect on the status of iconicity in ancient cultures. The proximity of the Greek philosophical breakthrough and postmodernity is mainly based on the analogy of the media and intellectual revolutions taking place in both periods. The juxtaposition of the archaic and postmodern, however, does not aim to indicate how pre-philosophical Greece is postmodern, but rather to highlight how much of the behavior inherent for archaic culture is actualized in postmodern conditions. That enables indicating the tangents, the “commonplaces” established, among other things, due to a non-binary mode of perception, incoherence, semantic lability, fragmentation, non-linear temporality, non-Euclidean spatiality, hybridization, rizomaticity, nomadicity, processuality, performativity, or transmediality. [3.5] In the last subsection, “Sense of participation and the polyenergidal model of the image”, having in mind the sociocultural behavior characteristic of postmodernity (especially the performative attitude) discussed above, I point to the sense of participation as a category of pre-textual ethnography which allows observing elements of the way in which the iconicity and the thingness that is characteristic for the attitude of an archaic man are perceived. I emphasize that contemporary images have a polyenergidal (multinuclear) structure. At the same time, they are susceptible to theories of representation, transduction or nonrepresentational theories. They are multidimensional, multimodal, structurally labile, rhizomatic, subject to metamorphosis and sublimation; They can move freely between worlds: reality, virtual reality, artificial reality; they are characterized by metabolē and dynamis. By understanding them and their new technological habitats, paradoxically, we begin to better understand the elements of iconicity inherent for the culture of chōros. Chapter IV The cultural work of seeing [4.1] In the “Visual reduction – since when did the Greeks see images?” subsection I pose the following question: Since when did the Greeks begin to perceive the world within the concept of image (representation, image, depiction)? That moment is crucial for understanding the difference between the Greek culture of the archaic and classical era. At the beginning of the chapter I draw attention to the tangency of post-modern iconic practices implemented, inter alia, across social networks (Instagram, Snapchat, as well as open-access policies of various entities making fragments of collections temporarily available) with archaic iconicity. In both cases, it is an element of individuation, a kind of a strategy for the implementation of goals that is not focused on the plastic dimension (group integration, building one’s position within a group, etc.); iconicity in that case is an activity that has a primarily social dimension. I emphasize that primordial iconicity does not automatically imply pictoriality or the existence of a visual culture operating with independent (i.e. developed within its functionality) strategies of seeing. To emphasize the distinctness of visual perception in archaic cultures, I cite the example of a central African tribe, Dowayo, whose members did not have a developed visual competence operating in the category of mimēsis. The fundamental change that takes place in Greece between the 6th and 4th century BCE is a dynamic transformation of the structure of the visual field, a change in the way of seeing, a shift from subjective engagement and emotional perception, experiencing and empathizing with the world toward viewing, representing, and reading it objectively. In order to illustrate that process I analyze a passage from Euripides’ tragedy Ion concerning the visual perception of artefacts. [4.2] In the “From θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι to κάλον θέαμα” subsection I cite examples of lexicalization of the process of seeing in Greek culture; I identify the basic strategies and mechanisms involving the manipulation of seeing (showing and hiding), which I connect with the functioning of a closed and open space valued linguistically and religiously, respectively. I analyze further the three basic forms of Greek seeing as having to do with iconicity: Homeric thinking with eyes as having the status of reflective perception (ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν νοεῖν), admiration implying astonishment and a kind of bewilderment (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι) and spectacularity (κάλον θέαμα). [4.3] The cultural work of Greek vision is also composed of elements such as kinesics (embodied vision, facial expressions, and psychophysical states, gestures, body movement, which are all a part of non-verbal communication), proxemics (the way of perceiving and feeling of spatiality), and other elements related to the motional response (speech, sounds, colors, verbal communication). These issues are addressed in the “Kinesics and proxemics in the process of visual perception of iconic facts” subsection. The kinesics part in that chapter is analyzed from the perspective of the theory of affordances and ecological optics of immersion by James J. Gibson and the biomechanics of movement by Vsevolod Meyerhold. Affordances allow us to notice the possibility of taking action (‘climb ability’ in stairs, ‘stealthiness’ in containers) in Greek iconic facts apart from their objectiveness and materiality (e.g., stairs, containers-vessels). They allow us to see the world performatively, to experience artefacts as assemblages and states of affairs (verb-like culture). Meyerhold’s theory of composition of movement, on the other hand, allows me to reconsider the immobility and stiffness of archaic sculpture, which, paradoxically, was attributed extraordinary mobility by the authors of the Classical period (the so-called Daedalic sculptures). I point out that the aim of archaic iconicity is not to produce an illusion, as in trompe l’oeil painting (which is what we would expect, with our concept of an image built on a modern understanding of space and movement) or to imitate the order of everyday life. Subsequently, I also point to the performativity, gesturality, and interactivity of seeing as microtemporal elements (in relation to Simondon’s aforementioned transductivity) elements of perceiving artefacts. I emphasize that seeing was action-formed, often as a part of the so-called simultaneous perception (synesthesia). Iconic elements were gestural in nature, designed to influence or impress rather than represent something. I analyze this dynamic perception of things using the example of the metaxy theory from Plato’s Theaetetus and Homeric self-moving tripods. The mobility of the latter, the transition from a closed space (domos/megaron) to an open one (agon) is connected with the aforementioned manipulation of vision (invisible-visible) and the functioning of elaborate strategies of showing and watching (temples, sanctuaries, agoras), which, at the same time, determined a specific manner of movement of the observed subject, its gestures or behaviors resulting from a strong stimulation with visual stimuli. To understand the specificity of composition of certain iconic conventions present in Greek plastic realizations, I then turn to the question of proxemics. For that purpose, I define two basic notions: topos and chōra, pointing out the fundamental difference between them, not only from the perspective of a modern concept of space as a container for objects, but also the different understanding of them in archaic and classical cultures. To bring closer the prephilosophical concept of space/place, I use Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological category of spaciousness, according to which archaic space exists as a state entangled with action, a derivative of something happening. Ascribing space to action, even seeing it as an effect of that action, something produced as a result of an event is close to the Homeric chōros. In the archaic world, the place of an object is the result of using it rather than its location in space defined by specific coordinates. Thus, for an archaic Greek man, things are not placed in space, but rather space is the effect of the existence of things in action, the handiness of their use. One of the basic activities of creating space was inhabitation (the case of the household of Eumaeus from the Odyssey). The act of building a courtyard leads to the separation of exterior and interior, and thus to the separation and disintegration of spatiality. An attempt to counteract the chōreō – the disintegration of chōros is the bonding act of measuring (gestures of merging). Such performative behavior is meant to keep space in action, people in a community. I stress that all iconic, religious or ritual actions of a community involving repetition of certain formulas, behaviors or gestures can be understood precisely as the constant renewal of an impermanent space. Measuring (dia-metreo) the space of something (e.g. the agora – “assembly”), marking the border (with horos) would be iconic gestures of suspension intended to preserve and fix the space (the scene of the fight between Paris and Menelaus in the “measured square”). In the original sense, space is united not only with action but also with things. I analyze this problem using the example of Odysseus’ bed, which cannot be moved due to the chōrē produced by it. The objects form a kind of community. Similarly, the bow of the Ithakesian king, by being held in his hands, produces its place – chōrē. At the same time, by remaining in this relation of belonging it confirms his identity. From that perspective space is not something external to things or people, unchanging, enduring, something in which the elements of the world are contained as in a massive Platonic reservoir; instead, it is a function of conformity to the thing and community in action. To visualize the archaic feeling of space I also introduce the notion of polytopia by illustrating it with the example of the Odyssey. In the Homeric world space does not form a coherent, all-encompassing container in which events take place. Moving in this world resembles post-modern, chaotic, hypertextual sailing on the ocean of a global network whose topography will remain tangled and whose movement consists in jumping from one place to another. This is polytopia, a dynamic constellation of individual topoi. Having outlined the status of archaic kinesics and proxemics, I turn to a reflection on visualization strategies present in Greek culture. One of them is the desire of the vase painters to “fill” the “empty space in the painting” with various geometric motifs (these are three metaphysical and post-Platonic categories). In the perception of the original makers and users of painted vessels there was probably no question of any kind about filling in the empty space, as space was not yet considered as capacity. Horror vacui is therefore not a fear of emptiness, but rather a consequence of the archaic way of understanding of space; its graphic, polytopic equivalent, just as in the case of a modern painting, the equivalent of space is the convergent perspective. Creation of isomorphic systems is, at the same time, an iconic gesture of bonding and measuring, aimed at maintaining integrity of what is happening “on the vase”. Another derivative of the polytopically, rhizomatically understood spatiality are the disturbed (from our perspective) body proportions of archaic figures. With the development of the black-figure style the “filling” elements disappear, sometimes turning into stylized floral decoration. This process is connected with a change in perception of space that begins to be treated as capacity. As a result, paintings during the Classical period begin to create the illusion of space as a result of their representational character. The category of the surface appears as a view, a measured, shared, and unified place given to images. The field of the image, the surface of things, and the background begin to constitute a unified, indistinguishable space that is a capacity. The last part of the subsection is my reconstruction of the field of vision functioning in the culture of chōros and diakrisis based on a fragment of the poem “The Destruction of Troy” by Arctinos of Miletus (7th century BCE), which is briefly referred to by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. It consists, among other things, of actions that are crucial for the metaphysical concept of the image, such as concealment, making visible (expositional strategy), mystification, distinction between what is true and what is false – hidden and open, invisible and visible. Visuality (equivalent to what an image is in its essence) in this case is a kind of deception, a mystification. In the culture of diakrisis instead of pointing to the real object of worship, Trojan Palladion, eikōn creates spatial distance, moves away – distances. By “impersonating” Athena, the image pretends to be her to focus the attention on itself, direct it towards itself, mislead, and thus protect the “true image”: the hidden Palladion. [4.4] The “Iconic realizations problematizing primordial spatiality, mobility, and vision” subsection is an analysis of selected antiquities as artefacts in the context of the issues addressed in this chapter. For the Archaic period, I discuss isomorphic arrangements (ornaments), cauldrons on tripods, the amphora of the Polyphemus Painter, relief pithoi, socalled eye-cups and the aryballos of Nearchos. In case of the Classical period, the scene of the court of Paris by the Dolon Painter is studied. [4.5] The “Iconic fact as a close-up” subsection summarizes considerations made in chapter 4. Therein I emphasize that an iconic fact not only produces an event by making it visible and makes available to the senses, but, above all, it is an activity that places something that is far away in proximity. A painting, therefore, cancels the remoteness, de-distances (Ent- fernung) by becoming a “thing at hand”; it familiarizes and enables action through showing it. However, this should be understood not as a physical displacement, a shortening of the measurable distance, but rather as a kind of existential experience of something, a removal of a qualitative difference. Owing to the visualization of the deeds, Troy becomes close to the archaic Greek in a dimension which we could now call spiritual or cultural; it is a pothos, a kind of longing, a closeness based on an affective bond with the heroes and their achievements, similar to the one we feel towards Classical Greece, despite the temporal distance. On the other hand, in diakrisis culture, visual similarity (also understood as a kind of closeness) results in a distance from the archetype. The metaphysical image works differently: by producing an illusion, it creates a difference, making it distant. Chapter V Eikonomy as part of the cultural mentalité of the Greek world [5.1] The “Games and social practices” subsection goes beyond the problem of seeing things. However, the sole knowledge of principles of perceiving artefacts is insufficient. It is also necessary to know what to “equip” the artefacts studied with; what to see and how? Which rules, social norms, and activities thus organized the cultural space, the habitat in which these facts iconically existed? To reveal the fundamental difference between the status of iconic phenomena in the chōros culture (spontaneous and practical thinking) and the diakrisis culture (theoretical thinking), it becomes necessary to discern the basic social games and practices of the time, a kind of cultural literacy. To this end, the key concept of eikonomy is introduced and used throughout the book. The dispersion of iconic modalities, characteristic of Greek culture, is inscribed simultaneously in two basic models of economic relations: gift economy (unmediated exchange creating social bonds of philia and xenia type) typical of chōros culture, and market economy (indirect exchange taking place with the use of an equivalent recognized by the parties to the exchange, typical of diakrisis culture). Thus, eikonomy also becomes a form of management and disposal of a specific cultural resource, part of which are iconic proficiency and competence, defined, among other things, by the relevant rules (themis, dikē) governing the social life of time within the framework of ksenia, philia or serving mnēmē, timē, aretē, kleos. In the chōros culture what we refer to from our perspective as an image and perceive as an ornamented object was thus rather a continuous act of production of similar things by equating, a continuous process of comparison that fits in Simondon concept of transduction. Such production is not a stage in the process, but an endless continuation of becoming, production, and use of things within the framework of gignetic, biomorphic, or genealogical imaginaries operating in archaic Greek culture (biological and sexual reproduction as the basis for visual reproduction of imaginaries). In the following subsection, I draw attention to the shift in cultural competence, the reevaluation of “cultural capital” itself, and changes in the rules of use and perception of artefacts that take place upon the end of the archaic era. Things (as already inanimate objects) become equipped with aesthetic qualities and begin to be perceived from a material perspective. It is no coincidence that in the lexical resources of the Greeks in the 5th century BCE the term eikōn appears in the understanding of the result of the activity of resembling, equating, the final product of the complicated process of creating bonds or the mechanism of socialization. The nounness of Classical culture, its tendency to perceive the surrounding world from the perspective of finished objects, to focus on the final stage of manufacturing processes, builds a new iconic competence, a new capital, consisting of an orientation towards nouns and towards easily exchangeable, discursive meanings. [5.2] The “Tool-being: the world of ‘things at hand’” subsection is an introduction to the issues of exchange seen through the prism of Heideggerian tool-being. I treat iconic facts as instruments of action that enable exchange, change a state, influence, or create bonds, rather than as objects of reflection. Therein I draw attention to the fact that an archaic object was at the same time handy, passed from hand to hand, held in hand, grasped, given, or taken in hand, which implies culturally conditioned gestures of possessing, controlling, passing on, receiving, manipulating, violating, taming or defeating. Thus, being an artefact consisted not only of material elements but also of actions to which they were subjected, the activities of which they were a part of, their origins, affiliations, gestures, etc. From the modern, scientistic perspective they appear only as objects to be looked at; nevertheless, we should treat them as an element of a complex network of behaviors and eikonomic activities conditioned by the specificity of the pre-philosophical culture of that time. [5.3] In the “Exchange as the basis for eikonomic games and practices in chōros and diakrisis culture” subsection I point to the act of exchange as the basis for all eikonomic games and practices. At the same time, I emphasize the different character of this act in the chōros and diakrisis culture. I analyze exchange in relation to the reciprocal gift-repayment relation establishing a network of relationships not only between people but also between people and gods (the shield of Achilles, the statuette of Mantiklos) and ancestors (the armor of Glaukos). I emphasize that the gift, in addition to creating a social bond, established a relationship of symmetry, conformity, equality, and similarity, which is one of the basic laws of “iconic economy”. I then present Greek vocabulary relating to the category of gifts, as well as cultural exemplifications of exchange and the handiness of things (phialē from Pindar's songs, the armors of Glaukos and Diomedes, Paris’ spear, Odysseus’ bed, geometric vases, rings). I also draw attention to the special case of an archaic exchange, which is the exchange of things for signs and meanings. The primary sign-making by the Greeks is essentially existential, non-intellectual in nature. It is a form of experiencing, marking out a place, recognizing something by putting together matching parts, completing or revealing, or showing something hidden. Sēma is also significantly linked to the categories of telling, representing (phrazein), as well as recognizing and knowing (anagnōrisis and noēsis). The archaic Greeks, it is worth emphasizing, do not interpret (in our modern sense) but they rather admire, recognize and find answers. With the sophistic turn, oriented towards aisthēsis, things become objects of exchange of a different kind – a reflection, social and political discourse (especially vase painting). Logomachia – the exchange of iconic facts into words – became one of the most important eikonomic practices of the epoch. The words take the place of phōnē understood as the disposition of things. The archaic chōros culture, being a culture of gifts, gradually transforms into diakrisis, a culture of measured equivalents of respective things and iconic properties. Chapter VI Medial bodies. Iconic facts in light of selected names of things and eikonomic practices [6.1] In the “The world of new media” subsection I indicate the gradual formation of the mediality category in the chōros culture. Within the framework of social activities, iconic facts become mediatized; thus, they begin to be perceived from a representational perspective (as images). The first phase of these “emancipatory” transformations of the iconic element took place in Greece between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE with the so-called Orientalizing period (including new visual stimuli). Iconic facts gradually ceased to be seen as agentive topoi, “places of residence” of various dispositions and acting forces and became media, means of communication, and carriers of meaning. The mediality and visuality of artefacts begun to play an increasingly important role in the social space of the Greeks, developing in parallel with the institution of polis. This connection is not accidental; artefacts are linked to the social function of a city from the very beginning, as evidenced by the development of specific imaginary patterns and how they are demonstrated. [6.2] In the “Iconic modalities in light of selected artefact names” subsection, I analyze more than sixty selected names of iconic facts from the lexical resource of the archaic and classical periods, dividing them into classes of things and groups (1-8). This compilation aims to investigate the state of dispersion of iconicity and its original dependence on various extra-artifactual factors. Iconicity, among other things, is originally a component of the procedure of making a thing, the quality of making it, the way it is perceived or its effect on humans. Representing the equipment of a thing, iconicity began to gradually emerge in Hellenic culture during the 8th-4th centuries BCE as an increasingly autonomous category denoting a special type of plastic activity. The analysis of the lexical resource enables me to show that the artefacts of the archaic era were perceived by their users as existing in functional dispersion, unrelated to one another, specialized tools for achieving different states or fulfilling specific activities (the handiness perspective, see supra 5.2). The qualities that we currently consider iconic had their origin in activities or actions that brought things into a certain state through smearing, weaving, cutting, sticking out, greasing, forming, smoothing, setting, superimposing, or pricking. In the archaic period, instead of an image-thing-noun, we encounter a state of a thing, e.g. a state of being similar. Over time, however, many of the names of archaic iconic facts shift from defining properties or states to denoting Aristotelian “objects of property for use”. In a fully developed diakrisis culture, the effect of seeing something whose property is, for example, the state of being equal, started to be treated as being equated – eikōn. [6.3] The “Cultural configurations and the interchangeability of names” subsection is a description of the variability of cultural and social networks of configurations, interrelations, and dependencies, of which artefacts remain an essential element. Their names reflected the dynamic, processual nature of relationships and social dependencies and how the identification and circulation of artefacts in cultural networks of exchange occurred. Cultural valorization means that, in the perception of archaic Greeks, objects similar to our scientific view (agalma, kouros, andrias, kolossos) did not necessarily belong to the same class of artefacts, e.g. “statues”, and thus to a single iconic habitat. In the following part, on the basis of literary and epigraphic sources, I analyze how the most important names of iconic facts were identified and circulated in cultural networks of exchange. I point to their different functions, states achieved, or activities performed, such as iconic ambiguity, acts of identification, inclusion in a particular group (kouroi, korai), exclusion from a particular group (akrothinia, eikones), evoking a favorable reaction (agalmata), ritual and magical activities consisting in stopping, restraining (kolossoi), evoking an impression of complexity (daidala) or reviving (daidaleia). [6.4] In the “Medial bodies as an element of socio-eikonomic practices” subsection I link the iconicity of the groups and classes of artefacts identified above (6.2) to specific microtemporal procedures that we now recognize as technological activities or as having a social dimension (see supra 3.3). Since the cultural space of the Greeks of the archaic period was primarily performative, relying on ad hoc initiated bonds, activities, dynamic processes of exchange, and flow, the measure of the value of these activities was their effectiveness and efficiency expressed in the handiness of iconic facts. Activities such as imprinting, molding, and operating with a sharp tool become the basis for conceptualizing iconicity from the perspective of woodcarving, weaving, or metallurgical techniques. Related to this are the categories of giving shape (striking, punching), manufacturing (joining, braiding and arranging), duplication, establishing relations of similarity, and reproduction (imprinting). Painting, on the other hand, was an activity originally related to greasing, smearing, and staining. The eventual separation of painting from the domain of cutting, scratching, and pricking, rather than negatively valorized dyeing or staining, marks an important stage in the cultural history of Greek iconic facts. An activity related to sharp tool action was poikilia, the interaction between an intense color and smell involving synesthetic and transmedial states. Colorfulness was a way of achieving certain magical qualities, a form of iconic action on things, ensuring their permanence (e.g. strengthening the existence of statues by making them expressive in sensory perception, sharply outlined, in opposition to deceptive shadows, phantoms). Activities with a social dimension were associated with activities such as offering, donation, exchange, and commemoration. These were achieved through various types of artefacts (including keimēlia, chrēmata, agalmata, anathēmata, pinakes, andriantes, see supra 6.3). The erection of a statue, a column, or a stele, the location of a shrine, a treasury, or a temple was associated in archaic perception with the production of a place (chōros) that conditioned its existence. At the same time, it should be remembered that these practices were a part of a continuous network of human-god-human exchange, forming a closed circle of flows; they served to influence, establish, and sustain various social contracts (Pandora is precisely an element of exchange between gods and humans). The world of things on their own, treated neutrally as buildings, architectural elements, sculptures, well encasings, columns, small bronze, terracotta figurines or even toys did not exist. Subsequently, basic imitation and replication strategies and techniques based on acts of comparison by juxtaposition, equating, identification, metamorphosis, replication or imitation are examined. Numerous iconic activities (painting, weaving, carving, sculpting, and engraving) present in the chōros culture were performed precisely within the frames of an isopragm; they constituted the act of transferring the desired properties of A to B, capturing and placing them, using tools appropriately qualified for these iconic qualities, in the artefact likened by this action. In that context, Homeric similes, the transformation of Odysseus into a beggar, the story of Pandora described by Hesiod, or dance movements are the subject of my study. The induction of an emotional response (liking, a desire to possess or fear) is another component of the activities that I discuss as a source of iconicity. In this context, I examine in more detail certain sēmata – iconic facts depicting dangerous phenomena, predatory animals, Medusa’s head and the aegis. The last type of activity related to distinguished groups and classes of artefacts is the attribution to iconic facts of certain states of consciousness and the ability to speak. This problem is considered, among others, by using the example of Nestor’s cup or the so-called Naxian colossus. Through speech, artefacts gained the ability to socialize, became participants in cultural practices, interacted with people and gods, and were induced to take action and engage in social activities. [6.5] In the “Iconic realizations problematizing the media status of iconic facts” subsection I analyze selected archaeological monuments of the archaic period. These are the statuette of Mantiklos, the statue of Phrasikleia and Cypriot vases of Bichrome type. These examples are placed within the framework of the activities indicated above that are components of social games and eikonomic practices. Chapter VII The tribe of the living and the tribe of the dead. Democratization of iconic facts in the culture of diakrisis [7.1] The beginning of a discussion on the new status of iconicity in diakrisis culture is the constitution of a different way of perceiving artefacts from the previous one. I call it the aestheticizing gaze. It arose from the development of rationalizing thinking, a critical attitude, and, as a result, the emergence of several terms for reflection of iconic phenomena (eikōn, mimēma, morphē) in language, which I analyze, for example, in relation to a fragment of Aeschylus’ satirical drama bearing the significant title of Theōroi (The Spectators). At the same time, I identify important categories of contemporary thinking about iconic facts as images, the “deprivation” present in Euripides’ Trojans (amenēnos “weak, powerless, frail”) or the Platonic distinction between “what is alive” (empsychos) and “what is dead” (apsychos), and between “what is old” (archaios “primitive, primeval”, “old, ancient”) and “what is new”, carefully made, beautiful, having aesthetic value (kainos “new, young, fresh”, “strange, unusual”). Their exponent becomes the sophist Hippias, who, in a conversation with Plato’s Socrates, sees the creations of art in an evolutionary way of “moving forward”. Evolutionary thinking, viewing reality from the perspective of a progressive scheme, is the evidence of the anthropomorphization of the past, characteristic of the sophist school. As a result, the Greeks have made a recognition as an interpretation of their culture from the perspective of a specific historical moment for the first time on such a large scale. Artefacts are perceived differently than before, as silent, dead, illusory phantoms. Simultaneously, the same aestheticizing gaze finds astonishing supernatural qualities in ancient things categorized as made in a less technically advanced way, looking at them from the perspective of external qualities (appearance, shape, form). It was the change at the level of the way of perceiving the world, the final formation of an intellectual view of things or causal thinking that implied this “primordial evolutionism” and resulted in the projection of an aesthetic perspective on earlier iconic production. [7.2] Within this new, evaluative aesthetic gaze, anthropomorphization becomes the primary eikonomic practice of the period. This is the subject of the “Things with a human face – anthropomorphization as the primary iconic strategy of the Classical period” subsection. Therein the anthropomorphic attitude gains two basic dimensions. In the fifth century BCE it was “seeing with the body”, i.e. perceiving reality through the proportions of the human body according to the Pythagorean εὐνομία, the Protagorean formula πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον άνθρωπος or the Delphic γνῶθι σεαυτόν. In the 4th century BC it was replaced by “seeing the body”, which we can understand as breaking the metrical bond of anthrōpos-kosmos and focusing on the representation of the sensual (establishing the mirroring bond of mimēsis resulting in apatē). With regard to the former I examine the issue of the Polykletian canon and the entanglement of its iconic dimension in social games of exchange in the subsequent subsection. [7.3] In the “The time of essentialists – intellectual foundations of transformations in the sphere of iconic production” subsection I look at changes in the cultural perception of iconic phenomena rooted in philosophical reflection, especially at essential attempts to define the image carried out within the diairesis and diakrisis method. On the available archaic linguistic substrate a new discursive category is built: eikōn – an intellectual tool that can embrace and include in its semantic limits various objects whose status so far has been categorized not by distinguishable, independently existing, and destined ad oculos physical properties, but rather by the agency realized within the chōros culture. Subjected to democratization, egalitarianization, and equalization, iconic facts are bound together by the buckle of mimeticism. As eikones, a class of similar and equalized things, they begin to form a “pictorial genos”. Defining the image through the prism of imitation, which took place as a part of philosophical reflection on the true-false relationship, was a fundamental achievement of Greek culture at the beginning of the fourth century BCE, as well as another step toward the emergence of art as a field of production of inanimate objects characterized by significant artistic and aesthetic values. Eidōla and eikones came to signify a class of creations, a set of facts categorized from the perspective of their representational function. The discursive triad of eidōlon–eikōn–phantasma embedded iconicity in a hierarchical chain of entities. Its sense (meaning) was spatial, and the value (efficacy) of an image begins to determine its location in relation to a model. It is a relational model in which the vector of sensory similarity is directed outward, toward open, open space – the greater the illusion (visual similarity), the more magnificent the view, and the greater the distance from eidos (see supra 4.5). [7.4] The “The time of images – statuae atque imagines multis modis” subsection shows the opposite of the philosophical extremity of cultural functioning of iconic facts as images. It is the domain of pisitis and common religious practices. In these, there is a superimposition on the images of a not entirely gone, magical (irrational from the perspective of philosophical thinking) way of perceiving things specific to the chōros culture. As a result of this process images undergo a secondary psychization, a fragmentary anthropomorphization, and begin to be perceived through the prism of a new social game of identity and difference. In public consciousness artefacts are perceived as inanimate objects, although, at the same time, they can manifest unusual and miraculous behavior (moving, animated statues). The media, which in the chōros culture were extensions of human senses, reflecting the immersive and performative way in which people function, have begun to be treated communicatively, symbolically. Iconicity thus becomes visuality. From this new image-based, visual perspective, the focus on what we might call the “intellectual content” of artefacts has replaced their previous function of locating and rooting humans in the world. Chapter VIII Semiurgies. Iconic facts as meaningful facts in the perspective of cultural games and exchange practices [8.1 and 8. 2] In the first introductory section (“The spectacle of sense and rattling significants; The critical attitude of Euripides’ era”), I show the relationship between the acquisition of variously qualified knowledge (οἶδα, ἐπιστήμη, γνώσις, αἴσθησις, μάθημα, σοφία) and iconic facts, as well as point to the formation of a new discursive attitude in Euripides’ time, the critical attitude. It is a crucial and breakthrough process in the whole further cultural history of the image because it then becomes the one on which a new human attitude towards the world is formed. The Athenian audience shaped by Euripides’ tragedies seeks and desires meanings, clarity, content that will be subject to the rules of intellectual dismemberment, symbolization, the act of symballō; it is already oriented toward the spectacle of meaning, discovering and extracting meanings from words and images, and thus their simultaneous viewing and understanding. It is also probably the first such large group of people in the world with a critical attitude, equipped with appropriate theoretical tools, able to recognize the illusion of reality as an element of the human way of being. [8.3 and 8.4] In the second part (“Image device – image as autoikon and mēchanē; Modi of the proper and the improper”) I show the image as a kind of an intellectual tool and a container that makes it possible to think about the world functioning in the language of the era differentiating between kyrios (“what is proper”) – akyros (“what is improper”). At the time of the metaphysical breakthrough it was additionally inscribed in the order of “what is true” (alēthes) and “what is false” (pseudēs), entangling iconicity in a discussion on the way the world exists and, at the same time, shaping the cognitive qualities of the image. Following Agamben, I divide iconic facts that are already present as images into proper (sym-bolic) and improper (dia-bolic) ones. The proprieties of “proper” images are homogeneity, harmony and consistency (they evoke beauty), while the “improper” ones are diabolicalness, heterogeneity, and transgressiveness (they evoke ugliness, monstrosity, and thus complexity and a lack of comprehensibility). In the discursively-oriented culture of diakrisis of the classical period, image not only turns out to be a mental invention that enables a new way of describing or explaining the world (especially in relation to the previously considered category of phrazō and ek-phrazō), but it begins to be used for production and storage of meanings. The iconic fact as an image begins to have the ability to problematize the world, to make it understandable (proper images) or incomprehensible (improper images). The agentive dimension is still important here, but this agentivity takes place in a completely different, discursive order. The appearance of representativeness in place of iconicity implies or even forces the parallel emergence of a new type of visual culture. It is expressed, among other things, in the statue habit, the development of the portrait, new ways of seeing (the culture of view and audience) or the development of a critical attitude and search for an answer to the question on the meaning of a given image/representation. It begins to play the role of a mediator, something that not only mediates, but also measures, thus enabling equivalentization, the transition of things into meanings; it becomes a mēchanē – a device that measures something or allows something to be defined, recognized, explained. The tendency to see iconic facts as containers – spatial entities with a metrizable topicality and dual structure that can be closed, opened, or penetrated – becomes one of the most common and discernible in literary, philosophical texts or inscriptions of attitudes in the new era. However, the image as a mēchanē is characterized by a particular topicality that reflects the cosmographic space of the Greek city – having an exterior (visual surface) and an interior (center, agora, depth of meaning) in which meaning is deposited, or rather negotiated, produced, measured and balanced like a talanton. The role of the image as a discursive category becomes the simulation of depth, spatiality, and capacity, the agora in which the discourse takes place. The agora is at the same time a logeion, a place where meaning is produced, exhibited and displayed. Therefore, the image as a machine for simulation and production of knowledge operates within the Platonic metaphor, the “image” (eikōn) is a “container” and a “tool” (teuchos). At the same time, it is a cognitive scheme that is most often projected onto visual phenomena or perhaps embedded in them to recognize them using already understandable signs – “proper words” (κυρία ὀνόματα). Iconic facts as images begin to function as containers from which meanings are taken out – ἐξαιρέω “take out, draw out”, “extract”, “select”, “remove” (the active role of the object, in which recognition is the disclosure of the “deposit”; the receptive attitude of the subject), or into which they are put – ἐγκαταβάλλω (the active attitude of the subject, the lack of “deposited” information enabling recognition). To possess meaning, to answer the essential question of “what does it mean?” one must therefore access the interior simulated by the image as a mēchanē – by opening the container. This model introduces a division between the external (ἐξόθεν) and the internal (ἔνδοθεν), the appearance – εἶδος and the hidden, which constitute the “entrails” (ἔγκατα), content – γέμος (“filling, charge”) available when “opened”. Therefore, the perception of images as containers involves the superposition of topology based on kinesthesia, the embodied orientation of the human being in space determined, among other things, by the prepositions ἐν-ἐξ/ἐκ (“in”-“out”). It involves the splitting of space (κρίνω), the separation, defining and establishing of a boundary between the two parts (causing a crisis, disorder), and, more importantly, their mutual positioning. What is outside is identified with an open, accessible space (visible, open) – a view; what is inside – with something closed, inaccessible, unknown, secret, invisible, hidden – something separated from the outside by a form of an iconic surface, a partition, a wall manifesting its presence, and thus standing out, resisting, as well as discernible (the façade of a house, a palace, a shrine, the surface of a vessel, a statue, a painting). The very act of “opening” (ἀνοίγνυμι) of the interior is connected with the process of bringing out, revealing the meaning, uncovering, explaining (i.e. showing, making open, clear). The three-dimensional model of the image in question (embodied by the above-mentioned figures of the Silenes, the Sphinga singing her riddles, or the labyrinth in which the Minotaur lives) is, however, only an appearance, a kind of a semiotic “trick-trap” of a mind that uses a language soaked in metaphysics, kinaesthetics, and proxemics to facilitate the processes of understanding and gaining knowledge about the world using specific figures, schemes, or images. In reality, an artefact has no “inside” (content, sense, meaning) understood as a completion of the external visual surface; it has it only when it is an image/representation, a discursive category. The interior is a delusion, a mystification, a product of the signifying mechanism, a conceptual projection of the subject, aimed at gaining knowledge about a phenomenon, using elements of the manufacturing process. Meanings are thus phantom; they are apparent simulations made through images. [8.5 and 8.6] In the third part (“Signification mechanisms; signification strategies”) I describe how the image device works as a container. I identify, analyze, and define, using examples from the archaic and classical periods, the three basic signification mechanisms of iconic facts: homogeneous, heterogeneous, and transgressive (diagenic). The homogeneous mechanism operates (i.e. produces meanings) through activities such as reproduction, juxtaposition, harmonization, comparison, emotional stimulation, and admiration; the heterogeneous mechanism – opening, closing, filling, taking out; and the transgressive – intrusion, penetration, displacement, violence. The mechanisms mentioned above are activated using specific strategies. I distinguish between sensory-emotional, functional-technological, textual-narrative, mimetic, and rhetorical strategies in case of archaic and classical periods. Thus, a given artefact is firstly perceived in terms of an image, and, subsequently, with the use of a particular strategy, a specific signification mechanism is implemented in it, enabling creation of knowledge and meaning about perceived phenomena. [8.7] In the fourth part (“Metafigures”) I analyze the issue of the emergence and formation of meanings in Greek culture within the most extended transgressive mechanism using the example of three metafigures: Sphinga (penetration), Riddle (displacement), and Minotaur (violence) in detail. Afterword The dragon teeth. From representations to magical states of affairs The following is an attempt to summarize the reflection on the iconicity phenomenon in both Greek and postmodern culture. In the “Flat and geologized” subsection I link the practices of seeing in both periods using a poetic metaphor of Tadeusz Różewicz. I show that the contemporary perception of Greek things and images is a vision of smuggled reliefs; it is blurred and fluid, because the motivations underlying archaic actions, “thinking with actions” cannot be seen; they are available to us only in the form of an iconic trace, which from the perspective of thinking in pronouns remains illegible, unclear – it does not enter into the discourse. However, it is that very state of blurring that seems to connect contemporary and archaic culture, enabling us to reflect from a different level. Ergon, the iconic thing, reappears as energeia, a flow, a kind of action, touchiness, and desire. In the archaic world, as in postmodernity, things are not distinguishable from images (appearances); iconicity emerges either as a function of things or as a strategy for influencing things. Archaic iconic facts constitute a space of sharing; they enable making a close-up, immersion, distancing, making something distant visible, locating and rooting, establishing a fact and affecting, constituting a direct intervention in the environment, enabling exchange, influence, changing a state or creating a bond. This way of experiencing is restored to contemporary culture by machines, non-human AI entities. For them the representationalism of the image does not exist; it is a fractal perspective, devoid of all metaphysics, based on the reproduction of the same thing, in which images are self-perfect objects, the result of actions defined by an appropriate algorithm, often generated according to fully automated procedures. The image produced in this way is not marked by categories such as similarity, life or meaning, which, at the same time, no longer constitute an important point of reference. The only criterion is compatibility with the algorithm, which also determines its effectiveness. In that (post- )archaic perspective, images become like dragon teeth – magical, polymorphic artefacts capable of transformation. In the Postscriptum that closes the book I quote a fragment of Tadeusz Różewicz’s short story in which an attempt to reconstruct an image from the past reflects the way our “archaeological manufacture” of interpretation works. As the poet suggests, it should consist of “excavating objects, tools and people buried in the ground”. Bringing these three elements together and putting them back together was also the basic aim of this book.