Farocki/ Didi-Huberman. Lisibilité des images et pédagogie critique

How should one place oneself within the present iconosphere, at a time when everything seems to be hyper documented? What can be done with the plethora of images surrounding us? And is there anything left for us to read in these objects that have already been discussed over and over again? The filmmaker Harun Farocki hangs on to the belief that his documentaries can make images speak in new and different ways. Also, while traditional iconology sees the image as a crossword puzzle with only one possible interpretation, Georges Didi-Huberman argues for a critical montage aiming to restore the openness of the images in order to deploy their multiple meanings. What is at stake here is the very construction of "the eye of history," an alternative viewpoint allowing for a kind of reading that would free the document from the strictures of homogenizing interpretations. The montage as understood by Didi- Huberman restores the complexity of the visual, thus placing itself in stark opposition to traditional authoritarian ap- proaches. This paper explores the role of a "pedagogy of the document" in liberating knowledge from automatized modes of reading.