The hospitality of imaging zones in the philosophy of Marie-José Mondzain

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify, in the thought of the French-Algerian philosopher Marie-José Mondzain, an approach to images that values their connective role in the production of interdependencies and bonds of care between different subjects and ways of life. Based on a reflective approach to her most recent works, we attempt to clarify the way in which she defines the operation of images in the process of creating image-bearing zones of indeterminacy, of intervals and thresholds open to recognition and hospitality. The hospitality of images is produced through a work of fiction, that is, through the creation of other arrangements and structures for the presentation of events and existences that alter the texture of experience and the configuration of our gaze. For Mondzain, in dialogue with Jacques Rancière and Andrea Soto Calderón, the fiction that is created in the interval zone where images flourish allows for another intelligibility of the world and guides an action that rejects colonial confiscations and the inhospitalities forged in the midst of capitalism.