The Vision and Its "Exceedingly Blessed Beholder": Of Desire and Participation in the Icon

Understanding legal semiotics

“…Isar reads the living image of Christ Pantocrator, Chôra tôn zôntôn, as a sign: Christ stands up and holds an open book in His left hand, while pointing to Himself with the other hand as a motion of the finger that is a gesture of demonstration of the pure visibility, of the iconic presence (deixis) and not a representation. 65 Goodrich identifies a code of legal images, the basic visual structures, the juridical imaginary in diverse images of sovereignty, justice, amity, reverence, lure, lust and infinite[ly] more of the particulars of law. More than that, wresting our eyes from the text means giving credence to images, becoming learned in the visual and so proceeding as the legal authors of the emblem books were wont to say, ad apparentiam, according to appearance, figuratively and not textually.…”