The major concern of this chapter – and of this book as a whole – is the relationship in the work of Georges Bataille between the image and violence as manifest in a specific instance of the relationship between and the image and victim. What follows continues an investigation into how the victim in the image does not simply evoke identification. In this regard, the image as transparent emerges for Bataille in relation to the victim of Chinese lingchi as portrayed in photographs reproduced in The Tears of Eros (Bataille 1990: 204– 207). Such transparency contrasts with the notion of the image as ‘mediality’ – which means that the image can appear in its own right – as proffered by Agamben. The same transparency of the image can also be observed in Bataille's writing on the art of the Lascaux caves (see: Bataille 1979: 7–101) and in his study of Manet's paintings (see Bataille 1979: 103–167). These texts are arguably the most important for understanding Bataille's engagement with the image, an engagement that reveals the intimate relation between image and victim. In this context, the issue of the image in general is raised. The now well-rehearsed argument that the image is media specific, and is thus opaque, will be considered in order to show that, for Bataille, the image is – as has been mentioned – transparent: it provides direct access to the imaged. So that the full implications of Bataille's position can be made clear, recourse to a general theory of the image is necessary.

In his introduction to a book on representations of pain, James Elkins writes that the group of scholars giving papers on this theme at the 2005 University College, Cork, conference, ‘often had difficulty keeping their attention fixed on the representations’ (Elkins 2013: 5). He adds that they were aware of the ‘slide from image to subject, from signifier to signified, from medium to historical event, but we were powerless to prevent it’ (5). In another essay, Elkins writes that ‘The lingchi images are painful because they record real events, actual and specific pain, exact forms of violence and cruelty’ (Elkins 2004: 13). In other words, an academic – not to say intellectualist – approach to the image, which inevitably treats the image as object, is powerless to prevent the image disappearing into what is imaged.