Enhancing Image-Text Relations

 Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328-9):

The left-right axis of the page, the vectors in the inauguration-flag image, and its relations with preceding text, combine to construct an indexical temporal sequence. The gaze of people in the crowd is up to the stage and across to the left. Implicit in these gazes is the inauguration ceremony they are watching, and its central protagonist, Mandela. And their gaze is also towards Mandela’s life story that lies to the left of the image. These vectors realise implicit identification, all pointing anaphorically to ‘him’, Mandela. But Mandela himself is not in the picture. Counterbalancing this up and leftward gaze is the powerful vector in the flag, which points down and right towards the people who surround it, cataphorically identifying ‘them’. In sum, the layout and images indexically construe a complex activity sequence, in which not only apartheid belongs to the past, but also the struggle against it, and Mandela’s own life story. In contrast the future belongs to the people.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. The two photographs construe the same temporal location — that of the inauguration of Mandela as President — but the text, an excerpt from the Meaning of Freedom text (reproduced below) is not located in time relative to the inauguration.

[2] This is misleading, because it is not true. The gaze of the crowd in the right-hand photograph is towards the background in the image, not left to the adjacent text.

[3] To be clear, this confuses paying attention (looking at phenomena) with directing the attention of others (pointing at phenomena).

[4] To be clear, this "powerful vector in the flag" is directed only to one anonymous head, in the foreground of the photograph. That is, every other person in the crowd is excluded by this vector.

[5] As demonstrated above, this conclusion is not warranted by the authors' analyses. The 'activity sequence' is confined to the text, and the two photographs, both of the same occasion, are not related temporally to the text.

∞

Meaning of Freedom

I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free - free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow^moving bulls, As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.

It was only when ! began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it.

At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased and go where i chose. Later, as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honourable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family - the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life.

But then i slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free.

I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. That is when I joined the African National Congress and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that 1 could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.

Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me. 

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. 

I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. 

The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. 

Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that this is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. 

I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

(Mandela 1995: 746-51)