The introduction establishes a chronological overview and introduces readers to Didi-Huberman’s most important texts by mapping the evolution of his intellectual development through the decades. The reader is introduced to the book’s core argument: Didi-Huberman emerges from the general critique of representation that was underway in France during the 1970s and 1980s. Didi-Huberman’s aim is to develop an alternative philosophical framework for understanding images, in turn disrupting an art-historical tradition that stretches back to Plato. Specifically, this is the idealism that underpins mimesis. In its broadest sense, idealism privileges the notion that ideas are primary, while non-ideas, such as physical and material things, are secondary.