Widzenie przez kulturę. Wprowadzenie do teorii kultury wizualnej

Abstract

In the first chapter (the Status of visual culture studies as cultural studies reflection) I reflect on the status of visual culture studies, which in my opinion they fall within the scope of cultural studies. Assuming that visual culture studies are suspended between the history of art and cultural studies, in my opinion their specificity is shifting to the side of cultural studies to a large extent. In the second chapter (Cultural Image Theory) I reflect on the cultural theory of image, which refers to the iconology of Erwin Panofsky and an anthropology of images by Hans Belting. Cultural Image Theory is a sub-discipline of VCS, the creator of which is W. J. T. Mitchell. This knowledge deals with the cultural aspects of the functioning of the image, which can be found in the reflection of visual culture studies. In the third chapter (Cultural Theory of Visuality and Seeing), I undertake the presentation of another sub-discipline of the VCS, which is referred to as visual studies. It is an interdisciplinary W. J. T. Mitchell's research project. The subject of visual studies and cultural theory of visuality and seeing was delimited by what Hal Foster calls visuality. In the fourth chapter (Socio-cultural thought in the field of visual culture studies) I present the sources and genesis of sociological reflection in the area of ​​VCS. On the one hand, the declaration and progman of the development of visual culture studies contained in Mitchell's essay Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture, and on the other hand, the crisis of representation contained in post-structuralist reflection and the development and transformation of visual sociology. The final fifth chapter (Cultural Turns in the VCS Area) is a study of three pictorial / iconic, postcolonial and performatic turns that can be seen in the VCS reflection. I put the presented turns in the perspective of cultural sciences, although the iconic turn arose in the field of image theory. However, he caused a new cultural perception of the image by joining his forces with the critique of cognition and the critique of language. For this reason, in the area of ​​the English-language reflection of the pictorial turn, we are constantly moving in the field of linguistic theories. When defining post-colonialism in terms of visual culture, it is worth referring to the scopic (visual) regimes, which in this approach are models of cultural perception imposed by colonialism. In this perspective, these procedures making vision systems, visual representations and images that arise as a result of exercising power. Another performative turn draws our attention to the expressive dimension of social actions and visual events that are either a performance or a time-based process based on "agency".