Visual Cultures and Critical Theory 9781849663120

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Acknowledgements

D Many people are involved with the writing of any book and this is very much the case here. Our publishers were supportive and positive about the idea of this book, which was encouraging in all the appropriate stages of writing. In particular, we would like to thank Lesley Riddle for her initial help and friendly manner in dealing with all our queries and requests. Her suggestions at the commencement of this project were insightful and welcome. Our thanks go to Alexia Chan, who provided a smooth transition towards the end of the project. She offered understanding just where publishers need to without any compromise to the progress of the work. Thanks also to Colin Goodlad for his warmth, support and good humour. In terms of academic stimulus and general banter, there are several whom we would like to thank. To our colleagues at Royal Holloway, University of London and at Curtin University, for their support. For the love of film, art, television and generally looking we thank Sam Tarlington, who happily spent many a night on Oxford Street just watching; Robyn Wagner who possesses a similar tenacity and enthusiasm for the saga of the screen as her sister; Margaret Mills who, through her friendship and care, has always given much in all of our discussions and of herself. Also to our families - their love, encouragement and interest in this book helped it move along. And finally, for our little Noah - who without knowing it provided an unshakeable deadline and a much-anticipated sight on which to set our eyes.

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A Note on Images

D A book on visual cultures inevitably needs to refer to a great many images. However, we felt that any attempt to include all the images would be unwieldy and, perhaps even more disadvantageous, might restrict the concepts and issues to very specific examples. Therefore where possible we have included a reference to a web page where the images can be found. These will often direct the reader to other examples, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of the book. We have also included a list of some useful gallery pages and film reference sites. These will provide more examples and sources of reference.

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Hyperlinks

D Galleries referred to throughout the book: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection!default.htm http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/default.htm http://www.artchive.com/ftp_site.htm http://www.mcu.es/prado/index_eng.html http://www.louvre.frllouvrea.htm http://www.rijksmuseum.nl! http://www.uffizi.firenze.itlwelcomeE.html http://www.reemst.comlcalvin_and_hobbes/ ror all films referred to in all chapters: http://www.imdb.coml

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INTRODUCTION

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There is a scene in one of the early episodes of the television series The Sopranos where Tony Soprano, one of the most powerful men in the Mafia, sits in the waiting room before his analysis session with his psychiatrist. He looks around the room, a curious figure (a mixture of masculine power and nervousness), before his eyes, and then our own gaze (through the camera), settles on a painting hung on the wall. It looks innocuous enough; a generic and relatively bland picture of a barn and some trees, but Tony's gaze insists on looking at it. We, the spectator, are made to look at it with this same degree of intensity. We peer into the image because the intensity of Tony's gaze tells us there is something significant here. A few moments later, in the session, Tony becomes agitated and asks Dr Melfi, his analyst, why she has the picture on the wall. She responds saying that it is only a picture and asks why it bothers him so much. At this all of the force of Tony Soprano explodes and he rants that it is a far from innocent picture, and insists that it is a trap - a psychoanalytic trap. He tells Dr Melfi that she shouldn't have such traps on the wall, and speaks of how much it affects his mind to see such an image. In this scene, and it is beautifully done, we witness one of the fundamental issues of the image and the formation of what has come to be termed 'visual culture'. The image of the barn and trees is just that, and it may well have been hung on the wall simply to take blankness from the space, or add some cheer to a stressful environment. It is the sort of image that we all encounter, perhaps do not even register, every day - from doctors' waiting rooms to bus stops, from the calendars we hang in the kitchen, to the countless postcards of seasides or famous buildings, to the hundreds of pictures we Hick past in a magazine. And most of the time these images will slip from our eyes, no more noticed than a colour of a fence, a curtain, or a stranger's face in the street. But now and then the image seems to be more powerful, more demanding and relevant, and we are drawn to it. Part of the complexity is figuring out why some images do this more than others, why an image can do this at one moment and not another, and how we might share such an experience with others. From the almost unseen to the insistent, these images are the constitutive elements of a visual culture; how we become spectators of them is what locates us within a visual culture. Between these three elements - image, culture, spectator - exists a powerful and complex matrix of processes and relationships. Before we go any further, let us take up a second image. In a different way this image illustrates a similar point that is operating in Tony Soprano's compulsion to the painting on the wall. In the sixteenth century, Europe was devastated by a series of plagues, which xi

Chapter One

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INVESTING IN POWER AND TH E BODY Foucault and the visual INVESTING POWER IN THE IMAGE

Why power? And why power and the image? When we look at images are we interacting "vith relations of power? Have we entered into an economy of power that positions us and how we view what we look at? Aren't we just looking? We look at ourselves every day, in the mirror, and for the most part we are consciously avvare of nothing except a projected reflection. When we go to an art gallery or read a magazine, look at photos or even when we watch images on film or television, we are engaging with other images and forming investments of power. The two constants in each of the above situations are you, as spectator, and the image. It is this change from you-as-human-being to you-as-spectator that involves issues and relations of power within any interaction with the image. For Michel Foucault, power was a means to an end. Foucault was not primarily interested in analysing or critiquing power, as for him power (as a freestanding sociocultural force) did not exist prior to an interactive relationship. Rather, for Foucault, it was the subject, more specifically the construction of human beings into subjects, that was his main research objective. Power was only 'activated' once a power relationship had been constructed and engaged with. Foucault viewed power as a technique or mechanism to be used in working out why and how we become subjects. 'My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. My work has dealt with three modes of objectification which transform human beings into subjects' (Foucault 1983a: 208). By arguing that a subject invests power in an image, we look more towards the objectivizing of the subject from the perspective of the image and the resistance a spectatin!f subject produces in meeting and refusing such objectification. "Vhat is of interest here is how these power relations are produced and why they are produced to create certain subjectivity with specific reference to any image. In order to use power as a tool to analyse the subject and how we become subjects, Foucault suggested a new economy of power relations. 'It consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point ... Rather than analyzing power from the point of view of its internal rationality, it consists of analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies' (Foucault 1983a: 211). We can adopt this approach in finding out what power relations are involved in visual cultures, by looking at 1

Chapter Two

SEEING THE SELF IN THE

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BAROQU E MIRROR Lacan and the visual Perhaps men would have to learn everything anew, and especially how to read an image. (Lacan 1988b: 47)

The metaphoricity of the mirror Jacques Lacan, perhaps the one who was more Freudian than Freud himself, loved the mirror. Even in his old age he was known to be unable to resist stolen glances of himself as he walked by a mirror. And why not? For here was the man who spent his intellectual life holding up the speculum to the unconscious and, in the process, to the social order of things. For Lacan, the mirror was both an intellectual pursuit and a personal obsession, it was an instrument of analysis and a process of forming subjectivities. Lacanian theory depends on the mirror in part because it is a reminder of all the travails of what it is to exist. It is the mirror that marks the point at which we become the split, fragmented subject, tom from the ego-centric and the sense of the whole and placed into the realm of the signifier, that is the Symbolic. Psychoanalysis also depends on the mirror because here is an instrument invested in the visual - an issue at the core of this analytic process. In The Four Fundamental Concepts rfPsychoanalysis, Lacan urges us to meditate on optics; 1 a sentiment we find in countless places in Freud, some of which we shall have reason to visit here. And, finally, Lacan's psychoanalytic methods depend on the mirror because of its metaphoricity. This is the mirror as it enables critical metaphors for some of the fundamental issues of psychoanalytic concerns. We will have more to say of Lacan's theory of, and relationship to, the mirror in a moment - but for now let us pursue a less declared aspect of Lacanian theory and style. This is an aspect that is as much about the style of Lacanian psychoanalysis as it is about the substance - and this includes the theme of the mirror and the visual. Here we encounter the idea that there is something altogether Baroque about Lacan and his works and ideas. Hidden away in a seminar delivered towards the end of Lacan's life we find a few references to the Baroque. They would seem almost inconsequential, especially compared to the wealth of influences and forces of Surrealism found in Lacan's personal and

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Chapter Three

TRANSGRESSION, ABJECTION AND TH E BODY Kristeva and the visual

Julia Kristeva's works are complex and deeply embedded in linguistic, psychoanalytic and literary theory. What this chapter aims to do is to look at how some of Kristeva's theories have influenced and shaped the new discipline of visual cultures and contributed to a visual theory. In Kristeva's work, the development of some key concepts holds a great deal of significance for the image and we will work through these, referring to some of her early semiotic and later psychoanalytic works. As most of Kristevan theory is concerned with psychoanalysis and its application to (predominantly French) literature, there is a need to be cautious with any application to visual cultures, as primarily this was not its original focus. However, fundamentally, Kristeva's concepts are theoretically solid, some left carefully ambiguous, and they deal with the formation and developments of the subject. In this spirit we will take up some of her key concepts, notably abjection, the body and corps propre, the simiotique and Symbolic, and apply them to the various images forming a visual culture and a subject involved with a visual culture. It is critical to appreciate and understand Kristeva's conception and theoretical stance on art in general, in addition to situating a visual culture in terms of wider cultural spheres. One of Kristeva's main theoretical objectives is concerned with the dynamics of how a subject or subjectivity is created as a process. Her work deals not so much with what the subject creates in terms of culture, visual or otherwise, but how the process of subjectivity formation influences and participates in the process of culture formation. In this way, art, or for our purposes here, all images which together form a visual culture, are discussed as forming part of a process instead of presupposing a visual culture. More simply, Kristeva's focus can be directed towards how a visual culture generates particular individuals, as well as socio-cultural subjectivities, instead of visual cultures being created or established by individuals or through a cultural collective. By keeping within this framework and consciously maintaining such a perspective, we can apply Kristeva's theories and their respective influences towards a visual culture and the 'spectating' subject. The primary concern will be to examine the analytic strategies that appear in Kristeva's texts for reading such images, while maintaining a concentration on considering visual cultures as a process regarding the formation of subjectivity. These analytic strategies deal 43

Chapter Four

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FROM PARASITOLOGY TO SPECTRES

Derrida and the visual LOCATING DERRIDA As we have expressed elsewhere, part of the concern of this book is to consider the relationship between culture and the visual, of how cultures are produced through the visual, and the ways in which we can utilize visual signs to read and interpret cultural processes. So the term 'visual cultures', to reiterate, does not simply refer to the visual texts of a culture, but rather a complex system that at some level must involve examining what it is to engage in such interpretative acts. Included in this is the idea that we need to examine the visual products of a culture in order to understand cultural processes, including the formation of the spectator. Thus, our use of the term 'visual cultures' (combined with the interests of critical theory) always carries with it a reflexive sense about meaning and understanding. As discussed in the chapter on power and Foucault, an image never simply is, but involves a relationship between image, context and spectator. At some level the image invests, exerts, struggles with, and operates within a sense of power, which necessarily includes the struggles with interpretation. The central concern in this chapter is how certain versions of critical theory can be employed to try to map out the relationship of the image to understanding and interpretation - two processes very much immersed in processes of power. We will also be interested in how one of the major figures of contemporary philosophy -Jacques Derrida - has used the visual in his systematic teasing apart of the major issues of philosophical methods. This, then, is the inversion: we look to see how the image can be used to explore issues of philosophy, and how philosophy has used the image to work through its themes. The central figure in all of this is Derrida. One caveat before we go any further. There have been many philosophers concerned with all aspects of the visual, and the obvious question is 'Why consider Derrida above any of the others?' Some of the reasons have already been outlined in the introduction to this book - that is, the locating of a particular moment (that is, the various movements in critical theory) in terms of the visual, and the defining issues of culture. But it is also noteworthy that what Derrida offers is a way of looking at the large-scale themes and histories of ideas. If his ideas - perhaps erroneously (or at least ambiguously) termed deconstructionl - can be said to have a recurring theme it would be one of how systems of thought and methods of analysis need to be examined from the inside out in order to 64

Chapter Five

SPECTATOR, CULTURE, IMAGED Barthes and the visual [T]he social formation is inherently and immanently present in the image and not a fate or external which clamps down on an image that might prefer to be left alone. l

How are images formed? What are their effects? How are images read, and what types of images are read by which demographics? The main concerns of this chapter look at the image in this way, focusing on how it is read within the parameters of visual cultures, predominantly, how an image comes to form an integral part of a visual culture (as well as possessing the ability to typify it) and how such a formulation shapes a visual culture. Instead of listing images and how they operate as individual examples, a more theoretical and conceptual approach will be taken, looking towards the role of the spectator and their influence on the image and in terms of the image. The relationships and interactions between spectator, culture and image will be looked at, and discussed with particular reference to the theories and works of Roland Barthes, to see how they form a fundamental basis for a visual culture. This chapter also seeks to outline the semiotics 2 of the image, and how the spectator's act of reading is crucial in the formation of the image, individually, and within a larger socio-cultural context. It is how the image is socially formed in which we are interested, and this type of questioning looks at the image's construction and capacity for signification. The disciplines of visual cultures and visual theory are concerned with analysing the image, not as a single component within a specific field (such as art, for example), but instead examining the image as a concept operating within and from a wide range of media sources. The aim of this approach in thinking about the image is to look beyond its capacity for simple representation, and engage with all forms of image representation so that in considering the formation and function of the image, new concepts of images can emerge and help generate contemporary critical methods of interpretation. The aim of this chapter is to work towards a "re-modelling' or a "re-vision' of the image, looking at how it is formed, read and generates meaning in culture through analysing its structure, and then 'putting it back together' so that there is a different knowledge of the image and its place in visual cultures.

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Chapter Six

INVISIBILITY AND HALLU CI NATIO N The state of the image in the postmodern world Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle towards my hand? Come, Iet me cl utch thee - I have thee not and yet I see thee sti II!

(Shakespeare, Macbeth) Unlike the other chapters, here we will be looking at a range of different theories. One of the most striking aspects of all the theorists in this chapter is just how visually orientated their style is. This does not just include the metaphors and examples they employ, but also the very substance of what they are attempting to do. Each of them works with the visual in order to explain and explicate ideas, concepts and dilemmas drawn from a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychoanalysis, social theory, cultural praxis, media studies and the sciences. Because we are concerned with some key theorists here, each having produced a great many works, there is a need to keep things focused. What we lose in coverage we should make up for by providing a more in-depth analysis of a particular theme (and one that has resonance across a number of fields, including the works of the theorists at hand). The common link in this chapter will be how we might approach the issues and idea of the visual that is not there, or has been problematized in terms of its status and existence. This is the visual in terms of surfaces, hallucinations and simulacra. Although this questionable status of the visual has a postmodernist feel about it, in fact it is one of the oldest attributes of the relationship between image and spectator. For what often marks the visible is indeed its absences, its shadows and its simulations. A key part of this is authenticity; and every generation, every cultural and historical era, seems to have had versions of this in terms of the image. How a cultural moment defines itself in terms of the authenticity of the image determines so much of that culture's identity. As we have seen, and will further observe in this section, from the end of the nineteenth century there has been a sort of unauthentification of the image. There is a certain irony to this, for with the refinement of scientific instruments that allowed for images of previously unseen objects (from the minute particles seen through an electron microscope to the galaxies revealed by the Hubble telescope) it would seem logical

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D BIBLIOGRAPHY Bakhtin, Mikhail (1968) Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Barthes, Roland (1964) Essais critiques, Paris: Seuil. -- (1967) Elements rffSemiology, trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith, London:Jonathan Cape. -- (1973) Mythologies, trans. A. Lavers, London:Jonathan Cape. -- (1974) Sf:::', trans. R. Howard, New York: Hill and Wang. -- (1975) The Pleasure rffthe 1i:xt, trans. R. Miller, New York: Hill and Wang. -- (1977) Image-Music-1i:xt, trans. S. Heath, Glasgow: Fontana. -- (1979) The EiffilTower and Other Mythologies, trans. R. Howard, New York: Hill and Wang. -- (1984) Camera Lucida, trans. R. Howard, London: Flamingo. -- (1985) The Grain rffthe Voice: Interviews 1962-1980, trans. L. Cloverdale, New York: Hill and Wang. -- (1990) The Fashion System, trans. M. Ward and R. Word, California: University of California Press. -- (1993) A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. S. Sontag, London: Vintage. Baudrillard,Jean (1982) In the Shadow rffthe Silent Mqjorities, New York: Semiotext(e). -- (1983) Simulations, trans. P. Beitchman, New York: Semiotext(e). -- (1988) The Ecstasy rffCommunication, trans. B. and C. Schutze, New York: Semiotext(e). -- (1990) Seduction, trans. B. Singer, London: Macmillan Press. -- (1995) The GuffWar Did.NOt Take Place, trans. P. Patton, Sydney: Power Publications. Bazin, Germain (1964) Baroque and Rococo, trans. J. Griffin, Norwich: Thames and Hudson. Benjamin, Walter (1996) illuminations: Essays and Riflections, London: Random House. Bryson, Norman (1985) VISion and Painting: The Logic rffthe Gaze, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press. -- (2001) 'Semiology and Visual Interpretation', in Julia Thomas (ed.), Reading Images, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave. Deleuze, Giles and Felix Guattari (1983) On the Line, trans. J. Johnston, New York: Semiotext(e). -- (1984) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and &hiwphrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane, London: Athlone Press. Derrida, Jacques (1973) Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory rff Signs, trans. D.B. Allinson, Evanston: North-Western University Press. -- (1976) QfGrammatology, trans. G.C. Spivak, Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.

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