engleski

Against the canon. How to do research in Visual Studies

All disputes about the ontological nature of images emerge from two basic, counterposed viewpoints: essentialist and subjectivist. Whenever we want to talk about the issue of what an image represents, in what way we do or do not understand it – regardless of our possible intention to assess the ontological questions of the images’ constitution philosophically or, more commonly, only to refer critically to particular concrete image examples from the vast area of visual culture – we always ask ourselves if the analyzed image object contains a value in itself or if it has been provided by the viewer. The purpose of this dialectical confrontation is not to rule out all the interpretive nuances that exist in either of them or to discourage further insights into their specificities. When it comes to the theory of images, the purpose of this discussion is to turn our focus to the possibilities of the pictorial in-betweenness and contingency, or disciplinary becoming, instead of defining. Apparently, this approach will first of all require shifting our focus from the ideological to the material concerns of images, for only then will we be able to start comprehending them in a different light.

essentialism, subjectivism, visual studies, interpretive canon, dialectics

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