engleski

Introduction to “Theorizing Images”

If somebody in the foreseeable future decides to write what then might be called a history of visual studies, he or she will probably soon come to the conclusion that notions of “time” and “history” do not play the same role in the discipline they are about to discuss as they do in other disciplines, in which timelines, resemblances and influences constitute the very foundation of their specific knowledge. Introducing the present book, we will argue, drawing on numerous extremely knowledgeable and insightful opinions voiced and research projects undertaken in the study of visual culture, that there is a problematic relationship between the study of images through history on the one hand and the relatively recent phenomenon called visual studies on the other. We will argue as well that this relationship is the cause of the still contestable academic status of the new discipline, although its becoming rapidly established in universities worldwide may prove the opposite. The problem, which will be discussed by the contributors throughout this edition, consists of the fact that the study of images, representations and visual phenomena in the widest sense was the subject of human interest for more than two millennia before a group of respectable scholars started a conceptual and institutional demarcation of the area of visual studies (or visual culture, or Bildwissenschaft for that matter), an area growing so rapidly that it has easily outgrown, at least in scope, all other visual epistemologies confined within the theoretical boundaries of the philosophy of the image, art history, semiotics or any other discipline systematically related to the visual field.

image theory, media theory, visual studies, film studies, fashion studies

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