Introduction to Visual Criticism Author: Wu Qiong Publisher: Southwest Normal University Press Producer: Beideya Hardcover + Envelope

- Editor's Recommendation -

☆ "Jacques Lacan: Reading Your Symptoms" is a masterpiece of visual culture research by Professor Wu Qiong, author of

☆Diagnose the problems of the visual age we live in and reveal the alien forms of contemporary subjects

☆ Incisive and easy-to-understand discussion, with more than 100 illustrations, presented in a hardcover case

★Today, visual machines are like ghost machines. They are omnipresent, invading every corner of human life, capturing every bit of life, and turning people or life into ghostly existences. That is to say, when the so-called "consumer society", "media empire", "image age", "postmodernism" and other descriptions are associated with visuality, they refer not only to the unprecedented proliferation of images, but also to the social control implemented by modern society using vision as an institutional model.

★…Just as there is no pure monochrome or colorless, in our daily viewing behavior, pure viewing without desire does not exist. Obsession and fear, guilt and euphoria - whether you realize it or not - always coexist in the behavior of viewing. They often constitute a symbiotic effect, twisting the contradictory sides in the operation of juxtaposition, and thereby constructing the fatal temptation of viewing - especially illegal or transgressive viewing - for us, and the story of viewing often unfolds here.

★Our viewing is never self-sufficient and pure. Behind individual viewing, there are always multiple gazes from others, society and institutions. Our subjectivity is constructed in the superposition of the views of others and our own. The self or subject confirmation we complete in viewing is actually an act of self-abandonment. Behind "I see, therefore I am", there is always the ontological entanglement of "I am not here, therefore I see" and "I see, therefore I am not here".

★Nowadays, the aesthetic effectiveness and pleasure production of images are considered to play more of a "screen" function. As a representation, images reveal and display certain things while also obscuring and shielding other things. Behind the visibility of images there is always an operation of invisibility, and visibility itself is an operation of invisibility. This is a double operation that unfolds in different spaces, and the political connotation of the image is secretly embedded in this double operation.

★ Visual culture research has developed into a very diverse form, and its stance towards visual culture, especially popular culture or media culture, is also varied, but I prefer to emphasize its critical side. The fundamental point is: if we admit that today's era is a visual era, then the criticism of visual centrism will directly point out the "panopticism" of contemporary society, the narcissism and fetishism wrapped in our viewing, and the alienation of contemporary subjects. I also want to emphasize that visual culture research is not a healing machine. It certainly wants to provide us with a strategy to get out of the mirror city, but the obsession with the phantom of the mirror city has become a part of the existence or life world. At best, we can only seek escape again and again in the "already" fate, because as long as we are alive, we cannot do without the mirror image provided by visual culture.

- Introduction -

"Visual Culture Studies" as a specific academic trend emerged in the West from the 1970s to the 1980s, and reached its peak from the 1990s to the early 21st century. Today, its momentum has gradually weakened, and people's sense of novelty about it seems to be less strong than before, but the problem consciousness constructed by it has not become invalid, but continues to penetrate and spread in the humanities and social sciences in more diverse ways.

This book is a study of the main issues of the Visual Culture Research Institute. The book consists of an introduction and six chapters:

The introduction outlines the genealogy, objects, basic framework and main topics of visual culture research (e.g., critique of visual centrism, machine research, institutional research, politics of representation, viewing and identity). In this sense, it is also a literature review.

The first chapter, "The Story of Seeing," focuses on the construction of "visuality," that is, the functional operation of the various levels or elements that structure our vision or viewing behavior, and examines this operation in a specific historical context, including an examination of visual centrism. Therefore, in this "story of seeing," there is no coherent art history or visual history, nor is there a coherent art theory history or visual theory history. This chapter simply borrows some historical fragments to unfold the operation of visuality in history. More precisely, only in history can the operation of visuality be specifically explained.

Chapter 2 explores the functions of visual machines using photography, film, and television as subjects. Since the mid-19th century, with the invention of modern visual machines such as cameras, video cameras, and televisions and their widespread use in daily life, not only the relationship between people and objects, but also the relationship between people and the world has been redeployed. They are no longer devices and sensory technologies in the general sense, but a "thermodynamic machine" that can exchange energy with the body, a "colonization machine" that has been implanted in the body and disciplines the body by controlling vision.

Chapter 3 revolves around the study of the establishment of visual culture. The sociological aspect of art is a component of artistic practice and is also the meaning of visual "cultural research". "Institutional gaze" is an explicit indication of this theme. The establishment of the aesthetic field is by no means just a set of aesthetic or artistic systems, it is also a part of social establishment, a system of devices used by society to construct the meaning and value of subjects and objects. Especially in today's visual age, in this society where all kinds of exhibitionism and voyeurism have been bred due to excessive visualization, the institutional gaze is a surveillance gaze, a regulating gaze, which regulates the flow of libido, the direction of visual drive, and the distribution and reproduction of power.

Chapter 4 mainly discusses the relationship between viewing and subjectivity. The relationship between viewing and subject formation is paradoxical. While viewing structures subjectivity, it also throws the subject into a kind of alterity. In visual culture research, the relationship between viewing and subjectivity has always been a hot topic. It involves many aspects of subject formation, such as the subject's identity, illusion and pleasure, the establishment of the visual field, knowledge and power, the temptation structure and interrogation mechanism of image coding, etc. There are different angles and ways to think about these issues. This chapter mainly discusses them in the context of Lacan's psychoanalysis. By embedding the elements that constitute subjectivity into the topological structure of viewing, we can think about the puzzle of viewing and the original sin and fate of the viewing subject as a subject of desire.

Chapter 5 defines the nature and composition mechanism of "fetishism" from different discourse contexts, especially the operation of the object's deification and spectacle in the visual field, and on this basis, examines the composition and effect of the subject's fetishistic or fetishistic viewing. What we call the consumerist era is actually a "new fetish era". Fetishism has become a symptom of this era, not only a social or cultural symptom, but also a symptom of the subject and vision, because our fetishistic consumption is fundamentally inseparable from the operation of the visual machine, and the construction of the visual field for the subject, the object, and the subject's way of viewing and even consuming the object. In other words, the examination of fetishism/fetishism here is also a reflection on the visual composition of the consumer era, and a reverse operation of the fetishistic logic of consumerism and its visual call.

Chapter 6 focuses on the issue of representation in visual culture. Whether it is the construction of visibility in the production field or the realization of the meaning of visible objects in the exchange field, images are by no means simple reproductions or representations, nor are they completely transparent communication tools. They always play a certain production function, producing both meaning and the subject that receives meaning, producing both the "knowledge" of the referent that is reproduced or expressed, and the desire and pleasure satisfaction of the subject that receives the "knowledge". Image representation is not only a symbolic operation, but also a social and cultural practice related to ideological production. It not only participates in the construction of the relationship between the subject and the world, but also directly produces the subject type that is adapted to it.

In short, the development of visual culture research has been extremely diverse, and its stance on visual culture, especially popular culture or media culture, is also varied, but this book tends to emphasize its critical side. The fundamental point is: if we admit that today's era is a visual era, then the criticism of visual centrism will directly point out the "panopticism" of contemporary society, the narcissism and fetishism wrapped in our viewing, and the alienation of contemporary subjects. This book also emphasizes one point: visual culture research is not a healing machine. It certainly wants to provide us with a strategy to get out of the mirror city, but the obsession with the phantom of the mirror city has become a part of the existence or life world. At best, we can only seek escape again and again in the "already" fate, because as long as we are alive, we cannot do without the mirror image provided by visual culture.

Wu Qiong, a native of Susong, Anhui Province, is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Philosophy of Renmin University of China. His main academic fields are Western philosophy and aesthetics, Western Marxist literary theory, visual culture research, art history and art theory. He has written "History of Western Aesthetics", "Jacques Lacan: Reading Your Symptoms", "Reading Paintings: Unfolding the Folds of Famous Paintings", etc., and translated "The Decline of the West" etc.