Images in Use
Towards the critical analysis of visual communication
1st Edition
Published on 26. October 2011
VI, 298 pages
978-90-272-8416-7 (ISBN)
Description
News coverage of EU negotiations, children's war memories or TV series glamourising political processes - images pervade both private and public discourse, and visual communication plays a key role in our social negotiation of values. Conceptualising images as "images in use", this volume considers the agencies behind visual communication and its impact on society.
Images in Use engages critically with traditional approaches to visual analysis, offers suggestions for alternative, socially situated analyses of images and demonstrates the explanatory force of thinking through "images in use" in a series of case studies. The conceptual contributions consider broader issues of critical theory, representation, as well as the mediatisation of politics. The case studies offer a survey of current visual communication including news coverage, political cartoons, political rhetoric, memory culture, celebrity humanitarianism, reality TV, as well as the narratives of blockbuster cinema and comics.
This volume proposes a new approach to visual communication, situating images in their social contexts and identifying the real, rhetorical and political impact of their use.
Images in Use engages critically with traditional approaches to visual analysis, offers suggestions for alternative, socially situated analyses of images and demonstrates the explanatory force of thinking through "images in use" in a series of case studies. The conceptual contributions consider broader issues of critical theory, representation, as well as the mediatisation of politics. The case studies offer a survey of current visual communication including news coverage, political cartoons, political rhetoric, memory culture, celebrity humanitarianism, reality TV, as well as the narratives of blockbuster cinema and comics.
This volume proposes a new approach to visual communication, situating images in their social contexts and identifying the real, rhetorical and political impact of their use.
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Matteo Stocchetti | Karin Kukkonen
Images in Use
Towards the critical analysis of visual communication
Book
10/2011
John Benjamins Publishing Co
€100.70
Shipment within 10-15 days
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Content
- Images in Use
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC data
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Approaches to visual communication and the question of power
- 1. Images
- 1.1 From the social to the political: Engaging the Leviathan
- 1.2 Visual knowledge and the challenge of the postmodern condition
- 1.3 The failure of visual studies and the reconstitution of the political
- 1.4 Power in visual politics: Images-in-use
- 1.5 Summary
- References
- 2. The critical tradition in visual studies
- 2.1 A short history of critical visual studies
- 2.2 Marxian materialism and visual studies
- 2.3 Case study of two journals
- 2.4 Critical visual studies revisited
- References
- 3. The map, the mirror and the simulacrum
- 3.1 Visual communication
- 3.2 The mirror and the map: Persuasion of mimesis and tellability
- 3.3 The simulacrum: "I'm afraid of mimetic persuasion"
- 3.4 Map, mirror, simulacrum and the question of power
- 3.5 Conclusions
- References
- 4. Disenchantment with politics and the salience of images
- 4.1 The 'visual turn'
- 4.2 Media and politics
- 4.3 Disenchantment with politics: The legitimation crisis
- 4.4 The fictionalisation of politics and the politicisation of fiction
- References
- Part II. Case studies
- 5. Organising political consensus
- 5.1 Visuality, performativity and the practices of power in international relations
- 5.2 The visual public sphere and television news images as acts of political display
- 5.3 The visual management of the accession negotiations between the EU and Finland
- 5.4 Entering the EU scene
- 5.5 Conclusions
- References
- 6. Walls, doors and exciting encounters
- 6.1 Peeking on the other side of the wall
- 6.2 Locked gates, closed doors and doors left ajar
- 6.3 Exciting encounters
- 6.4 Conclusions
- References
- 7. The politics of visual representation
- 7.1 From verbal to visual communication
- 7.2 Continuity and change in the mental imagery of US security discourse
- 7.3 The political role of mental imagery in use: The polarisation of security discourse through the verbal manipulation of mental imagery
- References
- 8. The politics of identity and visuality
- 8.1 The war and the children in Finland
- 8.2 Spatial belonging and its visual representations
- 8.3 Reconstructing social identities: Visual politics and spatial belonging
- 8.4 Images and community: Identity politics and the reconstruction of collective memory
- 8.5 Visual communication and the request for national inclusiveness
- References
- 9. Visual politics and celebrity humanitarianism
- Introduction
- 9.1 The visual politics of celebrity humanitarianism
- 9.2 The global imaginaries of celebrity humanitarianism
- 9.3 Aesthetic engagements: Contemporary Hell and Eternal Home
- 9.4 The Eternal Home
- 9.5 The politics of the image and the visual manipulation of humanitarianism
- References
- 10. The economics of gay reality television
- 10.1 The 'pink' economy
- 10.2 The visualised 'truth' of sexuality
- 10.3 The capital of promotional subjects
- 10.4 Homonormative politics of reality television
- 10.5 Conclusions
- References
- 11. Mending endings
- 11.1 The end
- 11.2 Audience estrangement vs. audience engagement - Critical vs. traditional attitudes
- 11.3 Realism and the real
- 11.4 The transitional object
- 11.5 Endings and generalisations
- References
- 12. Representing the state of exception
- 12.1 From Superman to Watchmen: The evolution of superhero politics
- 12.2 American utopianism, or, The Veidt Method
- 12.3 Who watches the watchmen? - The superhero in a state of exception
- 12.4 Confusion of narrative powers? - Image vs. text in the comic book narrative
- 12.5 Conclusions - The politics and poetics of the superhero
- References
- Index
