Visual Worlds

Description

Ideal for first-year university students from diverse backgrounds, Visual Worlds: Looking, Images, Visual Disciplines provides a full introduction to the visual world across all the fields that theorize it. In contrast with typical visual culture texts, it looks beyond the arts, taking a comparative approach that considers a number of fields including art history and theory but also epistemology, ontology, vision science, neurology, cognitive psychology, law, advertising, medicine, warfare, and more.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE. CONCEPTS AND THEORIES OF THE VISUAL
Introduction
1. Image, Visuality, Visibility
1.1 Image or Visual Object
1.2 Visuality and Visibility
1.3 Darstellung and Vorstellung
1.4 Xiang
1.5 The Limitations of Visual Studies Concepts
2. The Verbal and the Visual
2.1 Reformulating the Dichotomy
2.2 Language as an Aid to Seeing
2.3 Language as an Impediment to Seeing
3. Vision
3.1 How the Eye Works
3.2 Images on the Retina
3.3 Images in the Brain
3.4 Science of Vision and Art History
4. The Gaze
4.1 The Word "Gaze"
4.2 Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Theories of the Gaze
4.3 Psychoanalytic Discourse
4.4 Gender and Identity Discourse
4.5 Spatial Discourse
4.6 Non-European Gazes
Conclusion
PART TWO. TYPES OF SEEING
Introduction
5. Staring and Peering, Glimpsing and Glancing
5.1 Staring
5.2 Peering
Peering at Paintings, Using the Internet
Peering at the Insides of Pyramids
Mutual Peering: The Case of Camouflage
5.3 Glimpsing and Glancing
6. Seeing and the Other Senses
6.1 Sight and Touch
6.2 Representing Other Senses
7. Animal Seeing
7.1 Examples of Animal Seeing
7.2 How Complex are Animals' Visual Worlds?
7.3 Deep-Sea Visuality
Attracting Mates
Prey Detection
Prey Luring
Startling and Confusing Predators
Countershadowing
Conclusion
PART THREE. STYLES OF LOOKING
Introduction
8. Looking at The Inside of Your Own Eyes
8.1 Ways of Looking at the Inside of Your Eyes
8.2 Afterimages
8.3 Migraines
8.4 Other Scotomas
9. Looking at the Sunset
9.1 Colors of the Sunset
9.2 Rays
9.3 The Speed of the Sunset
10. Looking at an Oil Painting
10.1 Phenomenology
10.2 Materiality
Painting as Expressive Medium
Institutional Resistance
11. Looking at Photographs
11.1 The End of Indexicality
11.2 Affect, Memory, and Time
11.3 Photography's Digital Nature
12. Looking at Advertisements
12.1 Parallels with Scientific Imaging
12.2 Visual Critique of Advertising
12.3 Advertising Theory
13. Looking at a Postage Stamp
13.1 Style History of Postage Stamps
13.2 Expectations of Close Looking
13.3 Postage Stamps and Other Small, Overlooked Objects
Conclusion
PART FOUR. TURNING WORLDS INTO IMAGES
Introduction
14. Visible Worlds
14.1 Problems of Mimesis
14.2 Objectivity as a Variant of Mimesis
15. Invisible Worlds
15.1 Some Terms
15.2 From Epistemology to Ethics
16. Abstract Worlds
16.1 The Sublime
16.2 Mental Images
17. Pictorialization
17.1 Nonvisual and Nonpictorial
17.2 Limits of Pictorialization
17.3 Pictorialization and Truth
17.4 Pictorialization and Picturing
18. Visualization
18.1 Histories of Visualization
18.2 Kinds of Visualization
Conclusion
PART FIVE. HANDLING IMAGES
Introduction
19. Administering Images
19.1 Wunderkammer Projects
19.2 Encyclopedic Projects
19.3 Analytic Projects
20. Worshipping and Destroying Images
20.1 Elements of the History of Iconoclasm
20.2 Concepts of Iconoclasm
20.3 Iconophilia, Iconophobia
20.4 Onomoclasm, Khay'yal
21. Using Images to Incite
21.1 From Images That Represent to Images That Kill
21.1 How Political Images Move Through the World
21.3 The Politics of Incitement
21.4 The Question of When to Watch
22. Surveillance
22.1 Surveillance, Sousveillance, and Other Forms
Pseudo-Panopticons
Panopticism II: Public Closed-Circuit TV
Sousveillance: Looking from Below
Self-Surveillance
Future Surveillance
Panopticism III: Mutual Surveillance
22.2 Neogeography
Conclusion
PART SIX. HOW DISCIPLINES LOOK AT IMAGES
Introduction
23. How the Military Looks at Images
23.1 Human Vision and Its Expanded Field
23.2 Thickets of Representation in Battlefield Visualization
23.3 Looking Back at the Military
24. How Doctors Look at Images
24.1 Images as Constructions and as Truth
24.2 Neuronavigation and Operational Images
24.3 Machine-Based Visual Analysis
24.4 Imaging in Medical Research
25. How Lawyers Look at Images
25.1 Case Examples
25.2 Philosophic Issues
25.3 The Professionalization of Legal Images
26. How Scientists Look at Images
26.1 Scientific Images as Containers for Information
26.2 Vampire Seeing
26.3 Scientific Images as Models
27. How Art Historians Look at Images
27.1 Senses of Formal Analysis
27.2 Practices of Formal Analysis
27.3 The Apparent Neutrality of Formal Analysis
Conclusion
PART SEVEN. WRITING IMAGES, WRITING LOOKING
Introduction
28. Writing with Images
28.1 Images as Mnemonics, Examples, and Illustrations
28.2 Images as Theories
28.3 Images as Interruptions
29. Writing about Images
29.1 The Use of the Term Ekphrasis through History
29.2 Linear Ekphrasis
30. Writing through Images
30.1 Writing About, With, and Through Images: Sebald
30.2 Images Becoming Literary Texts: Celan
30.3 Images from Poetry: Dürrenmatt
30.4 Writing Compelled by Images: Canetti
30.5 The Dissolution of the Visual in Writing: Proust
Conclusion
CONCLUSION
The Book's Seven Themes
The Impossible Textbook
The Variety of Seeing
The Problem of Particularity
Thickets of Representation
Vision Science and Art Theory
Non-European Terms
The Omnipresence of Photography
Envoi
Glossary
Picture Credits
Index


Picture Credits