Reading images / edited by Julia Thomas.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Thomas, Julia, 1971-

Series:

Readers in cultural criticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Image (Philosophy).

Vision.

Gaze.

Physical Description:

xii, 239 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave, 2001.

Summary:

Is seeing a matter of nature? Does perspective show things as they really are? Can we read an image in the same way as a text? Reading Images draws together essays that attempt to answer these questions but in a variety of ways and from the different theoretical positions offered by psychoanalysis, semiotics, poststructuralism and postmodernism. The anthology opens up a dialogue between seeing and the seen, text and image, theory and practice. By discussing a range of visual material, from advertising and architecture to painting and photography, it crosses generic and disciplinary boundaries and suggests ways in which vision and visuality are related to questions of textuality, subjectivity, race, and gender.

Contents:

2 Perspective / Richard L. Gregory 11

3 Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's Thriller / Kobena Mercer 17

4 The Look / Rosalind Coward 33

5 In Plato's Cave / Susan Sontag 40

6 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography / Roland Barthes 54

7 The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction / Walter Benjamin 62

8 Panopticism / Michel Foucault 76

9 Semiology and Visual Interpretation / Norman Bryson 89

10 Imaging / Teresa de Lauretis 102

11 Desperately Seeking Difference. Jackie Stacey Considers Desire Between Women in Narrative Cinema / Jackie Stacey 109

12 The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators / bell hooks 123

13 Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a / Jacques Lacan 138

14 Pornography, Nostalgia, Montage: A Triad of the Gaze / Slavoj Zizek 148

15 Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini / Julia Kristeva 158

16 Why Peter Eisenman Writes Such Good Books / Jacques Derrida 172

17 Las Meninas / Michel Foucault 184

18 Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality / Jean Baudrillard 198.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-234) and index.

ISBN:

0333765400

0333765397

OCLC:

44413907