Abstract
When reading about images and visual culture, one frequently encounters the term representation. Often, this situation results in a confusion because it forces us to ask about a relationship between image and representation and between visual culture and representation: What is a representation and how does it differ from an image? What is the role of representation in the field of visual culture? This chapter tries to answer these simple (at the first sight), however very complex (when examined closely) questions by inviting a reader into a realm of visual culture where theoretical writing on images gets more politically engaged and critically addresses and reflects on social issues. It refers to a group of authors whose theoretical work has been inseparably connected with their work as political activists and prominent figures of public education. In the first part, a wider cultural context, in which the notion of representation emerged, is established. Then the text provides an insight into how the authors Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, John Berger and Nicholas Mirzoeff have approached the issue of representation in their unique ways, and yet with a common goal: to show us that visual culture is both a powerful tool through which ruling powers of modern society can control the people and a platform based on which the people can control the leading structures. In the end, we discuss some of the protest movements emerging lately in the fields of visual arts and political culture. We use them as examples of visual activism that is seen as a practical implementation of the presented theoretical accounts into the contemporary public life.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bennet, Tony. 1995. The Birth of Museum. London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, Tony. 1988. “The Exhibitionary Complex”. New Formations, 4: 73–102.
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: The Penguin Books.
Crimp, Douglas. 1993. On the Museum’s Ruins. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Debord, Guy. 1994 [1967]. The Society of the Spectacle. New York. Zone Books.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1988 [1986]. Foucault. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1987 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A. C. McClurg.
Foucault, Michel. 1977 [1975]. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1977 [1980]. “The Confession of Flesh”. In: Colin Gordon (ed.) Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Vintage: New York.
Hall, Stuart. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (2nd Edition). London: SAGE.
Hall, Stuart. 2017. Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands. Durham: Duke University Press.
Laclau, Ernest and Mouffe, Chantal. 1985. Hegemony and Social Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London and New York: Verso.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to Look. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2016. How to See the World. London: The Penguin Books.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2017. “The Appearance of Black Lives Matter”. NAME Publications. https://namepublications.org/item/2017/the-appearance-of-black-lives-matter/
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T. 2015. Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture and Media Aesthetics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen, 16 (3): 6–18.
Nochlin, Linda. 1971. “Why There Have Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTNews, January: 22–39, 67–71.
Pollock, Griselda. 1988. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art. London and New York: Routledge.
Tiqquin. 2012 [1999]. Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Watson, Mary Ann. 2008. Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience of the 20th century. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hrůzová, A.P. (2021). Anglo-American Theory: Representation and Visual Activism. In: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_42
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_42
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-71829-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-71830-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)