Double Exposures: The Practice of Cultural Analysis

by Bal; Mieke

• ISBN13: 9780415917032
• ISBN10: 0415917034
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-06-04
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

A feminist literary theorist, specialist in Rembrandt, and a scholar with a knack for reading Old Testament stories, Mieke Bal weaves a tapestry of signs and meanings that enrich our senses. Her subject is the act of showing, the gesture of exposing to view. In a museum, for example, the object is on display, made visually available. "That's how it is," the display proclaims. But who says so? Bal's subjects are displays from the American Museum of Natural History, paintings by such figures as Courbet, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Rembrandt, as well as works by twentieth-century artists, and such literary texts as Shakespeare'sRape of Lucrece.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Das Gesicht An Der Wand	xi
Edwin Janssen
Introduction	1	(12)
Telling, Showing, Showing Off	13	(44)
in which the threshold between two worlds is more telling than the division between the two sides of New York's Central Park, and words expose images exposing words
Setting as Image, Nature as Sign
Who Is Speaking?
Asian Mammals: The Politics of Transition
The Contest between Time and Space: Evolution and Taxonomy
Circular Epistemology
In the Beginning Was the Word
Picking Up Crumbs
Notes
The Value Factory	57	(30)
in which issues of ownership and preservation reveal a first-person narrator, and literary theory is brought in to learn the foreign language spoken in museums; and in which the distinction between types of museums turns out to be more than just labeling
The Medusa Effect
Discourses of Ownership and Conservation
For Goodness' Sake
Repetition and Metaphor
On Distinction
Difficulties of Looking and the Need to Read
Notes
The Talking Museum	87	(48)
in which one image reads another by hanging next to it, and in which parrots can speak without imitating; but this requires that discourse be liberated from the stronghold of linguistic supremacy
Reading the Handwriting on the Wall
Museology versus Museums
Speaking Spaces: Reading Rooms
Word and Image Are But/Not One: Reading Walls
Reading Walls: Second Episode
Allegorical Museology
Notes
Museumtalk	135	(30)
in which conversations lead to monologues and authority makes sense, so that museology becomes a measure for cultural analysis
The Discourse of Museum Discourse
Artspeak
Art Apart
Situatedness
Showing Your Hand
Notes
First Person, Second Person, Same Person	165	(30)
in which the best scholarship gets entangled in a narrative of display in its very attempts to avoid such discourses, but where unknotting those knots turns out to be worthwhile
Narrative under Suspicion
Telling Stories Is Harder Than You Think
The ``New'' Epistemology
Narrative and Epistemology
Second Person?
Notes
A Postcard From The Edge	195	(30)
in which postcards, undeliverable for lack of a recent address, can still be returned to sender
Playing Games
``Beauty'' and the Critical Project
Showcase
The Subject of Eroticism
De-Distancing
Looking for Naughty Boys
Pimp versus Client
Returns to Sender
Notes
The Story Of W	225	(30)
in which lessons about reading metaphor against simplification are practiced to save Lucretia's (after) life, and the struggle to find words to fit images provides a model of integrative display
The Practice of Theory
Rape, Suicide, Signs, and Show
Contagious Logorrhea: Between Men
Vision Vying Violence: Between Women
Expository Writing
Notes
His Master's Eye	255	(34)
in which it turns out not all modern men heed Shakespeare's will, to the detriment of their own enjoyment; but some do, and thus teach cultural analysis about its subject
A Vision That Is Not (One)
Portrait of the Expert as an Old Man
Vision against Vision
The Interests of Realism
The Master's Piece
The Women Talk (Back)
Self-reflection: Exposing Modes of Vision
Notes
Head Hunting	289	(24)
in which ``Judith'' demonstrates that epistemology is not the prerogative of philosophers, and images will point out, for the last time, what can be shown, and what cannot
The Missing Head
Epistemic Risks and Gentileschi
Vision and Narrative as Epistemologies
``Judith'' as Epistemology, Gentileschi as Philosopher
Laying Bare
Notes
Works Cited	313	(18)
Index	331