Reading Images

by Thomas, Julia

• ISBN13: 9780333765395
• ISBN10: 0333765397
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-25
• Publisher: Red Globe Pr

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.

Author Biography

Julia Thomas is Lecturer at the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
General Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(10)
Julia Thomas
Perspective	11	(6)
Richard L. Gregory
Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's Thriller	17	(16)
Kobena Mercer
The Look	33	(7)
Rosalind Coward
In Plato's Cave	40	(14)
Susan Sontag
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography	54	(8)
Roland Barthes
The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction	62	(14)
Walter Benjamin
Panopticism	76	(13)
Michel Foucault
Semiology and Visual Interpretation	89	(13)
Norman Bryson
Imaging	102	(7)
Teresa de Lauretis
Desperately Seeking Difference. Jackie Stacey Considers Desire Between Women in Narrative Cinema	109	(14)
Jackie Stacey
The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators	123	(15)
bell hooks
Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a	138	(10)
Jacques Lacan
Pornography, Nostalgia, Montage: A Triad of the Gaze	148	(10)
Slavoj Zizek
Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini	158	(14)
Julia Kristeva
Why Peter Eisenman Writes Such Good Books	172	(12)
Jacques Derrida
Las Meninas	184	(14)
Michel Foucault
Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality	198	(9)
Jean Baudrillard
Summaries and Notes	207	(20)
Glossary	227	(5)
Suggestions for Further Reading	232	(3)
Notes on Contributors	235	(2)
Index	237