Full Description
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
Contents .- List of Illustrations.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction.- Perspective; R. L. Gregory.- Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson's Thriller; K. Mercer.- The Look; R. Coward.- In Plato's Cave; S. Sontag.- Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (extract); R. Barthes.- The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (extract); W. Benjamin.- Panopticism (extract); M. Foucault.- Semiology and Visual Interpretation; N. Bryson.- Imaging (extract); T. de Lauretis.- Desperately Seeking Difference; J. Stacey.- The Oppositional Gaze; B. Hooks.- Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a' (extract); J. Lacan.- Pornography, Nostalgia, Montage: A Triad of the Gaze (extract); S. Zizek.- Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini (extract); J. Kristeva.- Why Peter Eisenman Writes Such Good Books; J. Derrida.- 'Las Meninas'; M. Foucault.- Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality; J. Baudrillard.- Summaries and Notes.- Glossary.- Suggestions for Further Reading.- Index.
