Spectacle of Visual Culture: General Overview of Visual Culture

Author: Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: The selected essays in this book include both classic works by Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, and others, as well as new achievements by Mikkael, Victor Burgin, and others. They provide us with a basic map of visual culture studies—what is "visual culture studies"? What is the spirit of this research? If the primary function of vision is to see, then what relationships exist between the seen and the seer, between vision and the machine of vision, and between the subjectivity of vision and the other? What is "visual culture studies"? What is the spirit of this research? What are its methodological characteristics? If the primary function of vision is to see, then what relationships exist between the seen and the seer, between vision and the machine of vision, and between the subjectivity of vision and the other?
Around these questions, the selected essays in this book will provide readers with a basic map, but not answers. The essays by Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, and others have become classic texts in visual culture studies, while the writings of Mikkael and Victor Burgin can be said to represent the newest achievements in this field.
"You see yourself seeing yourself," the young goddess of fate once said somewhere. Of course, the rich and complex implications of this statement are related to the topic of femininity raised in The Young Fate Goddess—but we have not yet reached that point. What we are discussing is the philosopher, what he understood as an essential commonality between consciousness and its relationship with representation, that is, what the phrase "I see myself seeing myself" indicates.
What evidence can prove that we can indeed trust this expression? In fact, how does it relate to the basic model in Cartesian "cogito"—where the subject understands itself as thought? The very separation of this understanding of thought is a doubt, the so-called methodological doubt. This doubt concerns anything that might support thought in representation. Then, "I see myself seeing myself" is the shell and foundation of this doubt, and it may not be the only one who believes it lays the groundwork for the certainty of this doubt.
What is going on here? Because "I warm myself by warming myself" refers to the body as a body—a referent. I feel the warmth, and from some internal perspective, the warmth spreads within my body and exists within it. However, in "I see myself seeing myself," there is no such feeling of being visually attracted.
Furthermore, phenomenologists have successfully and accurately proven in a mysterious way: "I can see the 'external world,' perception is not within me; it is about the object it understands—all of this is certain. However, I always understand the world through some perception, which concerns the interiority of 'I see myself seeing myself.' The priority of the subject seems to be established through this reflective relationship between the two poles. According to this relationship, once I perceive, my representation belongs to me."
In this way, due to an idealized assumption—a hypothesis that derives my existence solely from my representation in doubt—the world is grasped. In practice, serious engagement carries little weight, but on the other hand, this philosopher, this idealist, faces himself and those who listen to his teachings, placing himself in an awkward position. How can we deny that unless in my representation, the world does not present itself to me? This is Berkeley Bishop's irreducible method—for his subjective stance, much has been said—some of which may leave you bewildered, such as the idea that "what belongs to me" is a certain aspect of representation, which also brings to mind ownership.
When this process of reflection, this reflection of reflection reaches its limit, it even reduces the subject to a destructive force as understood in the meditation on Cartesian philosophy. The subject is the mode of presence of the "I" in the world. As long as it is reduced solely to the certainty of the existence of a subject, it becomes an active destructive force. In fact, the process of philosophical meditation pushes the subject toward the action of transforming history, and around this point, it regulates the paradigm of the construction of this self-consciousness through the transformation of active self-consciousness in history.
As for the meditation on existence, it reaches its peak in Heidegger's thought. This meditation revives the destructive force of existence itself—or at least raises the question of how existence is connected to the destructive force. P23-24