MODERN AND POSTMODERN VISUAL PRACTICES IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The paper analyzes conceptual peculiarities of «iconic turn» in modern/postmodern philosophy. The concept of look allows distinguishing the content of modern and postmodern visualistics. The basis of modern visual philosophy is the concepts of the eye and vision equipped with optical instruments and distantly viewing objects of the outside world. In turn, in postmodern visualistics, the concept of look overcoming distance between Me and the outside world becomes the main one. The postmodern practice of vision presupposes the elimination of subject-object disjunction, the merging of the Looking Person and the Visible in phenomenon of attentive look. The consequence is the increased interest of a postmodern person to such visual forms as photography, cinema, theatre, advertising, fashion, the structure of which he/she tries to describe. As the result, new philosophical forms appear in postmodern situation, such as philosophy of photography, philosophy of cinema, semiotics of fashion, philosophy of advertising, etc., which can be combined in the new genre of «philosophy of visual forms».

It is shown that postmodern visual practices are carried out in two modes: mania and philia. A person practicing the videophilia mode is in love with spectacleness and imagenessand this person is their subtle connoisseur. Videophil has a refined aesthetic taste, paying attention only to those visual phenomena that are either marked with a talent stamp, or are capable of causing an «aesthetic shock», to encourage reflection, to make one understand his/her place in the video world. Videoman craves to see turning into a theatre-goer, cineman, showman, star-man. Videomania involves a postmodern person in the cycle of visual impressions, directing him/her to a new experience of visual forms and spectacles. Unlike Videophil, Videoman tries to occupy the visual center: just he/she (and not the director/photographer) generates the film, the photo, the play, he/she gives rise to all these by the fact of his/her presence in the auditorium (at the exhibition) and by the act of looking at images without which the latter would not have take place. Videoman’s look inspired by the desire to see everything is unconsciously identified with a video/photo camera. His/her look tries to reproduce the process of video recording, recreating director/photographer/operator vision, feeling himself/herself involved in video action (note that in this case we are talking just about merging with the camera, identifying with it, whereas in modern philosophy the optical technology has been considered only as an addition, as an «extension» of the eye, but not as its substitute).

Videomania deals with the phenomenon of social voyeurism understood, in the widest sense, as any desire to see the «back side» of events, to know what persons would like to hide from eyes of others, to observe such spectacles, whose participants may not guess about the presence of spectators. Social voyeurism is closely connected with the phenomenon of social exhibitionism manifested in the desire of a modern person to attract looks of other people, to be «in sight» of everyone. The consequence of exhibitionist logic is the prominence in the modern world of precisely those social actors and precisely those professions that are oriented toward accumulation of visual capital (a new kind of social capital measured not in monetary units but in «assembled» looks) – these are actors, singers, musicians, dancers, models, boxers and so on.

The «iconic turn» in postmodern era is manifested not only in total interest in reality of images and visual forms, but also in style of writing practiced by postmodern authors. The texts of postmodern thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault are maximally visualized; their content is transmitted not so much through rational logical computations or abstract-ideal symbols, as through images and visual metaphors that have a topological structure and physically-sensible relief.

Hence, visualistics of the era of «iconic turn» radically differs from the visualistics of previous eras.If the visual interest of pre-modern thinkers is oriented on the transcendental, the mental look of modern and postmodern thinkers is focused on the immanent – on the visible surface of real things.