Візуальний поворот, який у середині 1990-х проголосили незалежно один від одного одночасно два
дослідники (В. Дж. Т. Мітчелл і Г. Бьом), розглядають у двох аспектах: як зміну ситуації в медіалізованій, переповненій зображеннями культурі, але також як появу нової методології і проблематики
дослідження візуального аспекту культури. Ця двоїстість дослідницького поля візуальної культури
поєднується із питанням політичних імплікацій його програм, які, з одного боку, проголошують емансипацію образів як культурних «інших» (В. Дж. Т. Мітчелл), чи, навпаки, критикують їх як агентів
глобального капіталу (редактори журналу «Октобер»). У статті окреслюється взаємонакладання
і взаємовідображення цих двох засадничих для нового поля досліджень питань.
TTwo different scholars, W. J. T. Mitchell, G. Boehm, independently of each other announced a vi-
sual turn in mid 1990s, indicating a changing condition in culture that has been variously described as
“frenzy of visible” (J.-L. Comolli) or “graphic revolution” (D. Boorstin). It was not entirely clear
whether the visual turn related to just this new cultural condition or also to a new methodology, a reflective
and/or critical way of seeing pictures and describing the visual dimension of culture, since the term
“visual culture” was coined by art historian M.Baxandall in his study of Renaissance art in Italy. This
ambiguity of the visual turn in culture and/or in cultural studies remains one of the defining features
of the new field of studies of visual culture, with different scholars tending to one or the other option,
or trying to combine both.
The other, even more significant ambiguity of the new field of visual studies involves its political implications
and its complex relation to the imperatives of critical theory. There is an apparently emancipative
program of “rehabilitating” of images seen as cultural “others” in essentially logocentric Western culture
(this is the program developed by W. J. T. Mtchell), which inherited naive cultural populism of the postmodernist
dismantling of the “great divide” between high art and popular culture. Yet, this political program
has been seen (and justifiably so) as new services for the global capitalism (this criticism was first voiced by
editors of October journal). Still other scholars pointed out that visual studies’ emancipative program is
directed not at the images per ce, but at their ambivalence, and the new field is far from oblivious to the
hypnotic danger inherited in images that fascinate, distract, excite and deprive of the abilities of critical
thinking. One among many other scholars who extended the field of studies of visual culture from the pictures
and cultural codes that make them meaningful to the one which facilitates them (i.e. the point of view and
the right to look), N. Mirzoeff proposed what he called a program of “critical seeing.” Thus the search for
the possibility of autonomous political position in the condition of medialization of life saturated with images
becomes a key point for the program of critical visual studies. The article discusses juxtapositions of these
options as defining the questions of the new field of research.
