Ten years after the last edition, this thoroughly revised and updated third edition of The Visual Culture Reader highlights the transformed and expanded nature of globalized visual cultures. It assembles key new writings, visual essays and specially commissioned articles, emphasizing the intersections of the Web 2.0, digital cultures, globalization, visual arts and media, and the visualizations of war. The volume attests to the maturity and exciting development of this cutting-edge field.
Fully illustrated throughout, The Reader features an introductory section tracing the development of what editor Nicholas Mirzoeff calls "critical visuality studies." It develops into thematic sections, each prefaced by an introduction by the editor, with an emphasis on global coverage. Each thematic section includes suggestions for further reading. Thematic sections include:
- Expansions
- War and Violence
- Attention and Visualizing Economy
- Bodies and Minds
- Histories and Memories
- (Post/De/Neo)Colonial Visualities
- Media and Mediations
Taken as a whole, these 47 essays provide a vital introduction to the diversity of contemporary visual culture studies and a key resource for research and teaching in the field.
Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Morana Alac, Malek Alloula, Ariella Azoulay, Zainab Bahrani, Jonathan L. Beller,Suzanne Preston Blier, Lisa Cartwright, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Beth Coleman, Teddy Cruz, René Descartes, Faisal Devji, Henry Drewal, Okwui Enwezor, Frantz Fanon, Allen Feldman, Mark Fisher, Finbarr Barry Flood, Anne Friedberg, Alex Galloway, Faye Ginsburg, Derek Gregory, J. Jack Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Brian Holmes, Amelia Jones, Georgina Kleege, Sarat Maharaj, Brian Massumi, Carol Mavor, Tara McPherson, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Timothy Mitchell, W. J. T. Mitchell, Naeem Mohaiemen, Fred Moten, Lisa Nakamura, Trevor Paglen, Lisa Parks, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Jacques Rancière, Andrew Ross, Terence E. Smith, Marita Sturken, Paolo Virno, Eyal Weizman
PART 1 Expansions Chapter 1: "There are No Visual Media" W. J. T. Mitchell Chapter 2: "The (In)human condition: A Visual Essay" Ariella Azoulay Chapter 3: "Mapping Non-Conformity: Post-Bubble Urban Strategies" Teddy Cruz Chapter 4: "X-reality: Interview with the Virtual Cannibal" Beth Coleman Chapter 5: "On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge" Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Chapter 6: "Notes on the Photographic Image" Jacques Rancière Chapter 7: "Queer Faces: Photography and Subcultural Lives" J. Jack Halberstam Chapter 8: "Currents of Worldmaking in Contemporary Art" Terence E. Smith Chapter 9: "Sublimated with Mineral Fury: Prelim Notes on Sounding Pandemonium Asia" Sarat Maharaj Chapter 10: "The Sea and the Land: Biopower and Visuality after Katrina" Nicholas Mirzoeff PART 2: GLOBALIZATION, WAR AND VISUAL ECONOMY War and Violence Chapter 11: "The Archaeology of Violence: The King’s Head" Zainab Bahrani Chapter 12: "The Actuarial Gaze: from 9-11 to Abu Ghraib" Allen Feldman Chapter 13: "American Military Imaginaries and Iraqi cities" Derek Gregory Chapter 14: "Zeroing In: Overheard Imagery, Infrastructure Ruins, and Datalands in Afghanistan and Iraq" Lisa Parks Chapter 15: "What Greg Roberts Saw: Visuality, Intelligibility, and Sovereignty - 36,000km Over the Equator." Trevor Paglen Chapter 16: "Media and Martyrdom" Faisal Devji Chapter 17: "Live True Life or Die Trying" Naeem Mohaiemen Attention and Visualizing Economy Chapter 18: "Kino I, Kino World: Notes on the Cinematic Mode of Production" Jonathan L. Beller Chapter 19: "On Virtuosity" Paolo Virno Chapter 20: "Faking Globalization" Ackbar Abbas Chapter 21: "Creativity and the Problem of Free Labor" Andrew Ross Chapter 22: "It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" Mark Fisher Chapter 23: "Do It Yourself Geo-Politics" Brian Holmes PART 3: THE BODY, COLONIALITY AND VISUALITY Bodies and Minds Chapter 24: "Optics" René Descartes Chapter 25: "Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eye-Witness Account" Georgina Kleege Chapter 26: "Reduplicative Desires" Carol Mavor Chapter 27: "The Persistence of Vision" Donna Haraway Chapter 28: "The body and/in representation" Amelia Jones Chapter 29: "Mami Wata: A Transoceanic Water Spirit of Global Modernity" Henry Drewal Histories and Memories Chapter 30: "The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity: Flâneur/Flâneuse" Anne Friedberg Chapter 31: "Tourism and Sacred Ground: The Space of Ground Zero" Marita Sturken Chapter 32: "Maps, Mother/Goddesses and Martyrdom in Modern India" Sumathi Ramaswamy Chapter 33: "Museums in Late Democracies" Dipesh Chakrabarty Chapter 34: "The Fact of Blackness" Frantz Fanon Chapter 35: "The Case of Blackness" Fred Moten (Post/De/Neo)Colonial Visualities Chapter 36: "Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order" Timothy Mitchell Chapter 37: "The Colonial Harem" Malek Alloula Chapter 38: "Vodun Art, Social History and the Slave Trade" Suzanne Preston Blier Chapter 39: "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm and the Museum," Finbarr Barry Flood Chapter 40: "The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition." Okwui Enwezor Chapter 41: "Urban Warfare: Walking Through Walls" Eyal Weizman PART 4: MEDIA AND MEDIATIONS Chapter 42: "U.S. Operating Systems at Midcentury: The Intertwining of Race and UNIX" Tara McPherson Chapter 43: "Rethinking the Digital Age" Faye Ginsburg Chapter 44: "The Unworkable Interface" Alex Galloway Chapter 45: "On the Superiority of the Analog" Brian Massumi Chapter 46: "Race 2.0: Neoliberal Colorblindness in the Age of Participatory Media" Lisa Nakamura Chapter 47: "Imagination, Multimodality and Embodied Interaction: A Discussion of Sound and Movement in Two Cases of Laboratory and Clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging" Lisa Cartwright and Morana Alac
Biography
Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is author and editor of several books including Watching Babylon (1995) and An Introduction to Visual Culture, now in its second edition (2009).
'This volume is required reading for anyone interested in media studies or visual culture. It brings critical visuality studies up to the moment and introduces new directions for future work. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.' - A. M. Laflen, Marist College in CHOICE
'This is a first rate collection covering the range and the depth of critical visual studies today. An essential guide for anyone concerned with the power of the image and the image of power.' - McKenzie Wark, Eugene Lang College, USA
'This 3rd edition of Nicholas Mirzoeff’s The Visual Culture Reader is unrecognizable from the collection’s first edition published way back in the last millennium. Its content, character, and urgency are invigorating and galvanizing. If the Reader’s first edition gave shape to Visual Culture Studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, this 3rd edition will, I believe, mould visual culture itself.' - Marquard Smith, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Visual Culture & Director of Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, UK
'With this volume, Mirzoeff has assembled an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners of visual culture across disciplinary and geographic boundaries. Combining foundational texts and cutting-edge contemporary scholarship, the Third Edition of the VCR charts the emergence of critical visuality studies and brings the field into the twenty-first century.' - A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester, USA
