Full Description
This volume explores the many facets and ongoing transformations of our visual identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its chapters engage with the constitution of personal, national and cultural identities at the intersection of the verbal and the visual across a range of media. They are attentive to how the medialities and (im)materialities of modern image culture inflect our conceptions of identity, examining the cultural and political force of literature, films, online video messages, rap songs, selfies, digital algorithms, social media, computer-generated images, photojournalism and branding, among others. They also reflect on the image theories that emerged in the same time span—from early theorists such as Charles S. Peirce to twentieth-century models like those proposed by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida as well as more recent theories by Jacques Rancière, W. J. T. Mitchell and others. The contributors of Imaging Identity come from a wide range of disciplines including literary studies, media studies, art history, tourism studies and semiotics. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership interested in contemporary visual culture and image theory.
Contents
1. Images of Identity: Text, Visuality and Modern Culture, Johannes Riquet and Martin Heusser.- Part I: Digital Images of Identity.- 2. From the "Belfie" to the Death-of-me: The Affective Archive of the Self/ie, Misha Kavka.- 3. Calculating Lives? Memory, Archive and Identity in a Digital Era, Holger Pötzsch.- 4. Modelling Vision: Semeiotic Approach to Algorithmic Images, Stephanie Schneider.- Part II: Written Images of Identity.- 5. Ideal Identities and Impossible Translations: Drawing on Writing and Writing on Drawing, Tilo Reifenstein.- 6. On Identification and Narrative Identity: Self-Formation in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine, Nicole Frey Büchel.- 7. Art, Arcadia and Images of Identity in John Banville's Frames Trilogy, Alexander G. Z. Myers.- Part III: Contested Images of Identity.- 8. W. B. Yeats's The Dreaming of the Bones: Self-Consuming Images of Identity, Chris Morash.- 9. Images of theVietnam War: Photojournalism, Memory and Civic Spectatorship in Life Magazine, Martin Heusser.- 10. "That was my truest voice": Rap Identities Between Authenticity and Fame, Ana Sobral.- 11. Terrorist Self-Fashioning: Politics, Identity, and the Making of "Martyrdom" Videos - from the 7/7 Bombers to Four Lions, Michael C. Frank.- Part IV: Idealised Images of Identity.- 12. Islands as (Floating) Images: Towards a Poetic Theory of Island Geography, Johannes Riquet.- 13. "Come see my land": Watching the Tropical Island Paradise Die in Poetry, Daniel Graziadei.- 14. Island Images and Imaginations: Beyond the Typical Tropical, Godfrey Baldacchino.
