After Cultural Theory: The Power of Images, the Lure of Immediacy

Abstract

A number of recent tendencies seem to have resulted in the evaporation of the social in visual and cultural theory. This article begins by exploring arguments for the ‘power of images’, invoked by scholars for good reason to draw attention to the ways in which images appear to compel their own interpretations. The problem only arises when this power seems to have its own autonomy, and its origins in social–historical relations are ignored or obscured. Similarly, recent important correctives to social and cultural theory have taken their critiques too far in the direction of a notion of experience unmediated by language, experience and social life. Specifically, the article addresses revivals of phenomenology, theories of affect, theories of the post-human and neuroaesthetics. All of these correctly note the sense of immediacy in aesthetic experience, but mistakenly conclude that this ‘presence’ is not in fact mediated in many ways, necessarily invisible at the moment of the encounter. The article reviews the historic lacks in cultural theory that these developments seek to address, agreeing with their project but ultimately rejecting their overstatement of an idea of immediacy.

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