Good looking : essays on the virtue of images

Bibliographic Information

Good looking : essays on the virtue of images

Barbara Maria Stafford

MIT Press, c1996

  • : pbk

Other Title

グッド・ルッキング : イメージング新世紀へ

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780262193696

Description

Building on the arguments of her previous books, "Body Criticism" (1991) and "Artful Science" (1994), "Good Looking" challenges the reflexive identification of images with vice. Today rampant criticism, both inside and outside the academy, condemns the immoralities of aesthetic illusion, museum display, cable television and hypermedia. Believing with the American pragmatists that it is harder to do than to denounce, Barbara Stafford urges imagists to abandon Foucault's bankrupt paradigm of verbal combat. Instead of more "improving" theoretical discourse, she calls for developing a positive visual praxis on the interpretive ruins of linguistic postmodernism. Not deconstructive autopsy, but demonstrating the historical virtues of visualization for the emergent era of computerism is the task at hand. These 12 essays meditate on the implications of a global shift toward vision and visionary modalities. Apparatus changes, but the basic questions endure. Machine dreams flowing from laser disks, video tapes, CD-ROMs, and magnetic disks are transforming educational, medical and legal institutions as well as on-line society at large. Organized around three major themes - the explosion of optical information, the urgency of inventing an imagined interdiscipline, and the ethical dilemmas of technological transparency - these pieces connect a disappearing lens culture to the digital diaphanousness of the 21st century.
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780262692106

Description

Building on the arguments of her previous books, the author challenges the reflexive identification of images with vice. Criticism condemns the immoralities of aesthetic illusion, cable television and hypermedia. Believing with the American pragmatists that it is harder to do than to denounce, Barbara Stafford urges imagists to abandon Foucault's bankrupt paradigm of verbal combat. She calls for developing a positive visual praxis on the interpretive ruins of linguistic postmodernism. Organized around three major themes - the explosion of optical information, the urgency of inventing an imaging interdiscipline and the ethical dilemmas of technological transparency - the essays in this text connect a disappearing lens culture to the digital diaphanousness of the 21st century.

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Details

  • NCID
    BA28946716
  • ISBN
    • 0262193698
    • 0262692104
  • LCCN
    96007079
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Cambridge, Mass.
  • Pages/Volumes
    xv, 259 p.
  • Size
    24 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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