Visual Theories and

Construction of Nature

Lecture 1-1: Introduction

The Study of Nature after The Visual

Turn2006, 02, 19

A M.A. Seminar By Prof. Chen Chi-szu

Research Area: Subject/Object of the Visual Study of Nature

• 1. Perception of Nature: Visibility 有什麼可以看？– Phenomenological study of bodily experience– Dialogical “interrogation” of visual experience and oral story

• 2. Conception of Nature: Visuality 如何看？– Epistemological research on how Nature is conceived through lo

gos and mythos

• 3. Reception of Nature Discourse: Textuality (narrative and discourse)– Archeological interrogation of nature discourses with reference t

o gender, race– Toward an ecological ethics (practice) 看了之後該 / 不該做什麼 ?

Historical Overview of the Turns of Theories

• Ontological Turn: Plato vs. Aristotle• Epistemological Turn: Idealist vs. Empiricist Kant’s thre

e critiques• Archeological Turn: Hegel’s journey/dialectics of idea• Linguistic (structuralist) Turn:

– Saussure: signifier/signified, arbitariety– Darwin’s evolution theory: apehuman– Freud’s phychological theory: unconsciousconscious– Marx’s material determinism

• Postmodern Turn: Derrida’s deconstruction subverts the Western metaphysical biases (binary oppositions)

• Cultural Studies Turn: culture > humanities • Visual Studies Turn: visual > textual

Empiricists: Hume, Locke

“a posteriori”

Idealists (Rationalism): Plato, Leibniz

“a priori”

The origin of knowledge

Kant’s Copernicus Revolution• The Three Critiques1. Critique of Pure Reason: Epistemology2. Critique of Practical Reason: Ethics,

Politics, Sociology3. Critique of Judgment: Aesthetics

( S / O )Perception (Imagination)

S1 /

UnderstandingS2 /

Reason

S / O

PerceptionS1 /

Understanding

S2 /

Reason

Somehow the mis en abyme self-reflexive process must be suspended in order to act.

To act, one must engage in a dialogue, not immerse oneself in monologue, and respond to the demand of the Other.

Kant’s influence on visual studies

• Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, eds. Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (1991); Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations (1994).They are interested in import postsrusturalist theories into their studies of the visual texts.

• “Holly asserts that visual culture should study not object, but `subject caught in the congeries of cultural meaning’ (1996b, p40)”“Self-reflexive visual studies reveal the ethical and political commitments of those who study them (Moxey 1994b, 1999b)” Quoted by Magaret Dikovitskaya, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, 14.

Spiritual need

Physical need

Economy: sustainable

Science: non-mechanical

Ethic: Ecological

Spiritual need: 生成於形而上，落實於形而下 ( 生活，物質 )

Physical need: 生成於形而下，結果於形而上 ( 文化、政治、社會、宗教，精神 )

My Diagram

Research Area: Subject/Object of the Visual Study of Nature

• 1. Perception of Nature: Visibility– Phenomenological study of bodily experience– Dialogical “interrogation” of visual experience and oral story

• 2. Conception of Nature: Visuality– Epistemological research on how Nature is conceived through lo

gos and mythos

• 3. Reception of Nature Discourse: Textuality (narrative and discourse)– Archeological interrogation of nature discourses with reference t

o gender, race– Toward an ecological ethics (practice)

Q1: What is the relation between conception of Nature and action toward nature?

• What comes first?

• Is the changing construction of nature motivating social changes (economy, culture, science)?

• Or, changing social system conditions citizen’s perception and conception of nature?

• Eg. SARS, Bird Flu, 921 Earthquake

Q2: What is the correlation between visual theories and the construction of nature in arts and

literature?• “As a result of the cultural turn, the status

of culture has been revised in the humanities: It is currently seen as a cause of—rather than merely a reflection of or response to—social, political, and economical process. The importance of the concept of cultural context in the humanities has added further momentum to the rise of visual studies. Perception has come to be understood as a product of experience and aculturation, and representations are now studied as one among the other signifying systems that make up culture.” –Magaret Dikovitskaya, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, 2-3.

Dikovitskaya’s defining the scope of visual studies

1. “It is a research area and a curricular initiative that regard the visual images as the focal point in the processes through which meanings is made in a cultural context.” Dikovitskaya,1,

2. “My project provides a new perspective on the interdisciplinary nature of visual studies through its interrogation of how art history and cultural studies intersect as they are practiced and taught in the academic communities in the United States.” Ibid. 2.

How does visual studies satisfy our physical need for an sustainable economy, and our spiritual need for ecological ethics?

Dikovitskaya’s Problematics• Her aim is to show how visual culture can a

void what she defines as the Scylla and Charybdis that threaten it: the lack of a specific object of study (given its departure from the traditional hierarchies of art history) and the expansion of the field to the point of incoherence as it seems to subsume everything related to the cultural and the visual.

1. What is the visual studies and what is its object?

2. What is the relevance of visual culture for art historian?

3. What attitudes does art historians adopt toward visual studies today?

4. What is the relationship between the study of the history of art and the study of the visual and the cultural?

5. Does visual culture require interpretative methodologies that are distinctive from those employed by art history and cultural studies?Ibid. 3.

These questions/problems are applicable to the study of ecological discourses in humanities departments.

藝術史注重「看什麼？ 」 (ontology) 、「為何看？ 」 (tautology)

視覺理論注重「如何看？ 」 (epistemology)

生態倫理注重「看了之後該 / 不該怎麼做？」 (ethics)

The Death of Nature : Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, 1980

Reinventing Eden; The Fate of Nature in Western Culture , 2003Earthcare: Women and the En

vironment, 1995

Ecology (Key Concepts in Critical Theory) , 1994

Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (Revolutionary Thought/Radical Movements), 1992

The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History , 2002

Carolyn Merchant’s problematics

• “But concepts of nature and women are historical and social constructions. There are no unchanging “essential” characteristics of sex, gender, or nature.”

• “The historian must ask, `How have people historically conceptualized nature?’`How have they behaved in relationship to that construction?’`What historical evidences supports a particular interpretation?’

• “When the historian raises questions about the way nature was viewed in another era, she is asking questions meaningful to her own epoch.“

• --Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, xvi, xvii.

Merchant’s thesis• “Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the

image of an organic cosmos with a living female earth at its center gave way to a mechanic world view in which nature was reconstructed as dead and passive, to be dominated and controlled by humans. The Death of Nature deals with the economic, cultural, and scientific changes through which this vast transformation came about.”

• I am asking not about unchanging essences, but about connections between social change and changing constructions of nature.”

• --ibid. xvi.

From top to down, or down to top?

• What comes first?

• Is the changing construction of nature motivating social changes (economy, culture, science)?

• Or, changing social system conditions citizen’s perception and conception of nature?

• In the first book (1980), Merchant does not tell us why and how the “organic” and “mechanic” images of nature come into being, nor does she tell us why “organic” image is replaced by the “mechanic” image. The hypothesis to support this replacement is “paradigm shift.” The relation between idea/action, essence/existence is intertwined.

• “The Death of Nature” is also an image of Nature. Based on this image, she weaves the theories and his/stories of nature to reconstruct the mythos of nature, to solicit ecologically ethical practices.

• Earthcare: Women and the Environment (1995), Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2003)

Merchant’s “Table 1 Conceptual Framework fro Interpreting Ecological Revolution,”

Earthcare, xx.

Merchant’s conceptual table 1

Merchant’s “Table 2.1. Reinventing Eden: Narratives of Western Culture,” Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2003), 21.

Merchant’s conceptual table 2

Vertical view: diarhronical narrative order

Horizontal view: synchronic structure

Spiritual need

Physical need

Economy: sustainable

Science: non-mechanical

Ethic: Ecological

Spiritual need: 生成於形而上，落實於形而下 ( 生活，物質 )

Physical need: 生成於形而下，結果於形而上 ( 文化、政治、社會、宗教，精神 )

What we can do in this course?

As a literary researcher, what questions should we ask for our epoch?

• What is the correlation between visual theories and the construction of nature in arts and literature?

Overview of this Seminar

• The course contains three sections:

1. addressing the problems (4 weeks),

2. introducing visual theories (7 weeks),

3. case studies (5 weeks).

Juxtaposing the reading of poetry with that of the visual arts, we may get acquainted with the aesthetical, ethical, and ecological conceptualization of Nature at different periods of Western arts and literature

Requirement

• Class Discussion 20%• 6 Short Response Entries 30% (5% x 6):

within one page• Oral Report 10%• Final Paper 40%: 10 pages, MLA format,

double space.The subject of the final paper should contain at least one literary work and some works of one visual artist.

Major Textbooks and ReferenceEdward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought.