Synopses & Reviews
"Just about everything in this book is fresh and exciting." --Carol Siegel
Ann Kibbey's Theory of the Image is based on a concept of the image as a dynamic relation rather than a thing. In three essays Kibbey contends that the image itself is an ideological construct. "The Capitalist Theory of the Image" argues that capitalism enforces social identity and fetishism through religious iconoclastic beliefs about the commodity as image. "Liberating a Woman from Her Image" creates a new feminist approach to women in film, breaking the symbiosis of woman and image at the heart of previous theory. "Relief from the Production of Certainties" challenges conservative and racist agendas informing the assumption that a photograph records an image. The book draws on extensive personal interviews and also provides detailed explications of important films in recent transnational cinema to demonstrate new theories of the image for a global society.
Review
"Just about everything in this book is fresh and exciting."
About the Author
Ann Kibbey is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado and editor of Genders. She is author of The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Table of Contents
Contents<\>Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.
The Capitalist Theory of the Image
The Iconoclastic Theory of the Image and the Corporation
Congruence with the Capitalist Economy
Critique of Baudrillard
Critique of Barthes
Debord and the Social Production of the Image
Screening Out: Lacan's Mirror Stage and the Cinematic Apparatus
Mulvey's Symbiosis of Woman and Image
2.
Liberating a Woman from Her Image
The Suitors
Persian Narrative Structure and Activating the Audience
The Story of the Veil
The Story of the Sheep
How Images Move the Story Around
Character and the Mutable Image of the Veil
The Stabbing
Exit the Black Screen Suitcase
3.
Relief from the Production of Certainties
Overview: Peirce, Eisenstein, Manchevski
The Icon as a Set of Relations
Indexes: The Natural Image, Racism, Photography
Why Eisenstein Has Been a Threat
Before the Rain: An Iconic Film
Women, Time, Photos
"Have a Nice War. Take Pictures."
Linear Narrative, Cubist Narrative
Selected Bibliography
Index