Imaging Identity: Text, Mediality and Contemporary Visual Culture

by Johannes Riquet (Editor), Martin Heusser (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030217730
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2019
Edition description:	1st ed. 2019
Pages:	333
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Johannes Riquet is Associate Professor of English Literature at Tampere University, Finland. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Island Space: Perception, Ideology, Geopoetics (2019) and the co-editor of Spatial Modernities: Geography, Narrative, Imaginaries (2018). He is currently working on railway fiction in different media and contemporary representations of the transnational Arctic.

Martin Heusser is Emeritus Professor at the English Department of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests include word and image studies, American studies and literary theory. At present, he is working on representations of the Vietnam War in graphic novels and the role of spatiality in the writings of Thomas Hardy.

Table of 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 the Vietnam 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.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A provocative book that is frequently as delightful as insightful. Its ambitious scope—ranging from the selfie and hip-hop celebrity culture to Vietnam War photography and image/text relationships—and its deep engagement with theory and cultures will make this an exciting book for scholars across disciplines.” (George Micajah Phillips, Assistant Professor of English at Franklin College, USA)