Abstract
Images have always been impudent – from the beginning, when they were not human-made but appeared by themselves, forming, for instance, a shape of clouds in the sky, through the centuries, to when they became ceremonial as pieces of art adored by artists, to now when they are communized. Images have followed a path from agentlessness, through inspired and spiritual skillfulness, to a trivial ordinariness with a strong capacity to act. Today everybody can create images. The point, however, is not to create them but rather to use them appropriately, which entails one’s ability to put them into the market of images. The use of images is the topic of this volume; the authors are ‘focusing on processes not objects’ (p. 3). The book critically examines one of the most important issues in contemporary culture and politics, namely how images are used to legitimate dominant ideologies. From this perspective, ‘images are not considered as meaningful objects, in and of themselves, but as part of the processes of negotiating social values, i.e. politics and power’ (p. 3). Images thus – like verbal discourse – struggle to compete for control over the distribution of knowledge and axiological content.
Such a definition of visual communication makes this book interesting for the whole field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and for all those dealing with communication as a tool in establishing, maintaining and negotiating ideologies in society, including the abuse of power. Images are taken as signs, just like linguistic signs, that do not represent reality as it is but rather represent ways in which humans, grouped into interpretative communities (Stanley Fish’s term), perceive and interpret reality (socially constructed reality).
The book is divided into two parts – one is more theoretical and the other presents case studies. Several questions are taken into consideration in the first part. Matteo Stocchetti – introducing the foundations of visual communication – emphasizes problems in the politics of visual communication, the legitimization of power, the agency of images and the social meaning of words and images. Juha Herkman confronts two tendencies in recent critical research – one is derived from Marxist concepts, while the other is poststructuralist. This chapter raises fundamental questions about the critical inquiry itself: What kind of critiques should be made and what aims ought they to have in social terms? Karin Kukkonen, in turn, deals with methods of representation in visual communication, emphasizing three of them: mirror, map and Baudrillard’s simulacrum. From this perspective, Bourdieu’s theory is introduced and the problem of abuse of power is understood as a naturalization process (in Barthesian terms). Ruth Wodak describes the problem of communication in our ‘visual era’ when the disenchantment of politics emerged as a result of the visual turn in late modern societies.
The case studies concern many varied problems such as (1) visual representations of accession into the EU: the coverage of the Finnish accession by state-owned TV (Anne Koski) and Bulgarian political cartoons concerning the process of EU integration (Alina Curticapean); (2) verbal – but in fact ‘visual’ – narrative on security in the discursive strategy of George Bush in seeking endorsement for ‘security measures’ (Halle Palu); (3) visual practices, that is, children’s drawings as a tool for challenging the ‘spatial trauma’ evoked by the displacement of Finnish children during the Second World War (Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen); (4) the hidden and naturalized colonial discourse in imaginaries imposed towards Africa by what is called celebrity humanitarianism, deconstructed as a typical Western and ‘civilized’ ideological commitment (Riina Yrjölä); (5) the representational policy of sexual differences in reality television in reproducing signs of gayness (Marjo Kolehmainen and Katariina Mäkinen); (6) ideologically-motivated endings of plots in Hollywood movies, bringing into question canonic meanings of narrative functions of the happy ending (Gerda Dullaart); and (7) the concept of ‘state of exception’ as a phenomenon that appears in the relationship between the superhero and the state in selected comic strips (Mervi Miettinen).
The whole volume is very interesting and productive in enriching one’s knowledge of new approaches and provides new empirical findings. Since the range of problems is broad, demonstrating that there are innumerable topics in the critical visual inquiry, I would like to mention only a few aspects I consider to be the most important.
Ruth Wodak discusses the role of images in simplifying the semantic content of communication. ‘Politicians’, she writes, ‘have to be “media personalities” to be successful; the boundaries between various professions, between politics and pop culture, between politicians and celebrities are blurred’ (p. 69). From this perspective, images reinforce ‘celebrity culture’ (p. 70) and, in turn, politics ‘becomes simplified to just a few slogans’ (p. 71). These reductions of complex content to just a few images enable ideologies – through and by visual discourse – to legitimize power and reproduce inequalities. Another important issue in this limitation of political consciousness is the substitution of traditional genres within political communication (pp. 71, 80). Wodak then lists effects of the visual turn: ‘the fictionalisation of politics’, the ‘politisation of fiction’ and the ‘glocalisation of hegemonic political values’ (p. 72). This problem is addressed purely within CDS, although the foundations of meaningfulness of genres have been discussed by Bakhtin and one should pay more attention to this problem, both in verbal and visual communication.
These issues are also connected with another important question that is only mentioned a few times in the volume, namely the issue of the intersections and overlappings of verbal and visual signs. From this perspective, another problem arises. In Chapters 7 and 9, the visual is taken not literally (the image as something visual), but operationally (the image – the mental image – as something that is activated when using words). This is a relevant philosophical and linguistic problem that opens up visual communication to linguistically oriented research. If it is so, that is, if images are really triggered in our minds when speaking and thinking, it means that visual communication is to a greater extent employed in data processing and our understanding of the world. It would thus be interesting to see to what extent the visual turn impoverishes our ability to communicate with words.
The most crucial remark is that when dealing with intersemiotic issues, linking verbality and visuality, one should also refer to more elaborated methodologies, for instance – but not limited to – a theory of conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner), semiotics (Eco) and cultural semiotics (Uspensky and Lottman). In striving for understanding of this issue, one could think of a volume in which methodological issues would also be taken into consideration in detail. This volume demonstrates that there are many methodological approaches to hand and that some of them could be enriched.
Another question I would like to mention is one raised by Juha Herkman. I do agree with the author that the problem of defining critical inquiry is one of the most important in contemporary scholarship. But I disagree with the diagnosis the scholar makes. He confronts two tendencies in recent critical research – one is derived from Marxist concepts and the other is poststructuralist. While the latter is considered to be purely academic meta-theorization, or pure empiricism with the lack of the ‘material’ and the ‘social’ (p. 50), the former is taken as more productive in struggling against elite domination. If I understand the author’s claims correctly (he refers to Marx many times, but there is no Marx in the bibliography, and no precise indications of which concepts he is referring to), the neo-Marxist critic, as in the Frankfurt School, should be more normative and should codify where the universal truths lie in order to confront the ‘dominated’ with the ‘dominant ones’. In the postmodernist view – the one criticized by the author – all universal truths are taken as constructivist, including the Marxist. I have no idea why Marxist concepts, and thus the whole materialist ideology, are considered better and more appropriate than any other concept/ideology. Marxism, as any ideology when it is absolutized, is easily transformed into totalitarianism. This was the case, as with the Nazi and fascist ideologies, when millions of people were killed by Soviets and other communist rulers in the 20th century just because they didn’t want to follow the only acceptable ideology – the Marxist ideology of ‘false consciousness’. When the author mentions fascists and oppressive capitalism (p. 42), he should also mention communists and oppressive Marxists. Both – not only the first – are outgrowths of Western thought. Why is oppression under the banner of ‘positivist’ ideology worse than oppression under the Marxist banner? I am not saying this in order to discourage people from reading Marx (I myself read him and critically learn from him). I am saying it in order to emphasize that any kind of knowledge, including Marxist, when absolutized, can easily be destructive and dangerous. Thus, in contrast to Juha Herkman, I prefer looking at communication with the watchful – and to some extent anarchistic – eye of a postmodernist, rather than a declared Marxist (this does not exclude critical inquiry in confronting problems of social inequality). My discussion is merely ideological, but why not? As CDS deals with ideological content in communication, why not deal with the same issue within its own field?