http://vcu.sagepub.comJournal of Visual Culture

DOI: 10.1177/1470412906070580 2006; 5; 427 Journal of Visual Culture

Lee Rodney Book Review: Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn

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Communist Party and their work around Algeria. The book establishes firmlythat Bretons radical stance on Eros never wavered and that his violent hatredof the ruling class did not mellow over the years. Mahons bookdemonstrates an impressive depth of research and her closing sentencecertainly does seem to fit the mood of the times: The legacy of Surrealismafter 1968 must surely follow artists, writers, thinkers and activists who arecommitted to the power of the unconscious and to the imagination of otherpossible worlds (p. 215).

References

Bate, David (2004) Counterfeit Liberals, New Humanist 119, May, URL (consultedJan. 2006): http:www.newhumanist.org.uk/vol119issue3

Books 427Bate, David (2005) Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and SocialDissent. London: I.B. Tauris.

Breton, Andr (1969[1947]) Ode to Charles Fourier. New York: Cape Goliard Press.Engels, Friedrich (1987[1878]) Anti-Dhring, in Marx and Engels: Collected Works,Vol. 25, pp. 24454. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Gille, Vincent (2005) Surrealism Today: Two Books, a Few Questions and the Mood

of the Times, Papers of Surrealism 3, Spring, URL (consulted Jan. 2006):http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk//publications/papers/journal3/index.htm

Kachur, Lewis (2001) Displaying the Marvellous. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Marx, Karl (1981[1848]) Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Revolutions of

1848: Political Writings, Vol. 1, pp. 947. London: Penguin.

Hazel DonkinUniversity of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK

[hazel.donkin@unn.ac.uk]

M. Dikovitskaya, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the CulturalTurn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 344 pp. ISBN 0262541882 DOI:10.1177/1470412906070580

Margaret Dikovitskayas Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after theCultural Turn tracks the development of visual culture and visual studies inAmerican institutions over the last decade. Published 10 years after thepolemical October 77, Questionnaire on Visual Culture (1996),Dikovitskayas book signals the staying power of an area of study that hasoften been regarded as a novelty within established academic disciplines. Herstudy suggests that the relationship between art history and visual culture isstill fraught with tension: while its adherents continue to grow in number,visual culture is still subject to scrutiny.

Dikovitskayas approach is somewhat tentative given the vast body ofliterature on the subject. While she has conducted extensive research intothe origins of visual culture and the development of academic departmentsdedicated to its study, she seems content to defer to the views of others. She

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has taken an anthropological approach, referring to her project as a kind ofpolylogue; much of the book is dedicated to a series of interviews with manyof the major contributors to the field, including Nicholas Mirzeoff, Martin Jay,W.J.T. Mitchell and Lisa Cartwright, among others. The first chapter focuseson the fracturing of art history and the subsequent emergence of visualculture over the past 20 years. The second chapter compares the twofounding graduate programs in visual culture in the United States (at theUniversity of Rochester and the University of California, Irvine).

The remainder of the book is dedicated to the interviews. These address twoimportant gaps in the current literature: a need for a discussion of pedagogyin visual culture, and a history of its development. Dikovitskaya makes theimportant observation that visual culture (or visual studies as it is sometimescalled) is neither cultural studies nor a modernized art history (p. 69).However, she suggests that the turn toward the analysis of culture inhumanities programs, the cultural turn that was set in motion during the1980s, has brought about a sea change in terms of the discipline of arthistory. Rather than an emphasis on art and history, Dikovitskaya implies thatin these new programs we witness a shift in emphasis from art to the visualand from history to culture (p. 5).

While this characterization is certainly true for some approaches, it seemsthat Dikovitskayas understanding of history is bound by questions of canonformation and chronology. It is inaccurate to equate visual culture solely withthe study of the contemporary even though it is often noted that the excessof the visual or hypervisuality is a characteristic of postmodern culture moregenerally (Mirzeoff, 1999). There are a number of books that are essentialreading in the field of visual culture that are historical studies: Mary AnnDoane (2003), Tom Gunning (1989), Jonathan Crary (1992, 2001), andBarbara Maria Stafford (1991, 1994) have all written on the history ofperception and technologies of vision. The breadth of this body of literatureshould indicate that the purview of visual culture reaches far beyond thecontemporary field.

At the outset of the second chapter Dikovitskaya states that visual studieshelps the university prepare students to live in the contemporary world (p.86). Given her enthusiasm for the potential of visual culture, her questionsseem to indicate a lingering concern for the status of the art object withinvisual studies. While visual culture often addresses historical and contem-porary art, its function is characteristically different from art criticism orhistory. And while visual culture seems to incorporate the history of artwithin its interdisciplinary purview, it does not often work in reverse, as arthistory is the establishment position put into question by visual culture.James D. Herbert, a professor of visual culture at the University of California,Irvine, suggests that art history is of necessity subsumed under visual studies:visual studies not only encompasses art history but also historicizes it (p.185). This is an important question insofar as visual culture and visualstudies are typically taught within art history departments, or the vestiges ofart history departments that have merged with other departments.

journal of visual culture 5(3)428

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Dikovitskaya frequently asked her interviewees about the relevance of visualculture to the study of historical art (pp. 134, 163, 175, 187, 226, 262, 270).This question betrays an implicit bias toward art history that may not havebeen intended. She often introduced this question by quoting NicholasMirzoeff (1999), who refers to visual culture as a way of talking about post-modernism, a tactic with which to study the genealogy and functions oftodays life from the point of view of the consumer. David N. Rodowicksreply to this question indicates that visual culture needs to be appliedhistorically its not simply a function of twentieth century culture (p. 262).Mirzoeff himself replies by stating that the transformation of contemporaryculture demands a new history of modernism and modernity that can beginto account for the changes we are seeing now (p. 226).

While Dikovitskayas scope is commendable, Visual Culture at times readsmore like a field guide rather than a book or comparative study. As theinterviews comprise nearly two-thirds of her text, Visual Culture still retainsthe quality of a round-table; the book lacks a critical framework orperspective that would give the interviews some sense of exigency. Whatseems missing is a sense of the critical tension that inevitably exists in anyfield: personalities and positions that contradict or even clash. It seems herethat Dikovitskaya has attempted to remain objective in order to foregroundthe more starkly differentiated positions of her subjects.

The interviews revealed some notable reflections missing in the criticalliterature. Many of those interviewed spoke about first-hand experiences inteaching visual culture and how student engagement has changed in recentyears. However, as Dikovitskaya aims toward a kind of quantitative objectivityin her interview process, she betrays the tenor of the cultural turn that iscritical to her overall thesis. Since the cultural turn is premised on a moresubjective orientation toward research, it would seem to follow that shewould be more forthcoming herself in terms of outlining her ownperspective. Her background only slowly emerges through the course of theinterviews. At the end of the book, in her interview with Howard Singerman,she mentions the influence of her early studies:

At the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, where I studied, there is a singlediscipline which might be called art-visual-culture, with thecomponents dealt with in the same terms. Now, for me visual cultureand visual studies are the same, and I find it very useful not to opposeart to the rest as it were. (p. 270)

Also absent is some kind of commentary on the institutional politics that haveshaped the various programs. If art history has its origins in Italian, Frenchand German sources, visual culture, it might seem from Dikovitskayasperspective, is a product of Anglo-American discourse alone. While this maybe partially true, some mention of this bias might help shed light on visualcultures relationship to the academic and institutional structures that havegiven rise to this new discourse.

Books 429

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Nicholas Mirzoeff points out that the future of the study of visual culture isnot limited to English-speaking countries alone: One thing I have noticedover the last six months is the much higher degree of interest in visualculture in Central and Eastern Europe (p. 233). As this interview took placein 2001, one can only expect that quite a different international picture hassince emerged. Dikovitskayas research, however, has provided a valuableoverview of visual culture as an American enterprise, which will hopefullysoon be fleshed out by scholars working elsewhere.

References

Crary, Jonathan (1992) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the19th Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Crary, Jonathan (2001) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and ModernCulture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Doane, Mary Ann (2003) The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency,the Archive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gunning, Tom (1989) The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and theAvant-Garde, in Thomas Elsaesser and Adam British Film Institute.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.) (1999) An IntroductiRoutledge.

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on to Visual Culture. London:Stafford, Barbara Maria (1991) Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in EnlightenmentArt and Medicine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Stafford, Barbara Maria (1994) Artful Science: Enlightenment, Entertainment and theEclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lee RodneyUniversity of Windsor, Ontario[email: lrodney@uwindsor.ca] ial use or unauthorized distribution.ollege of Arts on May 4, 2008

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