Визуализация культуры и визуальные исследования в современной Литве

Abstract

With references lo such well known scholars of visual culture as W. Mitchell, M. Jay and V. Flusser, the author examines the phenomenon of visual turn - shows how and why twentieth century philosophers and scholars are interested in visual culture and how visual-ity conquered various sociocultural spaces. The author analyzes various interfaces between pictorial turn and privileging of vision over ihe other senses (ocularcentrism). The present paper discloses the concept of usual, which represents noi a return to traditional theory of adequacy, but rather a re-discovered post-linguistic image created by interaction of imagination, conceptual creative process and visible reality. Interfaces among popular visual studies and various social sciences and humanities are analyzed; their testing problems and methods are highlighted. The conclusion is that scholars* attention focused toward visual studies and rousing of new visual studies programs at various universities and high schools is connected with domination of visual aspect in contemporary culture and rapidly growing need for specialists who could work in various fields of visual culture. The author argues that visual studies arc interdisciplinary phenomenon, but they could be treated as a separate discipline, even if having rather studio than scientific nature. The aim of visual studies is to create and present theories to help to understand how images function in the wider cultural sphere. By analyzing ihe development of visual studies in contemporary Lithuania the author concludes thai it is a very dynamic and popular field, therefore many new academic disciplines connected to visual studies rise in various Lithuanian universities and high schools.