Visual Interpretations/Interpellations

Anyone who knows me knows that I have postmodern/post-structural leanings, and that I am constantly fighting against those who write off the ideas of postmodern theory because they lead to relativism or nihilism. I admit, this is often a tough defense, because it is difficult for many people to admit that there is no objective capital-T Truth, or that we are created by language (or culture), and that we have little or no control over “who we are.” But as difficult as it is to defend postmodern theory, I continue on that track.

Reading Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright has thrown me back into this defense of postmodern theory. Many of the theorists they cite – Barthes, Foucault, or Althusser – have complex, complicated ideas on authorship, author function, authority, interpellation, ideology, and reader/audience created meaning. But while Sturken and Cartwright attempt to explain these theories as support for their claims about visual texts, I felt that many times their explanations were over-simplified or were just “not quite there.” Without fuller discussion of the complications of these theories, Sturken and Cartwright have left the door open for the spiral into relativism and nihilism that so many people believe postmodern theory leads to.

For instance, on pages 59-61, when Sturken and Cartwright are discussing Bourdieu’s theory of “taste” and how it is “learned through exposure to social and cultural institutions that promote certain class-based assumptions about correct taste” (60), they fail to examine where and how these social and cultural institutions are constructed. While it may seem that Althusser himself is not interested in the origins of ideology (see the section title “Ideology has no History” in his essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”), without even acknowledging that culture and society have some sort of origin, Sturken and Cartwright have left their readers to wonder where culture and society get the values that they (seemingly insidiously) pass on to the individual.

Sturken and Cartwright’s discussion of ideology even seems a bit simplistic. Their definition – that “ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures” (23) – leaves the reader believing that they have a full understanding of ideologies. In fact, the term “ideology” is used in many different ways with many different connotations. Cultural Studies theorists are still struggling with the definition of ideology, and how it influences individuals, and likewise, how individuals influence it. The ideas of dominant ideologies and counter ideologies have filled many pages, and for Sturken and Cartwright to so simply define ideology and then use it to explain how meaning is made, could be dangerous.

Please don’t get me wrong – I find Sturken and Cartwright’s explanations of how viewers make meaning of visual texts and how cultural context influences that meaning quite helpful, even if they are somewhat simplistic and incomplete. Yes, I was exposed to these theories about texts, authors, and meanings before, but I don’t always keep them in the front of my mind. Reading Practices of Looking has reinforced the ideas that visual texts are subject to the same examination and interpretation that literary texts are. It is a helpful reminder for me to think about culture, society, and ideology, and how meaning is made by the viewer that is placed within these structures. The authors’ claims and explanations will no doubt serve me well when I am examining – or even creating – visual texts, and not just for this semester.