Empires of Vision: A Reader

Published by Duke University Press 2014

Empires of Vision

A Reader

Edited by: Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy

In the series Objects/Histories

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822378976

Overview
Contents

About this book

Combining visual culture and postcolonial studies, this reader shows that an appreciation of the role of visual experience is necessary for understanding how colonialism worked and how colonized subjects spoke to imperial rulers.

Author / Editor information

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including Downcast Eyes, The Dialectical Imagination, and Marxism and Totality.

Sumathi Ramaswamy is Professor of History at Duke University. She is the author of The Goddess and the Nation, also published by Duke University Press; The Lost Land of Lemuria, and Passions of the Tongue.

Reviews

"Empires of Vision is one of those books that had to be written, and that required, not a single author, but an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan collective of scholarly learning and critical passion. In a brilliant series of interventions, the authors gathered here survey the full range of ways in which imperialism worked its black magic, not just with the standard tools of armies and military technologies, bureaucracies and gunboats, but with photographs, paintings, maps, and the whole range of visual arts and media. This is essential reading for art historians, anthropologists, and scholars of visual culture across the globe."—W. J. T. Mitchell, author of Seeing Through Race

"The culture of empire has been assessed and analyzed most frequently on the evidence of its 'writings.' It is the inscriptive archives of law, literature, anthropology, history, and theology, amongst others, that have dominated our view of the representational conditions and ideological commitments that prevail in colonial societies. But empire was a potent apparatus for looking, viewing, and gazing—an act of surveillance, an art of regulation, and a profound shaper of visual culture. No collaboration could be as fruitful as the shared spirits of Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy, who serve as our gifted cicerones in the world of empire's seeing. They have gathered together some of the most important essays that explore the visual domain of empire's rule and misrule, and their anthology will have a transformative effect on art history, the history of ideas, and postcolonial studies."—Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

“Duke University Press has done social visionaries a real service by printing Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy’s massive collection of insightful articles unveiling how the very way we see the world is daily shaped by ‘pictorial practices, image-making technologies, and vision-oriented subjectivities’ that have been ‘entangled in empire-building, nationalist reactions, post colonial contestations, and transnational globalization.’ It is not just economic or military power that shapes the way we see the world, but also photographs, paintings, maps, and the whole range of visual arts and media that are scrutinized in this collection.”

-- Tikkun

“The power of Empires of Vision is in its trans-disciplinary scope, but is also in its ambition. The themes and essays come together and prod the reader to consider the multi-dimensionality of image and empire. It moves beyond mere collections and museums; it moves beyond observed and observer. Empires of Vision examines the nature of empire through oft-forgotten and frequently overlooked historical characters.”

-- Lydia Pyne Somatosphere

"An essential contribution to an ever-expanding field of investigation as much as it is fascinating reading."

-- Sandra Marques Social Anthropology

"The volume...comprises a sound and valuable anthology of established research on visual culture, Empire, and the postcolony. As most of these contributions have become or are on the way to becoming canonical works, Empires of Vision is exactly that — 'a reader.' As such, it is a valuable contribution to the field, and a useful text for those teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on visual culture, imperialism, and postcolonialism."

-- Stephen Sheehi Canadian Journal of History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Reprint Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction: The Work of Vision in the Age of European Empires Sumathi Ramaswamy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Section I: The Imperial Optic
Introduction Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
PART 1: EMPIRES OF THE PALETTE
CHAPTER 1. The Walls of Images Serge Gruzinski Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
CHAPTER 2. Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science Daniela Bleichmar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
CHAPTER 3. Indian Yellow: Making and Breaking the Imperial Palette Jordanna Bailkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
CHAPTER 4. Colonial Panaromania Roger Benjamin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
PART 2: THE MASS-PRINTED IMPERIUM
CHAPTER 5. Objects of Knowledge: Oceanic Artifacts in European Engravings Nicholas Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
CHAPTER 6. Excess in the City? The Consumption of Imported Prints in Colonial Calcutta, c. 1780–c. 1795 Natasha Eaton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
CHAPTER 7. Advertising and the Optics of Colonial Power at the Fin de Siècle David Ciarlo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
PART 3: MAPPING, CLAIMING, RECLAIMING
CHAPTER 8. Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity Ricardo Padrón Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
CHAPTER 9. Mapping an Exotic World: The Global Project of Dutch Cartography, circa 1700 Benjamin Schmidt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
CHAPTER 10. Visual Regimes of Colonization: European and Aboriginal Seeing in Australia Terry Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
PART 4: THE IMPERIAL LENS
CHAPTER 11. The Photography Complex: Exposing Boxer-Era China (1900–1901), Making Civilization James L. Hevia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
CHAPTER 12. Colonial Theaters of Proof: Representation and Laughter in 1930s Rockefeller Foundation Hygiene Cinema in Java Eric A. Stein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
CHAPTER 13. Colonialism and the Built Space of Cinema Brian Larkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	346
Section II: Postcolonial Looking
Introduction Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	377
PART 5: SUBALTERN SEEING: AN OVERLAP OF COMPLEXITIES
CHAPTER 14. Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse Zeynep Çelik Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	395
CHAPTER 15. Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India Sumathi Ramaswamy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415
CHAPTER 16. Notes from the Surface of the Image: Photography, Postcolonialism, and Vernacular Modernism Christopher Pinney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	450
CHAPTER 17. “I Am Rendered Speechless by Your Idea of Beauty”: The Picturesque in History and Art in the Postcolony Krista A. Thompson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	471
CHAPTER 18. Fanon, Algeria, and the Cinema: The Politics of Identification Robert Stam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	503
PART 6: REGARDING AND RECONSTITUTING EUROPE
CHAPTER 19. Creole Europe: The Reflection of a Reflection Christopher Pinney Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	539
CHAPTER 20. Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference Simon Gikandi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	566
CHAPTER 21. Double Dutch and the Culture Game Olu Oguibe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	594
Conclusion: A Parting Glance: Empire and Visuality Martin Jay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	609
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	621
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	629

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 688
Illustrations
- Other: 58 photographs

eBook

Published: March 14, 2014
ISBN: 9780822378976