Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 8, 2023

 

From Reading to Viewing: Cultural Reception and the Question of Agency in the Image Era

(Abstract)

 

Li Yingzhi

 

We live in an era of images supported by modern technology. With technological developments in printing and reproduction, as well as image-making and the mass media, images have increasingly become widespread carriers of cultural information. In terms of cultural acceptance, a transition has emerged from word-centered “reading” towards image-centered “viewing.” In the era of the image, people no longer clinging to interpretation of the authoritative meanings implied in reading; rather, they are inclined to receive cultural information and communicate by way of image-led viewing, preferring to believe that what they see is all there is. They thus obtain the kind of freedom of choice and cultural consumption they require. In a self-oriented viewing “event,” the elitism and authority-dependence of “reading” is shaken off, and the power of interpretation thus shifts from the elite to the public. The value direction of the dominant ideology is gradually interdicted by the non-symbolic regions of images, and then dispersed and replaced by an image interpretation based on the subject’s own feelings and desires. Images “induce” the viewer, who ultimately accumulates subjective awareness, thus opening up a possible new space for the subject’s self-reconstruction.