Select here to proceed to the Cultural Studies Virtual Tours

Note: This project is currently under development for publicaiton as an interactive CD-ROM by
Fairchild Publishing and in conjunction with Susan B. Kaiser's text, Cultral Studies of Style and Fashion.
Please email the author for more information: keketchum@ucdavis.edu]

CITATION INFORMATION:
Karyl E. Ketchum Ph.D.
www.interpellation. org

About this CD-ROM: An Introduction to the
Cultural Studies Virtual Tours for students

By applying visual theory and Cultural Studies concepts to images we are able to interrogate their logic toward developing a critical visual literacy. Through these theories we can begin to identify an image's assumptions, and begin to denaturalize epistemological linkages among visual culture, history and materiality. These linkages often otherwise go unmarked and function as common sense, nature, or even objective "Truth". Conventions of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) -- used to construct websites -- are uniquely suited to illustrate and visually chart the deconstructive movement of critical theories of vision and meaning-making. This is due in large part to their ability to manipulate, explore and even exploit the formal aspects of images so as to slow down visual perception thereby making the processes of attaching meaning to visual forms more apparent and available for critique. Through this capacity, web technologies offer a kind of performance of theories of vision, potentially affording us insights into what Roland Barthes terms the "rehetoric of images." This is the premise behind the Cultural Studies "Virtual Tours."

In naming these experimentations in theory and technology "Virtual Tours," I am imposing a geographic, and fundamentally detached, spectator's position on my interlocutor. While there are, admittedly, disadvantages to this metaphor, there are some powerful and strategic advantages as well. Namely, as a spectator distanced through the gaze of the tourist, we can perhaps overcome some of our own self-interest in these systems which so powerfully work toward the naturalization of historic currents of privilege. This feels like a critical first step in deconstructing the rhetoric of the image, as well is in the interest of intervening within these logics (the role of the Cultural Critic). However, it is critical to remember that we are, in fact, not finished interrogating these structures until we also take stock of our own positionality within them.