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Indiana University

Theory of the Image

Theory of the Image

Capitalism, Contemporary Film, and Women
Ann Kibbey
Distribution: World
Publication date: 11/23/2004
Format: paper 256 pages, 30 b&w photos
6.5 x 9
ISBN: 978-0-253-21746-2
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Description

“Just about everything in this book is fresh and exciting.” —Carol Siegel

Ann Kibbey’s Theory of the Image is based on a concept of the image as a dynamic relation rather than a thing. In three essays Kibbey contends that the image itself is an ideological construct. “The Capitalist Theory of the Image” argues that capitalism enforces social identity and fetishism through religious iconoclastic beliefs about the commodity as image. “Liberating a Woman from Her Image” creates a new feminist approach to women in film, breaking the symbiosis of woman and image at the heart of previous theory. “Relief from the Production of Certainties” challenges conservative and racist agendas informing the assumption that a photograph records an image. The book draws on extensive personal interviews and also provides detailed explications of important films in recent transnational cinema to demonstrate new theories of the image for a global society.

Author Bio

Ann Kibbey is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado and editor of Genders. She is author of The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

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Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1.
The Capitalist Theory of the Image
The Iconoclastic Theory of the Image and the Corporation
Congruence with the Capitalist Economy
Critique of Baudrillard
Critique of Barthes
Debord and the Social Production of the Image
Screening Out: Lacan's Mirror Stage and the Cinematic Apparatus
Mulvey's Symbiosis of Woman and Image

2.
Liberating a Woman from Her Image
The Suitors
Persian Narrative Structure and Activating the Audience
The Story of the Veil
The Story of the Sheep
How Images Move the Story Around
Character and the Mutable Image of the Veil
The Stabbing
Exit the Black Screen Suitcase

3.
Relief from the Production of Certainties
Overview: Peirce, Eisenstein, Manchevski
The Icon as a Set of Relations
Indexes: The Natural Image, Racism, Photography
Why Eisenstein Has Been a Threat
Before the Rain: An Iconic Film
Women, Time, Photos
"Have a Nice War. Take Pictures."
Linear Narrative, Cubist Narrative

Selected Bibliography
Index