Monday, November 14, 2011

Metapictures and Culture

When reading through Mitchell’s “Metapictures,” there was a particular statement that stuck out to me: “Metapictures are pictures that show themselves in order to know themselves: they stage the self-knowledge of pictures” (Mitchell 48). This excerpt appears when Mitchell is discussing what qualifies an image as a metapicture. It is eventually concluded that metapictures must be able to self-reference themselves in order to gain higher meaning and consequentially yield understanding with respect to any potential frame. I found the idea of pictures having “self-knowledge” to be very interesting. For me, this thought was originally difficult to comprehend; however, by applying the idea of the hypericon in relation to culture, it became more clear. As it is mentioned, metapictures are essentially, “a piece of moveable cultural apparatus..that encapsulates an entire episteme” (Mitchell 49). Based on this claim, it seems that images have the potential to become classified as hypericons if they hold a higher meaning respective to only certain groups of people, not all groups of people. Mitchell notes that, “they are not merely epistemogical models, but ethical, political, and aesthetic ‘assembleges’ that allow us to observe observers” (Mitchel 49). In the sense of understanding culture, this seems highly applicable as different images can have the potential to be interpreted differently amongst people based on cultural norms, overall understanding and past occurrences throughout history.

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