Recognition and diffusion of visualities in the German speaking social sciences – VISUALL

The pregnance of a hermeneutic tradition is the foundation of controversy in German social sciences. The importance of the new approach by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960), then the approach developed at the beginning of the 1970ies by Ulrich Oeverman (1993) led for example to the development of a Videohermeneutik by Dirk Tänzler and Jürgen Raab (2006). The tension between visuality and text can also be found in the analysis of segment (Segmentanalyse)promoted by Roswitha Breckner (2012) and inspired by the work of the art historian Max Imdahl (1996). Likewise, the works of Michel Foucault getting to be known in the German academic world means the birth of a new visual analysis of discourse (visuelle Diskursanalyse) that questions again the links between the systems of utterance and those of visibility (Maasen, Mayerhauser and Renggli, 2006). To conclude, the importance given to the place of the image as a medium of meanings in our societies leads to various terminologies, methodologies and epistemologies. Bringing them closer is a capital issue if one wants to study the visual objects that resist epistemological segmentation. It becomes necessary to delimit the development, the paradigmatic relations and transformations, the epistemological foundations and the systems that led to this situation. That is why this project aims at identifying the current debates and contexts of analyses to spread them and discuss them in the Frenchspeaking academic world.

The intrinsic construction of our scientific project offers large opportunities to the circulation of ideas and to the diffusion of the results of our research. This activity comprises two work axis: on the one hand, we organise scientific events; on the other hand, we publish articles and a book . With that, online data is provided.

Besides the scientific events and the publications carried out within the framework of this project, software tools for visualisation are developed to assist the researcher according to the type of images and to the epistemic approach he/she wishes to exploit.

work in progress

The interdisciplinary debates whose topic is the image, the visuality and the visual practices have increased tremendously in Germany and in German-speaking countries in the last few years. The speeding-up of this movement is developing the problematics structuring the visual set of themes that were outlined about twenty years ago and are still alive in the German-speaking Academic world. The 1990ies have consequently witnessed the birth of a new scope of research called “ Bildwissenschaft” that tries to combine the disciplinary perspectives of art history, public relations and philosophy (Bredekamp, 2003;Belting, 2004). Simultaneously, the Anglo-American sphere sees the development of “Visual studies” whose aim is to decenter the subjects of research in art history into taking the daily cultures into consideration (Mirzoeff, 1999; Evans and hall,1999).
These new analytic approaches crystallize around a paradigmatic transformation described as “Pictorial turn” or “Iconic turn” depending on schools of thought (Stiegler,2008;Boehm and Mitchell,2009). In the Anglo-Saxon sphere, the “Pictorial turn” as stated by W.J.T. Mitchell (1994;2009) refers to a reorientation of usual practices linked to a shift in the patterns of semiotic and linguistic analyses. Those observations match with their German counterpart Gottfried Boehm (1994) who advocates the rise of an iconic turn and who emphasizes the pregnance of the images in contemporary western cultures as well as their marginalization as a subject of academic research. Yet, from his point of view, he refers to an ontological definition of the image. He does not mean to take into consideration explicitly the historical and cultural conditions of visual practices.
Nevertheless, we have to admit that quite a few German-speaking culturalists support the doctrine of a predominance of hybrid forms between images and texts, mainly within the context of research on the internet and television. G. Boehm’s theory is therefore controversial when trying to understand the inequality of social distribution between social circles and societies charaterizing the social practices concerning the making, using and viewing of images (Burri,2008; Schnettler and Pöetzsch,2007). Those different points of view have all contributed to different approaches that remain to be spread and confronted with the theoretical positions in human and social sciences in the French-speaking world.
The pregnance of a hermeneutic tradition is the foundation of controversy in German social sciences. The importance of the new approach by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960), then the approach developed at the beginning of the 1970ies by Ulrich Oeverman (1993) led to the development of a Videohermeneutik by Dirk Tänzler and Jürgen Raab (2006). The tension between visuality and text can also be found in the analysis of segment (Segmentanalyse)promoted by Roswitha Breckner (2012) and inspired by the work of the art historian Max Imdahl (1996). Likewise, the works of Michel Foucault getting to be known in the German academic world means the birth of a new visual analysis of discourse (visuelle Diskursanalyse) that questions again the links between the systems of utterance and those of visibility (Maasen, Mayerhauser and Renggli, 2006).
To conclude, the importance given to the place of the image as a medium of meanings in our societies leads to various terminologies, methodologies and epistemologies. Bringing them closer is a capital issue if one wants to study the visual objects that resist epistemological segmentation. It becomes necessary to delimit the development, the paradigmatic relations and transformations, the epistemological foundations and the systems that led to this situation. That is why this project aims at identifying the current debates and contexts of analyses to spread them and discuss them in the French-speaking academic world.