Call for Papers for the sixth issue of online peer-reviewed journal
"View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture"

Issue Theme: Pathos-Image

One of the first lessons Western civilization taught itself was the
lesson of suffering, expressed in the abrupt formula of Greek
tragedy—pathei mathos—the obligation to learn from suffering. This was
also the first development of a specific form of expression: pathos,
understood as the presentation of suffering, the field of unresolved
tensions and enacting a confrontation with the magnitude of a hostile or
indifferent destiny. The importance of this primary lesson is hardly
evident in contemporary culture. On the one hand, artists and critics
are not afraid of anything so much as getting too emotional, or
displaying excessive engagement, often taken for a lack of criticality.
Such a restrained emotional attitude toward a cultural artifact was—not
without the influence of the otherwise meritorious and complex political
thought of Brecht or Adorno—almost entirely identified with a more or
less explicit iconoclasm, a fundamental suspicion towards every sign of
illusion. Thus, today pathos is understood most often as a symptom of
naivety and affectation, one which by all means should be avoided. On
the other hand, contemporary mass culture—from cinema blockbusters to
computer games—draws from the depths of pathetic discourse, directly
derived from historical times, as if modernity was not only over or
late, but had never even started.

The sixth issue of "View" (2/2014) is focused on a question concerning
the possible existence of fully modern, creative and critical forms of
pathos. A main point of reference—but in no way an obligatory framework
for submitted texts—is the renewed interest in the writing of Aby
Warburg, and his theory of culture based on the concept of "formulas of
pathos" [Pathosformeln], understood as elements useful in analyzing not
only intensities of visual representations, but also their historical
wanderings. We would also like to analyze contemporary culture from the
perspective of its expressive formulas of intensive affect, formulas
that even if modern and functioning in contemporary political, social
and cultural contexts, can still respond to a lesson addressed to us by
a remote past.


Deadline for submitted texts: May 20th, 2014.

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http://widok.ibl.waw.pl/index.php/one/about/submissions

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