Visuality/Materiality

Two of the key theoretical shifts over the past two decades of critical work have been the 'visual turn' and the 'material turn'. This book argues that these hitherto distinct fields should be understood as in continual dialogue and co-constitution and focuses on reconceptualising the visual as an embodied, material, and often politically-charged realm.Taking this conceptual argument as its basis, this edited volume elaborates it through a series of contemporary case-studies, drawn from the disciplines of Architecture, Design, Film, Ecology, Anthropology, Medicine, Fine Art, Geography and Sociology. The case studies included are paired around four themes: consumption, translation, practice and ethics.As well as exploring the bringing together of visuality and materiality studies, the contributors raise questions of social identity and social critique, and also focus on the ethics of material visualities.