Culture and Popular Culture

This book is largely about graphical matters; the domain of alphabetically printed literary writing. However, I begin instead with the concept of vision. Vision, the faculty of sight, has long been used as a metaphor for its opposite, for seeing that which is not here. The seer, the visionary, is the traditional bearer of truths, or at least knowledges, which serve to inspire, discipline or even countermand the truths and knowledges of the material world. In the twentieth century such vision has escaped the confines of mere metaphor; we have the technology for seeing that which is not here. Television and video, and their popular predecessor cinema, are the means by which matter can be taken and turned into an image.