The image of man and the visualization of political communication in the postmodern era

Abstract

The article is devoted to anthropological problems of the human image in the history of culture and philosophy of the twentieth century and in processes of visualization of political communication in the postmodern era. In the first part of the article, it is proposed to consider the transition from the modern era to the postmodern era in the context of the main stages in the history of the relationship between word and image, language and visuality in European culture of the XX century. The understanding of the visual image as defined by discursive practitioners and understood as a text in the semiotic paradigm of the mid-twentieth century, primarily in the works of R. Barth, is analyzed in detail. The liberation of the visual image from language discourse, which begins at the end of the last century, leads to the active development of visual anthropology, and radical changes in the reproduction technology to a change in the ways of perceiving the world. The article examines the features of the functioning of human images existing in the public space, problems of perception and modern visual communication. The second part of the article examines the tendencies of the development of political ideologies in the postmodern era. The authors describe three coordinates of system of postmodern political ideologies: the disappearance of traditional political ideologies, the revolution of technology, the political changes of the 1980s and formation of “monotonous politics”. It is shown that in the postmodern era political ideologies are forced to minimize the theoretical justification of their fundamental principles, turning instead to new visual and virtual forms of promoting their ideas. The main tendencies are change of the form of political practices, rejection of traditional methods of formulating political ideas, visualization and virtualization of the theoretical and practical components of political activity. The specific features of theatricalization of political and art activism are revealed in the article. In addition, the main aspects of modern political communication are highlighted: functionality, superficiality, and network character.

Keywords:

human image, semiotics, R. Barth, visual anthropology and communication, post- modernity, political ideologies, protest movements, art activism, visualization