Archaeologies of vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on seeing and saying

Abstract

While many acknowledge that Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault have redefined our notions of time and history, few recognize crucial role that the infinite between seeing and saying (as Foucault put it) plays in their work. Gary Shapiro reveals, for first time, full extent of Nietzsche and Foucault's concern with visual. Shapiro explores whole range of Foucault's writings on visual art, including theory of visual resistance, concept of phantasm or simulacrum, and his interrogation of relation of painting, language and power in artists from Bosch to Warhol. Shapiro also shows through an excavation of little-known writings that visual is a major them in Nietzsche's thought. In addition to explaining significance of Nietzsche's analysis of Raphael, Durer and Claude Lorrain, he examines philosopher's understanding of visual dimension of Greek theatre and Wagnerian opera and offers a powerful new reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Archaeologies of Vision should be a valuable work for all scholars of visual culture as well as for those engaged with continental philosophy.