The scopic regime: social and cultural context

Abstract

The paper investigates the problem of visuality as a whole and the way this concept is analyzed both in modern philosophical and cultural literature, which is characterized by serious conceptual laden, and in “visual studies” in particular. In the scientific community of Anglo-American academic environment much attention is paid to the interpretation of the concept of “visual culture». The first period of the studies development, related to the so-called “visual turn”, begins in the early 70s of the XX century, the second refers to the 90th, when global and national features of this turn were reconstructed (S. Alpers, M. Baxandall, N. Bryson, T.J. Clark, G. Pollock).The paper analyses the existing modern methodologies of visual studies, nature and essence of the visuality regime (scopic regime); it also explains the factors, defining scopic regimes evolution in our society. Vision is interpreted in this context both as the act of seeing and as the specific discursive construction, which reveals the connection with the cultural practices of an individual and society. The special attention is paid to the life practices of the society of the twenties. In order to get a broad picture on this issue, the article discusses visual resources and technologies, which were used in the Soviet era, for the presentation of the transformed life spectacle and structuring of the visual experience of a person. The methodology of the phenomenological analysis of the visual and cultural experience formation as a whole is used in the article. The purpose of the study is to find the objectives of scopic regimes typology, to identify scopic regime structures and give detailed cultural description of the visuality regime, which was formed in the 20s in the USSR. The results of this comparative study could be used in assessing the contribution of visual studies in social knowledge, social ontology.