KL: Michael Hagner: Image and Knowledge - A Liaison Postmoderne?

It is a truism that history of science and – more generally – cultural studies was not interested in the role of visualisation in the process of knowledge production before the 1990s. Knowledge, it was said, was often produced without and sometimes with images, but in principle they were regarded as marginal. Why did the situation change so profoundly? In my lecture, I shall argue that the rise of images is part and parcel of the postmodern condition. My main point is not that this condition is characterized by an aesthetization of the world, but by a combination of new digital technologies of producing images and a new understanding of the status of knowledge. I will analyse the postmodern status of image and knowledge by focussing on the work of Lyotard and Latour, and then interpret neuroimaging as a paradigmatic case for the new regime of visualisation.

// Prof. Dr. Michael Hagner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)