Teaching visual culture (and then doubting it)

Abstract

Teaching visual culture is driven in large part by what could be best described as a will to see. This can be under – stood in part as a supposed natural desire to see; to see things in particular ways, and to know things through specific practices of looking. The will to see is inherently self-justifying and tied tightly to the presupposition that the more we see, the more knowledge we gain. But what happens when students don’t see? In this article, the promise of visual culture studies is advanced and at the same time made problematic through doubt. Using concepts from psychoanalytic theory, an argument is made that teaching visual culture is stained by the unconscious, engaging the unknown, unfixed, anxious, uncertain, and absent subject.