In this presentation, Professor Mirzoeff opposes the critical study of visual culture to the notion of “visuality,” the means by which autocracy imagines history. Against visuality, whose beginning can be found in plantation slavery, comes the right to look. Visuality uses certain techniques to form what he calls “complexes of visuality.” In his talk, Mirzoeff demonstrates the functioning of these techniques in relation to the strategy of global counterinsurgency that is currently the doctrine of the U.S. military.

Bio note:
Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is an art historian whose work has been key to the development of visual cultural studies in the past decade. His books include the widely read An Introduction to Visual Culture, Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture, and the forthcoming The Right to Look: A Counter-History of Visuality.