Scopic regime and its place in the epistemological plan of visual culture

Abstract

Introduction. The interest of modern humanities in the field of the visual involves systematic work with the structural and content elements of the spectacle, encoding important information about social being and thinking, about the value systems of man and society, about the nature of receptions and models of cognition adopted in a particular era. The subject of attention in the article is the basic coding tool of visuality - the gaze mode or the scopic mode. Elucidation of its nature and mode of action opens up the possibility of a philosophical consideration of the cognitive models of the era. The purpose: of the article is to present models of scopic modes in the aspect of the philosophical theory of visuality, to reveal their epistemological significance and to consider examples of the practi- cal operation of such modes in films of the 20th and 21st centuries. Methods. In the course of the study, general scien- tific methods of analysis and synthesis were used; the method of phenomenological reduction, which allows fixing the sensually perceived qualities of ob- ject-spatial screen images; a hermeneutic method that allows, on the basis of visible sign structures, to reveal the deep intentions of a visual image, as well as methods of structural and discursive analysis of a visual source, which make it possible to identify markers of the philosophical and cultural content of a visual text and the objective causes and conditions for its appearance. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that we ap- proach the visual source from the standpoint of epistemology, which allows us to find out the na- ture of the cognitive strategy of a particular era. We systematize the types of scopic modes accepted in visualism and reveal the possibility of theorizing an additional, “observational” mode, which is relevant for the beginning of the 21st century. Results. In the course of the analysis, we applied the tools and conceptual base of philosophical epistemology to modern visual culture, namely, to photographic and cinematic images. This made it possible to see a certain cognitive strategy behind the same type of way of organizing the spectacle and controlling the spectator’s gaze, and thereby open up a possible path to studying the epistemo- logical “a priori condition” of cognition characteris- tic of a particular era. The five most effective scopic regimes are considered: “Cartesian perspectivism”, “topographic” regime, “baroque” regime, “impulse” and “observational” regimes. Conclusions. Structural and discursive analysis of visual material (photographic series and films) of different decades of the 20th and 21st centuries makes it possible to highlight a special tool that encodes the cognitive intentions of the era in a visual image: the scopic mode or the gaze mode. Using the type of selectivity inherent in it and the dynamics of the gaze as the basic characteristics of the scopic mode, we distinguish five basic scoping modes in the visual practice of the XX—XXI cen- turies.. At the same time, understanding the regime of gaze as an expression and action of the episteme that dominates in a particular era, we discover the philosophical and epistemological field of study of photography or film.