Avetysian A. «Heuristic potential of visual studies: cultural-philosophical analysis»

The thesis aims to clarify the philosophical background of the visual studies and to solve the primary theoretical problems of the field employing cultural-philosophical analysis. The work discusses the disciplinary status of the visual studies and outlines the methodological coordinates of the work of visual studies' key representatives. The author also clarifies what philosophical and methodological developments have become the theoretical background for different vectors of the field. Through the reconstruction of the phenomenological foundations of the visual studies (E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty, M. Dufrenne), the work articulates the experience of the visual (as opposed to the visual experience) to be the principal object of the visual studies. This terminological shift is proposed to avoid a theoretical reduction of this experience to its optical component. The expanded research of philosophical doctrines that complement the phenomenological perspective of the study of the visual (G.Deleuze, G. Didi-Huberman, K. Wulf, G. U. Gumbrecht, and others) allows the author to elucidate the structure of experience of the visual and to formulate the basic principles of its researching. The author outlines the peculiarities of a transformation of experiencing the visual in the age of technology development (based on W. Benjamin's and P. Virilio's approaches). The thesis concludes that the analysis of the experience of the visual is possible only with a researcher's (a beholder's) body inclusiveness into the perception of the thing's presence and openness to its affectation in the act of experiencing the visual.