Which Visual Literacy in the Teaching of Culture?

Abstract

Visual literacy is not a magic key to the mysteries of the image not only because teaching and learning is no magic, but also because there is no image (and therefore no mysteries linked to it). Images are cultural forms or cultural practices which ought to be studied as such in their social context, but starting from the proper disciplinary background of the student. The gradual and maybe unending disclosing of this context, which has always an impact on the context of the learner himself or herself, must be at the heart of every visual literacy program inspired by cultural studies. Heavily inspired by the ways of looking permitted or enhanced by cybernetic culture, this program rejects explicitly many of the presuppositions of communications studies and art history.