The Lensmaker's Equation: Tracing a History of Visual Culture through Richard Powers' Three Farmer's on Their Way to a Dance and Plowing the Dark.

Abstract

Powers' novels discussed here address two technologies of representation (photography and virtual reality respectively) from separate eras often recalled for their rapid technological change. I examine this conception of technological progression using the critical theory of Virilio, Baudrillard and others and discuss how these 'advances' were accompanied by significant shifts in the 'modes of seeing' that the visual culture of an era is based on. Across the novels a diachronic shift can be traced from an analog-based visual culture that elicits an interpretive response, to one that is increasingly based on simulation and I examine what the implications of that may be. My main focus is on visual media, but as I argue, these technologies have progressed alongside other capitalist-industrial, complexes almost always related to warfare. My research agenda thus raises questions about what 'visual culture' may be, on the level of social-cultural phenomena, but also as an object or field of study.