Episode: Pleasure and Persuasion in Lens-based Media

Media-culture is an undeniable force in our lives. Its pervasive and pleasurable power has primarily been located in discourses on `spectacle' and the persistent connections between technology and dominance. However, when traditional modes of critique produce and use a media-culture, the question of how our experiences of images constitute the political is imperative. This first collection of essays edited by the research group Curating Video brings together an international field of researchers from the realms of cultural studies, visual art, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy to explore new contexts and issues that are crucial to understanding the experience and meaning of images. Without idealising or demonising media culture these essays interrogate the critical status of lens-based media, taking up the pressing dilemmas of a politics of the image and its contemporary condition.