French Theory: Poststructuralism and Deconstruction

Images can be looked at, they can be felt, they can make an impression and they can be experienced; images, however, can also be deciphered; they can communicate a relatively distinct meaning, since they refer to something that goes beyond their immediate material being. Accordingly, images can be considered as signs, that is, encoded entities that unfold a meaning in the very moment of being decoded. Poststructuralist and deconstructionist approaches in image studies take images to be signs, broadly conceived. As signs, images form part in discourses. Other than in a merely semiotic perspective, the significative character of images relates to different levels: the level of intersubjective and collective forms of the production of meaning, the level of contextuality, the level of more or less dominant governing forces within various contexts (power), the level of circulability across contexts and herein of breaking with a so-called “original” context.