Social Construction- a theory that gained primacy in the 1980s in a number of fields that asserts that much of what

has been taken as fact is socially constructed through ideological forces, language, economic relationships, and so forth. Myth occurs when we read connotative meanings as denotative, and thus naturalize what are in fact meanings derived from complex social ideologies. A hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are in reality specific to certain groups, are made to seem universal Photographic Truth Images produced by the camera have the power to project images of truth and to be seen as unmediated copies of reality. the myth of the photographic truth means that photographs are understood to be evidence of actual people, events, and objects of the past, even though they are relatively easy to manipulate. . It is a factual piece of evidence of the past. It also invokes powerful emotions about the changes that were about to occur in the South. Thus, this photo demonstrates the photographs capacity to both present evidence and to evoke a magical or mythical quality. -Roland Barthes- French theorist who described the two levels of meaning that an image can have as denotative and connotative. Denotative meaning: the literal face-value meaning of a sign Connotative meaning all the social, cultural, and historical meanings that are added a sign's literal meaning denotation: The photo presents a boy riding a bike. connotation: For viewers, this could stir up their own personal experiences with learning how to ride a bike, childhood memories Positivism philosophical position that is strongly assumes that meaning exists out in the world, independent of our feelings, attitudes, or beliefs about them. Only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge and other views are suspect. Ex. The photography directly give us the truth of world is a positivist assumption Emperical Truths Assumes that things exist independent of language and other forms of representation, and can be known independent of any specific context To know the truth about things we need to know how they are necessarily connected. Thus to know the truth about physical reality we need to know how matter exists and moves about in space in a necessarily connected way. If we knew this then we would find that deductions from our theory of reality (logical truths) would match knowledge from our senses / experiments (empirical truths). Surrealism This is not a pipe/ words vs. meaning political movement of the early 20 century extended around the world literature, theater, visual art that focused upon the unconscious in representation and in dismantling the opposition between the real and the imaginary

Gaze the relationship of looking in which the subject is caught up in dynamics of desire through route of looking and being looked at among objects and other people (Lacan French psychoanalyst) relationship of looking in which the subject anetwork of power/ Fantsy male woman Alienation reliaztion of sapretness from other human/ in marxism capitalism huan experience sapration labor relations /Psy split of subjectvty/ split between what they are physically capable of doing and what they see and imagine themselves to be mirror Developmental Phase/ infant build tier Self (Ego) 6-18 months throug the procces of looking to mirror body image /Different (Not-Self or Other)/ to understand the emotion and power invested by viewers images asa kind of ideal form Orientalism edward said Western Cultures conceive THE EAST Practis foun in cultural reprisntation ,edu, soci. Poltic/ steryope - thinking like this never went away - always the other - fantasies about this exoticness, eroticness - as a discourse: system of classification, this is how this type of person/world are characterized, they are the other, "colonial gaze", relationship of power, who is okay to exert power over because they are not us, its written into EVERYTHING thus its a discourse Discourse Body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something They are specific to particular social and historical contexts Change over time Discourses cover broad social domains and produce certain kinds of subjects and knowledge We occupy to varying degrees the subject positions defined within a broad array of discourses Hegemony A concept most associated with Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci Rethought traditional Marxist theories of ideology away from ideas about false consciousness and passive social subjects Two central aspects of hegemony Dominant ideologies are offered as common sense Dominant ideologies are in tension with other forces and hence constantly in flux Indicates how ideological meaning is an object of struggle rather than an oppressive force that fully dominates subjects from above