Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture

The paper provides a survey of some topical conceptions oriented towards a definition of an object and method of visual studies. The author suggests a methodological analysis of some essential texts written in the last 50 years by (visual) anthropologists, cultural analysts, art historians, and other specialists in closely related fields of humanities. The main issue of the paper is to prove the multicast and heterogeneous character of a field which does not require an object of study in the traditional sense. The author stresses a visual dominant of contemporary culture which operates with references, as opposed to substances. Vision as such is an interpretation, a sequence of ordinary and/or analytical optics. As a result, the recipient is deprived of any immediacy.