Imaging Identity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Identity and Modern Visual Culture: Textual Perspectives

   • Johannes Riquet, Martin Heusser

   Pages 1-31

3. Digital Images of Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33

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   2. From the “Belfie” to the Death-of-Me: The Affective Archive of the Self/ie

      • Misha Kavka

      Pages 35-59

   3. Calculating Lives? Memory, Archive and Identity in a Digital Era

      • Holger Pötzsch

      Pages 61-81

   4. Modelling Vision: A Semeiotic Approach to Algorithmic Images

      • Stephanie Schneider

      Pages 83-102

4. Written Images of Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. Ideal Identities and Impossible Translations: Drawing on Writing and Writing on Drawing

      • Tilo Reifenstein

      Pages 105-122

   3. On Identification and Narrative Identity: Self-Formation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

      • Nicole Frey Büchel

      Pages 123-145

   4. Art, Arcadia and Images of Identity in John Banville’s Frames Trilogy

      • Alexander G. Z. Myers

      Pages 147-162

5. Contested Images of Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 163-163

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   2. W. B. Yeats’s The Dreaming of the Bones: Self-Consuming Images of Identity

      • Chris Morash

      Pages 165-186

   3. Larry Burrows’s Images of the Vietnam War: Photojournalism, Memory and Civic Spectatorship in Life Magazine

      • Martin Heusser

      Pages 187-209

   4. “That was my truest voice”: Rap Identities Between Authenticity and Fame

      • Ana Sobral

      Pages 211-235

   5. Terrorist Self-Fashioning: Politics, Identity and the Making of “Martyrdom” Videos—From the 7/7 Bombers to Four Lions

      • Michael C. Frank

      Pages 237-258

6. Idealised Images of Identity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 259-259

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   2. Islands as (Floating) Images: Towards a Poetic Theory of Island Geography

      • Johannes Riquet

      Pages 261-278

   3. “Come see my land”: Watching the Tropical Island Paradise Die in Poetry

      • Daniel Graziadei

      Pages 279-299

   4. Island Images and Imaginations: Beyond the Typical Tropical

      • Godfrey Baldacchino

      Pages 301-318

7. Back Matter

   Pages 319-333

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This volume explores the many facets and ongoing transformations of our visual identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its chapters engage with the constitution of personal, national and cultural identities at the intersection of the verbal and the visual across a range of media. They are attentive to how the medialities and (im)materialities of modern image culture inflect our conceptions of identity, examining the cultural and political force of literature, films, online video messages, rap songs, selfies, digital algorithms, social media, computer-generated images, photojournalism and branding, among others. They also reflect on the image theories that emerged in the same time span—from early theorists such as Charles S. Peirce to twentieth-century models like those proposed by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida as well as more recent theories by Jacques Rancière, W. J. T. Mitchell and others. The contributors of Imaging Identity come from a wide range of disciplines including literary studies, media studies, art history, tourism studies and semiotics. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership interested in contemporary visual culture and image theory. 

• visual identity
• national
• image theory
• culture
• photojournalism
• branding
• social media
• medialities
• image culture
• Derrida
• Roland Barthes
• media
• rap songs
• W. J. T. Mitchell

“A provocative book that is frequently as delightful as insightful. Its ambitious scope—ranging from the selfie and hip-hop celebrity culture to Vietnam War photography and image/text relationships—and its deep engagement with theory and cultures will make this an exciting book for scholars across disciplines.” (George Micajah Phillips, Assistant Professor of English at Franklin College, USA)

• Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

  Johannes Riquet

• University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

  Martin Heusser

Johannes Riquet is Associate Professor of English Literature at Tampere University, Finland. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Island Space: Perception, Ideology, Geopoetics (2019) and the co-editor of Spatial Modernities: Geography, Narrative, Imaginaries (2018). He is currently working on railway fiction in different media and contemporary representations of the transnational Arctic. 


Martin Heusser is Emeritus Professor at the English Department of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests include word and image studies, American studies and literary theory. At present, he is working on representations of the Vietnam War in graphic novels and the role of spatiality in the writings of Thomas Hardy.

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