Signatures of the Visible

The visual is essentially pornographic,' writes Fredric Jameson; films ask us to stare at the world as though it were a naked body.' In Signatures of the Visible , Jameson explores film and its culture, interrogating the relationship between the imaginative screen world and the historical world onto which it is projected. Jameson questions the critical-utopian potential of film in our commodified culture, where contests over value, desire, and power increasingly take place in the realm of the visual. In the postmodern world, asks Jameson, can the filmic form replace the novel as the predominant instrument for exploring social reality?