Echo Objects – The Cognitive Work of Images - Hardcover

Stafford, Barbara Maria

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226770516 ISBN 13: 9780226770512

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2007

Synopsis

Barbara Maria Stafford is at the forefront of a growing movement that calls for the humanities to confront the brain's material realities. In "Echo Objects", she argues that humanists should seize upon the exciting neuroscientific discoveries that are illuminating the underpinnings of cultural objects. In turn, she contends, brain scientists could enrich their investigations of mental activity by incorporating phenomenological considerations - particularly the intricate ways that images focus intentional behavior and allow us to feel thought.As a result, "Echo Objects" is a stunningly broad exploration of how complex images - or patterns that compress space and time - make visible the invisible ordering of human consciousness. Stafford demonstrates, for example, how the compound formats of emblems, symbols, collage, and electronic media reveal the brain's grappling to construct mental objects that are redoubled by prior associations. In contrast, she shows that findings in evolutionary biology and the neurosciences are providing profound opportunities for understanding aesthetic conundrums such as the human urge to imitate and the role of narrative and nonnarrative representation.Ultimately, she makes an impassioned plea for a common purpose - for the acknowledgment that, at the most basic level, these separate projects belong to a single investigation.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Maria Stafford is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She is the author of seven books, including, most recently, Visual Analogy, and coauthor of Devices of Wonder.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226770516
• ISBN 13: 9780226770512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 302