W.J.T.Mitchell Icon Theory Research

This article begins with W.J.T.Mitchell’s icon theory is the research object,which aims to sort out and elaborate the overall framework,ideological context and conceptual flow of his theoretical discourse,in order to achieve three research goals: first,to comprehensively investigate the knowledge structure of Mitchell’s icon theory;the second is to analyze Mitchell’s dialectical thinking concept in the process of reconstructing iconography;The third is to explore Mitchell’s open and pluralistic research attitude,and summarize the enlightenment and reference significance of his theoretical ideas for future image research.Mitchell’s focus has roughly changed from “image” to “picture” to “icon”,so this paper uses these three keywords as the fulcrum of theoretical research.Starting from the research perspective of keywords,this paper focuses on the description of the completeness and logic of Mitchell’s icon theory,as well as the outline of the spiritual core of subjectivity throughout his theory.In addition to the introduction and epilogue,the full text consists of four parts.The first chapter,which focuses on the similarity of images,textuality and ideology,is the starting point of Mitchell’s image theory.Under the control of transcending comparison and similarity,the image family genealogy and mixed text gradually establish the equal status of images in theory,and the exploration of the ideological mechanism behind images has found the root cause of the heterogeneity of language maps.Mitchell’s image theory points to the core goal of restoring the status of the subject of the image,and its research also shows a trend of continuous deepening;The second chapter is centered on the theories of pictorial turn,meta-picture,and biological picture,which is an extension of Mitchell’s image theory.As an extension of the pictorial turn,meta-pictures demonstrate the possibility of image ideologies in the basic scope of linguistic turns,while biological drawings lift the constraints of linguistics,restore the subjective status of images from the two levels of life and desire,and further deepen the image view;The third chapter,an exposition of iconography and semiotics,closely related to images,is a deepening of Mitchell’s icon theory.On the one hand,Mitchell’s posticonography is a rejection of traditional iconography,extending the scope of image research through the image family,and is a continuation of the image view;On the other hand,Mitchell’s post-semiotics is committed to maintaining the autonomous status of iconography,and preliminarily verifies the possibility of the autonomous existence of iconography through pictorial turning,which is an extension of the pictorial view;Chapter 4 is an inductive reflection on the gains and losses of Mitchell’s icon theory.Starting from the three aspects of image view,picture view and icon view,this paper affirms Mitchell’s contribution to expanding the scope of image research and improving the status of image subject,so that iconography escapes from the narrow art history methodology,and thus moves towards a broader sense of image research,and at the same time points out the problems of generalization in the current research field,dialectically looks at Mitchell’s icon theory,and points out the direction and useful reference for subsequent image research.The concluding part is first of all a summary of the value of Mitchell’s theory research,that is,the value orientation of dialectical logical thinking in Mitchell’s research;Secondly,it is about the embodiment of the research value of this paper,which is mainly manifested in the overall appearance and development potential of Mitchell’s theoretical system through the connection of theoretical plates at different stages,highlighting its unlimited theoretical vitality and practical value.