A picture speaks a thousand words? Vision, visuality and authorization

Abstract

Images of brains circulate today as rationales for decision-making and selectivity in policies, curriculum, preservice teacher education and inservice professional development. The excitement over brain-based research, its visual reach and authorizing role accompanies longstanding debates in which the status attributed to biology, physiology and allied psychological approaches has been considered prejudicial. This article traces a series of dislocations in the linkages forged between discourses of vision and epistemic authorization, and how they still inhere in contemporary debates over brain imaging. The critical history that the article offers within the general framework of Visual science and technology studies requires questioning some of the core tenets of visual culture, including what gets to count as the visual, ‘its’ role in legitimation, and the primacy assigned to looking and observation as strategies of truth-production.

Keywords:

• Discourses of vision
• visuality
• images
• authority
• science and technology studies
• brain imaging
• philosophy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bernadette Baker is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Her research areas include philosophy, history, comparative cosmology and sociology as they intersect with curriculum studies and transnational and postfoundationalist approaches. She has published widely in educational philosophy, curriculum studies, history of education, disability studies and cultural studies journals in the field.

Antti Saari is a research fellow in the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Finland. His research interests include history and philosophy of education and curriculum studies. Saari’s publications deal with the interfaces between expert knowledges and educational policies, including how psychological and sociological discourses are translated to practices of evaluation, classroom management and the use of instructional technology.