Total Image: A Materialistic Approach to Contemporary Image Digitization and Ubiquity

Abstract

The contemporary state of digital and global images turns visual studies’ opening question on the nature of images to the inquiry on the material conditions of their current omnipresence. In this paper we point out two central processes regarding contemporary image that allows us to think of it as total: digitization and ubiquity. Contrary to the common sense that suggests that digital images are nothing more than immateriality, we highlight three material aspects of digitization: the phantasmal as a mode of circulation; the screens as a technological support; the mineral substrate of the devices. In the second part, opposing the idea that ubiquity is nothing more than the multiplication of images, we propose: to rethink profusion in political terms as ocularcentrism; in economic terms as superabundance (essential in developing neoliberalism); and in psychosocial terms as surveillance.