Social Media

Pictorial Biographical Spaces for Reflection on Cognitive Vision in Processes of Self-design

Abstract

How can Max Imdahl’s art-historical concept of perceptive seeing (erkennendes Sehen) be brought into dialogue with Aby Warburg’s cultural-historical reflections on the image-based space for reflection (Denkraum)? And how might both approaches, from sociological as well as social and cultural theoretical perspectives, be applied to the analysis of image phenomena in social media? This article addresses these questions by connecting Warburg’s ideas on the affective and culture-forming potential of images with Imdahl’s methodological reflections on recognition, the act of seeing and perceptive seeing. Drawing on a case study of a young woman’s pictorial self-presentation on Instagram, combined with a biographical-narrative interview, the article demonstrates how an image-analytical approach informed by both Warburg and Imdahl can illuminate contemporary visual self-formations in social media. The argument put forward is that social media can be understood as pictorial spaces of biographical reflection (bildbiografischer Denkraum).