Beyond Bombardment: Subjectivity, Visual Culture, and Art Education

Beginning with an understanding of visual culture as a postmodern discourse, this article argues for more focused attention to how visual culture presents a critical rethinking of subjectivity within art education. Through an analysis of a language of bombardment, a discourse that positions the subject as bombarded by media messages, this article examines how differences between humanist constructions of the self and postmodern theories of the subject impact understandings of viewer/viewed, student/teacher and active/passive relationships. The performative photographs of Cindy Sherman are presented as a critical rethinking of conduit metaphors of communication and liberal humanist constructions of the self. In its conclusions, this article suggests that visual culture marks not only a rethinking of the subject's relationship to the visual, but also a significant shift in understandings of subjectivity itself.