Images can be studied in many ways--as symbols, displays of artistic genius, adjuncts to texts, or naturally occurring phenomena like reflections and dreams. Each of these approaches is justified by the nature of the image in question as well as the way viewers engage with it. But images are often something more when they perform in ways that exhibit a capacity to act independent of human will. Images come alive--they move us to action, calm us, reveal the power of the divine, change the world around us. In these instances, we need an alternative model for exploring what is at work, one that recognizes the presence of images as objects that act on us.
Building on his previous innovative work in visual and religious studies, David Morgan creates a new framework for understanding how the human mind can be enchanted by images in Images at Work. In carefully crafted arguments, Morgan proposes that images are special kinds of objects, fashioned and recognized by human beings for their capacity to engage us. From there, he demonstrates that enchantment, as described, is not a violation of cosmic order, but a very natural way that the mind animates the world around it. His groundbreaking study outlines the deeply embodied process by which humans create culture by endowing places, things, and images with power and agency. These various agents--human and non-human, material, geographic, and spiritual--become nodes in the web of relationships, thus giving meaning to images and to human life. Marrying network theory with cutting-edge work in visual studies, and connecting the visual and bodily technologies employed by the ancient Greeks and
Romans to secular icons like Che Guevara, Abraham Lincoln, and Mao, Images at Work will be transformative for those curious about why images seem to have a power of us in ways we can't always describe.
Industry Reviews
"The most valuable aspect of Morgan's treatment is the sustained attention he gives to the fact that images do things to people.... It is still common to hear people treat religions as deracinated sets of propositions.... [Morgan] will help move the field to recognize that religion is always something that people do with their bodies, together, in history." -- Kevin Schilbrack, The Journal of Religion
"The thesis presented in Images at Work, and the material selected and explicated to support it, is elegant in its simplicity... Morgan has clearly done the difficult, invisible, and underappreciated work of stripping his prose of nearly all lingo and academic shorthand... Morgan has taken the time and care to refine his argument into plain language. Because of this, the prose feels easy and unencumbered, allowing the meat and potatoes of the thesis to
speak for itself. Because Morgan has not definitively located his text within the confines of any single discipline, or embellished it with jargon specific to one field of study, the thesis he presents feels
open and invitingan offer to scholars across disciplines to use his text as a point of departure from which to reexamine and enrich their own areas of interest, whether those areas are religion, psychology, sociology, art history, anthropology, mythology, or semiotics." -- Aaron Duggan , Nova Religio
"This book will be of interest to academic libraries and scholars in visual studies, art, and art history . . . At its core, this book is really about the power of images. Morgan succeeds at demonstrating how enchantment exists as a fundamental and pervasive part of visual culture and the human experience." --Jillian Ewalt, ARLIS/NA Reviews
"The intellectual landscape that Morgan sketches for us is vast, drawing on anthropology, archeology, art history, philosophy, and even etymology. His aim is ambitious: to show how enchantment is still very much alive, drawing on but also displacing human agency, acting through networks of material and immaterial forces. The result is a wondrous, challenging work, written with great verve but also-always-great clarity." -- Simon Coleman, University of
Toronto
"Enlightenment is not a revelation of the mind. It is a series of small acts of engagement that define our survival. In this intensely ruminative volume, David Morgan shows how our perceptions of objects and images balance us within unequal structures of power. Reading this book will inspire you to see your own sight anew as you realize that it is a superpower we all contain-and how we can use it to affect our world." -- Kathryn Lofton, Yale University
"In this extended meditation on enchantment, David Morgan brings his keen eye to bear on its material manifestations, and on the categorical distinctions we so often use in our attempts to explain it-or explain it away. Images at Work is a major achievement, a passionate book that adds new dimensions to our understandings of religion and modernity." -- Matthew Engelke, London School of Economics and Political Science
