Hegemonic signification from perspective of visual rhetoric

What is it about?

The present paper asks tackles questions that can be briefly formulated as follows: 1) how to visualize power or hegemonic relationship? and 2) does visual rhetoric have anything to offer to research on the visualization processes of hegemony? One of the instruments through which power relations are established in society is photography. The following paper discusses the relationship between the theory of hegemony as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and the semiotics of culture of Yuri Lotman. The reason for believing that this incorporation will be successful is the very apparent theoretical congeniality between them. They both traverse the Saussurean ontological terrain. Using the photo of the Song Festival (1950) in Soviet Estonia as an example, I attempt to reveal the hegemonic signification process and how the concept of rhetoric may help to clarify this process. The main categories of analysis are tropes, metaphor, and metonymy.

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