Visualizing Colonial Myth: Revisiting iconic Philippine photographs in the early history of The National Geographic Magazine

Mgr. Angelie Marilla

Master's thesis

Abstract:

This thesis unpacks meaning-constructions in iconic Philippine colonial photographs that circulated in American popular media, The National Geographic Magazine in the late 1890s to early 1900s. The overall photographic performance is privileged according to the desires and attention of interpretive viewers: the scientific community and the popular audience. These hermeneutic fields though diverging, do not necessarily suggest an arena of contestation or transgression, but suggests plasticity of scientific boundaries that allow meanings to be recoded and repackaged for public consumption. As a result, science and politics are often profoundly mixed in public discourse and this popularizing effort win acceptance in public as colonial myth. This meaning making is facilitated by Alexander’s surface-depth model that is extended in visual analysis. The emblematic elements of the image reveal visuality in colonial culture, narratives and symbolisms that flow back to photographic presentation and style. The visible aesthetic surface is a photographic catalog of the unknown colonized world often depicted as primitive, wild, remote and exotic. The deep cultural structure is the rhetoric of morality: the sacred commitment to civilize, a ritual of purification and salvation through colonization.

Keywords

iconicity, visuality, meaning-making, colonial photography, cultural sociology

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 31. 5. 2017

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 21. 6. 2017
• Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Csaba Szaló, Ph.D.
• Reader: Dr. Werner Binder

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Master programme / field:
Sociology / Cultural Sociology (Eng.)