The Power of Image in Contemporary Sinophone Societies
Le pouvoir de l’image dans les sociétés sinophones contemporaines
Abstract
In contemporary Sinophone societies, the drawn, printed, displayed, or disseminated image plays a central role in shaping collective imaginaries, identity narratives, and power dynamics. Images do not merely represent: they act, perform, challenge, and sometimes subvert. This cahiers de l'AFPC issue proposes to investigate the power of the image in Sinophone contexts over the past century, drawing on various media: contemporary art, comics, political posters, editorial cartoons, propaganda images, religious or popular iconography, among others.
Announcement
“Pictures, including world pictures, have always been with us, and there is no getting beyond pictures, much less world pictures, to a more authentic relationship with Being, with the Real, or with the World.”
(Mitchell, W. J. T., What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Argument
In contemporary Sinophone societies, the drawn, printed, displayed, or disseminated image plays a central role in shaping collective imaginaries, identity narratives, and power dynamics. Images do not merely represent: they act, perform, challenge, and sometimes subvert. This issue proposes to investigate the power of the image in Sinophone contexts over the past century, drawing on various media: contemporary art, comics, political posters, editorial cartoons, propaganda images, religious or popular iconography, among others.
The question of the power of images has generated a rich body of literature, stemming from diverse approaches and disciplines. In the 1990s, a “socio-semiotic” concern led many image theorists to interrogate the discursivity of images as well as their social reach. Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle thus analyzed the rhetoric of visual documents ranging from comic strips to electoral posters, advertisements, and religious iconography, in order to reveal the relationship between icons and ideologies in the fixed image. Around the same time, historian David Freedberg worked toward a socio-history of censorship through the study of image reception, on the premise that “context conditions interpretation.” Rather than studying the processes by which images speak to us, Freedberg focused on how a given society makes images speak. In the early 2000s, art critic W. J. T. Mitchell developed a psychoanalytic and philosophical inquiry into the role of images in the construction of the subject. Drawing on Lacan, Freud, and Deleuze, Mitchell identified three fundamental modes of relating to the image (totemism, idolatry, and fetishism). Using this categorization of human interactions with visual objects, he offered an expanded reading of the “symbiotic relationship between images and the rest of life.” From sign analysis to subject theory, and from the socio-history of the obscene to studies of iconoclasm, the power of images raises questions across a plurality of disciplines.
Taking this notion as its central theme, this issue aims to encourage cross-disciplinary approaches drawing on art history, visual studies, anthropology, Chinese studies, political theory, and semiotics. Proposals may explore, within Sinophone spaces, the multiple registers of the image: the image as a vector of power, functioning to legitimize, indoctrinate, or resist in contemporary contexts; the image as a performative agent, engaging affects, beliefs, and behaviors while participating in the construction of reality; the image as a support for collective imaginaries—nationalist, diasporic, revolutionary, or utopian; the image as memory or archive, capable of making certain historical narratives appear or disappear; and the image as a field of aesthetic experimentation, particularly in contemporary visual practices (fine arts, installations, digital arts, fanzines, etc.) that interrogate visibility, censorship, or dissent.
Among approaches that situate cultural phenomena in their context, one may cite the work of Chang-tai Hung, who, while studying the visual culture of the regime established in China after 1949, highlighted the particularities of the centralized cultural system shaped by the Chinese Communist Party. Wu Hung’s contributions, at the intersection of art history, modern Chinese history, and cultural studies, interpret the architecture and imagery of Tiananmen Square as performative signs of communist utopia. More recent work by Zhou Xian, which explores how visual technologies inform everyday life—from the influence of television on traditional customs to the rise of cultural practices shaped by the use of the Internet—illustrates an approach that, while continuing to interrogate the meaning of images, also sheds light on the stakes and tensions within contemporary Chinese society.
Contributions may focus on objects from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, or Sinophone diasporas. We hope to put into perspective the specificities of how images and their interpretations are inscribed in each society under study.
Possible avenues of inquiry include
- How do images contribute to the construction of official or alternative narratives in contemporary China?
- What are the visual strategies of power (or its contestation) in graphic productions?
- How do contemporary Sinophone artists mobilize the image to redefine cultural or political boundaries?
- What role does the image play in the visual memory of revolutions, catastrophes, or social utopias in Sinophone contexts?
- What forms of agency are ascribed to images in Sinophone cultures (sacred power, political performativity, emotional force…)?
Submission of articles
Proposals, written in French or in English, must include a title, an abstract of about 500 words, and a short bio-bibliographical note about the author. They must be submitted by 30 September 2026 via the dedicated page of Les Cahiers de l’AFPC, website: https://cahiers-afpc.fr/appels-a-contribution/participer or sent to the issue coordinators.
Finalized articles, written in French or in English, must be submitted by 31 October 2026 via the dedicated page of Les Cahiers de l’AFPC, website: https://cahiers-afpc.fr/appels-a-contribution/participer or sent to the issue coordinators.
Timeline
- Publication of the call: 15 September 2026
- Deadline for abstract submission: 30 September 2026
- Deadline for submission of finalized articles: 31 January 2027
- Issue publication: 1 April 2027
Contacts
Issue coordination
- Marie Laureillard (marie.laureillard@parisnanterre.fr)
- Fanny Paldacci (fanny.paldacci@univ-lyon2.fr)
- Cahiers de l’AFPC: afpc.cahiers@gmail.com
Selected Bibliographic References
Andrews, Julia F. & Shen, Kuiyi, The Art of Modern China. University of California Press, 2012.
Descola, Philippe, Les Formes du visible. Une anthropologie de la figuration. Points, 2023.
Evans, Harriet & Donald, Stephanie (dir.), Pictures of Power: Propaganda Posters in Revolutionary China. Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
Freedberg, David, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre, L’éloquence des images. PUF, 1993.
Gladston, Paul, et al. (dir.), Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media. Springer, 2021.
Hung, Chang-tai, Mao’s New World: Political Culture in the Early People's Republic. Cornell University Press, 2007.
Huyghe, René, Les puissances de l’image. Flammarion, 1992.
Kikuchi, Yuko (dir.), Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan. University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.
Lent, John A., Asian Comics. University Press of Mississippi, 2015.
Lent, John A., Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. University of Hawaii Press, 2001.
McIntyre, Sophie, Imagining Taiwan: The Role of Art in Taiwan’s Quest for Identity (1987–2010). Brill, 2018.
Mitchell, W. J. T., What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Pang, Tina, Hong Kong Visual Culture: The M+ Guide. Thames 1 Hudson Ltd, 2021.
Poplin, Justine, Memes, Myth and Meaning in 21st Century Chinese Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Tang, Xiaobing, Visual Culture in Contemporary China: Paradigms and Shifts. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Wang, Ban, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wu, Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Wu, Hung (dir.), Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China. Smart Museum of Art & David and Alfred Smart Gallery, 2004.
Zhou, Xian, Visual Culture in Contemporary China II. Routledge, 2025.
Attached files
Keywords
- mémoire visuelle ; stratégies visuelles du pouvoir ; artistes sinophones ; frontières culturelles et politiques ; l'images dans les récits officiels, alternatifs ; modalités d’agentivité prêtées aux images
Contact(s)
- Marie LAUREILLARD
courriel : mlaureil [at] parisnanterre [dot] fr - Fanny PALDACCI
courriel : fanny [dot] paldacci1 [at] univ-lyon3 [dot] fr - Georges Bê Duc
courriel : afpc [dot] cahiers [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« The Power of Image in Contemporary Sinophone Societies », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, June 19, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/16fl5
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