Witold Gombrowicz's Iconoclasm from a Visual Studies Perspective 1

The present article seeks, in general, to reassess the literary output of Polish Modernism by introducing and applying some concepts and ideas from the field of visual studies. One of the main ideas underlying the emerging domain of visual studies is the notion of a “pictorial” or “visual turn”, i.e. a shift from a literary toward a visual paradigm in cultural relations and hierarchies. Visual studies is, however, not only concerned with the growing deployment of visualization at every level of contemporary culture and society, but also focuses on what might be called the “rhetoric” of visual experience and representation throughout the history of Western culture.