«Visuality» in the system of scientific knowledge: Approaches to definitional transcription (cultural aspect)

Contemporary research in cultural studies demonstrates the need to identify areas of scientific knowledge encompassed in the study of the definition of "visuality." This paper examines "visuality" as a phenomenon of sociocultural space. Particular attention is paid to approaches that allow us to find a starting point in the development of this phenomenon. Equally important is an understanding of the nature of "visuality" derivatives, the emergence of which is driven by changes in the narrative paradigm in the expanding flow of information. Despite the "stability" of the term "visuality," there is a certain vagueness of definition, which is associated with the relatively recent inclusion of the term in cultural studies (late 20th century), the dispersal of visuality studies across various fields of knowledge, and, accordingly, the terminological diversity, where there is both a normalizing terminological link through the use of the word "visuality" (visual communication, visual text, visual literacy, visual artifact, etc.), and terminologically unrelated conceptual and structural content (fine art, photography and cinema, entertainment, representativeness, etc.), united into a single field of research by the definition of "visual turn," where the meaning-forming factor (vision) is present, but has chronological limitations. The emergence of the term "visual turn" is associated with the stage of the scientific and technological revolution and the development of information and communication technologies, which defines the framework of "visual culture" of the mid. 19th–20th centuries. Visuality as a process of seeing and creatively processing what has been seen for transmission in the historical and cultural space is considered from the standpoint of expanding the temporal field of "visuality", the areas of scientific research included in the study of visual content, the role of cultural studies in "collecting" various approaches for a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of "visuality".