Abstract

The article focuses on the nexus between visual culture and identity formation by implementing a Lacanian social theory into three paintings by Tintoretto, Velazquez and Dali respectively. During the last decade the importance of everyday life has gradually become a junction between social sciences, ranging from sociology to international relations, visual culture and anthropology. Along with discerning the limits of structural determinations on identity, new approaches on the constraints and powers of individual choices have increasingly started to be welcomed by social theory. Due to that, the very basics of everyday life, such as reality and identity have begun to be the new objects of analyses. However, the importance of visuality, as to its impacts on the structuration of identity is yet to be understood as an ordinary component of everyday life. Hence the aim of this paper is to set forth an introductory argument for scrutinizing the impact of visual culture on the sources of identity and its wider ties relating to the changing patterns of socialization and social change through an interdisciplinary perspective. The critical nuance of this introductory argument is that visual culture has a deep and indirect impact on the sources of identity and socialization process, rather than having a direct impact on identity.