A visual text of the Russian-Ukrainian war: gender optics

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of visualising war as a socio-historical event in the space of virtual reality. In particular, the key visual modes of images representation in the visual text of war are recorded, using the example of a social network with the addition of gender optics to the analysis. A specific methodology for analysing a visual text in a social network is proposed and tested. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is a qualitative methodology based on the theoretical provisions of semiotic, structural, and gender approaches to text analysis. The method of traditional document analysis was used to collect empirical material. Based on the idea of myth and mythologisation of social space by R. Barth and the code of cognition by R. Eco, we have recorded the peculiarities of the visual text of the war: historical continuity, hybridity of meanings (mixing of incompatible meanings) and the emotional feature of the text as visually traumatic. The structural approach made it possible to identify contexts, genre diversity of visual images, and demonstrate the construction of chronological reproduction of events. The addition of gender optics has recorded trends towards a shift in the gender order towards mosaicism and situationality. Three visual modes of images representing the key participants in the ongoing war have been recorded. These are the image of a warrior, the Defender(he or she) — “Cyborg”, the image of citizens (civilians) — “Ukrainian Madonna”, and the image of the enemy — “chmonia”. The generalising visual characteristics of the first two images at the level of cultural codes representation include: hybridity, historical continuity, value saturation, visually traumatic experience, the idea of mobility, and emotional colouring. The third image is visually and meaningfully discordant with the other two.