Although we are now accustomed to watching history unfold live on the air, the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the first instances when history was produced on television. Inspired by the Wall and its powerful resonances, Sunil Manghani’s breakthrough study presents the new critical concept of “image critique,” a method of critiquing images while simultaneously using them as a means to engage with contemporary culture. Manghani examines current debates surrounding visual culture, ranging from such topics as Francis Fukuyama’s end of history thesis to metapictures and East German film. The resulting volume is an exhilarating interweaving of history, politics, and visual culture.   “Sunil Manghani’s Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall is the best sort of scholarly book—an intellectually grounded and theoretically adventurous critical performance. Through his concept of image critique, Manghani makes a virtue out of the many attributes of images that bedevil visual cultural studies, rightly insisting that rather than domesticating images for the tyranny of the word, scholars must do visual studies from the ground of images, in the process reconceptualizing theory and criticism. Manghani adeptly anchors his insights in close engagements with images, most notably images from the event of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  If heeded, Manghani’s book will change the trajectory of visual cultural studies by making critique a performance with force in the world.”—Kevin  DeLuca, University of Georgia               “Sunil Manghani’s Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall is the best sort of scholarly book—an intellectually grounded and theoretically adventurous critical performance. Through his concept of image critique, Manghani makes a virtue out of the many attributes of images that bedevil visual cultural studies, rightly insisting that rather than domesticating images for the tyranny of the word, scholars must do visual studies from the ground of images, in the process reconceptualizing theory and criticism. Manghani adeptly anchors his insights in close engagements with images, most notably images from the event of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  If heeded, Manghani’s book will change the trajectory of visual cultural studies by making critique a performance with force in the world.” -- Kevin DeLuca, University of Georgia Sunil Manghani is lecturer in film and television at York St John University College, United Kingdom. He is coeditor of The Image Reader .     Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall By Sunil Manghani Intellect Ltd Copyright © 2008 Sunil Manghani All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-84150-190-1 Contents List of Illustrations, The Fall of the Berlin Wall (... an Imaginary), Before Words ..., Chapter 1: On the Sight of the Berlin Wall, Chapter 2: The Problem of Visual Culture, Chapter 3: The End of History?, Chapter 4: Living without an Alternative, Chapter 5: Public Screening: Critical Pictures of the Wall, Afterword: Ecologies of Images, Topologies of Critique, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 On the Sight of the Berlin Wall This book, above all else, is concerned with the role of images in critical thought, but takes as its focus images of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What I take to be revealing and indeed challenging about the Berlin Wall as a case study is its relationship to critical engagement, the way in which it situates questions of history, politics, human action and freedom, as well as the media, or more broadly visual culture. However, rather than simply develop and apply theory to this 'object' or case study, the intention is that both theoretical ideation and a thematic interest of the Berlin Wall interlace, and in the interstice between the two a critical perspective can emerge. Thus, to make clear from the outset, I do not offer here a straightforward hermeneutic or historical analysis of visual representations of the Wall. I am not concerned with working through specific images or sets of images of the Wall, nor overly concerned with what others have said about them; though inevitably many such materials are incorporated in one form or another into the discussions which follow. My primary interest is to present an idea of what I term 'image critique': a double procedure of both a critique of images and their critical engagement. The aim, then, is to consider how images, and more specifically how a whole way of thinking with/through images, might bear upon the way we think critically about socio-political events and representations. In broad terms, I hope to remain faithful to traditions of emancipatory critique (informed as they are by the so-called grand theories of both Marxism and psychoanalysis), but more specifically, I engage with the contemporary issues and dilemmas that visual culture and image studies have helped bring to attention. My approach can be understood as being thematic, pondering