visualism

is the conversion of things, thoughts or ideas into visual objects, such as film or charts.

One of Chow's major critiques of modernity relies on the idea of visualism. Visualism is the conversion of things, thoughts or ideas into visual objects, such as film or charts. Chow builds her ideas from the scholarly discourse on Visuality. She relies on two theorist concepts of visuality: Foucault's concept that visual images, such as film, maps or charts, are tools of biopower as well as Heidegger critique that in modern culture everything 'becomes a picture'.[9]' (wiki)

is the tendency in anthropology to rely on maps, charts, quantification and diagrammatic representation to visualize a culture as a requisite for understanding it.

a deeply ingrained ideological tendency in anthropology, which relies for its scientific, 'observational' objectivity on the use of maps, charts, tables, etc. The recommendations for such visual aids 'rest on a corpuscular, atomic theory of knowledge nd information. Such a theory in turn encourages quantification and diagrammatic representation so that the ability to 'visualize' a culture or society almost becomes synonymous for understanding it. I shall call this tendency visualism' . . . visualism 'may take different directions toward the mathematical-geometric or toward the pictorial-aesthetic' (Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object)

visualism, n.All

visualism