»The book succeeds in being accessible without sacrificing scholarly rigor. The high-powered nature of the discourse together with the very detailed treatment of the subject matter means that this is no popularizing book, but at the same time its didactic precision informs while opening a dialogue across disciplines (of which the book spans many). Any work that addresses such a wide range of topics is bound to treat some of them more cursorily than others: there is more to read about Peirce’s theory of signs, for instance, than about Daoist aesthetics even though the latter appears more important to her concluding argument. That said, the book has a tightly wound internal logic, and its primary effect is to remind readers that news cycles and talking points severely distort every culture’s position in public debates about the status and regulation of images.«
Spencer Hawkins, Society Vol. 59.2022, 208