In attempting to show how visual epistemology is a crucial terrain of political struggle, this article argues that the popular image of the social pyramid renders the idea of a totalizing structure epistemologically available in a mediasphere devoid of such images. The pyramid evokes how social relations are organized and poses the question of their reorganization as a structure–agency problem. Yet, at the same time, the pyramid critically evokes a totalizing whole, it obscures an abstract form of domination specific to capitalist social life by locating the source of domination in hierarchical power relations as such. The article explores this double nature through an investigation of historical and contemporary images of social pyramids. Attempts by social movement actors to update the pyramid so that it more accurately reflects social reality, reveal the potential and the limitations of a visual epistemology for anticapitalist praxis in the present.

中文翻译：

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使垂直水平：描绘社会统治

在试图展示视觉认识论如何成为政治斗争的关键领域时，本文认为社会金字塔的流行形象呈现了在缺乏此类形象的媒体领域中认识论上可用的总体结构的想法。金字塔唤起了社会关系的组织方式，并将其重组问题作为结构-代理问题提出。然而，与此同时，金字塔批判性地唤起了一个整体，它通过在等级权力关系中定位统治的来源，掩盖了资本主义社会生活特有的抽象统治形式。本文通过对社会金字塔的历史和当代形象的调查来探索这种双重性质。社会运动参与者尝试更新金字塔，使其更准确地反映社会现实，