This is an OLD post that has been hanging around in the DRAFT folder for the last several years. And, in the interim, I have turned up several other ‘turns’ along the way but stopped trying to keep track of them. This might, though, be an opportunity staring me in the face: follow each turn, write about it, try to unwrap it a little, if only for myself.

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So, here I sit absolutely confounded that I did not ‘see’ this particular ‘turn’ staring me in the face, given the number of times that I referenced it in conference papers.

• Pictorial turn – the opening chapter of WJT Mitchell’s 1994 book, Picture Theory.

Mitchell opens the chapter citing Richard Rorty’s characterization of the trend in philosophy over time as comprised of “a series of ‘turns’ in which ‘a new set of problems emerges and the old ones begin to fade away'” (11). This is “the final stage in Rorty’s history of philosophy,” that is, the linguistic turn.