Postcards from a journey? Visual images in a reading of Mieke Bal

Beginning with the recently published Polish translation of Mieke Bal's "short guide", Wandering Concepts in the Humanities, the article presents her idea of "reading" images, sketching problematic elements and aiming at a critical discussion of the model of analysis offered by Bal. The author claims that Bal's theoretical declarations-originating in narratology and the semiotics stress too strongly the domination of the researcher over the object of her study, suggesting a radical isolation of the viewer from an interpreted object. Meanwhile in Bal's analytic practice both the object as well as the concepts gain the status of active elements of the process of "dissemination of meaning".