The field of
looking
The medium in which we see the image
The screen of a movie
Television
Cell phone
Computer
Billboard
Newspaper / magazine
The architectural, cultural,
national and institution are important
Looking is rarely preformed in
total isolation from activities of listening and feeling
Spectatorship – the broader
context in which looking in enacted in an interactive, multimodal, and
relational field
Looking practices in the field of
the gaze
A gaze – a look (n)
A gaze – the act of looking (v)
Carries connotations of
affections, awe, wonder, fascination
Subject of
Modernity
Descartes – sciences and mathematics to
establish rationality of nature
Embodied sensory perception and
empirical observation were not accurate means of knowing the world
Cartesian subject – constituted
in part through an activity of thinking that involves spectatorship
Rational for justifying political dominance
of democracies
Modernity – liberal human subject as
self-knowing, unified and autonomous
Endowed with consciousness and as
sense of itself as authentic and unique and as an autonomous source of action
Modernity – refer to the
historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the
enlightenment and the rise of industrial society, and scientific rationalism,
the idea of controlling nature through technology
Enlightenment – 18th
century philosophical movement
Eurocentric belief –the European
practices and beliefs were objectively better than the cultural practices and
ways of knowing and living in the world that had been in place prior
Modernism – refers to a group of
styles and movements in art, architecture, literature, and culture dating
1880’s through mid to late 1900s
Being modern – the rejection of
tradition and embrace through reason
Rationality of moral and social betterment
through scientific progress
Industrial capitalism put modernity to its
height
Karl Marx
Criticized industrial capitalism
for the systems economic and physical exploitation and social alienation of
workers – against the labor system instituted under capitalism and not
concerned with the overall consequences of industrial development
Criticized the idea that human
beings are self – determining individuals
Emphasized that we are
collectively subject to and produced as human subjects by the forces of labor
and the capital
Latour
We never have been truly modern
Self knowing humans that are
enlightened never existed
We have inherited a world of
hybrids
Humans and technology
Modern binaries
Sigmund Freud
Founder of psychoanalysis
Wrote about the subject as an
entity governed by the unconscious, the force of which are held in check by our
consciousness
We are not aware of the urges and
desires that motivate us
We repress emotions, desires,
taboo feelings and anxieties unconsciously in order to keep them in check
Michel Foucault
Human subject is constituted in modernity
through liberal human ideals but through the discourses of institutional life
of the period
The subject as an entity produced
within and through the discourses and intuitional practices of the
enlightenment
In comment of Freud – repression
does not result in leaving things unsaid – repression is for activities,
speech, meanings, sexualities
Psychoanalysis is an
institutional discourse through which the human subject is constituted and
through which the human subject comes to apprehend itself
Discourse – is not just spoken
language but the broader variety of institutions and practices in which meaning
is produced
Power system beliefs – understood
and spoken about in a given society
How things are understood and
spoken about in a specific society
Describe passage of writing or
speech, talking about something
Discourse – a body of knowledge
that both defines and limits what can be said about something
Discourses of law, medicine,
criminality, religion, sexuality, technology, and so forth – broad social
domains that define particular forms of knowledge and change from any given
time period and social context
Ex. Madness and how it has
changed
Jacque Lacan
Psychoanalyst who developed some of Freud’s
ideas
Liberal human subject never
really existed as such
The human subject becomes aware
of itself and thus emerges as such not as birth but during a period of
self-awareness and apparent autonomy that typically begins sometime between the
ages of six and eighteen months – the mirror phase – the infant gains some
motor skills but mistakenly sees itself as independent
Spectator’s Gaze
The individual who looks
Spectatorship the practice of
looking
Gaze constituted through a
relationship between the subject who looks and other people, institutions,
places and objects in the world
Terms and methods through to
consider the looking practices
The roles of the unconscious and
desire in viewing
The role of looking in the
formation of the human subject as such
The ways that looking is always a
relational activity and not simply a mental activity engaged by someone who
forms internal and mental representations
Theories of address – an image or
visual text invites certain responses from a particular category of a viewer ex
male or female
Production of the human subject
in historical and cultural context
Must consider the relationships
of looking
Attention to unconscious
processes as they influence looking practices
Unconscious thoughts and feelings
with clarity and certainty
Viewing is a multimodal activity
– interpellation
The viewer comes to recognize
himself or herself as among the class or group of subjects for whom the images
message seems to be intended
Less about creating a relationship
between the viewer and image along that about the viewer and production of
meaning – recognition of ones self in a world of meaning
Discourse and Power
Classification through the use of
the gaze
Photography and the camera
Used for both scientific professions and the
regulation of social behaviors through the state
Ex prisoners
Relation of images and power
Panoptic – how we participate in
practices of self-regulation in response to systems of surveillance – whether
they are in place or assumed to be in place
Power/knowledge – the display of
punishment *Foucault so people participate in self regulating behavior,
participate in norms. The words of specific people being taken over others
because of the relation of power ex. The police over the suspect
Bio-power – in the modern
political state are exercised indirectly on and through the body – they invest
it, mark it, train it, torture it, emit signs etc. Affects the standards people
establish
The gaze and the
other
Rewarding more power to the
person doing the looking than the object of the look
The binary oppositions
Overlap but are not mutually
exclusive
All depends on cultural meaning
Exoticism in viewing
Fetishes Orientals
The female body and the gaze
The change of it over time
The Gaze and
Psychoanalysis
Film text and the understanding the balance
of interacting with one another
Specific viewers respond to films
The spectator is understood to be
shaped, in a relationship of the gaze, within a network that includes film and
institutional text
The ideal family being portrayed
and the viewers focus and interaction with these people
The mirror phase and ideal
relationships with people
The change of the
gaze
Progression of society changes
the gaze and interactions of the gaze
The sexual relationships
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