Looking and Seeing

To those of us who are blind or have low vision, seeing and visuality are no less important than they are to those of us who are sighted, because the everyday world is so strongly organized around visual and spatial cues that take seeing for granted (9).


It is interesting to me that the first reference in Sturken and Cartwright's "Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture" should be to one being blind or visually impaired. It seems incongruous in a book about visual imagery as it really doesn't seem to be offering alternatives to sensory vision and the nature of the book must assume sightedness. Nonetheless, the reference hits close to home as I am currently exasperated with my own ability to look and see. Being a woman "of a certain age," I have been lucky to put off presbyopia for a relatively long time but the visual impairment of advanced age has recently struck with a mighty vengeance. Having worn corrective lenses for many decades of slight near-sightedness, I am not unused to have periods where I cannot see clearly, waking up in the morning, the time before I bother to put in my contacts, choosing to wear glasses instead for whatever purpose. But now, with this onset of presbyopia, I have to consider the values inherent in my choice of visual correction. I recently got a new lens prescription that allows me to see from the tips of my fingers on an outstretched arm through to the horizon, to the crisp edges of a night moon and the sparkly shimmer of the stars with an acuity that I have not enjoyed for years. But oh, what I am giving up on the near side! I cannot see my computer screen or discern the details of my dinner (or read a book or menu) without pulling out a pair of reading glasses. And if they are not close at hand, the only possible aid would be an incandescence suitable for interrogating a suspected terrorist! So looking and seeing are precious commodities, certainly not taken for granted. But I digress. I often digress. But how does visual impairment relate to looking and seeing? Do the authors imply that the sighted suffer a similar impairment between simply looking and not really seeing? Is the acuity of the lens the arbiter of the interpretant?

Both chapters 1 and 2 bring to my mind the theories of Michel Foucault. The authors do mention Foucault in the context of visual imagery in a few places, but I see shadows of Foucault throughout. When Sturken and Cartwright discuss semiotics and the relationship between the sign and the interpretant to construct meaning, or that the signifier and the signified construct the sign, is this relative to Foucault's admonition to "abolish the sovereignty of the signifier?" The meaning of this phrase has always eluded me, so I am wondering if it is relative to this visual context. These chapters also compel me to consider Kenneth Burke's terministic screens, but more in the context of how every choice we make is at the same time both a selection and a deflection. It is interesting to consider the choices the authors make in the selection of images to illustrate their text. In the selection of those images, what has been excluded, or deflected? To me, photographic images are more powerful than paintings or drawings, especially realism. I really don't have an interest in realistic images outside of photography. I like to dwell in the abstraction, the interpretation or the exaggeration of art in order to make it meaningful. But I don't know if I can articulate at this time, why a realistic photographic image is more powerful to me.

Chapter 2, "Viewers Make Meaning," parallels Jenny Edbauer's work: "Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies" (Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Fall 2005). Edbuaer, like Sturken and Cartwright, discusses how meaning evolves with public distribution, how ownership of the interpretation of a work is transferred from the producer to the consumer, and how the work and its meaning can be transformed along the way, or even used in opposition to its original intent. I am reminded that this also happens in music. The intent of the author or the author's ownership of music may be corrupted by its ultimate use, at least in the eyes (or ears) of the author. During the 2008 presidential campaign, John Mellencamp, an ardent Democrat, requested that the McCain camp stop using his songs. These same tunes had previously been used to support John Edwards (http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/02/04/mellencamp-asks-mccain-to-stop-using-tunes/). This is in the same vein as Verizon's intrusion into Austin, Texas's "Keep Austin Weird" campaign, by including themselves among the bumper sticker and slogan campaign intended to preserve small, independent businesses (Edbauer).