| CRARY ARGUES that what principally
matters regarding vision is not its biological or physiological truth but
the degree to which and ways that vision is located in history and historical
processes. Of central importance is the relation between vision and the
formation of the modern human subject. Crary links vision and visuality
to the changing perceptions of human subjectivity and identity. He would
seem to agree with Nelson Goodman's argument that the advent of photography
was one technological development that altered the entire episteme for
viewing art and images. It commensurately altered human consciousness.
Like Nelson Goodman (The Languages of Art), Crary finds that the
observer is changed by such developments, becoming "the site of certain
practices, techniques, institutions, and procedures of subjectification"
(5). Crary looks at the historical development of certain optical devices
like the camera obscura and the stereoscope not just as instruments of
visuality, but as larger rationalizations for reshaping the human faculty
of sight. These instrumentsóon the face of it mundane, domestic itemsóreorient
the organization of vision and positive observation in terms of their mechanical
operation, effectively changing the visual perceptions of their human operators.
This book provides a thought-provoking response to Goodman's basic question
of how photography changed the way that we view art and the world that
surrounds it. (Brent Whitmore.) |