What Are We Looking At: Paradoxes of the Visual (taught in English)

In Western cultures, the visual sense has been epistemologically privileged, demonstrated by the words “theory” and “evidence,” which derive from the Greek and Latin words for “seeing,” respectively. But conversely, the optical can also stand for superficiality and deceptive appearances. In this discussion-based seminar we will use this ambiguity as a cue to critically interrogate the idea that "to see is to know". Students will explore how key examples from literature, philosophy, painting, photography, and film frequently invoke this notion, but only to unsettle it upon closer inspection. Special attention will be paid to moments of blindness, hallucination, and disfiguration in works by Plato, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Sigmund Freud, Toni Morrison, and others.