Review article
“Ocularcentrism” or the Privilege of Sight in Western Culture. The Analysis of the Concept in Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Thought
Katarina Rukavina
; Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
The concept of ‘ocularcentrism’ is being considered from the fact that cognition in the western civilisation is determined by visual paradigm. Classical Greece thought the eyesight to be the noblest of the senses. The development of the western philosophy also shows its dependence on visual metaphors (shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave, Augustin’s glorification of divinely light, Descartes’ ideas accessible to the mental view, the belief of the Enlightenment in the data provided by our senses, terms like ‘speculation’, ‘observation’, ‘reflection’, ‘theory’ or ‘enlightenment’). Even though the western thought gives priority to the eyesight over other senses, ocularcentrism is always followed by its criticism. In this paper we are trying to show that in a given period such mutual dispute and dependence of the ocularcentric and anti-ocularcentric discourse forms the concept of real. The question arises as to whether the visual culture of modernity is yet another concept of vision?
Keywords
ocularcentrism; anti-ocularcentrism; scopic regime; visual culture
Hrčak ID:
100688
URI
Publication date:
26.2.2013.
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