Seeing Things: Explorations in Vision, Knowledge and Power
An international & Multi-disciplinary Conference
May 2-4, 2003: The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
What are the implications of our investments in "...representational
systems as apparatuses of power"? [Craig Owens]
Vision has long been the privilieged mode of observation in the West.
While other cultures have developed more sensory-integrated ways of
experiencing and describing the world, western cultures have tneded to
follow the doctrine of "seeing is believing". Recent critical
scholarship ha challenged the infallibility of vision and theorized it
as active, unstable and inseparable from the identity and location of
the seer/viewer. Similarly, theories of the gaze have opened p dialogue
around vision, power and subjectivity. In cultures where seeing is
equated with knowing or knowledge, how has vision and teh organization
of vision informed political, social and cultural ideals, beliefs and
structures? Vision as the basis of scientific observation, social
surveillance and corporeal regulation has historically been embedded
within colonial, patriarchal and heterosexist discourses and
constitutive of normative ideals of subjects and citizens. Meanwhile,
theories of identity often privilege vision as the primary sense through
which subjectivity is achieved and bodies differentiated.
THE CENTRE FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES AND FEMINIST RESEARCH and the DEPARTMENT
OF VISUAL ARTS welcome contirbutions, across disciplines, which explore,
challenge and re-define these and other aspects of the political,
social, historical, legal and cultural implications of vision. Topics
may include, but are not limited to: vision and racial classification;
vision and sexual desire; the limits of the visual as the erotic or
pornographic; visual consumption and identity; theories of the visual;
vision and other senses; vision as a mode of scientific observation;
writing vision; the role of vision in architectural surveillance; vision
and the body; visual methods of corporeal regulation; the gendering of
vision; visual identity and legal discourse, etc.
We welcome the submission of proposals for panel sessions or papers (20
minutes). We also encourage proposals for performance art or other
performative aspects of this topic.
PLEASE SEND A 1 PAGE ABSTRACT, PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION AND CONTACT
DETAILS TO: Alison Lee, Director, Centre for Women's Studies and
Feminist Research, The University of Western Ontario, University
College, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7 or WITHIN THE BODY OF AN E-MAIL
to alee@uwo.ca
Deadline for Submissions: MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2003.
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Full Information at
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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