Difference & Desire 

Covenant

Syllabus

Reading List

Notes

Winter 2001

Faculty and Staff

Links

 

Week 1 - April 6, 2001

 

Semiotics

 

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure

 

Sign = signifier + signified

 

-no fixed relationship between these two elements; relationship is arbitrary and conventional

 

-signs have meaning within a system

 

 

Iconic              -mimetic                                   painting of Christ on the Cross

 

Indexical         -physical connection                 relic of the True Cross

 

Symbolic         -not mimetic                             +

 

 

Charles Peirce (1839-1914), American philosopher

 

3 types of signs

 

iconic – mimetic, looks like what it represents – painting of a cross

 

symbolic – abstract, invokes idea without looking like it + or “cross”

 

indexical – trace of presence – relic (e.g. piece of wood representing the cross)

 

(photography is both iconic and indexical)

 

 

Visualizing the Other

 

 

Foucault identifies a change in the way the West approached knowledge. In The Order of Things, he notes that a shift occurs in the 17th century from an approach that categorizes the world according to similarities to an approach that is based on difference.

 

 

Internal Other

 

                -the poor

                                -peasant

                                -beggar

                -the Jew

                -woman

                -criminal

                -sick

 

External Other

                -non-Christian

                -dark skinned

                -unlettered

                -no sense of government

                                -unclothed

                                -incestous

 

 

               

The Body of the Other

 

                -anthropometry

 

                -anthropology

               

 

The Essence of the Visible

 

 

 

Imaging Technologies

 

 

 

Development of Perspective Systems

 

Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, La due regole della prospettiva practica (Rome, 1583), the first rule.

 

 

It still works without single point perspective

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Marriage, 1434, oil on panel, National Gallery at London.

 

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Marriage (detail), 1434, oil on panel, National Gallery at London.

 

 

 

The Mathematics of perspective

Albert Durer, Drawing Machine, 1525. Woodcut illusion from The Teaching of Measurements

 

Albert Durer, Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent Woman,1525. Woodcut illustration from The Teaching of Measurements.

 

 

The Seeing Camera

 

Comparison of eye and camera obscura. Early eighteenth century.

 

 

 

Time and the Body

 

Eadweard Muybridge: Nude Descending Stairs, 1887

 

 

 

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, motion study, photograph, 1878.

 

Analyzing the Body

 

John Lamprey, Anthropometric Study, c. 1870.

 

John Lamprey, Front and Profile Views of a Malayan Male, c. 1868-9.

 

 

Francis Galton, Specimens of Composite Portraiture, from Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, 1883.

 

 

Francis Galton, the composite apparatus, 1883.

 

Francis Galton, The Jewish Type, 1883.

 

 

The Truth of Science

 

Harold Edgerton, Gussie Moran, 1949.

 

Harold Edgerton, Shooting the Apple, 1964.

 

 

The Truth of History

 

Auschwitz

 

Art as a Subversive Strategy

 

Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,1995.

 

Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,1995.

 

Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Kitchen Table Series), 1990