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"The scholarship displayed in this book is dazzling. . . . [Its publication] is an extremely important intellectual event."--Rosalind Krauss, Founding Editor, "October
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Long considered 'the noblest of the senses', vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes' writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of 'scopic regimes'. Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, "Downcast Eyes" will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians.
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Even a rapid glance at the language we commonly use will demonstrate the ubiquity of visual metaphors. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Even a rapid glance at the language we commonly use will demonstrate the ubiquity of visual metaphors. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Martin Jay provides us with an encyclopedic survey of the role of vision in western thought, particularly France. Jay, who is strangely not dissimilar to Greil Marcus in this respect, has the knack for picking out lesser known texts and facts and integrating them into his analysis. If youre a foucault scholar, it's worth it just for the account of Roussel's role in Foucault's epistemic development. That is just one example. It is chock full of these fascinating details.
Alas, it remains a literature review with an interesting focus. If this were a lecture, I'd bring a tape recorder, knowing that I'd collapse into slumber on the one hand while being aware that what was being said was critical to my growth as an intellectual. Unlike Marcus, who works creatively with obscure texts, Jay suffers from an academic conservatism that ends up reading like a well-done second chapter to a conventional dissertation. If that is your need or if you like that sort of thing, by all means go buy it. Go buy it anyway, it is indispensable as a survey but read it with a triple espresso at hand.
Alas, it remains a literature review with an interesting focus. If this were a lecture, I'd bring a tape recorder, knowing that I'd collapse into slumber on the one hand while being aware that what was being said was critical to my growth as an intellectual. Unlike Marcus, who works creatively with obscure texts, Jay suffers from an academic conservatism that ends up reading like a well-done second chapter to a conventional dissertation. If that is your need or if you like that sort of thing, by all means go buy it. Go buy it anyway, it is indispensable as a survey but read it with a triple espresso at hand.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Excellent survey, stylistically conservative
27 Sep 1997
Format:Hardcover
Martin Jay provides us with an encyclopedic survey of the role of vision in western thought, particularly France. Jay, who is strangely not dissimilar to Greil Marcus in this respect, has the knack for picking out lesser known texts and facts and integrating them into his analysis. If youre a foucault scholar, it's worth it just for the account of Roussel's role in Foucault's epistemic development. That is just one example. It is chock full of these fascinating details.
Alas, it remains a literature review with an interesting focus. If this were a lecture, I'd bring a tape recorder, knowing that I'd collapse into slumber on the one hand while being aware that what was being said was critical to my growth as an intellectual. Unlike Marcus, who works creatively with obscure texts, Jay suffers from an academic conservatism that ends up reading like a well-done second chapter to a conventional dissertation. If that is your need or if you like that sort of thing, by all means go buy it. Go buy it anyway, it is indispensable as a survey but read it with a triple espresso at hand.
Alas, it remains a literature review with an interesting focus. If this were a lecture, I'd bring a tape recorder, knowing that I'd collapse into slumber on the one hand while being aware that what was being said was critical to my growth as an intellectual. Unlike Marcus, who works creatively with obscure texts, Jay suffers from an academic conservatism that ends up reading like a well-done second chapter to a conventional dissertation. If that is your need or if you like that sort of thing, by all means go buy it. Go buy it anyway, it is indispensable as a survey but read it with a triple espresso at hand.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Ivan Illich likes it
11 May 2005
Format:Hardcover
Says Ivan Illich in a marvelous paper - Guarding the Eye in the Age of Show - available from the Pudel site in Bremen:
"Historians of scopic regimes are people who concentrate their attention on the ethology of sense
activities in different cultures and epochs. If I had to choose a name for their discipline, I would call
it "historical opsis" to distinguish it from the history of optics. It is this focus on the image that
interests me here."
And here, he offers this footnote:
"I know of no better introduction to this field than Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of
Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). The main
theme of the book is the French critique of ocularcentrisme, from Bergson, Bataille, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty
to Lacan, Foucault, Barth, Derrida and Irigaray. However, the three introductory chapters to the body of the
book, which deal with the gaze from Plato to Descartes, and the large bibliography - usually critically
evaluated in the footnotes which refer to English and German twentieth-century authors - make this volume
a reference tool of a new kind."
"Historians of scopic regimes are people who concentrate their attention on the ethology of sense
activities in different cultures and epochs. If I had to choose a name for their discipline, I would call
it "historical opsis" to distinguish it from the history of optics. It is this focus on the image that
interests me here."
And here, he offers this footnote:
"I know of no better introduction to this field than Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of
Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). The main
theme of the book is the French critique of ocularcentrisme, from Bergson, Bataille, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty
to Lacan, Foucault, Barth, Derrida and Irigaray. However, the three introductory chapters to the body of the
book, which deal with the gaze from Plato to Descartes, and the large bibliography - usually critically
evaluated in the footnotes which refer to English and German twentieth-century authors - make this volume
a reference tool of a new kind."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Balloon ride over tricky terrain
8 Jun 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
For those who have struggled to grasp the big picture of French
philosophy, historian Martin Jay has created a solution. His book,
eschewing the complex textual strategies of the French thinkers
he discusses, offers up a clear narrative for his readers centered
around Western philosophy's seminal concept: vision.
Not only is this book entertaining, funny, and sharply focused, but
it is also a "Guide to the Perplexed" when it comes to the arcane
world of French theory. Highly recommended not only for its
intellectual rigor, but also for its entertainment value. Thank
you Dr. Jay!
philosophy, historian Martin Jay has created a solution. His book,
eschewing the complex textual strategies of the French thinkers
he discusses, offers up a clear narrative for his readers centered
around Western philosophy's seminal concept: vision.
Not only is this book entertaining, funny, and sharply focused, but
it is also a "Guide to the Perplexed" when it comes to the arcane
world of French theory. Highly recommended not only for its
intellectual rigor, but also for its entertainment value. Thank
you Dr. Jay!
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