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Synopsis
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 Browse Sample Pages
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Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision by D M Levin £17.05

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews   4 of 5 people found the following review helpful: Excellent survey, stylistically conservative, 28 Sep 1997 By A Customer This review is from: Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Centennial Book) (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.  Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this) › See all customer reviews...		Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews