----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Lacan proposes with his concept of "scotoma" that the subject in the split
of the eye and the gaze takes interest in the “lure” of a privileged object
or the “objet a” which emerges from some primal traumatic separation or
some self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real (Seminar XI,
83). This “objet a” is located in the form of the eye-globe or eye-ball
which cannot see itself seeing itself, but only focusing on what lies in
front of it (in terms of perspective) without regarding what happens out
there, reminding me of Tim Murray's comment on the "side vision" or the
"peripheral vision" which detects objects outside the direct line of
vision.
(
http://www.google.co.kr/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwinesurprises.com%2Feye%2Feye-diagram-blind-spot.html&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=gwEK2G6CLSHLeM&tbnh=198&tbnw=254&zoom=1&docid=HiUTaYpVITGnKM&ei=G4pRUse_LKTxiAf-lICABg&ved=0CAIQsCU)
Each eye has become a self-contained enclosure with the "tunnel vision"
after having lost the peripheral vision, as the figure of Abraham Bosse's
Les perspecteurs (1648) tells us. (
http://www.artnet.de/magazine/die-diktatur-der-fotografie-teil-ix/images/7/)
If the eye becomes empty gaze by being picked out of its socket and thrown
around--thereby becoming what Zizek calls "kino-eye" or "an organ without a
body," and looks into the unconscious Real, then there occurs the inverted
use of perspective in the structure of anamorphosis. Lacan's anarmorphic
perspective of "a hole of the pupil behind which is situated the gaze" has
been exemplified by the invention of the cinematographic technique of
capturing a widescreen picture. Through this standard 35 mm film taken with
the "anamorphic lens," the picture is optically squeezed in the horizontal
dimension to cover the entire film frame, resulting in a better picture
quality. This anamorphic lens (
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Scope_Aperture.jpg)
represents the "gaze," through which our position as the lookers-on when we
watch the movie becomes self-reflective, and we can participate as our eyes
become the eye-globe of the “kino-eye." The deliberate geometric distortion
of the anamorphic lens will leave us open to gaze into the stain.
I am curious to know how Deleuze and others have reappropriated this
foundational thinking of gaze as well as how Deleuze's concept of the
screen of the cinema which has moved from a movement-image to a time-image
creates the surface of the database of information, leading us to new media
and animation. I am particularly intrigued by the dynamic
liminal "in-betweenness" in which the eye-globe transgresses,
translated, and transforms itself into the medium of the Globe.
--
Youngmin Kim, Ph. D. in English
Professor of English, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea
President (2012-3), ELLAK
Chair, 2013 International Conference Committee of ELLAK (English Langauge &
Literature Association of Korea)
Editor-in-Chief, JELL (Journal of English Language and Literature), an
Outstanding Journal Endowed by the National Research Foundation and the
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
