Skip to main content

ETHNOS_APP

Home • Search • Journals • List 0

From A View On The World To A Point Of View In It

Rethinking Sight, Space and the Colonial Subject

Bibliographic Data

ID4546094
AuthorsJessica Dubow (0000-0003-0429-0175, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume2
Issue1
Pages87-102
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInterventions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/136980100360814
OpenAlexW2077846241
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited8

This essay seeks to revise the claims of recent postcolonial critique by replacing analyses of a power-charged colonial gaze with an approach that emphasizes the lived and affective aspects of visual experience under colonial conditions. The key argument here is how the creation of a field of vision represents the colonial subject's anxious desire for reciprocal engagement in a foreign space. Attendant on this is the suggestion that that strand of postcolonial critique which lays stress on the discursive determinations of the colonizing subject and on the formal structures of a colonial scopic regime betrays a dependence on a reductively spectatorial notion of theory. Against this reduction I suggest that a phenomenologically grounded account of colonial vision contains the potential for appreciating the lived and embodied desires of the colonizing subject and offers an alternative to the strictures of ideological critique that still largely regulate our attention. In looking towards a more dialogic conception of colonial sight and space, I offer the thematic hook of the colonial picturesque. It is, I argue, an aesthetic which does not merely mimetically duplicate a colonial view on the level of representational content. Rather, its internal and formal dynamics offer a stratagem for forging a relation between subject and object, self and space, and so enables the colony to be brought into phenomenal being

Aesthetics · Colonialism · Epistemology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Law · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature · Visual Culture and Art Theory

  • ‘A Desire of Preserving the Remembrance’

    Open Access•John Mcaleer•Visual Culture in Britain•2025

  • Aestheticising empire

    Percy Smith•Studies in Travel Writing•2019

  • The Italian colonial cinema

    Open Access•Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Ruth Ben‐ghiat•Modern Italy•2003

  • Geography and art. An expanding field

    Open Access•Harriet Hawkins•Progress in Human Geography•2012

  • Critical observational drawing in geography

    Open Access•Sage Brice•Progress in Human Geography•2023

  • Exhausting the Ears

    Open Access•Samuel Cheney•The Journal of Imperial &…•2025

  • Cross-cultural gazes in contemporary Irish short stories

    Kristina Deffenbacher•Irish Studies Review•2025

  • Landscape semaphore

    Open Access•Archie Davies•Transactions of the Institute of…•2021

  • Nature, space and distances in an imperial boundary network

    Open Access•Matthew Tillotson•Political Geography•2020

  • Europe Refracted

    Barbara Schulte•European Education•2012

  • Dialogues and Doings

    Open Access•Harriet Hawkins•Geography Compass•2011

  • Rethinking Landscape and Colonialism in the Context of Early Spanish Peru

    Open Access•Heidi V Scott•Environment and Planning D…•2006

  • Nof kdumim

    Open Access•I Braverman•Environment and Planning E Nature…•2021

  • All It Is Is Light

    Harriet Hawkins•The Senses and Society•2015

  • Imperial Eyes

    Mary Louise Pratt•Imperial Eyes•1992

  • Discipline and Punish

    Michel Foucault, Simon Prebble•Surveiller et punir•2019

  • The Birth of the Clinic

    Michel Foucault•Birth of the Clinic•2002

  • The Other Question

    Homi K Bhabha, Homi Κ Bhabha•Screen•1983

Unique citing works14
Citations per year0,61
Citation span2003 - 2025 (23)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 14
Ethnos_APP • Open Source Project • MIT License • Frontend v2.0.0 • Privacy and Cookies • API Documentation: api.ethnos.app/docs • API Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17049435 • Frontend Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17050053 • cruz.rio.br • Expectantes Misericordiae