Hey there, Rachel and Jorge. Since you're reading my draft, I figured I would let you know that I could really use your help with:

• Incorporating the course readings more meaningfully into the proposal
• Deciding if and how to include Gramsci (see the note in my references section)
• Making the composition parts clear and meaningful for non-specialists 
  
• Anything else that you think needs work : )

Have a great weekend!

Hiya folks, hope everyone's doing well. I have to admit to some slight confusion over a couple of the criteria for the project proposal, and I figured I'd bring it up here to see how you all are interpreting it. Forgive me if this question was ever brought up in class, but I'm not finding answers in my notes.

The criteria include a "literature review." They also include "specific links to class readings, discussions, and theme." In proposals I've done in the past, the term "literature review" was not used, so I am unsure as to what exactly that entails. I was assuming that this "review" is the establishment of the theoretical framework for the project using whatever of the class texts are appropriate. So is the second criterion something that is incorporated into the larger review section? Or am I missing something?

Sorry if this seems nitpicky or something...just want to make sure I'm crossing all of my Ts, as it were. -- Tiffany

While I'm here, I wanted to say that my project that I hoped to make a reality is seeming less and less like it's going to happen. This is because a much larger filming project has the convention's creators' full attention. They've got a Kickstarter and everything. While I still plan to attend the event and do my own filming, I'm wondering how (or if) I can incorporate this new aspect into my project. Very much still processing.

(The pic here is linked to the Kickstarter, if anyone wants to check it out for realz.)

Mirzoeff’s book, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) is about visual culture and the ways images narrate larger western history. Visuality for the author naturalizes the power structures. He looks at three complexes; the plantation slavery, imperialism, and the military-industrial complex in order to show visuality as a process that reshapes hegemony. In addition, he also offers countervisuality, as "the attempt to reconfigure visuality as a whole" (24). Meaning, that the right to look challenges and dismantles the visual strategies of the "Heroe" with a capital "H" or the visual strategies of "great men" that the hegemonic western structures produce. Overall, Mirzoeff's text was a very difficult read for me but after class discussion I feel that I can grasp the concepts a little better now. Like many of my peers I was struggling with visuality2 and countervisibility. After the class discussion I think visuality2 is the state manipulating or using visuality in order to reproduce the structure and its discourse. For instance, I thought about how neoliberalism has used “difference” as a way to reproduce the structure of inequality even though the discourse surrounding difference is hyper-individualistic. Countervisibility on the other hand, is more about the decolonial project that Mirzoeff offers; “the right to look.” Mirzoeff wants us to question our conceptualization of history, especially since history has been thought of as linear. However, what he shows is that our own westernized conception of history does not allow us to see other histories that fall outside the linear narrative. Which brings me to my next point, if the decolonial geneology must encompass a critical examination of visuality “with the formation of coloniality and slavery as modernity”  as he adds, this must establish a counterhistory, but what if there are multiple counterhistories, does that translate to multiple decolonial geneologies? This made me think about the “right to look” as an engaging relationship, but as Annita mentioned in class, what happens when one chooses not to be seen? how does that complicate "rights"? 

As I was doing my usual news surfing tonight I came across this news. We were all grumpy about Mirzoeff's last chapter particularly because it did not have enough coverage of present day military-industrial complex and the therorization of visibility and countervisibility. As I read the news I kept on wondering in which arena would this news fall!!

~ Somava

Here is the final list for reading project proposals. Your papers should be posted to the blog by 5 PM on April 5th. We will have the workshop in class on April 9th.
1. Annita and Tiffany will read Lizeth's paper
2. Lizeth and Jorge will read Annita's paper
3. Jen and Somava will read Jorge's paper
4. Rachel and Dell will read Somava's paper
5. Rachel and Jorge will read Jen's paper
6. Dell and Annita will read Tiffany's paper
7. Somava and Tiffany will read Rachel's paper
8. Jen and Lizeth will read Dell's paper

Apologies for the inconvenience in posting late....

    The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) by Nicholas Mirzoeff offers an academic audience a comparative decolonial framework by which to understand historical processes and interpretations of visuality. Mirzoeff claims that visuality is an “old word for an old project” (2). This project is western hegemony. Through his complication of what he calls the complexes of visuality, readers come to understand the fluid mechanisms that have constructed today’s global perceptions of reality—which happens to be rooted in Anglo-French-American colonial authoritarianism.  Treating visuality as a “discursive practice that has material effects” Mirzoeff conceptualizes a decolonized methodology and archive by locating the three characteristics of visuality: classifying, separating, and aestheticizing. From the chapters assigned, Mirzoeff traces the fluidity between these various “visualization[s] of history” (2) as situated beginning in the 19th century. Specifically, he compares three frameworks: the plantation slavery (1600-1860); the imperial framework; the contemporary military-industrial complex framework. Respectively, Mirzoeff is invested in complicating visual cultural studies. Making the argument that in order to be real, one must first be able to see, The Right to Look views visuality as a war; more importantly, provides readers with a sense of urgency in coming to grips with modernities’ personifications of what is real leaving to readers a firm idea of who has/and is interpreting our reality, and the social consequences should this realness be maintained by neo-colonial authorities.
    Particularly interesting for me was the early conceptualization of “The Modern Imaginary”. Here, Mirzoeff contrasts the early anti-monarchical revolutions as experienced in France and in Haiti. Conceptualizing these pivotal historical moments through a ‘politics of eating’—where a given society guarantees food distribution for those in governance and in populace (94)—Mirzoeff claims that the right to look provides a critique of western glorification of the nation-state. I found the following quote quite interesting:

Applying a bit of historical hindsight; it becomes quite evident that the revolutionary leaders as experienced in France and Haiti were not visualizing opposing agendas. This plays well into Mirzoeff’ s larger critique, following C.L.R. James, that individual heroes are not what popular movements necessarily require. Additionally, by analyzing the modern imaginary via the plantation surveillance framework, it becomes reasonable to understand that what underlies both these early “modern” revolutions was political economy—Toussaint’s goal was to comply with the 1798 US signed treaty (111).
    While I remember learning about the Haitian Revolution as an undergrad in an introductory Latin American survey course, I don’t recall having the narrative complicated as much. As he discerns in his introductory remarks regarding two modes of history, following Chakrabarty, Mirzoeff distinguishes between two kinds of visuality. Describing visuality 1 to be a process that seeks a coherent, structured modality of social reality that “allowed for centralized and/or autocratic leadership” (23), visuality 2, accordingly, is the “picturing of the self or collective that exceeds or precedes that subjugation to centralized authority” (23-24). As I understand, Mirzoeff’ s larger aim is to place Visuality 2 not in opposition to Visuality 1, but as a part of Visuality 1, or authority’s “life process” (24). This is similar to the conversation last week where Deloria’s argument that Native Americans have never been in opposition to modernity, but rather have played an integral part in shaping modernity.

Discussion Questions:
1 – Does Mirzoeff's incorporation of Chakrabarty's notion of History 1 (already "a precondition for capitalism") with History 2 (the not so capitalist-friendly archive) consider neoliberal hegemonic capabilities of appropriating counter-narratives for the continuation of western capitalist purposes?
2 – As I understand Mirzoeff, the “right to look” is the decisive action to reclaim historico-political agency. What might Mirzoeff say regarding hegemonic absorption? More specifically, what if any, are the limitations in this notion of claiming “a right to see”? E.g: The East LA shop were the shirt I am wearing today was purchased receive their daily “eats” by selling counter-narratives—in essence selling material representations as to what a “right of seeing” looks like. However, after taking this class and learning to view binary narratives critically, I wonder: how might we problematize Mirzoeff proclamation that by reclaiming the right to see (interpret vernacular/visual histories) does not necessarily  “democracy become democratized”?

Nicholas Mirzoeff's The Right to Look: a Counterhistory of Visuality (2011) interrogates the boundaries of visuality in colonial history and the postcolonial present, and he explores instances of countervisuality in three arenas: the plantation complex, the imperial complex, and the military-industrial complex. For Mirzoeff, visuality is a discursive practice based not merely on what/how entities see but how they are seen as autonomous (or not).

Mirzoeff points out that the visualization of history is an "imaginary" process, one that creates a lifeworld that, for the visualizer, "manifests [an] authority" (2). This way of visualizing history must be constantly renewed in order to become naturalized. Visuality is not just “visual perceptions” but consists of a "set of relations combining information, imagination, and insight into a rendition of physical and psychic space" (3).

In my reading, I found myself focused on representations of the Hero as they morphed through these various complexes of visuality/countervisuality, from the individual Hero of the plantation complex, to the "abstracted and intensified means of ordering biopower" in imperial visuality (196). Today, as Mirzoeff notes, the chaos that the Hero was supposed to hold at bay has now become a necessity in legitimating counterinsurgency (282). Yet, representations of the Hero still exist, though very much abstract in some sense. From a US point of view, the abstracted (and typically racialized) image of "the terrorist" or "the insurgent" is contrasted with the image of the American Soldier as the moral personification of citizens' continued liberty (to consume, if nothing else). Abstraction of the American Soldier relies on an absence of relationship, in some sense, through what is seen – mainstream media outlets generally don't show much war action or "counterinsurgency efforts," though the rhetoric of heroism can still be "heard" or "seen" through propaganda and thanks to citizens themselves (obviously this has the potential to get seriously complicated, and I'm trying not to go too far down the rabbit hole). Yet, this image of the American Soldier/Hero is also made concrete in various ways (e.g. special television episodes of families reacting to the return home of a soldier). It seems to me that despite the high level of abstraction, on some level, of a "global insurgency" that demands a permanent state of war, the continued management of domestic populations depends on the continued concretization of the representation of a Hero of counterinsurgency. This helps to inspire the "love" (again, on a domestic, national level) required for the military-industrial complex to continue even as the visuality itself, as Mirzoeff notes, "can no longer fully contain that which it seeks to visualize" (282).

I too found it interesting the Mirzoeff mentions Orwell since, in addition to the discussion of war as a permanent state (leading to the Party slogan "War is Peace") and the quasi-acceptance of a heightened state of surveillance ("Big Brother is watching"), I started thinking about doublethink, the concept of being able to believe in two contradictory ideas at once. I am still processing this, but on a domestic level, some kind of doublethink needs to happen in order to have an awareness of the tactics that the "counterinsurgency" is taking to maintain its authority while at the same time still venerating not only individual heroes but also the Soldier as abstract Hero figure. (I realize I'm in a very US-centric train of thought, but I'm going with what I know.)

Questions:

1)      Not sure if this will actually form a coherent question, but I'm interested in the relationships between counterinsurgency, counter-counterinsurgency (does that exist?) and available imagery. Mirzoeff says, "The sovereignty of the visualizer shifted ground so that authority was now derived from the ability to ignore the constant swirl of imagery and persist with a 'vision' above and beyond mere data" (292). We've talked about the ability to create counterpublics (Coombe) using various kinds of imagery, but I can only imagine how those counterpublics can be not seen (can something be "unseen" if we consider the ability of a large amount of "data" to overwhelm a "system" on an organic level?) in particular spaces like the Internet.

2)      How is Mirzoeff defining "modernity" throughout this book? Perhaps I missed the part where he is explicit in his meaning. Is modernity a constant? What are its parameters?

As a final comment, my thinking about heroes led me to thinking about representations of the Hero in today's popular culture (a place I often go), and so I'm posting a clip that shows, I think, the sort of contrasting beliefs about heroes that we yet maintain. The clip is from a show called Firefly (created by Joss Whedon, lasted less than a season but now has a pretty large cult following).

In the clip, Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) says, "Appears we got here just in the nick of time! What's that make us?" His second-in-command, Zoë Washburne (Gina Torres), replies, "Big damn heroes, sir." And Mal then says, "Ain't we just?" The tone is sarcastic, but the imagery is quite heroic (backlit smoke, dramatic entrance, the bringing of the "light" of Mal's ship and Jayne's [Adam Baldwin's] laser rifle scope). Mal and Zoë both do and don't consider themselves heroes, even as they would be considered "insurgents" by the imperial Alliance government. That they used to be rebels against the Alliance does put them in that category, but they serve as heroes to many, and they seem to have some awareness of that, especially as they see themselves rescuing the "innocent" siblings Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau). [Side note that for now must remain a side note: in this scene, Mal also lays claim to the person of the witch, who has the ability to "eat" people, thus also playing into the politics of eating as a way of establishing power/authority.]

InThe Right to Look: A counterhistory of visuality, Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011) builds a decolonial framework for understanding the contestation between visuality and countervisuality. Mirzoeff emphasizes that neither ‘visuality’nor ‘countervisuality’ are about visual perception; yet, these are slippery terms. He warns against the real dangers of missing what is crucial in visual study, what he refers as the opening towards the other (not as an object to be studied, but as a subject that is looking back) and to the political dimension of the image that is the issue of the right to look back. He explains that the concept of visuality refers to a set of mechanisms that order and organize the world, and by doing so naturalize the underlying power structures that are replicated and implemented by the transformations of the real. He argues that what is at stake is the ability to "assemble a visualization" (p. 2) and render it authoritative, over and against any claims
of autonomy on the part of those subjected to its material effects. He categorizes three "complexes of visuality" that were central in the legitimization of Western hegemony. These complexes are the plantation slavery, imperialism, and the present-day military-industrial complex. The plantation slavery is focused on the postcolonial management techniques of visualized surveillance, imperialism highlights the system of governance of the overseas empire (the role of the missionaries), and the military-industrial complex that
tries to see all possible insurgents without being seen by them. On the contrary, he defines countervisuality as not just a different way of seeing or a different way of looking at images, but the tactics to dismantle the visual strategies of the hegemonic system. He describes it as, "the attempt to reconfigure visuality as a whole" (p. 24). Therefore, he explained that "The right to look," goes even further than just the right to look back, although looking back is the first step towards countervisuality.
 Mirzoeff book was a great reader as it offers a potentially rich and challenging resource for surveillance scholarship. I especially like how he explained Dipesh Chakraboty's diachronic binary distinction between the two modes of History under capitalism where,   

Mirzoeff instead comes up with a "successive set of synchronic complexes for visuality and countervisuality from slavery to imperialism and global counterinsurgency" (p. 23)
 As Mirzoeff convincingly argues, each of the complexities of visuality is in some degree active in the present
world, and each is composed of a distinctive, albeit intersecting, configuration of three techniques:
classification, social organization, and aestheticization. Together, these analytically distinguishable moments work to naturalize relations of domination and subordination, aiming to render the association between power and authority neutral.

Questions:
1. In the last few lines of the book, Mirzoeff questions, "How can the 19th century hierarchies of most higher education continues to be justified in the same space as calls for radical change? What are the goals of education for a post- growth sustainable economy? Can universities democratize  themselves or should there be an emphasis on alternative modalities?" (p. 308/309). We as scholars from non-STEM area live through academic subordination everyday of our academic life. Being a part of a land- grant university can we ever overcome this subordination? 
2. Even though Mirzoeff ends at a hopeful note, the ending I feel is somewhat unsatisfactory as he does not specify the new "praxis of the everyday" (p. 309). I was wondering how we as scholars might imagine and
envision what it might mean to stop playing second move to visuality, and create new futures out of this present world in which we all may already be suspects, anyway?

References
Mirzoeff, N. (2011). The right to look: A counterhistory of visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

In the Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality, Mirzoeff (2011) examined the how the concept of visuality and traced its various histories within colonialism and its effect on modernity.  Visuality, according to Mirzoeff (2011), is “…that authority to tell us to move on, that exclusive claim to be able to look.  Visuality is an old word for an old project” (p. 2).  Visuality, then, is that which has been framed for us as suitable and “natural” to look upon and functions as a form of hegemonic discourse that perpetuates power for authority figures and disenfranchisement for the proletariat, slaves, unwashed masses.  Visuality functions in three ways: to classify, to separate and to aestheticize (Mirzoeff, 2011).  Through a decolonial perspective, Mirzoeff (2011) negotiates between points of visuality and countervisuality through three different “complexes of visuality.”  These complexes of visuality are: the plantation complex, the imperial complex and the military-industrial complex.  Within each of these complexes, Mirzoeff (2011) critically examines instances of visuality while also offering instances of countervisuality, or “the claim for the right to look” (p. 24).  Countervisuality is a dissensus, a defiance to look where there is supposedly nothing visible.  This dissensus directly challenges the visuality offered by authority, claiming that there is more beyond the frame of reference provided.  Throughout the book, Mirzoeff (2011) provides these points of countervisuality and how they relate to, inform and ultimately change the complexes of visuality as dictated by authority.

            Part of Mirzoeff’s (2011) conceptualization of countervisuality was the contradictions that could be created by subaltern groups speaking in dissensus.  For example, Mirzoeff (2011) gave the following example in regards to the French Revolution: 

Mirzoeff (2011) detailed other examples of this contradiction through discourse, including an unpacking of a painting of Toussaint where he is seated upon a rearing horse, brandishing a sabre.  His analysis of this painting pointed to it being an artifact of countervisuality because it featured Toussaint mastering “…several codes of conduct that were typically held to be beyond Africans…” (Mirzoeff, 2011, p. 107).  What is interesting about this is how this aspect of countervisuality can be used as a lens to examine other points of rupture between hegemonic powers and the subaltern publics.  After reading this, I was left to think about the points of countervisuality within the gay rights movement—from images of the White Night riots to Anita Bryant being pied on national television, there are these moments of “what should not be” occurring in unexpected places. 

            While I am still working on the overall framework for my part of the discussion tomorrow, here are a few questions to get us thinking about the first part of the reading:

1.     Mirzoeff (2011) spends a good deal of time critically analyzing the different forms of media prevalent during the French revolution, specifically paintings and drawings.  Applying his framework of countervisuality to popular culture today, what other forms of specific media (film, television, music, Internet sites) could be complexes of countervisuality?

2.     I would like to finesse out the differences between Visuality #2 and countervisuality during my time on the soapbox.  Specifically, Mirzoeff (2011) stated that “…Visuality 2 would be that picturing of the self or collective that exceeds or precedes that subjugation to centralized authority” (p. 23-24), whereas countervisuality, is simply “the right to look.”  How are these two things different and how do they play out within the three complexes of visuality that Mirzoeff (2011) examined in the book?

Mirzoeff, N. (2011). The right to look: A counterhistory of visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.