A few words on papers

Henri Lefebvre’s two illusions

• Lefebvre critiques the idea that the Cartesian-mathematical concept space is an objective, extra-ideological construct.
• This assumption that objective space is extra-ideological is produced as natural through …
  • the illusion of transparency, in which everything can be taken in by a single glance and according to which [c]omprehension is […] supposed […] to conduct what is perceived, i.e. its object, from the shadows into the light; this is a common default position for those who are constructed socially as educated.

    and

  • the realistic illusion, the belief that things really are what they seem to be; this is a default position for those who are constructed socially as naïve.

Seeing and knowledge

The doctor: it’s the same with a carburetor, if the fuel can’t reach it, the engine does not work and the car won’t go, as simple as that, as you can see. (64; ch. 5)

it had to be acknowledged that the authorities had shown great vision when they decided to unite the blind with the blind, each with his own, which is a wise rule for those who have to live together, like lepers. (106; ch 7)

Some common English phrases …

• … that treat seeing as a trope for knowledge:
  • To see what someone means
  • Exclaiming, Now I see! to indicate an epiphany
    • or to see the light
  • The claim that seeing is believing
  • An opinion as a point of view or perspective
  • Foresight
  • Others?

As Wigglesworth has it …

But we were blind, they say, in mind; too dim was nature’s light, Our only guide, as hath been tried, to bring us to the sight Of our estate degenerate, and curs’d by Adam’s fall; How we were born and lay forlorn in bondage and in thrall. […] But Nature’s light shin’d not so bright; to teach us the right way: We might have lov’d it and well improv’d it, and yet have gone astray. The Judge most High makes this Reply: You ignorance pretend, Dimness of sight, and want of light, your course Heav’nward to bend. (The Day of Doom, verses CLIX and CLXI)

The [Age of] Enlightenment

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another's guidance.

Immanuel Kant, Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

• Refers to philosophical movements in, very approximately, the 17th and 18th centuries.
• The term enters English-language vocabulary in the middle of the 18th century as a translation of a term current in French philosophy.
• Contrast the Dark Ages.
• You will also recall that out discussions of the horror genre earlier in the quarter constructed horror as being in part a reaction to the Enlightenment.

And yet, blindness …

Then His disciples came and said to Him, Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?

But He answered and said, Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.

Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.

Then Peter answered and said to Him, Explain this parable to us.

So Jesus said, Are you also still without understanding?

Matthew 15:12-16 NKJV

Shakespeare’s King Lear

Edmund resents his illegitimate status, and plots to dispose of his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks their father Gloucester with a forged letter, making him think Edgar plans to usurp the estate. […] Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar, and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar and proclaims him an outlaw. […] Gloucester protests against Lear's mistreatment. Wandering on the heath after the storm, Lear meets Edgar, in the guise of a madman named Tom o' Bedlam. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his daughters. Kent leads them all to shelter. […] Edmund […] shows a letter from his father to the King of France asking for help against them; and in fact a French army has landed in Britain. Once Edmund leaves with Goneril to warn Albany about the invasion, Gloucester is arrested, and Cornwall gouges out Gloucester's eyes.

(from Wikipedia’s summary of the play)

Partial vision

To this he gave me but a pitiless answer, Stranger, said he, you are a fool, or else you know nothing of this country. Talk to me, indeed, about fearing the gods or shunning their anger? We Cyclopes do not care about Jove or any of your blessed gods, for we are ever so much stronger than they. I shall not spare either yourself or your companions out of any regard for Jove, unless I am in the humour for doing so. And now tell me where you made your ship fast when you came on shore. Was it round the point, or is she lying straight off the land?

Homer’s Odyssey, book IX)

The Citizen and egocidal terror

–The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and glaring at Bloom.

–Ay, ay, says Joe.

–You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is ...

–Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us.

James Joyce, Ulysses, ch. 14

Looking again at Lefebvre …

• the illusion of transparency, in which everything can be taken in by a single glance and according to which [c]omprehension is […] supposed […] to conduct what is perceived, i.e. its object, from the shadows into the light; this is a common default position for those who are constructed socially as educated.

  and

• the realistic illusion, the belief that things really are what they seem to be; this is a default position for those who are constructed socially as naïve.

(From The Production of Space, 27-30)

[R]epresentational spaces [are] space[s] as directly lived through associated images and symbols. (39)

Oedipus at Colonus (1788)

Painting by Jean-Antoine-Théodore Giroust