Technologies of Seeing

Abstract

Hatem N. Akil interrogates the use of visual difference as a false dichotomy between Islam and the West. Akil asks what happens when one “sees”? Is visual cognition a mental capacity that one uses to simply see whatever is in the field of vision? Or are there other faculties that are involved in the act of seeing? Akil attempts to tackle the question of whether we unconsciously revert to established cultural frames that tell us the meaning of what we perceive before we even see the thing. Are these frames embedded in optics or ideology? Do they tell us who we are? And who “Others” are? Akil proposes a theoretical framework to the understanding of how the perception of images actually functions within cross-cultural settings.