The Question of Vision “We believe that there is a growing recognition of the need to differentiate between different 'ways of seeing ('scopic regimes', discourse and practices of visuality') and cultural forms, and to interrogate critically the problematics of anit-and post-ocularcentric positions in the field of visual experience" (xi). Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell. "Introduction: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of Vision.”

"Vision is a social practice, and it needs to be understood as such" (14). The self is called upon "to question itself with regard for its visionary capacity, and for the roles, routines and practices in which this capacity is channeled in response to the task" (15). "As we reflect on how individual vision. . .can be developed, we must also reflect, simultaneously, on how the collective visions of our society, the vision encoded in our culture, can be changed in corresponding ways" (10). David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision

Heywood, Ian, and Barry Sandywell Heywood, Ian, and Barry Sandywell. "Introduction: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of Vision." Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual. Ed. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell. London: Routledge, 1999. ix-xviii. “There is no simple way of disentangling the socila history of perception from the arts of observation and the technologies of visual culture" (x) They identify four levels in what they call the “field of visuality”: 1. Level of meaningful practices in the life-worlds of everyday life: routine visual categories "at work in organising the structures of practical experience, especially in the taken-for-granted political and ethical practices of envisioning others, of routinised perception and day-to-day social experiences, but also the role of visual idioms in those practices which take an analytical interest in the organisations and events of everyday life.”

2. empirical commitment to exploring the detailed sociology and politics of the visual order: different ways of seeing

3. “historical formation of theoretical sciences and the role of critical thought in reflecting upon the social construction of their problems and practices" (x) 13th century, circulatory system 18th century, circulatory system

4. meta-theoretical: "the emergence of critical discourses concerned to question and deconstruct the history and implications of visually organised paradigms and the practices, institutions, and technologies these have legitimated" (x) guided by "contextual concerns with the problems of authority and power vested in the dominant visual technologies of Western culture, the role of excluded groups in these systems, particularly the struggles of non-European colonial peoples, women, and working classes in relation to the dominant forms of visual ideology" (x)

Key Concepts Scopic Regimes/ Ocularcentricism Iconoclasm Gaze Vision/Visuality:: Looking/Seeing