”Scientific Looking, Looking at Science”

Marita Sturken and Lisa CartwrightPractices of Looking: An

Introduction of Visual Culture

Characteristics of scientific imaging/images

• it comes with confident authority behind (279, 292)• assumption of objective knowledge (279)• provides the capacity to see the ”truths”

otherwise not available to the human eye (281) ~ X-ray invented in the 1890s~ medical gaze to see the hidden truth• new frontiers of vision (281) → categorization/classification (!)• they are held to present accurate/self-evident

proof of certain facts (286)• it can blur the border between the medical and the

personal (293) → non-medical cultural function• encourage emotional bonding (e.g. between the

mother and the foetus) ~ more effective than the text (293)

What is the basis for the assumption of photographic truth?

• camera as an objective device for capturing reality (280)

• no intentionality ~ the truth is told without mediation or subjective distortion

• it is an all-seeing instrument (281)

Video recordings and their effects

• Video conveying a high-degree of authenticity/sense of realism (287) → Why? Due to what?

Formal conventions:

low-tech consumer grade video/film grainy black and white hand-held camera long takes unscripted action no selective framing

Video recordings and their effectsThe Rodney King case

• Rodney King video producing its counter-effect by employing the scientific imaging techniques:

breaking the flow of the filmic narrative to stills/frames (288)

eliminating its time aspect → discrete elements of the visual text will tell a separate story/narrative (289-290)

sharpening enhancement off-focus elements brought into focus use of interpretative language

→ undermined the authenticity of the video, the officers were acquitted

Anthropometric/clinical imaging&

Genetic mapping of the body• makes distinctions of the races• creation of the images of the Other in the name of scientific

inquiry (284)• Objectification of the human being (285)→ they become racialized subjects• effacing subjectivity• Clinical regime of knowledge (299)• Vision as primary avenue of knowledge → sight takes

precedence over the other senses (discredits ”felt evidence”) → camera as a foreign body (306)

• biological and cultural differences marked by genetics (301)

→ the body as an accessible digital map→ the body as a communication centre (302)

Conclusion

• PRACTICES OF LOOKING: central to discriminatory systems (303)

• Stereotypes are constructed through them

SCIENCE IS NEVER SEPARATE FROM SOCIAL MEANING OR CULTURAL ISSUES (294)

• What science signifies depends on social, political, cultural meanings.

• The nature of science practiced in a culture is a political issue. (294) → new subject positions created (295)