...more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations...the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality” -luce irigaray
Interpretation
This quote explores how visual perception influences our relationships and experiences, leading to a detachment from bodily sensations.
Luce Irigaray's quote highlights the power of the visual sense in shaping our understanding and interaction with the world. She suggests that in a culture where sight predominates over other senses, we risk reducing our physical experiences and bodily relations to mere objects, leading to a loss of materiality and connection with ourselves and others. This domination of the 'look' emphasizes distance and separation rather than intimacy and presence, ultimately impoverishing our sensory experiences.
In practice
During a lecture on sensory perception in psychology, this quote could emphasize the importance of experiencing life through all senses, not just the visual.
Your silence exists as does my self gathering. But so does the almost absolute silence of the world's dawning. In such suspension, before every utterance on earth, there is a cloud, an almost immobile air. The plants already breathe, while we still ask ourselves how to speak to each other, without taking breath away from them.
Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
It seems that we have been born only to consume and to consume, and when we can no longer consume, we have a feeling of frustration, and we suffer from poverty, and we are auto-marginalized.
Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.
When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.
The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.