Ricardo and Eugene,
"A (wo)man is sleeping in his room and suddenly wakes up and open her-his
eyes. She-he takes her-his trench coat, laying over a coat stand, as an
intruder in her-his room. She-he does feel afraid of the intruder-trench
coat. The feelling she-he feels in that time is REAL although it had been
genereated by a distorted perception (imagination) of "what was going on"."
Another example is the astronomer who 'saw' an elephant on the moon; Which
turned out to be a dead spider on the lens. Mieke Bal (Journal of Visual
Culture, April 2003) asks " what happens when people look, and what emerges
from that act?" she suggests the act of looking , grounded in biology, is
visual event that produces a subject and what emerges as 'experienced
image.' And what emerges is "inherently framed, framing, interpreting,
affect-laden, cognitive and intellectual." Our biology provides the optical
instrument to sense what is outside our body-to look. But what we see is
'experienced image' or outside mediated subjectively. This subjectivity is
real because there is no unmediated objectivity. The fact that one's
'experienced image' is out of sink with what is looked at should hardly be
surprising. If our mind has to produce 'experienced image' of outside
reality all the time, it is capable of believing its work! How do we know
our produced/ mediated/ experienced/ subjective reality is in sink with what
is outside our body?
"Virtual and "real" words are both mediated by culture. A one can interact
presentially or not presentially both in virtual and in "real" worlds. These
interaction can be synchronic or non-synchronic. Virtual and "real" worlds
are-were both criated by (wo)men. What distinguish them? The kind of
relation (wo)men have with them - according to Vygotsky's "law" of reality
of feeling."
This is parallel with Lefebvre's distinction between these two interrelated
worlds. He also speaks about the illusion of transparency or objectivity of
outside world-perceived space or FirstSpace (Soja). What is visible is not
'concrete' because it is seen only through our collective imagined
world-conceived space or SecondSpace (Soja). Here visuality becomes a
language that can produce its objects and can talk about them. visuality as
language puts some things on the radar by making them visible, while keeping
others under the radar and invisible. Visuality as language produces space
--an imaginary space as if the objects in that space are concrete,
transparent, and matter of fact.
That brings me to Eugene's quote from Simons and Foucault on ThirdSpace.
Because all images are 'experienced images' and mediated, then, they are
inherently unstable. Like all spaces and languages, they are filled with
tensions and contradictions --they are constructed, hence they can be
transformed. This is the bottom line of 'lived or third space.' The
ever-present power relations in our social world add more to the potential
and the need for seeking transformation. What Foucault refers to as
resistance being internal to power relations "this resistance is never in a
position of exteriority in relation to power" speaks to a potential in any
existing power relations to producing a way out of , not of power, but of
strategy of power in ones conduct.' This is producing third space, similar
to what Foucault's friend Gilles Deleuze called ' line of flight'.
One way I can relate to 'false consciousness' is through Franz Fanon's
imagery of 'black skin, white mask' as a collective mental trap imposed by
colonial powers; In order to normalize their domination by producing a
'conceived space' approving of it. Similar to other social movements, Fanon
made visible this strategy of power and made possible the imagination of
different realities-producing a third space (of resistance).
iraj
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