ABSTRACT
This chapter belongs to a series of studies of different conceptions of consciousness and self-reflection in the formation of modern thought. In the first section I explore the rhetoric of ‘inner perception’ and ‘specular reflection’ associated with modern philosophy and exemplified by the Cartesian cogito. The second section analyses the presuppositions of this world-view, in particular the image of the solitary ego which this framework legitimated. In the third section the theme of visual representation and the spectatorial conception of knowledge are singled out for particular attention. Finally, in the fourth section, I suggest alternative, non-representational ways of construing experience and knowledge prefigured by dialogical conceptions of human existence in the thought of some philosophical critics of modernity. I suggest that this development involves a paradigm shift from a world-view based upon ocularcentric categories to ways of thinking grounded in social and dialogical practices.
