ABSTRACT
A new or renewed focus on questions of vision seems to be a significant feature of the development over the past ten years or so of the field variously called “theory” or “cultural studies.” The immediate causes of this focus appear to be multiple, but it seems hard not to instance at least the ongoing tendency of theory to understand itself as a critique of representation; the increasing interest among literary scholars in film study; and a growing awareness within the discipline of art history of developments in adjacent fields. Typically, this interest in the visual has taken the form of a “critique of vision”—a systematic suspicion of the apparent transparency and naturalness of vision. Among the various works that inform this critique one might note such influential works as Laura Mulvey's “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, and the various books and essays in which Norman Bryson attempts to dismantle “the natural attitude” toward art history. 1
