ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of the book. This book demonstrate, the paradox of not looking at pictures is found in this very gesture: it is located in the gesture of our being retrained to look. On Not Looking is organized into four sections, each of which is organized around shared theoretical and thematic concerns. Not looking is not a simple negation of the insights of the Enlightenment, it is a practice of creativity, productivity, and in its most notable examples, of political resistance. In an image-saturated culture, many images do not look at what they claim, viewers often do not look at the images, and in other cases, we are encouraged by the context of exhibition not to look at images. The chapters examine images that invert, turn inside out, and subvert both the conventional ways of looking at black and marginalized bodies, and cultures of disempowerment.
