THE RIGHT TO LOOK

Authors

  • Nicholas Mirzoeff Universitat de Barcelona (UB)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/regac2013.1.09

Abstract

I want to claim the right to look. This claim is, neither for the first nor the last time, for a right to the real. It might seem an odd request after all that we have seen in the first decade of the twenty-first century on old media and new, from the falling of the towers, to the drowning of cities, and to violence without end. The right to look is not about merely seeing. It begins at a personal level with the look into someone else’s eyes to express friendship, solidarity, or love. That look must be mutual, each inventing the other, or it fails. As such, it is un-representable. The right to look claims autonomy, not individualism or voyeurism, but the claim to a political subjectivity and collectivity: “the right to look. The invention of the other.”

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Published

2013-01-09