The Threshold of the Visible World

by Kaja Silverman

Love.

Leading psychoanalytic theorist Kaja Silverman argues that love has a crucial role to play not only in the psychic, but in the political domain as well. In The Threshold of the Visible World she creates an aesthetic model capable of assisting us in the seemingly impossible task of loving bodies which are both different from our own, and culturally despised. At the heart of this model is a provocative rethinking of idealizaiton and the culturally transformative uses to which it might be put. Linking Benjamin's notion of the aura with Brecht's notion of alienation, she articulates an entirely new set of formal parameters for political representation.

The Threshold of the Visible World also provides a psychoanalytic examination of the field of vision. While offering extended discussions of the gaze, the look, and the image, Silverman is concerned above all else with establishing what it means to see. She shows that our look is always impinged upon by our desires and our anxieties, and mediated in complex ways by the representations which surround us. These psychic and social constraints lead us to commit involuntary acts of visual violence against others. Silverman explores the conscious and unconscious circumstances under which such acts of violence might be undone, and the look induced to see and affirm what is abject, and alien to itself.


In The Threshold of the Visible World Kaja Silverman advances a revolutionary new political aesthetic, exploring the possibilities for looking beyond the restrictive mandates of the self, and the normative aspects of the cultural image-repertoire. She provides a detailed account of the social and psychic forces which constrain us to look and identify in normative ways, and the violence which that normativity implies.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Art, Psychology, Psychoanalysis

254 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 1995

Reviews

[Merve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okuması çok zor bir kitap. Zihni çok zorluyor açıkçası. Psikanalitik dille imgesel dili birleştiren bir üslubu var. Çok alışkın olmadığım bir okuma deneyimi oldu. Sık sık dönüp irdelenmedikce zihinde yer edinmesi zor.. Ben Beden ve iktidar politikaları ile ilgili bir araştırmaya giriştiğimden bunun ana temalarindan birini de bakış olarak belirledim ve açıkçası bakış kavramına yönelik bir metin bulacağımıı sanmıştım istediğim şeyi fazla vermesi ancak çok dolu ve alışkın olmadığım bir ortamda ihtiyatlı dolasmama yol açan bir anlatı oldu. Bu anlatiyi hangi okumayla desteklemek lazım düşünmek gerek. Çok katmanlı zihin tembelligine ve kolay bir okuma ihtiyacına kaçışa izin vermeyen bir eser. Kendinize ve okuma alışkanlıklarınıza meydan okumak istiyorsanız oldukça iddialı bir yapıt
Sırada başlamaya korktuğum Direnmenin Estetiği ve Anti Ödipus;Kapitalizm ve Şizofreni kitapları var. Bakalım ne zaman cesaret edebileceğim onlara başlamaya?

[Clove · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75. I enjoyed this thoroughly. Silverman's one of my geek-crushes. Or, anyway, her brain is. Still - and maybe I'm just not well enough versed in psychoanalytic theory to get the importance of the nuances, but - it didn't seem super inspired. It's a fascinating premise - what does Lacan say about love? What could we propose by asking ourselves that question, and running with the answer? And the running part is fascinating... but the answer underwhelms.
Still, I'd read Silverman explain her thought processes around pretty much any subject. So it was all good by me.