Historicity of Observing and Vision in Jonathan Crary

Abstract

The famous 1996 October “Visual Culture Questionnaire” presents a set of editors’ assumptions about the newly founded “interdisciplinary project” (VCQ, 25). “In a manner openly unsympathetic to visual culture” (Dikovitskaya 2006, 17), each question begins with the phrase “it has been suggested that visual culture”, leaving no doubt about the editors’ aversion: the inquiry starts with the proposal to radically separate the disciplines of art history and visual culture. While the former is built on the model of history, the latter is supposed to be grounded in anthropology. Their radical difference is accepted beyond doubt. Regardless of the authors’ intentions and precise foundations of this distinction—unclear also for many of the original responders—the place of history within an academic endeavor centered on image and vision is worth revisiting. If only because one of the most important interventions of historicizing the image and visuality comes from an author consequently writing about his mistrust in the “new academic precinct (regardless of its label)” (Crary 1996, 33)—Jonathan Crary, Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University and co-founder of non-profit publishing house Zone Books.