i spy with my little eye
film
november - december 2023; paris, london, reims.
challenging western visualism
The central analytical focus of the film revolves around an anthropology of the senses. The European senses and sensory epistemology are derived from the Aristotelian articulation of the five senses (Goody, 2002, p. 17). Within this Occidental system of thought, sight is placed atop the hierarchy of the senses. One can indeed recognise the influence of this in the history of European thought vis-à-vis empiricism and therefore concretely in anthropology too. This condition articulated by Classen and Howes (1996, p. 93) as “Western visualism” has profoundly marked anthropology in its “[interpretation] of societies visually, rather than sensually” (ibid., original emphasis) and which “isolate[s] sight from other sensory phenomena” (ibid.). Having considered this, it is unsurprising that there have been calls within the field for a methodoligical shift away from visualism to “multisensory ethnography” (Nakamura, 2013), for acknowledging the importance of discursive analysis so as to shed light on the varying cross-cultural ontologies of the senses (in anthropology) (Porcello, et al., 2010; Goody, 2002) and for a reconsideration of anthropological and ethnographical logocentricity (Classen & Howes, 1996).
The film therefore explores the complicated nature of Occidental visualism. Methodologically, the observation of the visual arts by the subjects filmed serve as a microcosm for the western sensorium – its chief characteristic being the prioritisation of sight over the other senses. There is a range of research demonstrating this, but Classen and Howes (1996, p. 92) provide an excellent example: “for the Navajo, the only correct way to experience a sandpainting is to sit at its centre and feel the painting surround oneself. From a Western perspective, however, the only appropriate experience of a sandpainting is the view from above, which allows the painting to be seen in its entirety”. By the sheer ontology of the discipline that is visual anthropology, too, the film embodies the problem because of its reliance on the observation of subjects. However, this offers the best avenue for demonstrating empirically the phenomenon that is studied.