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Article: Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought.
- Article from:
- Afterimage
- Article date:
- November 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Visual Studies Workshop. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"Our previous history is not the petrified block of a singular visual space, since, looked at obliquely, it can always be seen to contain its moments of unease."(1)
"It seems impossible . . . to judge the eye using any word other than seductive. But extreme seductiveness is probably the boundary of horror."(2)
We might locate one such moment of unease, or horrific seductiveness of the visual, in the recent discovery of Einstein's eyes preserved in a jar of formaldehyde by his one-time ophthalmologist Dr. Henry Abrams. Surreptitiously removed from his body during the eminent scientist's 1955 autopsy, Abrams has described these visual organs with divine ...