Initial Response: Ways of Seeing

This essay is great. Probably my favorite so far. All of the reading, but especially this, has made me really want to take a linguistics class. I’m going to take one for my degree anyway, but the part where you read the words and think about the assumptions you automatically make when looking at a photograph or picture or whatever being presented “as art.” This really does change the opinion of people, I’m sure. For instance, I typically have immediate disdain for visual art, so when I hear someone say “look at this piece of art” I immediately subconsciously put on my most pessimistic glasses and give their so-called art a look. I don’t try to hide the fact that I have disdain for art, but I’m just an example of someone perceiving something with a (possibly cultural says the cultural anthropologist in me) built-in bias.. This also really reminds me of some existential riders like J.D. who wrote “The Politics of Experience” where they talk about object a perceiving object a through a perception be it clean or distorted and trying to come to some mutual conclusion through this possibly distorted perception of one another. This stuff really seems to go nowhere, but I enjoy the philosophical paradoxes. Also he keep sit short in this essay, he’s one of those only ones who kept the essay at the length of the point he’s making and ended it. I love how he added all the pictures throughout the essay about seeing. I didn’t even notice until about halfway through, then I realized id been ignoring all the pictures and went back to look at all of them.
Few people also, I believe, truly take into consideration the differences in our perception or the assumptions we makea bout each others perception on a daily basis, in every conversation, I’m glad people had to read this for this class because this information is really vital in beginning to understand other people or cultures. Ethnocentric behavior mindset or behavior is really hard to overcome, essays like this and other research on basic and perceived differences are one good way to help you vercomet his and achieve a truly relative perspective (kind of like a cultural anthropologist’s nirvana). Reading and re-reading these sort of essays helps to drill it into your head, but it’s really an impossible goal.
Edit:
I also enjoy the part about the way we perceive art, write about it, and things are "mystified", I prefer the term distorted, but maybe that's not what he meant. He's very esoteric in his feelings and thoughts aboout a painting (which really didn't interest me).