Bibliographic Reference
“The Phenomenology of Vision,” in Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art, accompanies exhibition of the same name at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, curated by Ellen Y. Tani, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow. Exhibition dates: March 1 – June 3 2018
This essay argues for an expanded field of phenomenology in conversation with disability studies and visual culture. It begins with a discussion of disability and contemporary art more generally, and how the lived experience of disability is an important ingredient in expanding our idea of the phenomenology of the disabled subject within visual culture. Here I offer a critique of ocularcentrism, the longstanding bias toward vision in Western thought and culture, by citing other scholars who have already contributed much to this subject, and discussing examples of how visuality itself has been challenged in visual displays, such as Baden’s The Flesh of the World.