Vision's Invisibles

Book excerpt: Although philosophy today has abandoned its former fascination with transcendent invisibles, it has left largely unexamined historical articulations of the divide between 'the visible' and 'the invisible.' Vision's Invisibles argues that such a self-examination is necessary for the sensitization of philosophical sight, as well as for engagements with visuality in other domains. To this end, it investigates a range of challenging understandings of visuality in its relation to invisibles, as articulated in the texts of key historical thinkers—Heraclitus, Plato, and Descartes—and of twentieth-century philosophers, including Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Derrida, and Heidegger.