Abstract
The essential issue of visual culture is to position the self and the world through vision. Rojas's subject of research is the literature and arts in the late Qing Dynasty to modern period, and he attempts a visual interpretation of Chinese modernity through constructing a three-dimensional visual system, in which the self-mirroring subjects, audience and object co-exist. He maintains that the body, as a visual object, is both a mirror-like screen, and the unreal image in the mirror, which provides the subject of visual desire as the other with a concrete channel of presentation. Through the interrelationship between time and space, vision as an individual desire can enter sociocultural context. It can be concluded that modernity in the field of visual culture is essentially the reflection of the experience of "looking" in everyday life. Through "looking," the other can exist and the relative position of the self and the world may become clear. Therefore, visual modernity is both a "mirror" and the "flower" in the mirror, which forms the everyday life itself, while visual culture should be regarded as a life philosophy of ontology.
First Page
191
Last Page
200
Recommended Citation
Lin, Wei. 2014. "Is Modernity a Mirror or a "Flower"?: On the "Vision" of Rojas's The Naked Gaze: Reflections on Chinese Modernity." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 34, (6): pp.191-200. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol34/iss6/14
