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September 29, 2005
Definetely Social Construction
I think that we definetely utilize social construction rather than mimesis. I think that it would be difficult for anything to be straightforward mimesis. Mimesis implies that the world is represented exactly as it is. Even this statement does not make sense, for the world is seen differently by everyone. For example, as it was acknowledged in Chapter 1 of Practices of Looking, even a photograph is subjective to the photographer's point of view. Of course, there is a standard way to take a photograph (with the object centered in the middle of the photo), yet everyone sees something and tries to capture that something differently. When I was thinking of what I wanted to write in this response, I thought of Annie Dillard's essay, "Seeing" came to mind. In this essay Dillard spoke of so many apects of sight, of seeing what others cannot see, and told many anecodotes about blind individuals who were able to regain their sight. She stressed the fact that we all see what we want to see and all see what we search for.
Thus, I think mimesis, although not totally dismissable, is a concept that does not have much validity. In my psychology class last year, we discussed what is really in our world versus what we see. We talked alot about the possibility of the fact that mentally ill patients who "see things" that are not there may be seeing the real world while those who are presumed to have well-functioning brains may not. This idea is certainly far-fetched and difficult to grasp, but it is interesting to think about. What is our world really? Is what we see truly what is there? It is for this reason that I believe in social construction.
Another reason that I believe social construction is more prevalent than mimesis is because we base so much of our world and our thoughts on other people's perceptions of things. We base judgement on a potential love interest, for example, on a picture that we see online. We base our view of a foreign country, for example, on the verbal description that someone else gives. For this reason, our representation of the world is based upon layers and layers of social construction.
I hope that I didn't contrdict myself too much in this essay. I had alot to get out and I tried really hard to organize it, but I do not know how well it worked out. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
Posted by lciscotis at September 29, 2005 03:27 PM