The Right To Look

The right to look affirms independence – not individualism or voyeurism, but a claim to political subjectivity and collectivity. It implies an exchange rather than profit. This means recognizing the other in order to obtain a starting point from which it is possible to make claims about rights and determine what is specifically correct. It is precisely the claim to subjectivity that has the freedom to establish relationships between the visible and the spoken. The opposite of the right to look is not censorship, but rather visuality as the power that dictates what you can or cannot look at. The term “visuality” dates back to the early XIX century, when it meant the visualization of history. The ability to gather material for visualization is a testament to the power of the visualizer. In turn, mastery of power requires constant renewal in order to gain recognition as something “normal” and everyday since it is always deliberately challenged. Thus, independence affirmed by the right to look opposes the authority of visuality. The article analyzes and identifies three primary complexes of visuality and countervisuality: the plantation complex that supported the transatlantic slave trade; what some apologists for the British Empire perceived as the imperial complex; what President Dwight Eisenhower denoted as the military-industrial complex, which continues today in many ways. A complex, in this case, means the formation of a number of social organizations and processes, as well as the state of an individual’s psychic system. Each complex has scope and stability, forming a distinct world that can be both an object of visualization and an environment.

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