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1.      What are some of the ways the camera obscura indicate the appearance of a new model of subjectivity, the hegemony of a new subject-effect?

2.      In what way does the camera obscura a priori prevent the observer from seeing his or her position as a part of the representation? How does the mind adjust to this?

3.      How do Vermeer’s paintings demonstrate the paradigm of the camera obscura?

4.      “There must necessarily be some place where the two images coming through the eyes…can come together in a single image or impression before reaching the soul, so that they do not present to it two objects instead of one.” (250) What do you think about Descartes ideas on vision? How does Cartesian vison and mind-body dualism relate to science of the eye and perception?

5.      Is Virtual Reality truly going to “implode” the way we look at reality? If we are able to collapse the boundaries between the social and technological, biology and machine, natural and artificial that are part of the postmodern imagery, will this destroy the human, or raise the marginalized?

6.      Thinking about Avatar and Men Against Fire; are these examples of virtual reality, or simply a distortion of an actual reality? Is there a difference?

7.      Does a belief in VR, in living beyond that boundary which separates reality from representation, automatically result in a belief in mind/body dualism?

8.      How is Virtual Reality related to Foucalt’s ideas about the panopticism? How are these related to photography?

9.      How do Lacan’s theories on the Mirror Stage demonstrate the self attempting to be subject and object of it’s own gaze?

We live in an era in which many of our most loved public figures and pop culture celebrate feminism and body positivity. Yet, despite all of the newfound female community, many women still feel constrained by social expectations. The typically thin, high fashion female form is still in fashion, as well as the more recently popularlized “thick” and curvy forms, and many advertisements are now attempting to represent a more diverse and accurate American woman. One woman that is particularly “in style” is the fit woman, or the athletic body form. From Reading the Slender Body, author Susan Bordo explains, “Today, however, the well-muscled body has become a cultural icon; ‘working out’ is a glamorized and sexualized yuppie activity…Muscles express sexuality, but controlled, managed sexuality that is not about to erupt in unwanted and embarrassing display.” (Bordo 220) While forms like this can offer empowerment, it is still important to recognize how our culture writes and shapes our bodies and how we see ourselves. The codes written on a fit body (determined, self-aware, etc) are cultivated through years of imagery and social conversation.

Upon viewing the documentary film titled, Regarding Susan Sontag, one sees first-hand her lifelong rebellion against ignorance and injustice. Susan Sontag was a Jewish-American writer best known for her contributions in the literary field of philosophical theory. With a love for reading and books at a young age, she gave herself the linguistic tools to develop her unique writing style and provoke the masses.

Throughout the documentary we see her resisting the status quo in her personal life by exploring her sexuality and her femininity. Consequently her rebel spirit comes alive in her writing as she explores the relationship the American society has with photography in her piece titled, On Photography. Here she explores the injustice imposed on the rest of the world created by the false global understanding Americans create with photography. Photos, as she describes, are a manipulation of reality, and yet the consensus in our society is that what isn’t photographed doesn’t exist in reality or isn’t worthy of historical attention. In addition, as we develop our understanding of the representation of the world through photography we further that false understanding. She also warns the public, as consuming photographs is addictive and preys on our insecurities by way of creating a smaller simpler world for us to more easily exist in. 

One thing I particularly admire of Sontag’s work is her application of the ideology structuralism. One great example of this feat is her piece titled, Notes on Camp. The essay is a collection of points describing the connotative definition of the word “camp”. She relays onto the reader the implications of the word identified as an unrealistic apolitical aesthetically dominated world view. To camp something is to have it exist without opposition, clearly representing good and evil, love and hate. This notion of camp perpetuates naturally as it is a way to please the insecurities of society, by removing the critical challenge involved in consuming a text. 

As it reads in the text, “41. The whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, camp involves a new, more complex relation to, “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” Here Sontag is describing how this cultural adoption of camping has created a new notion of what is to be considered serious and frivolous. This being undoubtedly harmful to the human experience of life. 

Another great example of her use of structuralism is a quote brought onto me by the documentary film reading, “death is the opposite of everything.” I find this particularly interesting because the human relationship to death is mysterious and complex, yet using the opposition of what we know to be everything, we are given a deeper representation of the nothingness that is death. 

Susan Sontag as portrayed in Regarding Susan Sontag was a real literary genius, and is preserved in a lasting image she created for herself. She was a Jewish-American writer, philosopher, filmmaker, and activist, as well as a cultural icon. The documentary explores what makes Sontag’s writing so powerful and socially thought provoking—she had great curiosity about everything, and this did not make her a perfect person, but rather an artist that had strokes of genius. “Still, there is a large difference between the activity of a photographer, which is always willed, and the activity of a writer, which may not be. One has the right to, may feel compelled to, give voice to one’s own pain, which is, in any case one’s own property. One volunteers to seek out the pain of others.” (On Photography 31) As a writer and photographer, her own philosophy pins one key aspect of Sontag’s ideological presence, that she embodies both spaces, and the spaces in-between.

One key thing to note is that Sontag was not just known for her work, but cultivated a widespread public image. Hers was a widespread name, and her written and ideological work was often connected to images of her, interviews with her. One of Sontag’s first essays, “Notes On ‘Camp,’” references her clear understanding of aesthetic experiences in culture. “38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of “style” over “content,” “aesthetics” over “morality,” of irony over tragedy.” (Sontag  10) Yet, Sontag also valued never fixing herself in one way, or being stuck to any identity except one of change and passion.

In cultivating her image, Sontag was not one figure, but many. She mastered many trades, and spent time around others who were also maters of their arts. She loved men and women, was the mother to a son, and both an academic and an artist. She saturated her life with irony, while writing in-depth about the temporariness of life, she was able to discuss her intense and rigorous passion for all things alive. She strove to be alone and free always as a way to experience her genius, but surrounded herself with people, culture, and city. From Optics, Descartes explains, “Indeed, the perfection of an image often depends on its not resembling its object as much as it might.” (Descartes 64)

A woman who photographed, wrote, travelled, and collected, Sontag also critiqued, analyzed, and took on the fights of those oppressed, coming herself from a background marginal treatment. In her writing On Photography, Sontag says, “As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure. Thus photography develops in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern activities: tourism.” (Sontag, 6) Sontag travelled the world and both photographed and was photographed, often journaling and conceptualizing her thoughts along the way. Just as people create stories to situate uncomfortable or unexplainable happenings, taking photographs is a way of processing the world, and a way of processing ourselves that Sontag has warned is highly addictive, and not necessarily free from sin.

After watching the documentary titled “Regarding Susan Sontag” I have a much more understanding of who Susan Sontag was and what she represented within the media. Throughout this documentary Sontag continually went against the norms that were placed in her generation. One of the norms that she continually fought against was the women should be treated as feminist she believed that woman needed to stop worrying about looks and start to look at what they think.

 As a second wave feminist Sontag was the type of woman to ignore the rules that is placed in front of woman and go on her path on righteousness this righteousness led her to become a member of the LGBTQ community in which she played a major role with her article titled “Notes on Camp” which was a collection of essays that Sontag written on the gay culture these articles were not necessarily about the gay culture and the impact it has whether it’s the actions presented by those within the culture that exemplifies the theories on it and the postmodern feel it has to it. Sontag’s own sexuality was bought into discussion as she was a straight woman with lesbian tendencies at first, she realized her lesbian experience was more prevelant after meeting Harriet Sohmers Zwerling whom she met at U.C. Berkley. Even though Sontag knew she was gay she went to marry Phillip Reif in 1950 and proceeded to have a child with she different abandoned the straight values until 1959 when she divorced him after that Sontag went on the full spectrum of being a lesbian.