Which did you see first this last time that the simple line drawing was shown? The duck? The rabbit?
Had you been told that the first image was a rabbit, it is likely you would have always first seen a rabbit and struggled to see the duck. This line drawing was constructed intentionally to have an ambiguous Signified. When this ambiguous signified is presented in relation to different nouns we can sense our eyes and minds struggling to work together to resolve the dilemma. Text always seems to win. By way of this, we know that text -- and we can extend this to language in general -- preconditions what we see . . . even dictates it to some (what?) extent. We struggle to resolve the visual within the terms of the linguistic. This limits what we are able to "see," and ultimately able to know.

This exercise points to the fact that myth (in the Barthesian sense) approaches meaning from both ends; it transforms it before, and after, perception.

In short, language
- and by way of this - history, is privileged even within the "objective" field of vision.

Return to Semiotics and the Rhetoric of Vision

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CITATION INFORMATION:
Site form and content by
karyl e. ketchum
Cultural Studies Dept.
University of California, Davis