Looking at "Looking"
The THRUSH has blog-block and suggested I return as guest writer. Actually this post is a comment on the SLOW LEARNER's ongoing discussion of "looking." Incidentally, that post is extremely well written; you should LOOK and SEE. It is so profound that I know my comment must LOOK and SEEM very lightweight beside it!
So, I'm bringing the conversation here, also, and encouraging you to read "Slow Learner."
THEY HAVE THAT "LOOK":
I'm unable to cite the source, but a fairly recent study explored "favoritism by appearance in the classroom." Without conscious thought, teachers responded more favorably to---call on more frequently---children with attractive "facades."
So, as an instructor, I began to LOOK AT my response to LOOKS more carefully. I have found myself initially guilty, but changing as I begin to "know" the souls inside those "carcasses."
I am wondering if, in general, those with more pleasing LOOKS receive better treatment:
---in nursing homes and hospitals
---in jury trials
---in restaurants
---in car sales lots and repair shops
---in job interviews
---with traffic police
---and more . . .
As a classroom teacher I could be explaining in wonderful detail the purpose and usefulness of, say, a graph, but if I were to have a spot of chalk on my cheek, that would be all a high schooler would notice.
One reason I enjoy blogs is for the opportunity to interact intellectually without the confusion of physical appearance.
Now here's a thought about GIVING THE LOOK:
Yes, there is a "come hither" look (and more) but are you familiar with the "teacher's glare"? Suppose chatty high schoolers just "had" to finish a giggly conversation after the final bell rang. The technique that an instructor may apply first is that long, quiet glare that says, "I see you and you know it---so stop it!" Then, there is the "continuous look" at someone trying to cheat during an exam, used to express the same message.
It is amazing what one raised eyebrow used as punctuation can do. Actually I hadn't thought much about the amount of disciplinary value the proper LOOK has.
Why don't you have a LOOK at the LOOKS you send and receive, strive for and avoid, and share?
Jane
Comments
Thanks for the post! I like people thinking on my behalf when I have nothing to say. Maybe you'd like to propose my master's for me.
FYI, I have deleted my other blog, which I had created a year ago for my attention class.
Sorry about the spam/porn -- sadly I'm sure that if you looked back enough through the archives of this site, then you could find more. It's just not worth it to me to be policing it all the time.
Posted by: Karin | Diciembre 9, 2005 07:08 PM
This is continued from the comment thread to my post. Thank you very much, Jane and Karin, for continuing the conversation. Now, where was I...?
[…] It is interesting that you make a distinction between “come hither” and the castrating glance of authority. I suppose there are certainly affective differences (as it should be) but don’t they really function on the same frequency, as it were? We have all of the components in both—a recognition that communicates both an inclusive desire (you want to be and be seen) and its limits (you can never “be” the seeing other). In this way the “come hither” look is a command to be in accordance with the other’s desire, just as with the teacher’s glance—the looks are both ways of communicating a “doing,” as in “do what I say”—but, of course, without saying anything at all!
Of course, this is fascinating when you mention the “disciplinary value”—an excellent turn of phrase for what we’ve been discussing, since it incorporates both the exchange value I mentioned before (as part of a distillation of Lyotard) and the valorization of the subject as subject(ed) to the gaze of the other. Using the example of the “continuous look” of would-be cheaters—how is this relationship set up, for there is no guarantee that the “looked-at” other is any more correct or incorrect than the cheaters themselves. What is interesting is how the look is manifest in both the lack defining the self-as-cheater (lack, I suppose of the “answers”) and the desire for the answers to be given freely by the other—complicit in the both the act of “cheating” and yet somehow assured of its “truth” (or “correctness”) under the authority of whatever the classroom discourse happens to be.
The value aspect comes back only in the recognition that this is a paradox—there’s no real way of (wholly) “knowing” what is seen or not seen, we’re kind of stuck in a feedback loop of “looks”—but must assign values based upon a patchwork of (mis)recognitions. While it makes for interesting cocktail parties, it’s a problematic concept, don’t you think?
Posted by: John | Diciembre 14, 2005 12:06 PM