Affected by the Eye: A Prelude to a Carnal Aesthetics

Chapter 1 points to the importance of the nexus between perception and affect for a racialized self in the limen to name and transform herself. Informed by the critical phenomenological work of Linda Martín Alcoff, Alia Al-Saji, and Helen Ngo, this chapter first centers on how perceptual operations of visible differences such as race are tied to tacit, sedimented bodily habits, which are themselves tied to affective responses. The chapter analyzes Al-Saji's theorization of racialized perception, the view that a perceiver cannot but look at and be affected by visible differences related to race in terms prescribed by normative, colonialist discourses and imaginaries. Al-Saji's view of hesitation is discussed in light of Kevin Quashie's notion of the quiet as well as Gloria Anzaldúa's and María Lugones's view of germinative stasis. Ultimately, the chapter starts a movement from the eye to mouthly or the multisensory perception characteristic of a carnal aesthetics.