Chicken vs The Egg/Design vs The Image

Both Hum and Gates reflect notions of postcolonial literary criticism in their respective essays. While Gates is heavily critical of antiquated ideas surrounding the colonial literature and how it pertains to the broad concept of race, Hum holds the indoctrinating process of Design to task due to its ability to self-perpetuate negative stereotypes, specifically in regards to race. Both of these theorists subscribe to postcolonialism as both their theories advocate for a certain change in the discourse. Hum argues that, if assessed properly, Design can “promote a socially tolerant and racially inclusive future” (Hum 208). Gates even reflects Hum’s notion of Design when he states that “the languages we employ to define [our] supposed differences not only reinforce each other but tend to create and maintain each other” (Gates 15). This is ostensibly an alternative articulation of Hum’s theory that “perceptual habits,” a term also used by Gates in his essay, “increase choice making processes” and establish somewhat of a cultural hegemony (Hum 193). Since both these theorists reflect several of the same themes, as well as place a lot of authority on perception and how it influences aspects of Design and development, I wish to bring them into conversation with one another in order to come to a conclusion as to whether the images we see influence, or design as Hum would put it, the way we interact and perceive the world or if the way we view the world based off of Design influences how we interpret images.

To start this analysis, I raise the question of why do we as a society perceive race in through divisive lens. Gates concedes fairly early on in his essay that race as we know it is a fiction and that it “pretends to be an objective term of classification” (Gates 5). With the idea that of race as a social construct becoming more and more prevalent in academia, why do we still look at it in as a means to classify and divide.  A possible answer to this comes from Hum’s theory on racialized gaze and how it is a product of Design. The very notion of a racialized gaze implies that it needs two factors for it to function: a gazer and something to gaze upon. The latter of these two functions represents an image or visual representation, resources that Hum asserts have the ability to “underscore hegemonic values and social hierarchy in subtle ways to manifest the dynamic of authenticity” (Hum 205). Couple this with the fact that Design processes “prioritize observable physical features” and the concept of visual representations becomes all the more prominent (Hum 200). Since the images that have influenced contemporary Design are rooted in the “dubious pseudoscience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” in regards to race, it is fair to say that the promotion of the “otherness” as Design has perpetuated itself into the contemporary context. Society, through the established literary canon (Gates uses figures such as John Hancock and T. S. Eliot) and its presentation of anyone other than the white author as “other”, has engrained authority in the image of white hegemony and racial “otherness.” Thus influencing our current view of race as a divider and classifier.   

So if both theorists, when analyzed in tandem, agreeing that ideological and perceptual habits are byproducts of Design and “inscribed differences in of language, belief systems, and gene pool, do they both agree that the context of one’s experience influences the way they interpret not only race, but the world at large. Gates asserts that that “writing, although secondary to reason, is nevertheless the medium of reason’s expression” (Gates 9). He goes on to say that the practices that influenced contemporary Design used writing as the principal way of defining the “principle measure of an African’s humanity” (Gates 9). What he is saying is that the images constructed by Europeans through the written tradition constructed the image, or visual representation, of Africans, and by extension anyone else who is other, as primitive and lesser than the predominantly white canon writing about them. This idea perpetuated throughout history and operated by Hum’s theory of Design as it shaped and molded collective thought throughout the years to create a white hegemony in literature. This is an example of images effectively influencing the way we see and operate in the world.

Hum complicates this idea when he states that “design as a noun, or available design, focuses on the existing resources from which those representations are crafted “ (Hum 191). What she is saying is that the way we give meaning to images is determined by the resources of our own experience.  This contrasts assertions made by Gates that it is the other way around and that images determine how we view our surrounding experience.  A great exemplification of this conflict ideological schism is the Little Rock Nine photo that we discussed in class on Tuesday. As some in the class pointed out, our awareness of the context of the photo, as well as our contemporary experience with race, influence us to interpret the image as “white students antagonizing the black woman for attempting to get an education.” This thought process would line up with Hum’s notion that experience designs interpretation. Gates would most likely disagree and state that images such as this one, as well as the languages we speak in, have influenced he way we “define supposed differences” and reinforce them as a means to “contain and maintain each other” (Gates 15). Images such as the Little Rock Nine one craft a language that perpetuates the otherness of non-white individuals and effectively designs a social experience.

Neither of these theories are explicitly wrong or unfounded, but I can’t help but wonder if a certain theory takes precedence over the other. I posit somewhat of “What came first: the chicken or the egg” scenario. Do images design our experience or does our experience design our images. While both theorist might have more nuanced conversations to add to this enigma, based off of the contexts of their respective essays I would have to say that I think that they would both agree that experience does in fact design the way we interpret visual representations. While Gates does prominently hold images’ ability to perpetuate elements of Hum’s  notion of racial gaze to task for its self-perpetuating  tendencies when he states that “current language use signifies the difference between cultures and the presence of power,” he also concedes that ultimately it is the “absence and presence of reason [that] delimits and circumscribes the very humanity of the cultures and people of color which Europeans had been ‘discovering’ since the Renaissance” (Gates 6, 8). This lines up with Hum’s theories on racialized gaze and how it is sedimented with perceptual habits that may run counter to the designer’s professional goals” (Hum 192). What Hum is trying to convey here is that no matter what context an image exists in, it will always be acted on by the culmination of individual Design and experience. For while it can be debated whether or not one’s own subjective experience holds any type of weight over the world they perceive, Hum argues that “No one approached images with an innocent eye” (Hum 193).