Archaeological Visions

Abstract

It is argued here that the desire to make things visible that under-writes archaeological research is an effect of the Western split between subject and object. This conforms a matrix of `optic knowledge', or the totalizing gaze of an all-knowing subject, that infuses our language and practices with visual metaphors. The critical consideration of visual metaphors is particularly relevant for gender studies in archaeology and their desire to make women visible. However, this desire also enables the re-signification of vision as a connected experience within a field of social and material forces, thus exposing gender, or any other aspect of social difference, as part of a field of relational practices.