She builds on this opposition by associating elaborately patterned surfaces
with subjectivity:“Their infinitely extendable, non-directional patterns of
line and color, with no single focal point or hierarchical progression
towards a decorative climax, required the insertion of subjectivity into
the opticalfield; they presumed a private way of looking.”^91 This“private
way of looking”does more than reflect the inward mimesis permeating
Islamic discourses of perception as outlined in this book. It also contrasts a
public or objective way of looking supposedly represented by perspective.
Necipoğlu’s recognition of isometric geometry as a cultural counterpoint
to perspective begs the question of whether and how polyhedral isometric
geometry translates as a meaningful model for subjectivity.
Yet an answer to this question requires a deposition of the natural
attitude we accord to perspective as a metaphor for subjectivity. Thenext
chapterundermines the teleology embedded in modern European dis-
courses about perspective as paradigmatic of Western rational subjectivity.
The resulting destabilization of what we have held as the natural basis for
reason paves the way for alternative understandings of the subject and
reason, explored in the conclusion. Between the structure of the mimetic
image and the powerful metaphors accorded to it, what might it mean to
lack perspective?
(^91) Necipoğlu, 1995 : 204.
Isometric Geometry in Islamic Perceptual Culture 299