alternative perspectives of a single universe, taken from the vantage point of
each individual Monad.”^26 In contrast to ibn Arabi’sideaofunityofbeing
(wahdat al-wujud, sometimes alsotawhid), which emphasized the multiplicity
inherent to the universal Divine, Leibniz’s multiplicity subsumed diversity in
the monocular gaze of God.^27
In this context, Desargue’s observations became lost in the dominant
ideology enframing perspectivalism–that of the monocular gaze of God.
Instead, the retention of divine authority, even under a scientific system
increasingly skewed toward the senses of Man, drove the relationship
between the singular, ideally positioned Western subject and the perspec-
tival image. Far from reflecting an increasing secularization of the world, it
indicated a retrenchment in the principles of Christianity through
a vocabulary increasingly distant from theology. The Christianate world
could have used the perspectival interpretation of geometry to develop
a multi-centered mode of viewing the world, similar in concept if not in
form to the use of Islamic polyhedral geometry. The postulates based on
a God-centered world precluded this development, and the West remained
mired in a monocular perspective of the world, exported in the Western
cultural hegemony accompanying colonialism.
By the nineteenth century, this monocular gaze no longer represented
God. Instead, a perspectival view indicated ownership, both in the literal
sense of land and the metaphorical, Hegelian sense of a prospect on history.
This is exemplified in the frontispiece to theDescription de l’Égypte,
twenty-three large-format volumes of text and plates published between
1809 and 1829 to document and celebrate the information gathered by
approximately a hundred and sixty scholars accompanying Napoleon
Bonaparte’s armies in their abortive 1798 foray into Egypt. [Figure 34]
The image presents an imaginary gateway, replete with symbols, framing
a landscape marked by ruins. The gate frames the Napoleonic conquest of
Egypt, symbolized in the open-winged motif at the top of the gate. Modern
Egyptians pictured in the bottom relief are juxtaposed with a mythified
Roman conquest depicted on the upper relief. A chain of battle insignia
along the sides link modernity with antiquity. The image presents Egypt to
the viewer through Napoleon as mediator. Yet Napoleon himself does not
appear in this image except as an“N”in a round monogram. Rather, the
large-scale engraving allows the viewer to imagine himself as surveying the
scene as its new conqueror. Like the topographic maps lending the volumes
military authority, the image offers a view“from a perspective where map(^26) Cache, 2011 : 99; Crary, 1996 :50–52. (^27) Akkach,2005a:58–59.
314 Perspectives on Perspective