and unknowable Islam from relatable cultural practice, embodied in art and
conceived as secular; the limitation of meaning to demonstrative informa-
tion; the disinterested subjectivity locating meaning in origins over recep-
tion; and what Foucault calls the“metaphysics of the object...of that never
objectifiable depth from which objects rise up towards our superficial knowl-
edge,”prioritizing things over thoughts and imagination.^4 Art history pro-
motes an understanding of Islam as a category within the nexus of
civilizations for which art serves as proof of being civilized, in which“non-
modern people are invited to assess their adequacy.”^5 In the modern era,
submission to this order indicates participation in the global community.
Like membership at the United Nations, it offers security through a pur-
ported equivalence nonetheless dominated by clearly defined major players.
As long as assimilation rejects the equivalent value of all sides; as long as it
models communication on conflict rather than on cooperation; as long as it
presumes a system of engagement between parties with preexisting rules
established by one side, it is always already a lie.
This system is outmoded and unsustainable. Robert Nelson points out
that
[The histories and classifications of art history] replicate nineteenth-century his-
tories and classifications that derive in part from versions of Hegel’s progressive
unfolding of the Absolute Spirit from the dawn of history in the unchanging East to
its realization in the progressive European nation-state, which for Hegel was
Prussia. That narrative is both nationalistic and teleological, and it belongs to a
culture that is waning. Our contemporary world has many centers and cultures.
They produce and have produced art, not to serve a teleological development that
leads to a Euro-American present of modernity or postmodernity, but for utterly
different patrons and audiences.^6
Revision of this Euronormative perspective cannot, however, simply
emerge by adding multiple centers. Each discursive frame renders a new
episteme through which to reconsider not only itself, but the entire world.
The study of perceptual culture discards perspectival historicism and the
objectivity it claims while valorizing an embodied subjectivity. We no longer
actas ifdisinterested, distanced, or static. Instead, we allow for the meanings
embodied simultaneously in emotional and physical selves conditioned by
multiple cultural contexts. How can stepping out of perspective allow us to
imagine an alternative to art history? What happens if we enable a paradigm
based on isometric geometry to rule the roost instead?(^4) Foucault, 1994 : 244. (^5) Asad, 2003 : 14. (^6) Nelson, 1997 : 39.
330 Out of Perspective