To look at the world out of perspective allows us to experience it in its
dazzling, perplexing, vertiginous cornucopia of meaning. Subjectivity
rooted in a shifting focal point rejects the gaze of mastery. It limits the
authority of any individual as each adjacent subjectivity challenges its
mastery of a uniquely authentic position. To look from one place becomes
infinitely insufficient. Qazvini points this out in considering the failure of a
reflection to remain constant as the observer moves. He explains:“What is
real does not change its place because of a change in the position of the
observer, but isfixed.”^7 The weakness of the perspectival gaze, and the
propriety of the subjectivities it perpetuates, becomes evident in how easily
it can be knocked out of kilter by simply stepping to the side.
The purpose of such an anamorphic view can never be to reestablish a
new paradigm of mastery. To valorize a multivalent subjectivity as properly
Islamic would merely replace one cultural hierarchy with another. It would
insist on a unique center that would, ironically, repeat the problem of
perspectivalism. Multifocal subjectivity does not produce identity. Rather,
it functions as a tool. Like the a-centered system proposed by Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, such subjectivities function as“finite networks
of automata in which communication runs from any neighbor to any
other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are inter-
changeable, defined only by theirstateat a given moment.”^8 Such a system
belongs to nobody and could come from any source. Just as it might be
modeled through Islamic pattern, it could be conceived through the Jain
concept ofanekantavada, which, in recognizing the complexity of truth,
advocates for intellectual and religious pluralism. Would this imply a
relationship between Islam and Jainism? Perhaps, but the question is
irrelevant to the issue of method. Rather than learningaboutcultures, we
need to learnfromthem.
To practice art history out of perspective necessitates a profound reor-
ganization of how we situate knowledge of the Other through art, and in
doing so, how we also situate knowledge in constructing a collective sense
of self. Such a practice would allow for Islamic thought to function outside
of the express boundaries of faith. This would mean that the study of
Islamic– or Korean or West African or Inuit– art would not only
constitute a regional specialization, but would offer an element in the
toolbox of how humans extract meaning from experience. Much as pre-
mises rooted in Christian theological and aesthetic practices incarnate in
secular art history have enriched our understanding of the world, the
(^7) Berlekamp, 2011 : 105. (^8) Deleuze and Guattari, 1987 : 17.
Out of Perspective 331