Towards a Critical History of the Gaze. Rethinking the Use of the Image within the Social Sciences

Abstract

In this paper, critical discourse is used as a fundamental element of what it´s called the Critical History of the Gaze. The text does not try to establish a mere method of interpreting the image, but on the contrary, to use the image as an important part of a broad analysis capable of containing within itself memories and social expressions that allow the social scientist to expose the contradictions in modern life, a life that conceals the functioning of reality so that in daily practice the institutionalized forms of society remain unaltered. For these reasons, the paper goes further and state that the judgments, ideologies and preferences of those who operate the apparatus, those who create the images, those who interpret them, as well as those who classify them, etc., are never neutral, but immersed in a complex, contradictory world, built on everyday dynamics that reproduce a specific material practice, often in accordance with the dominant discourse.