Contemplating representation

As a professor of performance studies, I spent much of my professional life examining representation. Reading about it, talking about it, thinking about it. Who represents what for whom? Who is the subject, who is the object, who owns the gaze, who frames what is seen? Is the subject respectfully, appreciatively seen? Or is the subject the butt of ridicule? How do class, race, and gender influence what is represented by whom and for whom?

This afternoon as Bella and I sat in a sidewalk café basking in January sunshine and waiting for our order of chips to be delivered, she picked up a newspaper and made her own study of the representation of a hand. I sat in silence, marveling. Bella seemed to grasp about all there is to say on the subject.

P.S. A set of pictures of a gloriously windy January week at the Oregon Coast is here, for anybody who might be interested.