Staring: how we look

Abstract

"Drawing on examples from art, media, performance, fashion, manners, and memoir, cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson investigates a basic human interaction that has remained curiously unexplored, the human stare. In the first book of its kind, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores what motivates it, and considers the targets and effects of the stare. While drawing from psychology, biology, and history to explain why the impulse to stare is so powerful, she also enlarges and complicates these formulations with examples from the realm of imaginative culture. Featuring more than forty illustrations, Staring reveals the stimulating combination of symbolic, material, and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible and vexed. Beyond this, the book brings to light how the usual responses to staring can shift into engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this unique study advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors—or just our fascination with staring"-- On back of cover.

Contents

Why do we stare? -- A physical response -- A cultural history -- A social relationship -- Knowledge gathering -- Regulating our looks -- Looking away, staring back -- Faces -- Hands -- Breasts -- Bodies -- Beholding.