The Visibility of Visuality: Vauxhall Gardens and the Siting of the Viewer

Abstract

What price have we paid for the fantasy that there are free rights of access to the domain of the visual? That everyone with eyes to see can in fact stand on an equal footing in the republic of visuality. This fantasy has long been with us and its origins lie deep in our history of understanding the visual realm. This chapter will explore a signal moment in that history when the politics and erotics of the look take on special cadences within the cultural topography of eighteenth-century England.