In this essay, I deconstruct the metaphysical idealism that embraces the ‘blind spot’ as the same value system from which the emanating ‘seeing spot’ derives, a provenance shared by the function of illustration. I trace the fantasy of the ‘transparency’ invoked in contemporary American politics back to the eighteenth-century All-Seeing Eye disseminated through the extensive reach of Freemasonry. Depicted atop an Egyptian pyramid, the All-Seeing Eye is characterized by rays of emanating lines of light. This highly discursive image bears interlocking significations of enlightenment, illumination and the revelation of something hidden. However enlightening the exposure of a revealed blind spot may be, the trope of the blind spot, fused with the persistence of light, poses an energetic ambivalence which leads to an uncomfortably close convergence between the operations of illustration and conspiracy theory.
Carolyn Shapiro (Tue,) studied this question.