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a small history of Octopus: A Visual Studies Journal
The title of the journal is inspired by the William S. Burroughs essay of the same name, in which he describes "a new creature, a mutant" whose enormous watching eyes are "anchored in [the] viscera with no intervening bones" and thus are "[e]yes that hear and feel and smell." Octopus proposes that vision is not rooted in the eye itself, but rather extends to corporeality, affect, and sensation. It seeks to engage questions of the politics of vision, the historicity of visual practices, and the cultures and theories of vision and visuality. Propelled by an investment in the work of emerging artists and scholars, the journal hopes to put into practice processes of interdisciplinarity and intellectual hybridity, as well as to provide a space for the production of visionary scholarship. As we considered possible topics for our first issue, as well as our perspective from within the field of visual studies, the unique qualities of synaesthesia suggested a potent metaphor and method for examining and informing the practice of visual studies, and responding to critiques of visual studies as myopically fixated on the visual at the expense of other embodied experiences. On the contrary, we take as our objects of study the products of a multidimensional, synaesthetic culture – a designation which keeps in mind the fact that the visual is experiential, and not ever without the collusion of other senses. Hence, the topic of our first issue was no accident: both synaesthesia and the octopus share a multidirectional scope of perception extending the reach of sensations, more appropriately describing the practice in which we participate. © Octopus Journal, all rights reserved. No part of this text may be reprinted or disseminated beyond personal use without permission from the copyright holder. ISSN 1559-016x/1559-0178. contact and editorial information
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