Frida Kahlo and Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race

Original posting, May 2009...

As I move forward pulling together the final elements of my new manuscript, Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race, a follow-up volume to Tex[t]-Mex, I have decided to include a chapter on seeing in the work of Remedios Varo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Frida Kahlo--to be truthful, it is a revision and update of a conference paper I delivered 17 years ago, "Surreptitiously Watching the Voyeur’s Mirror: Fragmented Notes on Eye/I Addiction Culled From the Autobiographical Works of Jorge Luis Borges, Frida Kahlo, Jacques Derrida and Remedios Varo" for the Addiction and Culture Conference (Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, March 1996). A book was birthed out of that conference but I never got my act together in time to submit anything for it--check it out here. In any event, as a placemarker, I wanted to share the plates from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait that will provide the focus of my chapter--the uncanny, funny, and dynamic "ojosaurus" sketches:
I will try to come back later and sketch out my own thoughts on this striking composition. You can peek inside the Kahlo diary here.