Same, not the same / by Justin Harrison


In the introduction to Foucault’s book ‘The order of Things’ the author references an old encyclopedia with various classifications, in which is a category of ‘Things that from far away look like flies’.

Whilst it is tempting to make comparisons, we must remember our positionality, not just spatially but temporally, conceptually, socially and critically.

Homi Bhabha describes that there are differing scalar effects of different angles of view through the intersticies. And perhaps I wonder - that one can be so far off that perception is skewed and really comparisons cannot be made.

Perhaps imagine a toy cow 🐄, go to a field of cows hold it up and they might even look the same, in colour, form and scale. However one is not a cow, you won’t get milk out of it. They are the same but not the same.