Varzi’s “The Whole World Blind” is particularly stirring for thinking about how to engage in visual and multimodal work. As she asks regarding war photographs, “What will we do with this visual information? If we do nothing, are we then simply guilty of voyeurism?” Much of the work that ethnographers engage in and with is embedded in some form of political, social, and patriarchal violence, and the resultant images and theoretical imaginings they produce can possibly contribute to this violence. Her text calls for ethnography that seeks to question the ways in which visual information is used, and how engaging the senses and the body in new ways might shed light on the taken-for-granted. In the case of Varzi’s project, she asserts that “There is an immediacy, an authenticity that is lacking in what is supposed to be the most real medium—the visual medium—that can only be overcome by the voice." What is the role of the body and senses in regarding visual material, whether in a text or in an installation? How is the notion that "seeing is believing" used at times to cause more harm than good? How can we see and/or visualize without becoming guilty of voyeurism? Such is particularly crucial to ask in the context of a project aimed at visualizing toxicities.
