This article explores a fundamental shift in the humanities called the «visual turn». We are talking about the transformation of visuality in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The difficulty of analyzing this phenomenon is due to the fact that the modern humanities have not yet developed a single subject and method for studying the visual turn. In this article, the turn as a transition from the classical to the non-classical observer is analyzed as a transformation of the very human presence in the world. The change in visuality is primarily associated with a change in the concept of the classical transcendental subject and the transition to understanding the affected and temporal subject of our time. In this article, we analyze the transformation of subjectivity based on the three-part mechanism of the power of distance, the power of gaze, and the power of memory, which was proposed by W. Benjamin. We show that at the beginning of the 20th century there takes place rethinking of a person’s presence in the world through the understanding of the destruction of the distance between the subject and the object (the world), a change in the power of gaze and a change in the role of memory in the perception of what is seen. The visible no longer acts as directly given to the subject, but presupposes the power of visual perception and the special role of memory in what is seen. This means that in modern non-classical concepts of visuality, an attempt is made to understand the act of seeing as an event of the formation of a subject. In this three-part mechanism of visual distance, the power of gazing into the visible and the role of memory in what is seen, the act of seeing becomes the very presence of modern man. However, in this case, the presence in the act of seeing eludes the subject of experience himself. Thus, visual experience in the form of a present consciousness of the world that is eternally and always does not correspond to it, is an unconscious atrophy of the most apathetic «narcissist» of vision. The article concludes that the lack of understanding of this moment of presence of the modern subject results in the fact that both the return of distance within the framework of the concept of the classical observer and the complete destruction of the aura within the concepts of the non-classical observer lead to a theoretical impasse in understanding the very experience of non-classical vision.

The article is a continuation of the previous article Non-Classical Subject of Vision. Part I and is devoted to the analysis of the eventivity of a non-classical subject. The analysis of non-classical subjectivity in the article is based on the three-part mechanism of the power of distance, power of gaze and power of memory proposed by W. Benjamin. The concept of the image as a mediator through which the subject regains the lost distance with the world is discussed. The article deals with the concepts of the non-classical subject of visuality by J.-P. Sartre and G. Didi-Huberman as different types of transformation of the power of gaze and the role of memory in non-classical vision. Important elements of the concept of «scanty image» by J.-P. Sartre are analyzed: criticism of the naive understanding of the immanence of consciousness and the world, criticism of images as a weak copy of the object of observation, the development of a specific givenness of a thing in an image through its distant present absence. It is shown that the theory of «scanty image» breaks the unreal objects of visual consciousness and the sensually perceived world into two poles that are not connected with each other. Therefore, in Sartre’s concept, the relationship with the world — both in visual and sensory comprehension of reality, turns out to be problematic. In the theory of G. Didi-Huberman, built on the reorganization of the understanding of the aura in technically reproducible art, a deeper understanding of the image is given. The presence as well as the absence of things of the world do not appear as separate from each other, but turn out to be the dialectical unity of the game of near and far (Fort-Da). The article discusses this dialectical understanding of the relationship between the man and the world, which acts as an incessant rhythm of approaching and removing a visible object. In this eventful space of a vision (D. Joselit) turns a thing into a hybrid object, and the person appears as a flickering subject of vision.