South African artist William Kentridge's (b. 1955) work frequently employs optical tools, such as the stereoscope, to highlight the contingency and instability of witness. These visual tools become metaphors for the process of historicization in post-apartheid South Africa. Kentridge is best known for his animations that are filmed by drawing with charcoal, photographing, erasing, redrawing and photographing again, leaving a palimpsest of previous traces on the paper's surface. Kentridge's prints, drawings, puppetry, theatrical projects and performances are also addressed in (un)Fixing the Eye. Kentridge's vast array of works narrates a history critical of the narrow and objective history of apartheid constructed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) official report. Furthermore, the metaphors suggested by Kentridge's optical tools undermine the ideology that apartheid is in the past. It suggests the necessity of colonial narratives as well as issues of class and materialism, within apartheid as traces that are very much part of the present. Each chapter of (un)Fixing the Eye uses a separate optical device to explore the narration of history in South Africa. To do so I draw from an eclectic group of thinkers: psychoanalytic models of melancholia and reparation, Jacques Derrida's work on forgiveness, Hayden White's theories of narrative and Jonathan Crary's work on optical tools and perception. Chapter one argues there is an ironic and impossible condition of forgiveness and truth in the TRC. Using Kentridge's Ubu Tells the Truth and its specific invocation of Dziga Vertov's realist 'kino-eye' and Alfred Jarry's brutal and absurd King Ubu as metaphors of absurdity and truth represented through the movie camera, this chapter argues that there is an impossibility of truth in the TRC. Chapter two reads Kentridge's Felix in Exile as a materialist response to the naturalized and a historical landscape tradition in South Africa. Felix's use of the theodolite and sextant as mapping and navigation tools highlights colonial mapping practices and the history of property ownership, particularly in the mining industry. In this way these optical tools link colonialism and mining alongside of the violence rendered in the film, unearthing a history of colonialism and class issues in apartheid narratives. Chapter three uses X-rays and CAT scans as metaphors for the testimony in the TRC, as both require an expert to decode and contextualize the testimony. Kentridge's films during the TRC use medical imaging technologies that are ambiguous and uncertain within the TRC's discourse of truth. Chapter four returns to the camera, this time as a colonial image in Namibia, arguing its usage in Black Box/Chambre Noir creates a melancholic relationship between Enlightenment Europe and colonial Africa. In this melancholia, Kentridge's history of the 20th century's first genocide in Namibia links a tremendous number of global histories. The focus in optical discourses, particularly the stereoscope is not new in Kentridge's work but (un)Fixing the Eye considers a number of tools that have not previously been a part of this optical work in Kentridge's art. It expands the political scope of Kentridge's work to include colonialism and class issues, insisting on their place in the current political landscape. Ultimately this project argues that Kentridge's work through a destabilized optical apparatus works both formally and allegorically as a way of conceiving of narrative and ideological critique in an expanded sense from the narrow confines set by the TRC.

[pt] O presente estudo propõe uma metodologia interdisciplinar para a criação de objetos óticos, que possa ser utilizada como material didático no ensino de Design. O uso de novas tecnologias em sala de aula permite questionar sobre que tipos de objetos estimulantes e atraentes podem ser desenvolvidos para o aprendizado do aluno nascido de uma geração imersa no meio digital. Uma das hipóteses seria o desenvolvimento da releitura dos chamados brinquedos óticos criados entre os séculos XVII e XIX e que são considerados os antecedentes do Cinema de Animação. No entanto, muitos são os desafios para que o novo material seja criado a partir de uma metodologia colaborativa recente, sem se caracterizar como apenas uma nova roupagem para antigos modelos. Fundamentada em conceitos como os fatores educativos de Luigi Giussani, a pedagogia das coisas de Pier Paolo Pasolini e a teoria de simetria de Bruno Latour, esta tese faz um levantamento histórico desses objetos óticos e analisa situações de ensino aprendizagem utilizando recursos didáticos a partir de tecnologias analógicas. Uma análise desses recursos, uma discussão e aprofundamento em questões como, interdisciplinaridade e Cinema de Animação são apresentadas. Por fim um estudo de caso de produção interdisciplinar de objetos óticos criados por alunos em sala de aula foi realizado. / [en] The essay presents an interdisciplinary methodology with the creation of optical toys for pedagogical purposes in Design teaching. In digital era, the use of new technologies in classroom favors speculation about what fascinates the students nowadays and what would be useful to their learning. One hypothesis is the recreation of the then-called optical toys, originally created in XVIII-XIXth centuries, considered the forefathers of Animation Cinema. However, there are many challenges to create new material originating from a recent colaborative methodology, instead only rehashing the old models. This thesis is based on Luigi Giussani s educative factors, Bruno Latour s simetry theory and Pier Paolo Pasolini s pedagogy of things, bringing a historical survey of the optical objects and analyzes cases of teaching learning with didatic resources from analogical technologies. It concludes an interdisciplinary case of optical objects producted by students in class.