Unflattening

Humans who exist in this “flattened” universe lack agency and resemble the characters of novelist Edwin A. Abbot’s Flatland. Flatlanders, who live in a two-dimensional world, see a penny from an angle that distorts it into a flat, straight line. When the protagonist of Abbot’s novel, a square, meets a sphere, he is confused as to what it is. However, with this door of perception opened, “a flood of possibilities ensue […]” (Location 36), and he grows curious. This “rupture in experience” is necessary to provoke flatlanders into seeing the world anew (Location 38).

Sousanis views his role in this mission as asking readers to think about different perspectives, which “begins in thinking about seeing” (Location 40). Perseus-like images of humans wearing winged sandals and flying accompany this claim. 

Sousanis states that our very eyes are equipped for showing us multiple perspectives. This is because “[T]he distance separating our eyes means that there is a difference between the view each produces” (Location 44); consequently, “[T]here is no single ‘correct’ view” (Location 44). This stereoscopic vision enables us to see things in motion and as changing and complex rather than simple.

As we come to understand that “differences of view are essential” to learning truth and gaining depth of insight into our own perspective (Location 51), we can overcome the “gulf of mutual incomprehension” that causes much of the conflict in the world (Location 51). Sousanis illustrates his point with images of dancing couples who make multiple distinct figurations and whose perception continually shifts in relation to one another. He argues for French philosophers’ Deleuze and Guattari’s “rhizomatic” model of decentered perception—one where “each node is connected to any other” (Location 52)—and illustrates this with the figure of an eye with multiple windows, each containing its own personal eyeball. Sousanis argues that these multiple levels of perception aren’t limited to the sense of sight, as dogs have a multidimensional olfactory sense.

Sousanis illustrates the revolution in perception that occurred when the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus replaced the Ptolemaic geocentric perception of the universe with the current heliocentric model of the solar system. However, as a result of Enlightenment-era technology that allowed humans to control perspective, our perceptions grew more limited. Sousanis believes that so-called advancements “can be a trap—where we see only what we’re looking for” (Location 49), creating an illusion of a single perspective.

Sousanis urges us to play the role of explorers who are curious about the texture of reality. In doing so we become more like James Joyce, the writer of the 1922 Modernist epic Ulysses, as “by seeing through multiple eyes, we can trace otherwise invisible connections across layers of time and space” (Location 58), thus making a mundane act like turning on the faucet an odyssey. The commitment to seeing life from multiple perspectives involves an attitude of openness and curiosity, which will eventually lead us to “dimensions not yet within our imagination” (Location 59).

Languages, which are made up of words, are “the means by which we order experience and give structure to our thoughts” (Location 64). An illustrated figure of a swimmer highlights the extent to which we are immersed in the verbal substance of our thoughts. However, despite the efficiency of verbal communication, “languages can also become traps” when we succumb to the illusion of “mistaking their boundaries for reality” (Location 65).

Sousanis then explains how Western civilization has long prioritized words over images. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato regarded the physical world as a degraded realm of forms, as opposed to the more transcendent world of abstract ideas. Images of the physical world were therefore even worse—“shadows of shadows” that obscured the search for truth (Location 67). The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes expanded on Plato’s ideas, dividing the mind from the body in a metaphysics known as dualism. For Sousanis, Descartes demoted physical experience to the extent that he left “us disembodied […] afloat in a sea of words” (Location 68).

Sousanis argues that no system of communication, whether verbal or imagistic, can convey truth in its entirety. Rather, as semanticist S.I. Hayakawa suggests, “[E]very language ‘leaves work undone for other languages to do’” (Location 70). While verbal modes of communication are linear, visual modes present everything “all-at-once” (Location 71), being both simultaneous and relational. Furthermore, where verbal communication posits a definite starting point, visual communication allows the spectator to begin anywhere they wish. Sousanis adds that we can often discern the truth more easily with an image because we encounter a direct representation of an object instead of an abstract signifier: “[W]hile image is, text is always about” (Location 71).

The verbal and visual correspond to complementary hemispheres in the brain. While the left side of the brain, which “breaks down and isolates information into segmented parts” (Location 76), controls the verbal, the right, which corresponds to images, “addresses the whole in its context” (Location 76). Sousanis argues that comics enable sequential and simultaneous information systems to coexist in relationship to one another. This enables a more nuanced perception of reality.