{"id":118,"date":"2026-04-07T10:06:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/visualculture-howtosee\/?post_type=chapter&p=118"},"modified":"2026-04-23T18:50:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:50:02","slug":"10","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/visualculture-howtosee\/chapter\/10\/","title":{"raw":"Sight Through the Everyday: Organizing & Personalizing Bags, M. Paula Vidal Valdespino","rendered":"Sight Through the Everyday: Organizing & Personalizing Bags, M. Paula Vidal Valdespino"},"content":{"raw":"

Sight Through the Everyday: Organizing & Personalizing Bags<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nI have had many questions on what it means to see and how do our personalities, along with the mundane of our daily lives, shape and reimagine our sight. Let alone something that we carry with us every day, like a purse, backpack, or whatever we define as our \u2018go-to bag.\u2019\u00a0 With a background in intersectional literature and creative practices, I struggle at the constant reach of blending positionality with academic endeavors and concepts that go beyond structural inequalities and turn to internal reflections outward\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0 What I mean by this is, rather than looking at class or gender in how we dress and adorn ourselves (which are influences we cannot ignore), how does the makeup, for example, that we use, shape our decisions in what is important in a material and mundane sense.\u00a0 And perhaps, I might be echoing the same message in both points, but it is through these natural acts of seeing that help me better understand questions of importance and human essence in our personal lives. By turning to authors\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0John Berger (1972) and James Elkins (2000), and their work on sight, I believe I can better conceptualize the different ways we see the everyday. And as a person who is fascinated by the mundane, there is a lot to see in the things people look over or ignore.\r\n\r\nIn Berger\u2019s book, Ways of Seeing,<\/em> he opens the first chapter by addressing the sense that \u201ccomes before words\u201d, which is sight, and the frames it as a sense that \u201cestablishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.\u201d (Berger, 1972, p. 7). He further expands this argument by sharing a common experience of knowing through sensory experiences (or embodiment), but what we see per se does not align with our feelings (also ideas and thoughts), as it is where knowledge \u201cnever quite fits the sight.\u201d (Berger, 1972, p. 7).\u00a0 Our experiences with sight have long come before we have formulated the very sentences to describe preexisting knowledge, and rather been on embodiment, feelings, and simply seeing. These preexisting thoughts and experiences have then turned into beliefs and understandings of how we view the world around us, which is constantly changing based on new embodied experiences but also the choices we make to \u201csituate\u201d ourselves \u201cin relation to \u201cnew or \u2018known\u2019 things (Berger, 1972, pp. 8-9). Later in his book, he focuses on the importance of space and advertising, which clogs up most of our sight in urban sights, sharing how \u201cIn the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.\u201d (Berger, 1972, p.129). This changes our relationship with sight and moves it away from a choice to see and personal discovery (such as coming across a flower on a walk or seeing the sun because our window faces the sunrise), into a forced act of sight, one that literally and figuratively \u201cconfronts us.\u201d (Berger, 1972, p.129). Although, Berger states \u201call images are man-made\u201d and embody information, how much of who we are and our personal ways of viewing are shaped by \u201cforced\u201d visuals and what we are expected to \u2018see\u2019? (Berger, 1972, pp. 9-10). Where does the new discovery of embodiment and knowledge-\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 making become reintroduced into our lives? I think this is where customization and personalizing mundaneness come into place, but I will unpack that later in this piece.\r\n\r\nIn the preface of James Elkins\u2019 (2000) book, How to Use Your Eyes<\/em>, he shares his aspirations for his book and how he hopes his book will:\r\n\r\nwill inspire every reader to stop and consider things that are absolutely ordinary, things so clearly meaningless that they never seemed worth a second thought. Once you start seeing them, the world\u2014which can look so dull, so empty of interest\u2014will gather before your eyes and become thick with meaning. (p. XIII)\r\n\r\nHe expands this by sharing the things we see that are made by man and by nature, such as postage stamps, mandalas, our fingerprints, to nothing itself, that we could either find fascinating or haven\u2019t given them much attention (Elkins, 2000, pp. 2, 86, 154, 238). In addition, he shares how these things are common and can be seen anywhere, but also includes things that are \u201cnot all there is to the visible world: there are also wonderful objects that are uncommon or rare.\u201d (Elkins, 2000, p. XII). Which I think could be a stretch, but what are the things that reflect how we understand, experience, and see the world, but are hidden away (or out of sight) as they are stuffed in bags? (Elkins, 2000, p. XII; Berger, 1972, p.8).\r\n

Mundaneness, Power, and Intersectionality<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The above analysis translates into my attempt to demonstrate sight through the everyday and carefully looking at the things\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0we consider mundane, common, or even ordinary (Elkins, 2000, pp. XII-III). As Berger established, to experience and see the world, we do not need to have the words or a full understanding of how it functions, but rather what Elkins calls for, an appreciation for the depth and existence they hold (or produce through feelings, thoughts, and ideas) (Berger, 1972, p.8; Elkins, 2000, p. XIII). Now circling back to acknowledging the role of intersectionality and the weaving of race, gender, class, and more in shaping how we experience and navigate the world, this in turn shapes the knowledge we use to understand the world around us\u2014it provides a framework to build the language for what we see, even if they do not quite align (Moya, 2011; Berger, 1972, p. 7).\u00a0 As Berger shares in the following passage: \u201cThe way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe\u201d; how we understand and experience sight is shaped by these personal experiences, beliefs, and identities. (Berger, 1972, p. 8). Therefore, sight becomes political, and we must not only acknowledge the systems of power that shape and profit from the demise of vulnerable and minoritized people in society, but the ways we shut them off too. We are not all Jesus or perfect beings, but we must stop and see who we are purposefully looking away from, especially those who have sought out for us to engage with them on a deeper level, beyond physically seeing<\/em> and hearing<\/em> them. \u00a0Whether it be victims of genocide, the houseless folks on our streets, or our romantic partners, the rise of individualism and push for capitalism has shifted our sight away from community, justice, and love.\r\n\r\nBy appreciating the richness of experience that everyone holds can help us move towards understanding how we and others see our surroundings, and how much \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0institutions and corporations push towards altering our attention and sight away from each other. In one of Berger\u2019s chapters, he discusses the way children and adults decorate their spaces, or boards as he calls them, with works of original art to \u201cmatch and express\u201d the experience of their rooms (Berger, 1972, p. 30). On a few pages after, he expresses how art has been replaced by a \u201clanguage of images\u201d and when people are cut from their past, they are less likely to act as a collective than those who have been \u201csituated\u201d in history, which reinforces the political nature of sight through art and history (Berger, 1972, p. 33). So, what am I trying to say\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 - Quite a lot, in all honesty. Sight is political, and through decorations and how people choose how to decorate their bedrooms\u2014what is important to them? Why? What do certain textures, patterns, or colours mean to them?\r\n\r\nCustomization and personalizing are impacted by our identities or proximity to the margins. Why are some hoarding and others placing everything in a bag? There are many questions to ask but I call to look at the intimate, mundane of everyday life; how people decorate their living room windows, style their hair, stylize their electronic devices (are\/what stickers are on there? Where did they come from? Who made them? What\u2019s their message(s)?), and where do they walk when they want to be outside? We will begin to see the conditions of sight versus how the world is are very different, as Berger shares: \u201cThe contrast between publicity's interpretation of the world and the world's actual condition is a very stark one\u201d (Berger, 1972, p. 150). Let\u2019s begin to once again ask questions and talk with those around us, to understand the multitude of meaning the world envelopes us with.\r\n

Reddit and Sight<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nI recently came across a Reddit forum called r\/whatsinthebag,<\/a> which is a sister page of another forum on everyday essentials called r\/EDC<\/a> for \u201cEveryday Carry.\u201d This forum includes hundreds of images from multiple Reddit users that show the items in their bags, from fans and hand sanitizers to prescription medications. Each post contains personalized bags and items that speak a lot to the users\u2019 needs and preferences, which hints at what they find important enough that they want to carry with them daily. I highly recommend checking out the forum not only for the following questions, but for any suggestions or ideas on how to organize your bags (especially as students, possibly caretakers and parents).\r\n