Kebab in theory: a treatise on political vision

This article presents a case study of the thinking image, by way of performing a close reading of David Goss's modern still life painting titled Lebanese Kebab. The oil on wood painting calls, on the one hand, for an iconographical interpretation, but at the same time it resists any simple reading of its subject matter or form. Locating itself between the discourses of art history, cartography, and contemporary Israeli society, the painting articulates the social imaginary of the Israeli subject and turns the gaze back to face its beholder. The painting's "thinking" takes place when it moves between knowledge paradigms and theorizes the instabilities of visual, categorical, and political perception.