Parallax

In a philosophic/geometric sense: An apparent change in the direction of an object, caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight. The apparent displacement, or difference of position, of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view. In contemporary writing parallax can also be the same story, or a similar story from approximately the same time line, from one book told from a different perspective in another book. The word and concept feature prominently in James Joyce's 1922 novel, Ulysses. Orson Scott Card also used the term when referring to Ender's Shadow as compared to Ender's Game.

The metaphor is invoked in the magnum opus of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his work The Parallax View. Žižek borrowed the concept of "parallax view" from the Japanese philosopher and literary critic Kojin Karatani. "The philosophical twist to be added (to parallax), of course, is that the observed distance is not simply subjective, since the same object which exists 'out there' is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently mediated so that an 'epistemological' shift in the subject's point of view always reflects an ontological shift in the object itself. Or—to put it in Lacanese—the subject's gaze is always-already inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its 'blind spot,' that which is 'in the object more than object itself', the point from which the object itself returns the gaze. Sure the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture."^[20]

The word is used in the title of Alan J. Pakula's 1974 movie The Parallax View, in which a reporter (Warren Beatty) investigates an assassination. The word in this case refers to a fictional corporation portrayed in the film.

The word is used in the song "Roll the Bones" from the album of the same name by the Canadian progressive rock trio Rush. In these lyrics, parallax is used to point out how differing points of view do not change the nature of certain facts or truths.^{[citation needed]}