Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by
Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object. This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage, in which a child encountering a mirror realizes that he or she has an external appearance. Lacan suggests that this gaze effect can similarly be produced by any conceivable object such as a chair or a television screen. This is not to say that the object behaves optically as a mirror; instead it means that the awareness of any object can induce an awareness of also
being an object.
Related concepts
Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
also had a distinct conception of the medical gaze in his social theories, although the common usage of the term is of the Lacanian one.
In cinema theory,
Laura MulveyLaura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London...
identifies the male gaze, in sympathy with the Lacanian statement that "Woman is a symptom of man." This means that femininity is a social construct, and that the feminine object the object petit a, or the object of desire, is what constitutes the male lack, and thus his positive identity.
Bracha Ettinger criticizes this notion of the male gaze by her proposition of a
Matrixial Gaze. Here there is no more question of positing a subject versus an object, neither a question of two figures looking at each other and effectively constituting a double gaze. The matrixial gaze is not operative where a "Male Gaze" is placed opposite to a "Female Gaze" and where both positive entities constitute each other from a lack (such an umbrella concept of the gaze would precisely be what scholars such as
Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
claim is the Lacanian definition of "The Gaze.") Ettinger's proposal doesn't concern a subject and its object, existing or lacking. Rather, it concerns "trans-subjectivity" and shareability on a partial level, and it is based on her claim concerning a feminine-matrixial difference that escapes the phallic opposition of masculine/feminine and is produced in a process of co-emergence. Ettinger works from the very late Lacan, yet, from the angle she brings, it is the structure of the Lacanian subject itself that is deconstructed to a certain extent, and another kind of feminine dimension appears, with its hybrid and floating matrixial gaze.
History of the concept
Numerous existentialists and phenomenologists have addressed the concept of gaze beginning with Sartre.
FoucaultFoucault can refer to:People:*Jean-Pierre Foucault , French television host*Léon Foucault , French physicist*Michel Foucault , French philosopher and historian...
elaborated on gaze to illustrate a particular dynamic in power relations and disciplinary mechanisms in his
Discipline and PunishDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
. Derrida also elaborated on the relations of animals and humans via the gaze in The Animal That Therefore I Am.
Definitions in cinematic theory
The gaze is characterised by
who is the gazer (viewer):
- The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text
A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
, i.e. the reader(s) of the text.
- The Intra-diegetic
Diegesis is a style of representation in fiction and is:# the world in which the situations and events narrated occur; and# telling, recounting, as opposed to showing, enacting.In diegesis the narrator tells the story...
gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text.
- The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall
The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...
, the viewer.
- The camera's gaze: is the film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
's gaze.
- The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or object in the text.
Theorists
Gunther KressGunther Kress is Professor of Semiotics and Education in the Department of Learning, Curriculum & Communication at the Institute of Education of the University of London.-External links:**...
and
Theo van LeeuwenTheo Van Leeuwen is the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney.Van Leeuwen studied linguistics at the University of Sydney, and taught communication theory at Macquarie University and the London College of Printing. He is one of the main...
posit that the gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the
indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; the
direct gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed.
The Male Gaze and feminist theory
In the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema",
Laura MulveyLaura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London...
introduced the concept of the "male gaze" as a feature of power asymmetry. The concept has been strongly influential on
feminist film theoryFeminist film theory is theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analysed and their theoretical underpinnings.-History:...
and
media studiesMedia studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
.
In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze.
Responses to the male gaze
In feminist theory, the male gaze expresses an asymmetric (unequal) power relationship, between viewer and viewed, gazer and gazed, i.e. man imposes his
unwanted (objectifying) gaze upon woman. Second Wave feminists argue that whether or not women welcome the gaze, they might merely be conforming to the hegemonic norms established to benefit the interests of men — thus underscoring
the power of the male gaze to reduce a person (man or woman) to an object (see also
exhibitionismExhibitionism refers to a desire or compulsion to expose parts of one's body – specifically the genitals or buttocks of a man or woman, or the breasts of a woman – in a public or semi-public circumstance, in crowds or groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers...
).
The existence of an analogous female gaze arises when the male gaze is considered. Mulvey argues that "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze…" Describing
Wide Sargasso SeaWide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author Jean Rhys. Since her previous work, Good Morning, Midnight, was published in 1939, Rhys had lived in obscurity. Wide Sargasso Sea put Rhys into the limelight once more, and became her most successful novel.The novel...
(1966), by Jean Rhys, Nalini Paul indicates that the Antoinette character gazes at Rochester, placing a garland upon him, making him appear heroic: "Rochester does not feel comfortable with having this role enforced upon him; thus, he rejects it by removing the garland, and crushing the flowers".
From the male perspective, man possesses a gaze because he is a man, whereas, a woman has a gaze
only when she assumes the male gazer role, when she objectifies others by gazing at them like a man. Eva-Maria Jacobsson supports Paul's description of the "female gaze" as "a mere cross-identification with masculinity", yet evidence of women's objectification of men — the discrete existence of a
Female Gaze — is in the "boy toy" adverts published in teen magazines, despite Mulvey's contention that
The Gaze is
property of one gender. Moreover, in power relationships, the gazer can direct his or her gaze to members of his or her gender, for asexual reasons, such as comparing the gazer's
body imageBody image refers to a person's perception of the aesthetics and sexual attractiveness of their own body. The phrase body image was first coined by the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Paul Schilder in his masterpiece The Image and Appearance of the Human Body...
and
clothingClothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...
to those of the gazed at man or woman.
The gaze and psychoanalysis
Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
argued that the concept of the gaze is important in his "
mirror stageThe mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
" of infantile psychological development; children gaze at a mirror image of themselves (a twin sibling might function as the mirror-image), and use that image to co-ordinate their physical movements. He linked the concept of the gaze to the development of individual
human agencyIn philosophy and sociology, agency is the capacity of an agent to act in a world. In philosophy, the agency is considered as belonging to that agent even if that agent represents a fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity...
. To that end, he transformed the gaze to a dialectic, between the Ideal–Ego and the Ego-Ideal. The ideal-ego is the
imagined self-identification image — whom the person imagines him- or herself to be or aspires to be; whilst the ego-ideal is the
imaginary gaze of another person gazing upon the ideal-ego, e.g. a rock star (an Ideal-ego) secretly hoping his/her school-era bully-tormentor (Ego-ideal) is now aware of his/her (the rock star) subsequent success and fame, since school times.
Lacan further developed his concept of the gaze, saying that it does not belong to the subject but, rather, to the object of the gaze. In
Seminar One, Lacan told the audience: "I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do not see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify to me that there may be others there. This window, if it gets a bit dark, and if I have reasons for thinking that there is someone behind it, is straight-away a gaze". (Lacan, 1988, p. 215) Thus Lacan would argue that the Male Gaze exists within the mind of the person who feels it on them. The practical implications of this statement reach far, inasmuch as it can be interpreted to the effect that perception supersedes actuality, that schism is actuality, that actuality is false, and that the interlocutor is the only real.
See also
- Evil eye
The evil eye is a look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike...
- Eye contact
Eye contact is a meeting of the eyes between two individuals.In human beings, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term has come in the West to often define the act as a meaningful and...
- Eye tracker
- Scopophilia
Scopophilia or scoptophilia, from Greek "love of looking", is deriving pleasure from looking. As an expression of sexuality, it refers to sexual pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects: erotic photographs, pornography, naked bodies, etc....
- The Look
Sources
- Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine, Women Artists at the Millennium. MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
, October Books, 2006.
- Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory — see external links.
- Ettinger, Bracha, "The Matrixial Gaze" (1995), reprinted as Ch. 1 in: The Matrixial Borderspace. University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota.Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its books in social and cultural thought, critical theory, race and ethnic studies, urbanism, feminist criticism, and media...
, 2006.
- Florence, Penny and Pollock, Griselda, Looking back to the Future. G & B Arts, 2001.
- Jacobsson, Eva-Maria: A Female Gaze? (1999) — see external links.
- Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen: Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. (1996).
- Lacan, Jacques: Seminar One: Freud's Papers On Technique (1988).
- Lacan, Jacques:Seminar Eleven: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. NY & London, W.W. Norton and Co., 1978.
- Lutz, Catherine & Jane Collins: The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic (1994).
- Mulvey, Laura: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975, 1992).
- Pollock, Griselda (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and the Image. Blackwell, 2006.
- Notes on The Gaze (1998) — see external links.
- Paul, Nalini: The Female Gaze — see external links.
- Schroeder, Jonathan E: SSRN.com Consuming Representation: A Visual Approach to Consumer Research.
- Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 21, Number 1, 2004.
- de Zegher, Catherine, Inside the Visible. MIT Press, 1996.
External links