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Gaze
The gaze (French: le regard), in the figurative sense, is an individual's (or a group's) awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. Since the 20th century, the concept and the social applications of the gaze have been expanded by phenomenologist, existentialist, and post-structuralist philosophers. Jean-Paul Sartre described the gaze (or the look) in Being and Nothingness (1943). Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), developed the concept of the gaze to illustrate the dynamics of socio-political power relations and the social dynamics of society's mechanisms of discipline. Jacques Derrida, in The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Come) (1997), elaborated upon the inter-species relations that exist among human beings and other animals, which are established by way of the gaze.
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Lacan's view on the gaze changes throughout the course of his work. Initially, the concept of the gaze was used by Lacan through his psychoanalytic work on the mirror stage. The mirror stage occurs when a child encountering a mirror learns that they have an external appearance. Theoretically, this is where the child begins their entrance into culture and the world. The child enters language and culture through establishing an ideal image of themself in the mirror. This image is someone the child can aspire to be like and work towards. The role of the ideal ego or self can also be filled by other people in their lives such as parents, siblings, teachers etc.
In his later essays however, Lacan refers to the gaze as the anxious feeling that one is being watched. More specifically, it is when the object that one is viewing is somehow looking back at the subject on its own terms. The psychological effect upon the person subjected to the gaze is a loss of autonomy upon becoming aware that they are a visible object. Lacan extrapolated that the gaze and the effects of the gaze might be produced by an inanimate object, and thus a person's awareness of any object can induce the self-awareness of also being an object in the material world of reality. The philosophic and psychologic importance of the gaze is in the meeting of the face and the gaze, because only there do people exist for one another.
The gaze can be understood in psychological terms: "to gaze implies more than to look at – it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze." In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (2009), Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright said that "the gaze is [conceptually] integral to systems of power, and [to] ideas about knowledge"; that to practice the gaze is to enter a personal relationship with the person being looked at. Foucault's concepts of panopticism, of the power/knowledge binary, and of biopower address the modes of personal self-regulation that a person practices when under surveillance; the modification of personal behaviour by way of institutional surveillance. In 'The politics of the gaze: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty', Nick Crossley (1993) argued that Foucault's account of the Panopticon and Panoptic power has deficiencies that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy allows us to overcome.
In The Birth of the Clinic (1963), Michel Foucault first applied the medical gaze to conceptually describe and explain the act of looking, as part of the process of medical diagnosis; the unequal power dynamics between doctors and patients; and the cultural hegemony of intellectual authority that a society grants to medical knowledge and medicine men. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault develops the gaze as an apparatus of power based upon the social dynamics of power relations, and the social dynamics of disciplinary mechanisms, such as surveillance and personal self-regulation, as practices in a prison and in a school.
The concept of the "male gaze" was first used by the English art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing, a series of films for the BBC aired in January 1972, and later a book, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. Berger described the difference between how men and women view and are viewed in art and in society. He asserts that men are placed into the role as the watcher and women are to be looked at. Laura Mulvey, a British film critic and feminist, similarly critiqued traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.
In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey discusses the association between activity and passivity to gender. Essentially, Mulvey argues that masculinity is related to the active, whereas femininity is related to the passive. Furthermore, she highlights heterosexual desire and identity and how they are related to the roles assigned to masculinity and femininity. This puts the viewer of a film into the role of the active masculine and coaxes the viewer to desire the passive feminine. This left no room for female activity and desire in the stereotypically masculine role. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies. Berger, Mulvey as well as Foucault also all linked the looming act of the gaze inextricably to power.
The term "female gaze" was created as a response to the proposed concept of the male gaze as coined by Laura Mulvey. In particular, it is a rebellion against the viewership censored to an only masculine lens and feminine desire regardless of the viewer's gender identity or sexual orientation. In essence, the forced desire of femininity enacts in the erasure of female desire and sexuality. In Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble, she proposed the idea of the female gaze as a way in which men choose to perform their masculinity by using women as the ones who force men into self-regulation. Film director Deborah Kampmeier rejected the idea of the female gaze in preference for the female experience. She stated, "(F)or me personally, it's not (about) a female gaze. It's the female experience. I don't gaze, I actually move through the world, feeling the world emotionally and sensorily and in my body."
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Gaze
The gaze (French: le regard), in the figurative sense, is an individual's (or a group's) awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. Since the 20th century, the concept and the social applications of the gaze have been expanded by phenomenologist, existentialist, and post-structuralist philosophers. Jean-Paul Sartre described the gaze (or the look) in Being and Nothingness (1943). Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), developed the concept of the gaze to illustrate the dynamics of socio-political power relations and the social dynamics of society's mechanisms of discipline. Jacques Derrida, in The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Come) (1997), elaborated upon the inter-species relations that exist among human beings and other animals, which are established by way of the gaze.
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Lacan's view on the gaze changes throughout the course of his work. Initially, the concept of the gaze was used by Lacan through his psychoanalytic work on the mirror stage. The mirror stage occurs when a child encountering a mirror learns that they have an external appearance. Theoretically, this is where the child begins their entrance into culture and the world. The child enters language and culture through establishing an ideal image of themself in the mirror. This image is someone the child can aspire to be like and work towards. The role of the ideal ego or self can also be filled by other people in their lives such as parents, siblings, teachers etc.
In his later essays however, Lacan refers to the gaze as the anxious feeling that one is being watched. More specifically, it is when the object that one is viewing is somehow looking back at the subject on its own terms. The psychological effect upon the person subjected to the gaze is a loss of autonomy upon becoming aware that they are a visible object. Lacan extrapolated that the gaze and the effects of the gaze might be produced by an inanimate object, and thus a person's awareness of any object can induce the self-awareness of also being an object in the material world of reality. The philosophic and psychologic importance of the gaze is in the meeting of the face and the gaze, because only there do people exist for one another.
The gaze can be understood in psychological terms: "to gaze implies more than to look at – it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze." In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (2009), Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright said that "the gaze is [conceptually] integral to systems of power, and [to] ideas about knowledge"; that to practice the gaze is to enter a personal relationship with the person being looked at. Foucault's concepts of panopticism, of the power/knowledge binary, and of biopower address the modes of personal self-regulation that a person practices when under surveillance; the modification of personal behaviour by way of institutional surveillance. In 'The politics of the gaze: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty', Nick Crossley (1993) argued that Foucault's account of the Panopticon and Panoptic power has deficiencies that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy allows us to overcome.
In The Birth of the Clinic (1963), Michel Foucault first applied the medical gaze to conceptually describe and explain the act of looking, as part of the process of medical diagnosis; the unequal power dynamics between doctors and patients; and the cultural hegemony of intellectual authority that a society grants to medical knowledge and medicine men. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault develops the gaze as an apparatus of power based upon the social dynamics of power relations, and the social dynamics of disciplinary mechanisms, such as surveillance and personal self-regulation, as practices in a prison and in a school.
The concept of the "male gaze" was first used by the English art critic John Berger in Ways of Seeing, a series of films for the BBC aired in January 1972, and later a book, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. Berger described the difference between how men and women view and are viewed in art and in society. He asserts that men are placed into the role as the watcher and women are to be looked at. Laura Mulvey, a British film critic and feminist, similarly critiqued traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.
In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey discusses the association between activity and passivity to gender. Essentially, Mulvey argues that masculinity is related to the active, whereas femininity is related to the passive. Furthermore, she highlights heterosexual desire and identity and how they are related to the roles assigned to masculinity and femininity. This puts the viewer of a film into the role of the active masculine and coaxes the viewer to desire the passive feminine. This left no room for female activity and desire in the stereotypically masculine role. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies. Berger, Mulvey as well as Foucault also all linked the looming act of the gaze inextricably to power.
The term "female gaze" was created as a response to the proposed concept of the male gaze as coined by Laura Mulvey. In particular, it is a rebellion against the viewership censored to an only masculine lens and feminine desire regardless of the viewer's gender identity or sexual orientation. In essence, the forced desire of femininity enacts in the erasure of female desire and sexuality. In Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble, she proposed the idea of the female gaze as a way in which men choose to perform their masculinity by using women as the ones who force men into self-regulation. Film director Deborah Kampmeier rejected the idea of the female gaze in preference for the female experience. She stated, "(F)or me personally, it's not (about) a female gaze. It's the female experience. I don't gaze, I actually move through the world, feeling the world emotionally and sensorily and in my body."
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