Abstract
In his writings on the gaze and the body in Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre describes the ways in which bodies are exposed and vulnerable to the anonymous gaze of the other, and how they in the midst of their vulnerability depend entirely on being seen by the gaze for their meaning and their very being. Although it sometimes appears as quite depressingly restrictive, Sartre’s analysis of the gaze and his account of the body offer rich and important resources for recognizing the force of objectifying categories and meanings in the constitution of identities. This article suggests that Sartre’s almost remorseless descriptions of how the body is molded by the gaze of the other provide a productive point of departure for understanding the becoming of singular identities, as they are lived on the margins and in the intersections of established categories which determine them in often oppressive ways. Being marked by difference, whether sexual, ethnic, racial, or other, is in many ways being trapped by the objectifying gaze of the other in such a way that the ability to return the gaze and claim a subject position is deeply circumscribed. The article gives an account of Sartre’s analysis of the phenomenon of the gaze as the force which objectifies me before the other and of his description of the body as it is subjectively experienced as objectified. This “third ontological dimension of the body” captures the tensions inherent in subjectivity and brings to light its perpetual exposure to its own unknown exterior as it is seen and constituted by the other.
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Notes
Murphy (1989, p. 103).
Sartre (1992, p. 387).
Ibid., p. 359.
In fact, his descriptions impose their own objectification on us, forcing us to confront the ways in which we are part of oppressive structures and tacitly accepted practices of inclusion and exclusion.
Ibid., p. 354.
Ibid., p. 346.
Young (1990, p. 205f.).
Probyn (2005, p. 38).
Ibid.
Sartre (1992, p. 360).
Ibid., p. 368.
Ibid., p. 387 (italics added).
Husserl (1970, §53, p. 178).
Sartre (1992, p. 471).
Ibid., p. 402.
Ibid., p. 432.
Ibid., p. 408.
Ibid., p. 402.
Ibid., p. 344.
Ibid., p. 462.
Ibid., p. 448.
Ibid., p. 453 (italics added).
Sartre’s claim that “the Other’s body is everywhere present in the very indication which instrumental-things give of it since they are revealed as utilized by him and as known by him” (ibid., p. 448) does not take us out of the trap of solipsism. For even if the other’s body is the center of reference of instrumental things and the totality of meaningful relations to the world I, again, would have no way of even identifying this center of reference or of determining these relations as meaningful unless the introceptive aspects of the other’s body were in communication with the extroceptive aspects and thus discernible on the other’s visible body. In other words, the situation in which the other necessarily appears would not be apprehended by me as a meaningful context were it not so that her subjectivity could somehow be detected on her objective body. Thus, if I were reduced to a mere object in the world when caught by the gaze of the other, I would no longer be a probable object in the world as I would no longer appear as a presence in person; I would be completely stripped of my subjectivity due to my objectification.
Ibid., p. 460.
Ibid., p. 461 (italics partly added).
Ibid., p. 464.
Ibid., p. 461 (italics added).
Fanon (1967, p. 116).
Young (1990, p. 205).
Beauvoir (1989, p. 16).
Sartre (1992, p. 345).
Ibid., p. 347.
Ibid., p. 455 (italics added).
Ibid. (italics in original).
On this see Waldenfels’ reading of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of expression in the essay “The Paradox of Expression” (2000).
Sartre (1992, p. 407f.).
Murphy (1989, p. 106).
Sartre (1992, p. 475. Italics in original).
As Rudolf Bernet points out, the speaking about myself as having a particular character contradicts how I experience myself. I differentiate myself from myself in becoming aware of myself but that does not mean that I leave myself in that differentiation. If I were to leave myself in the process of differentiation, the contradiction between the way I speak of myself and the way I experience myself would not be considered by myself as a contradiction. If I could leave myself, I would also leave the tension within myself. Bernet (1996, p. 179).
Sartre (1992, p. 352).
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Käll, L.F. Fashioned in nakedness, sculptured, and caused to be born: Bodies in light of the Sartrean gaze. Cont Philos Rev 43, 61–81 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9131-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9131-z