Gaze

For other uses, see Gaze (disambiguation).
The Conjurer, by Hieronymus Bosch, shows the bending figure looking forward, steadily, intently, and with fixed attention, while the other figures in the painting look in various directions, some outside the painting.

In critical theory, philosophy, sociology, and psychoanalysis, 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 defined and explained by phenomenologist, existentialist, and post-structuralist philosophers. Jean-Paul Sartre described the gaze (or the look) in Being and Nothingness (1943).[1] 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.

  1. ^ Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness, Part 3, Chapter 1