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=====Jacques Lacan========Jean-Paul Sartre======[[Lacan]]'s first omments comments on the [[gaze]] appear in the first year of his [[seminar]], in reference to [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]'s [[phenomenology|phenomenological analysis]] of "[[gaze|the look]]."<ref>The fact that the English translators of [[Sartre]] and [[Lacan]] have used different terms obscures the fact that both use the same term in [[French]] - ''[[gaze|le regard]]''.</ref>
For [[Sartre]], the [[gaze]] is that which permits the [[subject]] to realize that the [[Other]] is also a [[subject]].
<blockquote>My fundamental connection with the Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back to my permanent possibility of ''being seen'' by the Other.<ref>[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre, Jean-Paul]]. ''[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology]]'', trans. Hazel E. Barnes, London, Methuen, 1958 [1943]. p.256</ref></blockquote>
When the [[subject]] is surprised by the [[gaze]] of the [[Other]], the [[subject]] is reduced to shame.<ref>{{[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre, Jean-Paul]]. ''[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology]]'', trans. Hazel E. Barnes, London, Methuen, 1958 [1943]. p.261</ref>
[[Lacan]] does not, at this point, develop his own concept of the [[gaze]], and seems to be in general agreemtn with [[Sartre]''s views on the subject.<ref>{{S1}} p.215</ref>
[[Lacan]] is especially taken with [[Sartre]]'s view that the [[gaze] does not necessarily concern the organ of sight:
<blockquote>Of course what ''most often'' manifests a look is the convergence of two ocular globes in my direction. But the look will be given just as well on occasion when there is a rustlin go of branches, or the sound of a footstep followed by silence, or the slight opening of a shutter, or a light movement of a curtain.<ref>[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre, Jean-Paul]]. ''[[Jean-Paul Sartre|Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology]]'', trans. Hazel E. Barnes, London, Methuen, 1958 [1943]. p.257</ref></blockquote>
===New Concept of the Gaze===
It is only in 1964, with the development of the concept of ''[[objet petit a]]'' as the casue of desire, that Lacan devlops his own theory of the gaze, a theory which is quite distinct from Sartre's.<ref>{{LS11}} 1964a.</ref>
Whereas Sartre had confalted the gaze with the act of looking, Lacan now separates the two; the gaze becomes the object of the act of looking, or, to be more precise, the object of the scopic drive.
The gaze is therefore, in Lacan's account, no longer on the side of the subject; it is the gaze of the Other.
And whereas Sartre had conceived of an essential reciprocity between seing the OTher and being-seen-by-him, Lacan now conceives of an antinomic relation between the gaze and the eye: the eye which looks is that of the subject, while the gaze is on the side of the object, and there is no coincidence between the two, since "You never look at me from the place at which I see you."<ref>{{S11}} p.103</ref>
When the subject looks at an object, the object is always already gazing back at the subjet, but from apoitn at which the subject cannot see it.
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