Changes

We all [[know]] the [[uncanny]] moments in our everyday lives when we catch [[sight]] of our own [[image]] and this image is not [[looking]] back at us. I [[remember]] once trying to inspect a strange growth on the side of my head using a [[double]] [[mirror]], when, all of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of my face from the profile. The image replicated all my gestures, but in a weird uncoordinated way. In such a [[situation]], "our [[specular]] image is torn away from us and, crucially, our look is no longer looking at ourselves."3 It is in such weird experiences that one catches what [[Lacan]] called [[gaze]] as [[objet]] [[petit a]], the part of our image which eludes the mirror-like symmetrical [[relationship]]. When we see ourselves "from [[outside]]," from this [[impossible]] point, the [[traumatic]] feature is not that I am objectivized, reduced to an [[external]] [[object]] for [[The Gaze|the gaze]], but, rather, that IT IS MY GAZE ITSELF WHICH IS OBJECTIVIZED, which observes me from the outside, which, precisely, means that my gaze is no longer mine, that it is stolen from me. [...]