In critical theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, the gaze, in the philosophical and figurative sense, is an individual's awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. The concept and the social applications of the gaze have been defined and explained by existentialist and phenomenologist philosophers. Jean-Paul Sartre described the gaze in Being and Nothingness. Michel Foucault, in , 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, elaborated upon the inter-species relations that exist among human beings and other animals, which are established by way of the gaze.
In psychoanalysis
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the gaze is the anxious state of mind that comes with the self-awareness that one can be seen and looked at. The psychological effect upon the person subjected to the gaze is a loss of autonomy upon becoming aware that he or she is a visible object. Theoretically, the gaze is linked to the mirror stage of psychological development, in which a child encountering a mirror learns that he or she has an external appearance. 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 in systems of power
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, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright said that "the gaze is integral to systems of power, and 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 Birth of the Clinic, 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 , 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.
In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film. The concept was present in earlier studies of the gaze, but it was Mulvey who brought it to the forefront. Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Hollywood films played to the models of voyeurism and scopophilia. The concept has subsequently been influential in feminist film theory and media studies.
The feminine gaze
In Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender Trouble, she proposed the idea of the feminine gaze as a way in which men choose to perform their masculinity by using women as the ones who force men into self-regulation.
Imperial gaze
has introduced the post-colonial concept of the imperial gaze, in which the observed find themselves defined in terms of the privileged observer's own set of value-preferences. From the perspective of the colonised, the imperial gaze infantilizes and trivializes what it falls upon, asserting its command and ordering function as it does so. Kaplan comments: "The imperial gaze reflects the assumption that the white western subject is central much as the male gaze assumes the centrality of the male subject."
The oppositional gaze
In her 1992 essay titled "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship", bell hooks counters Laura Mulvey's notion of the gaze by introducing the oppositional gaze of Black women. This concept exists as the reciprocal of the normative white spectator gaze. As Mulvey's essay contextualizes the gaze and its objectification of white women, hooks essay opens "oppositionality a key paradigm in the feminist analysis of the 'gaze' and of scopophilic regimes in Western culture". The oppositional gaze remains a critique of rebellion due to the sustained and deliberate misrepresentation of Black women in cinema as characteristically Mammy, Jezebel or Sapphire.
Postcolonial gaze
First referred to by Edward Said as "orientalism", the term "post-colonial gaze" is used to explain the relationship that colonial powers extended to people of colonized countries. Placing the colonized in a position of the "other" helped to shape and establish the colonial's identity as being the powerful conqueror, and acted as a constant reminder of this idea. The postcolonial gaze "has the function of establishing the subject/object relationship ... it indicates at its point of emanation the location of the subject, and at its point of contact the location of the object". In essence, this means that the colonizer/colonized relationship provided the basis for the colonizer's understanding of themselves and their identity. The role of the appropriation of power is central to understanding how colonizers influenced the countries that they colonized, and is deeply connected to the development of post-colonial theory. Utilizing postcolonial gaze theory allows formerly colonized societies to overcome the socially constructed barriers that often prohibit them from expressing their true cultural, social, economic, and political rights.
The male tourist gaze
The tourism image is created through cultural and ideological constructions and advertising agencies that have been male dominated. What is represented by the media assumes a specific type of tourist: white, Western, male, and heterosexual, privileging the gaze of the "master subject" over others. This is the representation of the typical tourist because those behind the lens, the image, and creators are predominantly male, white, and Western. Those that do not fall into this category are influenced by its supremacy. Through these influences female characteristics such as youth, beauty, sexuality, or the possession of a man are desirable while the prevalence of stereotypes consisting of submissive and sensual women with powerful "macho" men in advertising are projected.
The Gaze Series
The Gaze: No Homo, originally a play, was written by actor, writer, director, and producer Larry Powell. The play became a finalist in the 2020 National Playwrights Conference and earned Powell a slot on Playbill's Queer Black Playwrights You Should Know and Support. Due to Covid-19 stay-at-home orders, Larry Powell adapted the play into a new media series and teamed up with Angelica Robinson of Tell Me A Story Productions. The series will make its debut on July 30th.
