The Gaze in Theory
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THE GAZE IN THEORY: THE CASES OF SARTRE AND LACAN Melinda Jill Storr Thesis submitted for DPhil degree University of York Centre for Women's Studies April 1994 ABSTRACT The topic of my research is the 'hierarchy of the senses' as it appears in mainstream Western thought, and specifically the privilege accorded to vision in twentieth century literary and theoretical writings. My aim is to investigate the allegation (as made by, for example, Evelyn Fox Keller and Christine Grontowski, and by Luce Irigaray) that the metaphor of vision is intimately connected with the construction of gender and sexual difference, and that the traditional privilege of vision acts to perpetuate the privilege of masculinity in modern writing practices. This allegation, captured in the thesis that masculinity 'looks' and femininity is 'looked-at' - that, as John Berger puts it, 'ben act and women appear" - has some degree of currency in contemporary writings an 'sexual difference', but has in itself received little critical attention. Taking the philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan as 'case studies', I investigate the plausibility of this allegation by means of a detailed analysis of the use of vision and its relation to gender in the respective works of each. This work represents a significant contribution to serious critical work an both Sartre and Lacan, and to the understanding of the relationship between gender and representation. 2 CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 8 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION 9 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 10 The trouble with vision 10 Luce Irigaray 15 The right to look 24 Gender and sexual difference 26 Reading 37 Texts and contexts 44 CHAPTERS TWO TO FOUR: SARTRE 60 CHAPTER TWO: THE HETEROSEXUAL DYNAMICS OF THE GAZE 61 INTRODUCTION 61 SECTION ONE: MASCULINE AND FEMININE IN THE BATTLE OF LOOKS 66 Femininity bodied forth 69 Women - the matter of life and death 74 SECTION TWO: HETEROSEXUALITY'S MELTING MOMENTS 83 Nausea 83 'I wish I were a man' 91 3 CONCLUSION 100 CHAPTER THREE: THE GAZE AND HOMOSEXUALITY 103 INTRODUCTION 103 SECTION ONE: THE HOMOSEXUAL AS OBJECT 108 Homosexuality and bad faith 108 Hamosexuality and being-for-others 115 The eye of God 122 SECTION TWO: THE HOMOSEXUAL AS OTHER 133 The homosexual's revenge 133 The criminal and the traitor 139 Mirror images 145 CONCLUSION 150 CHAPTER FOUR: THE GAZE AND THE SENSUAL HIERARCHY 154 INTRODUCTION 154 SECTION CGE: SENSES OF CONTACT 163 Smell 163 Taste 168 Touch 174 Men's knowledge, wamen's bodies 179 SECTION TWO: SENSES AT A DISTANCE 183 Visual codings: black and white 186 Aural codings: Sartre's black and white minstrels 189 Distant voices ,193 CONCLUSION 200 CHAPTERS FIVE TO SEVEN: LACAN 207 4 CHAPTER FIVE: THE IMAGINARY AND THE MIRROR STAGE 208 INTRODUCTION 208 SECTION ONE: NARCISSISM AND FEMININITY 212 The imaginary and the visual 213 Freud's naughty narcissistic girls 215 Narcissistic criminals: the Papin sisters 220 The joker 225 SECTION TWO: NARCISSISM AND OBJECT-CHOICE 226 And/or 227 Narcissistic object-choice: the lesbian as heterosexual waman 229 Significant (m)others 235 Anaclitic object-choice: the lesbian as homosexual rnan 240 Not/nor 244 CONCLUSION 245 CHAPTER SIX: THE SYMBOLIC AND THE GAZE 248 INTRODUCTION 248 SECTION ONE: THE PHOTO-GRAPH, THE GAZE AND THE SCOPIC DRIVE 252 Ambassadors of the symbolic order 255 Forward and back to the phallus 259 SECTION TWO: THE DESIRE OF THE ANALYST AND THE SMALL APPARATUS 262 The photo-grapher's small apparatus 263 In the name of the father 267 CONCLUSION 279 5 CHAPTER SEVEN: THE JUNCTURE BETWEEN THE IMAGINARY AND THE SYMBOLIC 283 INTRODUCTION 283 SECTION ONE: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LOGICAL TIME 285 Psychoanalysis versus hypnosis 285 Logical time 290 SECTION TWO: THE ANALYTIC PROCESS 296 Transference and the 'moment of seeing' 297 The I and the a 310 The desire of the analyst 314 CONCLUSION 317 CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION 325 Sartre and Lacan: connexions and conclusions 325 Writing gender 333 ENDNOTES 338 BIBLIOGRAPHY 409 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Alberto Giacametti, Portrait of Jean Genet 60 (Tate Gallery, London; oil an canvas) Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors 207 (National Gallery, London; oil on wood) 7 ACKNCWLEDGEMENT I would very much like to thank my thesis supervisor, Prof Nicole Ward Jouve, for her invaluable advice, help and guidance during the composition of this work. I am particularly grateful to her for having drawn my attention to the case of the Papin sisters and to the literature surrounding it. I would also like to thank Prof Rosi Braidotti (at the University of Utrecht) for her advice and guidance while this work was in its very early stages; Dr Treva Broughton (at the University of York) for her advice on both the very first and the very last drafts of parts of this work; and Ms Mary Maynard (also at the University of York) for her help with administrative and other matters throughout the writing of this work. This work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (for one year) and the British Academy (for two years). My trip to the University of Utrecht was made possible by the ERASMUS Student Network. 8 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION None of the material contained in this work has been presented for any degree awarded either at the University of York or elsewhere. Research for this work was begun an the MA in Women's Studies at the University of York in 1989. It was upgraded fram MA to MPhil status in 1990, and frcm MPhil to DPhil status in 1992. 9 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION The trouble with vision This piece of work is about vision. Let's have a look at the dictionary: "See, v: ... Have or exercise the power of discerning objects with the eyes ... Discern mentally, attain to the comprehension of, apprehend, ascertain by search or enquiry or ref lexion, consider, foresee, cannot see a or the joke, the point; see reason; do you see what I mean?; justice is seen to be done; can't think what he sees in her; must see what can be done ...). Take view of, have opinion of, (I see life, things, it differently now; I see it as being Quite possible; see eye to eye; see fit to); as I - it, in my opinion ... Reflect, take time to consider; let me - (appeal for time to think ...)" (1). Even the word 'theory' comes fram the Greek meaning 'spectator'. Vision is so accepted as the dominant metaphor of thought, of haw the rational human subject addresses the world, that its dominance is - if I may put it this way - practically invisible: that clear sight should be the paradigm of thought is at once obvious and unremarked, which is precisely why it stands in such urgent need of attention. The question to be asked is of what is at stake in this privileging of vision. Why is sight invested with such value in the construction of the human subject? What interests are served by that investment? Specifically, what are the signs, images, references and representations that the privilege of vision makes available for this construction of the subject, and what does it omit or elide? My thesis is that this question is fundamentally a question of gender, and that the privilege of vision in theories and representations of 10 the subject results in the construction of that subject as masculine. John Berger's now famous (or notorious) claim that "men act and wain appear" (2) might be taken as groundwork for such a thesis. The fact that visual representations can and do construct women as objects demonstrates that looking stands in same significant relation to gender. Berger's claim locates that relation in a model of heterosexuality in which men look and women are looked at by men This outline of a gender problematic around the look is expanded and given more definite shape in the film maker and theorist Laura Mulvey's article 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema', which draws an psychoanalytic theory to articulate the importance of what Mulvey calls the look's "active/passive heterosexual division of labour" (3) for the construction of the male subject. Mulvey writes: "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/ female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role warn are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to- be-looked-at-ness. Waman displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle" (4). Thus the claim that men act and wamen appear is elaborated by Mulvey into an analysis of the production, in the cinema and by extension in other forms of visual representation, of sexual difference and desire around masculinity as activity and femininity as passivity. John Berger and Laura Mulvey articulate the question of vision and gender fram within the fields of art and film criticism and theory; their respective arguments, that is, are explicitly concerned with the production and reception of visual representations. The privilege of vision and the power of the look are not, however, 11 confined to the cinema or gallery, as Rey Chow points out: "In the twentieth century, the pre-occupation with the 'visual' - in a field like psychoanalysis, for instance - and the perfection of technologies of visuality such as photography and film takes us beyond the merely physical dimension of vision. The visual as such ... reveals epistemological problems that are inherent in social relations and their reproduction.