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 Interpretation of the Sartrean existential concepts: ‘The Look’ and ‘Object’

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Interpretation of the Sartrean existential concepts:

‘The Look’ and ‘Object’
 February 2, 2021  Muhammad Kamruzzamann
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Muhammad Kamruzzamann

[Declaimer: This piece is written in defence of two Sartrean existential concepts, ‘The

Look’ and ‘Object’, which, I believe, are misinterpreted  in Umme Wara (Assistant
Professor in Criminology at University of Dhaka) and Nazmul Are n’s (an independent Archives
researcher) then published article, ‘Patriarchal relations in sexuality, objecti cation of
women and rape culture’ (published on Nov. 17, 2020, on New Age). Their article is
 June 2021
currently unavailable on New Age because New Age ‘has decided to take down the
piece from its website for a review’ as a result of my response to their article. It’s been  April 2021
more than two months since New Age has taken down Wara and Are n’s article.]  March 2021

T
 February 2021

his article critically disagrees with Umme Wara and Nazmul Are n’s
claim that Laura Mulvey has developed the notion of ‘male gaze’ from
Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of ‘le regard’ or ‘the look’, as well as argues
that the Sartrean notion of ‘the look’ and the concept of considering the Categories
human being as ‘object’ are misread by them in their ‘Patriarchal relations in sexuality,
objecti cation of women and rape culture’ (published on Nov. 17, on ‘New Age Youth’).
 CREATIVE WRITINGS

Wara and Are n claim that Laura Mulvey has developed the concept ‘male gaze’  LITFOLKS ORIGINALS
from Sartre’s notion: ‘le regard’ or ‘the look’. But Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and  বাংলা
Narrative Cinema’ claims no such thing: from the reading of the rst few pages of (pp.
6-10) Mulvey’s essay, it would be clear that the notion ‘male gaze’ has derived from her
understanding of the Freudian theory of scopophilia and Lacanian concept of
looking–not from Sartre’s ‘non-sexist’ concept, ‘the look’.

Wara and Are n’s unquoted lines from Wikipedia, ‘the existentialist philosopher
[Sartre] introduced the concept of “the gaze” wherein the act of gazing at another
human being creates a subjective power di erence, because the person being gazed at
is perceived as an object, not as a human being’, decontextualise Sartre as well as their
attempt to link Sartre to Mulvey’s ‘male gaze’ has derived from a misreading of the
subchapter, ‘The Look’ of the book, Being and Nothingness.

Sartre is wrongly linked to Wara and Are n’s study, though a detailed understanding of
Sartrean notion of existentialism, explained in the book, Being and Nothingness,
would help them to nd a solution to the problem they have tried to address in their
composition because the Sartrean notion of existentialism, as a system of belief, makes
individuals (irrespective of gender) understand their vulnerable condition under a
system like patriarchy as well as enable them to choose to be free and responsible
instead of being exploited. Similarly, an understanding of the role of a minoritarian or
a becoming-minoritarian that Deleuze and Guattari developed in the book, A
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, would help a person to ght against
‘a constant and homogeneous system’ like patriarchy because to negate to become a
part of or a victim of a system like patriarchy would help individual to bring change.

Wara and Are n’s assumption that Sartrean notion of ‘gaze’ demeans the person who is
being gazed at is probably based on the opening lines of the subchapter, ‘The Look’
of Being and Nothingness: ‘[t]his woman whom I see coming toward me, this man who
is passing by in the street, this beggar whom I hear calling before my window, all are
for me objects–of that there is no doubt’ (252). Seemingly, it is demeaning, political
and inhumane but it is not because the words, ‘look’ and ‘object’, are the same but the
roles they play in the Sartrean existential world are totally di erent from the purposes
they serve in Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.

Let’s nd out what an act of ‘looking’ is for Sartre: ‘When I am alone, I [cannot] realize
my “being-seated;” at most it can be said that I simultaneously both am it and am not
it. But in order for me to be what I am [that is to exist], it su ces merely that the Other
look at me’ (262). The thing is that the moment a person looks at ‘other’ as well as be
looked at, only then they can exist, otherwise they don’t because, for Sartre, one cannot
exist independently; ‘other’ have to be there to look at each other to exist. Imagine this
way, does an artistic performance or a news without an audience make any sense? Of
course, they would exist but on their own–unacknowledged. Similarly, Sartrean notion
of ‘looking’ at a person is all about acknowledging that the person exists, and by only
being looked at by ‘other’, one can be acknowledged as existing.

Let’s see how a human being becomes a mare object: ‘For the Other I am seated as this
inkwell is on the table; for the Other, I am leaning over the keyhole as this tree is
bent by the wind’ (262). Look at the analogy Sartre has made: he claims that there is no
di erence between his act of ‘seating’ and the inkwell’s position on table because, for
people who are looking at them, they (seated Sartre and inkwell) are nothing but signs.
What is a sign then? A ‘sign’ is a linguistic unit connecting a ‘signi er’ (a sound, printed
word, or image of a thing) to a ‘signi ed’ (the idea or concept of that thing). In the later
part of the quoted sentence from Being and Nothingness, the human act of ‘leaning’
and a tree being ‘bent’ are di erent because the act of ‘leaning’ is a conscious act
performed by a human being, on the other hand, the tree being ‘bent’ is not a
conscious act, but when people or the ‘other’ look at these two di erent acts, they (the
acts of ‘leaning’ and being ‘bent’) both become ‘images’ of the actions linked with the
‘concepts’ of those actions ready to comprehend and express by ‘other’. No matter how
di erent an act is, whether it is done by a living thing or done to a ‘thing’–to look,
listen, sense, taste and feel that action mean that it (the action) has become an image,
sound, sensation or phenomenon (signi er) linked to an imaginary concept (signi ed)
of an actual action (referent). So, the point is that, unlike in ‘male gaze’, it is not because
of a political ‘look’ of ‘other’, a human being becomes an ‘object’, rather it is because of
the language system (a communicative structure), in which people encode and decode
‘sign’, a human being is treated as object because there is no di erence between the act
of a human being to ‘lean’ and a tree to be ‘bent’ when they are turned into signs.

Muhammad Kamruzzamann
Muhammad Kamruzzamann is an enthusiastic reader of philosophy, novel,
play, criticism, and critical literary and cultural theory, who loves to eat
movie and admires South-Asian classic (Raaga).

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 existentialism, gaze, jean-Paul Sartre, object, Sartre

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