As a further reflection on our new media project, I refer to Sartre’s ideas in Being and Nothingness. (1953. Washington Square Press. p.349.)
Sartre refers to The Look as a the first step towards apprehending “the Other”, and thereby the self. He says “I see myself because somebody sees me . . .” and “It is shame or pride which reveals to me the Other’s look, and myself at the end of that look. It is the shame or pride which makes me live . . .”
About voyeurism he says “. . . it is a pure process of relating to the instrument (the keyhole) to the end to be attained (the spectacle to be seen), a pure mode of losing myself in the world, of causing myself to be drunk in by things as ink is by a blotter . . .”
While these are fragments of a much larger and complicated text, it is interesting to consider that “the look”, whether as “looking” or as “being seen”, is what creates us or absorbs us in the world.
