Being watched strips my own gaze of its objectifying power over others

Evidence

In particular my own look or my connection without distance with these people is stripped of its transcendence by the very fact that it is a look-looked-at. I am fixing the people whom I see into objects; I am in relation to them as the Other is in relation to me. In looking at them I measure my power. But if the Other sees them and sees me, then my look loses its power; it can not transform those people into objects for the Other since they are already the objects of his look. My look simply manifests a relation in the midst of the world, a relation of myself-as-object to the object-looked-at—something like the attraction which two masses exert over one another at a distance. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 739

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The reciprocity of looks—my objectifying gaze rendered inert by being itself objectified—is a dense phenomenological structure that resists compression into a formula.
• XREF: Resonates with Foucault’s panoptic gaze and with Beauvoir’s account of woman caught between being subject and object of the look. — connects to: The Other’s gaze imposes unchosen determinations on my being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1229; Being seen enslaves me to a freedom that is not my own — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 741; Being-for-others alienates me into an objectivity I cannot reclaim for myself (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: The physics metaphor of two masses attracting at a distance echoes the two-way mutual objectification implicit in the sacrifice discussion around social role-locking.

Broader Connections

• The Other’s gaze imposes unchosen determinations on my being #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1229
• Being seen enslaves me to a freedom that is not my own #corroborates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 741
• Being-for-others alienates me into an objectivity I cannot reclaim for myself #complicates (0.80)
• The power to not-see is constitutive of seeing itself #expands (0.75)