Sartre’s initial reciprocity is really the traumatic recognition of another’s freedom
Evidence
I suspect, however, that what is really meant by reciprocity here is no more than that traumatic and absolutely inescapable fact of recognition of another consciousness or freedom which was described in Being and Nothingness: I cannot, in other words, pass a man by as though he were a stone. His existence immediately puts him in relationship to me, and the project to treat him like an object can only come after that initial recognition. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 484
Categorization
- XREF: Jameson’s interpretive move — collapsing a new concept in the Critique back into Being and Nothingness — is a model of how to read an author’s later work through the earlier — useful for the reader tracing Jameson’s own method. — connects to: Sartre sees the Other’s gaze as falsifying essence-free being — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 632; Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 690; Sartre explains the sexual act as an attempt to capture the Other’s consciousness — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 102 (+3 more)
- DEFINE: Jameson’s own gloss reduces ‘reciprocity’ to the look/recognition of another consciousness from Being and Nothingness.
Broader Connections
- Sartre sees the Other’s gaze as falsifying essence-free being
#corroborates(0.90) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 632 - Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom
#expands(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 690 - Sartre’s denial of ontological being-for-others grounds his hostile intersubjectivity
#complicates(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 656 - Sartre explains the sexual act as an attempt to capture the Other’s consciousness
#expands(0.82) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 102 - Sartre’s freedom is structurally immune to genuine removal by the Other.
#qualifies(0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 641 - Sartre’s analysis of freedom is fragmented and internally inconsistent across Being and Nothingness
#complicates(0.78) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212