The oppressed classes look and this look is ontologically more fundamental

Evidence

Historically, it is this look of the oppressed which is ontologically the more fundamental one: and this is what Sartre had already tried to get across with imperfect means in Being and Nothingness, when he distinguished between the we-subject and the we-object. To be sure, the we-object cannot come into being until it is looked at by the we-subject: but paradoxically, the latter does not itself have any genuine being. Thus the we-subject is the cause or pretext for the emergence of the we-object; yet it finds its own identity and begins to define itself only in reaction against the latter, through a kind of defense mechanism. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 586

Categorization

• XREF: The it’s the dominated who see first claim echoes Lukács’s privileging of the proletarian standpoint and prefigures standpoint epistemology — a key lineage thread for the reader. — connects to: Sartre’s Look explains how oppressed classes politicize their oppressors — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 588; Class consciousness arises from being looked at by oppressors, not from material hardship. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1028; Social categories like worker and bourgeois arise only through the look — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1224
• QUESTION: The we-subject has ‘no genuine being’ yet still causes the we-object — worth chasing how Jameson later resolves this seeming paradox across the Critique.

Broader Connections

• Sartre’s Look explains how oppressed classes politicize their oppressors #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 588
• Class consciousness arises from being looked at by oppressors, not from material hardship. #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1028
• Social categories like worker and bourgeois arise only through the look #expands (0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1224