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đŸȘ” The Threshold

The Other's look displaces my world's center and objectifies me.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, define, storystem, candy, definitional_content, trade, singleton, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@sartre_being_1943, loc. 92

2 min read

The Other’s look displaces my world’s center and objectifies me.

Evidence

But this means that the spatial and instrumental organization of the world which I had effected with my own body as a center of reference is no longer the only possible arrangement. Instead there appears a grouping of objects around the Other as center; he has caused an “internal haemorrhage of my world which bleeds in his direction.” He has stolen my world away from me. 
 Still further development occurs when I experience my body-seen-by-the-Other. In this case I suddenly realize that I exist as an object for the Other, that I possess a self which he knows and which I can never know, and that I am vulnerable to the Other, who may anticipate and block my possibilities for action. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 92

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Core mechanism of the Look — the Other’s body recenters the world and reveals my self as an object I can never fully know. This is load-bearing ontology.
  • STORYSTEM: The idea of a self possessed by another — ‘a self which he knows and which I can never know’ — is a strong engine for a character who discovers a version of themselves invented by someone else.
  • CANDY: The ‘internal haemorrhage of my world which bleeds in his direction’ is a visceral, quotable image of how being seen dispossesses you.
  • XREF: connects to: The look splits me into a for-itself and an unknowable being-for-others — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on
, 742; The Other’s gaze imposes unchosen determinations on my being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on
, 1229; The Other’s perspective reveals my own body as merely worldly (+2 more)

Broader Connections

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