The Gaze and the Making of the Subject

After “The Connoisseur” by Norman Rockwell. AI image

  

Introduction: The Visibility of Being

In the classical metaphysics of consciousness, the subject was conceived as transparent to itself—a self-contained interiority, certain of its own existence even in isolation. Modern thought, however, has inverted this assumption. From existentialism to psychoanalysis and social theory, the self emerges not through introspection but through exposure. To be conscious is to be visible; to exist is to be seen or to imagine oneself seen. The gaze—whether an actual look, a symbolic presence, or an institutional mechanism—acts as the constitutive force in the formation of subjectivity. It transforms the human being from autonomous origin into a being-for-others, a figure caught within networks of recognition, language, and power.

From Instinct to Reflection: The Evolutionary Prelude

In the animal kingdom, gaze functions as a survival instrument. Among wolves, direct eye contact signals aggression; among primates, it establishes hierarchy or submission. Evolutionary psychology interprets this as a regulatory mechanism—an efficient means of coordinating behavior without words. Yet in humans, the function of the gaze is transfigured. Infants seek eye contact with caregivers within weeks of birth; mutual regard becomes the basis for emotional attunement, empathy, and the emergence of symbolic communication.

The human eye, unique among primates for its visible sclera, evolved to make gaze direction unmistakable—a biological gesture toward transparency. What was once a tool of dominance becomes an instrument of affiliation. Still, this transformation does not erase the ancient tension; it reworks it. The look that once threatened now binds. Nietzsche would have called this a sublimation—the turning inward of instinctual force. In On the Genealogy of Morality, he describes how primordial impulses, deprived of external expression, are internalized and spiritualized. The gaze follows a similar trajectory: the animal’s vigilance becomes the human’s conscience, the reflex of survival becomes the mirror of the soul.

The Gaze as Existential Event

Jean-Paul Sartre provides the most vivid articulation of this metamorphosis. In Being and Nothingness (1943), he portrays the gaze as a rupture in self-possession. The subject, absorbed in its own projects, suddenly feels the weight of another’s look and experiences a transformation. “The Other is the one who looks at me and judges me,” Sartre writes. The moment of being-seen divides consciousness: the self that acts and the self that appears. Shame arises not from wrongdoing but from being made into an object of another’s perception.

For Sartre, this encounter discloses the fundamental intersubjectivity of existence. Freedom is never absolute; it is continually negotiated in the space between self and other. To be seen is to be displaced from the center of one’s own world. Yet paradoxically, without this displacement there would be no self-consciousness. The gaze exposes the self, but it also brings it into being. The subject exists not in solitude but in a field of reciprocal visibility.

The Symbolic and the Split Subject

Jacques Lacan radicalizes this insight by situating the gaze within the symbolic order rather than individual perception. In Seminar XI (1973), he recounts a seemingly trivial event: a sardine can floating on the sea, whose glint made him feel watched. The episode reveals that vision is never purely under one’s control; the subject is always implicated in a wider field of visibility. “The gaze I encounter,” Lacan observes, “is not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.”

In this formulation, the gaze becomes an effect of language and desire. The subject is split between the position of seeing and being seen, speaking and being spoken. The self is never coincident with itself because it is structured through the symbolic network that precedes it. To look is already to participate in a system of signifiers; one’s perception is mediated by the invisible presence of the Other. The gaze thus ceases to be an organ of knowledge and becomes instead a site of alienation. What Sartre located in interpersonal encounter, Lacan situates within the architecture of the unconscious.

The Internalized Eye: Power and Surveillance

Michel Foucault extends the dynamics of the gaze beyond psychology into the social realm. In Discipline and Punish (1975), his analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon shows how visibility becomes a technology of power. The genius of the panoptic design lies not in constant observation but in the uncertainty of it. The inmate never knows if he is being watched and therefore behaves as if he always is. “Visibility is a trap,” Foucault writes.

Modern institutions replicate this logic. Schools, hospitals, and offices no longer require overt coercion; they function through subtle economies of exposure. The gaze has become ambient, impersonal, bureaucratic. The subject internalizes the observer, turning into his own inspector. The existential shock that Sartre described becomes habitual; the anxiety of being seen turns into the norm of self-monitoring. Here, the gaze achieves its most insidious form: power without presence, control without coercion. The individual, believing himself free, perpetuates the structure that confines him.

The Sublimation of the Instinct

Tracing this trajectory—from animal alertness to institutional surveillance—reveals the gaze as a historical and ontological constant, continually reshaped by the forms of life that host it. Its evolution is not linear but dialectical: each transformation absorbs the previous layer rather than abolishing it. Biological vigilance persists as social anxiety; social visibility deepens into existential reflection. The human capacity for self-recognition is inseparable from this recursive loop.

What was once a signal of threat becomes the condition of consciousness. The same visibility that disciplines also enables knowledge, empathy, and artistic creation. Beecroft’s performances, for instance, exploit this ambivalence by confronting spectators with models who refuse to reciprocate their gaze, destabilizing the traditional hierarchy of observer and observed. The result is not a liberation from the gaze but an exposure of its mechanics—a reminder that subjectivity is always relational, always at stake in the act of looking.

Conclusion: The Visibility of the Self

Across its diverse articulations—biological, existential, symbolic, and disciplinary—the gaze functions as the crucible of subjectivity. To be seen, or even to imagine being seen, is to undergo a transformation: from organism to self, from impulse to reflection, from freedom to self-awareness. Nietzsche’s inward turn of instincts, Sartre’s shame, Lacan’s symbolic alienation, and Foucault’s internalized surveillance all describe the same phenomenon from different angles—the constitution of the subject through exposure.

In this light, the human being is not primarily the one who looks, but the one who knows it can be looked at. The gaze, once a biological reflex, has become the medium through which the self appears to itself. Visibility, far from being an external condition, is the very fabric of subjectivity—the mirror in which consciousness takes form.

References

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books.
Lacan, J. (1973). The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
Nietzsche, F. (1887). On the genealogy of morality (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
Sartre, J.-P. (1943). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York: Philosophical Library.