The Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan. It describes the relationship of the subject with the desire to look and awareness that one can be viewed. The gaze can be motivated by the subject's desire to control the object it sees, and an object that can likewise capture and hold the subject's eye. The term 'gaze' is often defined as looking long and intently with affection at a subject. The gaze in this case is a relationship and not something that can be performed. A person who determines a sense of themselves as an individual element in the world makes up the idea of the gaze. The concept of the gaze is also a central part of theories looking within modernity. The gaze has affected historical, economical, and cultural environments.
In traditional psychoanalytic theory, the gaze is linked to fantasy and desire. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object. This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage that concerns itself with the infantile psychological development. Children gaze at a mirror image of themselves (a twin sibling might function as the mirror-image), and use that image to co-ordinate their physical movements. He linked the concept of the gaze to the development of individual human agency.
Modern media utilises the Lacanian fascination with the image, showing us pictures into which we are invited to project ourselves.
For further notes visit: Notes on 'The Gaze' by Daniel Chandler
Or
lacanonline.com
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