Lacan's Gaze 

Damn I wonder what a Bob Ross painting would have looked like if he read Lacan’s seminars on the gaze.. Excellent as always, thank you for keeping these videos coming!

I appreciate your commitment to accessibility in these videos. This format resonates with me, a non-academic, better than ~80% of what I read on these subjects. You have a way of distilling these complex dialectical concepts almost aphoristically and commonsensically.

Todd is one of the most accessible scholars alive (which also means ever). Guy has dozens and dozens of guest appearances plus his own podcast. Incredible wealth of knowledge. Greatly appreciated - this is what scholars should be doing. Also gotta point out the quirky bookshelf organization - Shakespeare, Marx, Proust side by side haha (can't see the title between Shakespeare and Capital).

Welcome back Todd, your vids have been missed

This is your clearest explanation of the gaze to date. Very helpful! Do you think it's correct to say that "the gaze" can serve as another name for Kantian transcendental activity?

spitting facts as always, thx professor!

After watching the movie The Last Seduction with Bill Pullman ... I thought, ya, that's probably a good example of the gaze. I saw it at a film festival in a packed theater last year, and everyone cheered and clapped (myself included) when a crime at the end is gotten away with ... hopefully that doesn't give too much away if you haven't seen it. Thanks for the great video Todd!

What always gets in the way of my appreciation of the concept of the gaze is Wittgenstein's remarks on “secondary meaning” in the second part of the Philosophical Investigations, where he deals with ambiguous images, i.e. multistable perceptions, which do not result from something overlooked in an image, but from a reinterpretation of the mysteriously unchanged field of vision. This seems to me to be a more subjective contribution than, in the case of the gaze, the perception of something overlooked, which rather implies that one has not looked properly. What has changed in multistable perception is the attitude, that is, what one is inclined to do (or desire?) next, not the perception of something previously hidden or unexpectedly appearing. Wittgenstein introduces the concept of “secondary meaning” for it, to which one can be blind, parasitic on primary meaning, which consists in everyday use (informed, the psychoanalytically orientated would probably say, by desire). As far as the sardine can episode is concerned, I speculate Wittgenstein would translate it in such a way that the young Lacan claims to be able to grasp something, but is instructed that one could also see it differently, which, however, as he subsequently realizes, only falsifies (or displaces...) his interpretation, but does not make it impossible. For, as it says in the Tractatus 1.21 “Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same” - while in Lancan’s witty reply suggests, it mightn’t.

Thank you for breaking down this difficult concept! This was much easier to understand than XI haha

Fantastic breakdown, as always! While gaze gets a lot of talk (not enough, in my opinion), the idea of the object voice is somewhat left in the shadows. Voice as what transceneds speech, voice as that which belongs to a meaningless void. A video on this with some clarity would be fantastic-especially considering the confusion around the impossibility of thinking voice as a nonsound. I'd really appreciate it if you could dive into that in a future video! sooner than later I hope 🙌

why are you looking at me like that, jacques?

He has returned!!!!

amazing video!! thank you so much for explanations and examples. It is still not all clear to me, but I think I am getting closer!

Le regard = the look as well as the looking

7:24 at this point, I take it that ‘the gaze’ is the first point at which the subject recognizes (part of?) itself as an object. To use the Mikey Downs Method of exegesis, the antithesis of how I am taking this framing of ‘the gaze’ would be the solipsism of Cartesian dualism. Am I tracking?

Great video! Do you think that the unconscious desire for the car to sink is there from the beginning and that the pause brings it to light, or does the editing create the desire retrospectively so we say "damn, I must have wanted that all along?"

What’s the difference between the gaze and le petit A? they sound very similar here.

And this is the main difference between Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Buddhism! One posits that one can gain safe distance/peace in nirvana from the world/Samsara and the other says no your are already apart of the world, engaged in its process and danger.

just finished Only A Joke there Todd! If only I could ever afford to take a class with u in person! alas! great admiration from Newfoundland, Canada. If you're ever here...I love to chat art!

I tried to think of an example of the gaze in music. Would John Cages 4'33 (it's a deliberate 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence) fit? The whole point of the piece is to actually sit, listen to and think about your surroundings. You, as the subject, are involved in this piece of music.

19:17 so what is the inermorphic secret of the dentist office painting? Pain?

so the gaze is the subjects subjectiveness affecting how it sees an object? as an artist, what i paint is my gaze?

Hi Todd, thank you so much for uploading this luminous explanation on the gaze. I wonder if you can recommend some books/works that have a focus on the Lacanian gaze and desire out of the psychoanalysis context？(I have read Zizek's book Looking Awry which was quite the idea above.) Thank you very much.

now I know why I don't approve of shock cinema like Irréversible: kits authorsvuse cheap tricks to get to our unconscious via violated gaze

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Psychological Seduction....😌

The late, great Hannibal Lecter!

the gays

Hi Todd thanks for an excellent explication on the gaze. I presented on Las Meninas recently, and recall (I think) that Lacan proposes at one point that the position of the viewer, the one we are standing in, is for those depicted in the image, anamorphic, which they are straining to see.

Just dessert-“boo”-This edit placed me in the frame! I laughed. Good discussion btw

Another great example is Haneke's movie Funny Games

AMAZING videos! instant sub. keep it up.

very good!

i dont have a problem with the gays