Surveiling the self

There’s no organ like the eye to affect our own otherness. Lacan uses the example: ‘I see myself seeing myself’ to reinforce its distancing effect. In comparison ‘I warm myself warming myself’ is corporal, whole, one. The eye and its perceptive function positions it both of us and outside us at once. In that it’s outside us, it’s open to manipulation and the influence of the public. Its being ‘in public’ and no longer of our private, discrete domain, it’s liable to adopt judgemental, self- conscious attributes. There is no longer our eye, our gaze, but the gaze of others – others’ eyes everywhere, even in our own mind’s eye. All this looking and being looked at renders the subject in a state of suspension. ‘From the moment that this gaze appears, the subject tries to adapt himself to it...’ and so starts the dance of the marionette, metaphorical strings attached. Without physical form, we cannot compare the gaze to other objects we’ve learnt to desire, we can’t buy, manipulate, dominate or discard it. Lacan says: ‘Of all the objects in which the subject may recognise his dependence in the register of desire, the gaze is specified as unapprehensible.’ We can try to comprehend and contain the gaze by seeing our-self seeing our-self, but try as we might, our focal point will continuously shift. Like a dog chasing its tail, we only end up running circles.