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The selfie and the intolerable gaze of the Other[Note 1. This paper is a revised version of an earlier ...]
Author(s) -
Uzlaner Dmitry
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of applied psychoanalytic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.314
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1556-9187
pISSN - 1742-3341
DOI - 10.1002/aps.1525
Subject(s) - selfie , gaze , subject (documents) , subjectivity , phenomenon , ideology , object (grammar) , identity (music) , psychology , representation (politics) , aesthetics , epistemology , sociology , psychoanalysis , philosophy , computer science , art , law , visual arts , politics , political science , linguistics , library science
This essay investigates the phenomenon of the selfie. The author is interested in what this phenomenon is able to say about the human subject and its constitution. Jacques Lacan's theory of the subject is used as a fulcrum to investigate, in particular, his reflections on the gaze and the role it plays in the process of constituting human subjectivity. The author takes one specific “mirror selfie” and consistently examines various aspects of the gaze in relation to it: the gaze as it constitutes the identity of the subject; the ideological dimension of the gaze and “ideological visual interpellation”; the gaze as the object‐cause of desire; the unbearable inevitability of the gaze; and the monstrous Real dimension of the gaze. The author concludes that new technology, in particular, the new possibilities for self‐representation they provide, do not distort the nature of man, but on the contrary only more clearly reveal it.