Volume 2, Article 6, 2010 |
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| Title: | The Politics of the Gaze Foucault, Lacan and Zizek |
| Author: | Henry Krips |
| Affiliation: | Cultural Studies and Andrew W. Mellon all Claremont Chair of Humanities, Claremont Graduate University, USA |
| DOI: | 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.102691 |
| Volume: | 2 |
| Article No.: | 6 |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Available: | 2010-03-04 |
| No. of pages: | 12 |
| Pages: | 91-102 |
| View Article: |  View Article (PDF); References (HTML) |
| Abstract: | Joan Copjec accuses orthodox film theory of misrepresenting the Lacanian gaze by assimilating it to Foucauldian panopticon (Copjec 1994: 18-19). Although Copjec is correct that orthodox film theory misrepresents the Lacanian gaze, she, in turn, misrepresents Foucault by choosing to focus exclusively upon those as-pects of his work on the panopticon that have been taken up by orthodox film theory (Copjec 1994: 4). In so doing, I argue, Copjec misses key parallels between the Lacanian and Foucauldian concepts of the gaze. More than a narrow academic dispute about how to read Foucault and Lacan, this debate has wider political sig-nificance. In particular, using Slavoj Zizek's work, I show that a correct account of the panoptic gaze leads us to rethink the question of how to oppose modern techniques of surveillance. |
| Keywords: | Film theory, the gaze, Lacan, Foucault, Copjec, Zizek |
