Only for the past half century or so have philosophy and the human sciences considered the gaze in itself and studied its presence and action in current life and in history. Using recent research by historians of mentalities, the author follows step by step the way in which this emergence occurs, in order to highlight the specific character of the corresponding Freudian notion.
Afterwards he imagines how psychoanalysis has gradually come to locate the gaze among the objects that govern our unconscious life. Sometimes confused with the sex, the instance of the superego or guardian, or with a partial object, it should rather be defined as a herald of the enigmatic message, condensing the sexual core of the message and impelling the subject to embody it in one way or another.