Cultural Gaze
February 17, 2007
One thing that I found interesting in the reading selections for this week was Silverman’s discussion of the cultural gaze and how, to a certain extent, the gaze of the Other determines “who” we are. Silverman writes, “…what is determinative for each of us is not how we see or would like to see ourselves, but how we are perceived by the cultural gaze…All of this suggests that we cannot simply ‘choose’ how we are seen ” (p. 19).
Although Silverman’s discussion relates to infants’ cognizance/child development, I can’t help thinking of the cultural gaze in a broader sense, one relating to society. At the end of the day, it seems that the individual does not have complete autonomy in deciding with which identity-group(s) he/she identifies, or rather, the individual is at liberty to choose what identity-groups he/she wants, but there is a possibility that Others/people will feel differently, and thus, categorize the subject differently. Whose determination “counts” more? the individual’s or that of society?
