Metaphor of Vision and the Construction of Sexist-Norms in Western Metaphysics

Current feminisms have emphasized the systematic nature of women s oppression. Feminist scholars like Luce Irigaray insist that woman s difference and otherness is a matter of male-dominated institutional definition: because the woman is theoretically subordinated to the concept of masculinity, she is seen and objectified by the man as his opposite, described as an absence, a lack, and, most notoriously, the other. The metaphor of vision, or the panoptic gaze, is thus faulted with a construction of sexist norms , and with the institutional definitions of gender and sexual difference. This paper examines the contention in the key theoretical writings of men- Freud, Lacan, and Sartre- who are engaged with the notion of femininity. Their conceptualizations on the notions of scopophilia, exhibitionism, and narcissism are specifically examined to explore the way the dichotomy of a male subject and a female object is formulated and perpetuated through heterocenteric assumptions about the gaze. It is concluded that within the masculine framework of Western metaphysics, a woman s entry into a presiding scopic economy contributes to her ineluctable limitation to passivity and her socio-sexual victimization. In this regard, the panoptic gaze is endowed with a constitutive influence upon the subjectivity of the individuals- appropriating the woman into a definable being.

Keywords:

Gaze , Feminism , Heterosexuality , Oppositional Dichotomy , and Western Metaphysics