Looks

Subjectivity as commodity

Bibliographic Data

ID12330187
AuthorsK Ratele (0000-0002-1688-5136, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume25
Issue4
Pages92-103
Publication date2011-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAgenda (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1013-0950 • E-ISSN: 2158-978X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10130950.2011.630518
OpenAlexW1503840123
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

Looking at, seeing, being looked at or being seen by certain people can afford libidinal excitation,1 1. Libidinal excitation is taken to mean the generation of energy associated with the libido, where libido means the psychical energy and desire derived from biological drives, specifically the sexual drive. but it also can be a source of psychical2 2. Psychical means that which has to do with the psyche which in turn refers to the human faculty for thought, perception as well as emotion. displeasure. Reading a series of events, texts, and images, this Article traces why and how we are excited or moved by the way we or others look. The Article argues that seeing or being seen by a sexual object3 3. Here, after Freud, the sexual object refers to the party at whom sexual feelings are directed. is an important source of libidinal pleasure around which a self and culture is built. Consequently, in late racialised capitalist culture, looking, being looked at, and generally looks (and inevitably subjectivities), cannot but become commodities, given that scopophilia4 4. In simple terms, the love of looking. lies behind the commodification of culture. The Article employs two cases as emblematic of commoditisation in late global capitalist culture: a research fragment about a father who disapproves of his dead son's dress choices; and second, the media-conveyed controversy around the athlete Caster Semenya. These are approached through constructionist and psychoanalytic registers, here taken as complementary approaches to a critical project on sexualities and gender. The Article demonstrates that the father seems to have looked upon his son as a man in the ‘wrong’ clothes, while Semenya is consciously or otherwise constructed in the media to be a woman in the “wrong” body. These constructions are grounded in the pleasure of looking or being looked at

Aesthetics · Commodification · Epistemology · Fantasy · Human sexuality · Libido · Literature · Pleasure · Psyche · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Sociology · Subjectivity · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society

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