Todd is one of the most accessible scholars alive (which also means ever). Guy has dozens and dozens of guest appearances plus his own podcast. Incredible wealth of knowledge. Greatly appreciated - this is what scholars should be doing.

Also gotta point out the quirky bookshelf organization - Shakespeare, Marx, Proust side by side haha (can't see the title between Shakespeare and Capital).

I think portrait of a lady on fire is a great example

Welcome back Todd, your vids have been missed

Damn I wonder what a Bob Ross painting would have looked like if he read Lacan’s seminars on the gaze..

Excellent as always, thank you for keeping these videos coming!

why are you looking at me like that, jacques?

This is your clearest explanation of the gaze to date. Very helpful! Do you think it's correct to say that "the gaze" can serve as another name for Kantian transcendental activity?

spitting facts as always, thx professor!

i used to read foucault, reading both discipline and punish, and the order of things. this explanation of lacan's gaze is mindblowing! thanks for all you do, Todd!

Hi Todd thanks for an excellent explication on the gaze. I presented on Las Meninas recently, and recall (I think) that Lacan proposes at one point that the position of the viewer, the one we are standing in, is for those depicted in the image, anamorphic, which they are straining to see.

What always gets in the way of my appreciation of the concept of the gaze is Wittgenstein's remarks on “secondary meaning” in the second part of the Philosophical Investigations, where he deals with ambiguous images, i.e. multistable perceptions, which do not result from something overlooked in an image, but from a reinterpretation of the mysteriously unchanged field of vision. This seems to me to be a more subjective contribution than, in the case of the gaze, the perception of something overlooked, which rather implies that one has not looked properly. What has changed in multistable perception is the attitude, that is, what one is inclined to do (or desire?) next, not the perception of something previously hidden or unexpectedly appearing. Wittgenstein introduces the concept of “secondary meaning” for it, to which one can be blind, parasitic on primary meaning, which consists in everyday use (informed, the psychoanalytically orientated would probably say, by desire).

As far as the sardine can episode is concerned, I speculate Wittgenstein would translate it in such a way that the young Lacan claims to be able to grasp something, but is instructed that one could also see it differently, which, however, as he subsequently realizes, only falsifies (or displaces...) his interpretation, but does not make it impossible. For, as it says in the Tractatus 1.21 “Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same” – while in Lancan’s witty reply suggests, it mightn’t.

Fantastic breakdown, as always! While gaze gets a lot of talk (not enough, in my opinion), the idea of the object voice is somewhat left in the shadows. Voice as what transceneds speech, voice as that which belongs to a meaningless void. A video on this with some clarity would be fantastic—especially considering the confusion around the impossibility of thinking voice as a nonsound. I'd really appreciate it if you could dive into that in a future video! sooner than later I hope 🙌

Thank you Todd for your videos and your podcast with Ryan K. I started out several years ago with a curiosity of critical theory and Zizek, then I read some Alenca Zupancic and Mari Ruti, and now have made my way to consuming your videos and books.

He has returned!!!!

Thank you for breaking down this difficult concept! This was much easier to understand than XI haha

Damn this is so perfect. Thank you man. Another filmmaker who is all about implicating the audience in unconscious desire for the unacceptable and disavowed is Michael Haneke. Funny Games is the prime example but most of his films involve precisely this dynamic.

thank you Todd

After watching the movie The Last Seduction with Bill Pullman ... I thought, ya, that's probably a good example of the gaze. I saw it at a film festival in a packed theater last year, and everyone cheered and clapped (myself included) when a crime at the end is gotten away with ... hopefully that doesn't give too much away if you haven't seen it.

Thanks for the great video Todd!

Just dessert-“boo”-This edit placed me in the frame! I laughed. Good discussion btw

19:17 so what is the inermorphic secret of the dentist office painting?  Pain?

AMAZING videos! instant sub. keep it up.