Torture and the Human Gaze
There’s something about the human gaze that’s inescapable, isn’t there? We look into a human face, we note the vitality of the eyes staring back at us, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we stand in the presence of a being–a fellow human–to whom we owe respect and compassion. Her face, her eyes, bore into us, demanding from us an ethical response. Her face, as the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas puts it, traces “where God passes.” Regardless of whether one takes Levinas literally or metaphorically, his point is clear: seeing the face of the other puts us in a profoundly ethical space that elicits from us recognition of the other as worthy of our moral consideration. If we fail to live up to this invitation, the other’s eyes judge us. So the eyes are the windows of both the other’s soul and ours. If we abuse her, we see the silent recrimination in them, and see ourselves as falling morally short. We feel shame. The gaze of the tormented in turn torments us. This may be part of the reason guards can fly into rages when prisoners, refusing to deferentially lower their gaze, stare straight into their eyes.
Read this profound blog in its entirety Death and the Maiden: Torture and the Gaze
Via: Wit of the Staircase
