APhenomenology of Being Stared at

JACOUES SCHNABEL

am in my room, studying; the time, 4:30PM. I have been at it for the

past forty-five minutes, and, almost reasonably, Isense a feeling of
boredom slowly taking hold of me. There is the inevitable yawn. The
afternoon is hot, bringing with it the drowsiness proper only to a hot
afternoon. The books fall from my hand and, giving to my body, I allow
my hand to rest on the table, my eyes to close. Suddenly, Irealize that
tomorrow Mr. the instructor, willgive an exam on the assigned
reading; Iremember failing the previous test. I talk to myself: "Look,
Jack, you've got an exam tomorrow, so better start studying!" I sit upright
and continue. The words on the book, however, do not register; they do
not penetrate my consciousness; they bounce off my mind. Without my
being aware of it, my thoughts turn to another thing: the face of the girl
whom Ihave tried, unsuccessfully, to meet for the past three veeks, and
whom I will try to call up tonight. Half-whispering, half-exclaiming, I
say: "O God, please! Please make her like me!"
As I utter these words, Ihear the floor boards behind me creaking. I
quickly turn my head and see my servant standing on the doorway. Ido
not have to see his face to know that there is a snicker on it. Ifeel myself
drowning in a sea of emotion as I realize that he has been standing there
for the past three minutes, that he has seen everything.
It is the hope and object of this paper to subject just that sea of emo
tion to Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenological reduction.
The raison d'etre for this is, Ilike to think, obvious. Satisfactory as the
proverbial man-on-the-street's diagnosis might seem, it is not really so.

54
 Being Stared at
55

For the natural attitude to take with regard to that sea of emotion is to
attribute to the assumption that my most intimate idiosyncracies are, like
my genital organ, not there for observation by just anyone. This interpre-
tation, it must be pointed out, begs the question: I may pursue the query
6urther and ask why, as a matter of fact, are my most intimate idiosyn
cracies, like my genital organ, not there just for anyone to see and take
note of. At this point the simple explanation ("simple" here used in its
most pejorative sense) ceases to function. Not being properly philosophi
cal, it is not involved with ultimate things.
So that, what I must first accomplish, to employ Husserl's very own
verb, is a bracketing of this natural attitude. I must hold in abeyance that
above "explanation'-not rejecting, not accepting, but merely suspend
ing. To remain faithful to Husserl's methodological designation of the
first step as the epoche, it remains necessary for me, in addition to the
preceding, to cut off all strings of personal attachment to the event.I
must refuse to be caught in that sea of emotion which Iearlier set out to
study; for having allowed myself to be so caught, how can a satisfactory
explanation ever be forthcoming? The question is, of course, rhetorical. I
must see that emotion outside of myself and study it in the illuminating
light of dispassion. Imust, for example, prescind from any ethical con
siderations: The idea that my servant should not have eavesdropped is
completely beside the point. Equally as irrelevant is any causal analysis
of the event, that is, that sea of emotion has its source in my experience of
being wronged by my servant in his spying on me. No, the event is the
only datum, and it is given only for description.
The task that now remains is a dual reduction of the phenomenon
under study-that sea of emotion. The first of these involves the determi
nation of the essence in what Husserl calls the eidetic reduction. I must
sift through my memories and find these experiences which share that
With which this paper is concerned, a common significance, a common
reaction on my part. The other experience is this: Thinking myself alone
in a public toilet, Imake silly faces in front of a mirror. Ido this for a
minute and then, as an image in the miror moves, Irealize it is the face
Of a man I have never seen before staring at me. I find myself drowning
ln that same sea of
emotion.
For the past few paragraphs, I have been speaking, rather ambigu
vusiy, I must confess, of that certain sea of emotion. This ambiguity has
its roots in the natural attitude, which glosses over that which it deems
unimportant. However, if only tobe keeping with what Idid a few sen
tences back, bracketing the natural attitude, I must now closely examine
that amorphous emotion. For, hand in hand with my suspension of the
56 Phenomenological Papers
natural attitude is my refusal to treat anything as trivial, my
of everything as important.
acceptanoe
In just what does that sea of emotion
consist? The first emoion
(first'' neither in temporal nor in causal terms but merely because I
have to discuss one emotion before the other and not
that of immobilization, of being petrified. Simultaneously) is
realization that someone is staring at me 1S Contemporaneous
with the
a massive inertia, an inertia
that fills my entire being. Icannot move; I
cannot think; all activity ceases
I am pure passivity.
What does it mean to realize that sonmeone is staring? To
realize that
that person is staring at me is to experience him in his
experience him as a subject. In this case, I do not just seesubjectivity-to
his face, the
clothes he is wearing, I do not just hear the noise he makes on the
floor, I do not just feel his eyes bearing down on wooden
me-over and above
these, Iexperience what he eXperiences. I experience his
scorn. Iexperi
ence his disgust. I experience the snicker that he makes
evident by the
movement of his lips.
Paripassu with the foregoing is my experience of myself as an
Here it might be opportune to make use of Jean Paul Sartre's object.
cal distinction between entre-en-soi and metaphysi
entre-pour-soi. Previous to the ex
perience, I experienced myself as
being-in-the-possession-of-a-depth,
a being in the possession of something which no
other being possesses
as
my subjectivity, a fraction of my being that was present to me
to the other. I was not, in Sartre's jargon,
but hidden
that
being-in-itself. Iwas not purely
which was present to the other. Iwas not what Iwas in that Iwas not
what I appeared to be.
With his stare, however, comes the loss of my
interiority. I love my
depth. My hidden element is not hidden anymore. I do not have an in
side anymore. Iam purely external. I am what I am in that I am what I
appear to be. I am being-in-itself. The hole-in-Being that I was is now, as
it were, turned inside out. am now self-coincident.
My feeling of massive inertia is closely related to my experience of
myself as objectified being. For now, I am sitting on the chair in the
same way that the book sits on the table. Now, my leg is moved by me
in the same way that the pages of the book are "moved" by the wind.
Now, I "is in the room in the same way that the desk is in the room.
The second emotion is that of fear-not an empirical fear, like that
of failing in tomorrow's test, a fear that involves only a fragment of me,
but fear on a metaphysical scale, a fear that saturates my being.T hns
fear is the fear of the conquered. Now, I am subjugated under the gaze of
the other, because now he has transformed me into a completely external
 Being Stared at 57

Laindhe knows everything there is to know about me. He has

+hing over me in that, while he poSSeSSeS me in somc
the converse is not true- do not know him knowing me completely,
completely.
in the possession of a depth. There is a part of the
To me, he is still
reality that is he that is
not present to me. He has an advantage over me.
be is remains intact. He still has an
The hole-in-Being that
interior and an exterior.
To summarize, the eidos of that sea of
emotion reveals itself to be a
metaphysical experience of immobilization and fear. It is important to
note that the feeling is not two feelings, for
this would presuppose an
analysis of the unity that is the experience, something clearly
province of Husserl's outside the
transcendental-phenomenological
A final reduction remains undone, and reduction.
this brings me to the tran
scendental reduction. If Istudy that feeling of immobilization and fear
more closely, I realize that it is not, to again borrowa term
from Sartre's
metaphysics of existence, a facticity." It is not a fact" in that I can
choose not to have that feeling. It is not a fact in that it is
unlike the
pain I experience when someone pinches me, which is
not choose not to have. Ihave that feeling of something I can
only because I choose to have it. Ican just as easily immobilization and fear
choose to ignore the
presence, the existence of the staring other, and continue with my actions
as if I had not at all noticed him. Thus, it is
only because I choose to
invest upon the situation the above significance of that
feeling of
bilization and fear that it does have such a significance. I thus immo
ence myself as the principle, the source from which the experi
meaning of the
experience flows. Stated in another way, I experience that feeling of im
mobilization and fear as a feeling-for-me. Furthermore, I experience
myself as a subject-for-that-feeling in that, I, having the liberty to choose
whether to attach myself to that feeling or not, chose to attach myself to
it. Iallowed the experience to engender that feeling in me and,
in so
doing, Ibecame a subject-for-that-feeling.