Bakışa Bakmak: Özne İmgesinin Kuruluşuna Sanattan Bakmak

Abstract

This study examines the process of subject formation within a psychoanalytic framework and discusses how this process finds correspondence in contemporary art practices. Although the foundations of the modern subject are often grounded in Descartes’s proposition “I think, therefore I am,” psychoanalytic theories argue that the subject is shaped through unconscious processes and its relations with the Other. In this context, the philosophical and psychoanalytic bases of subject, identity, language, and desire are explored through the theories of Sartre, Lacan, and Foucault. Following Sartre’s phenomenological approach, the study discusses how the gaze of the Other objectifies the subject and how this gaze produces a reciprocal form of alienation. Foucault’s panopticon model, on the other hand, reveals the role of surveillance as an internalized form of power in the construction of identity. Through examples of contemporary art dealing with themes of identity, gaze, and surveillance, the study investigates how psychoanalytic theories of the subject manifest visually and conceptually, and how art renders these dynamics visible. It is argued that the subject is not a fixed or closed entity, but a processual and discontinuous structure formed at the intersection of language, desire, the gaze of the Other, and mechanisms of surveillance. Accordingly, the study identifies a necessary distinction between “the gaze of power” and “the power of the gaze.” Contrary to the conventional assumption that power stems from an external force watching and regulating us, the central proposition here is that power is constituted through the meaning the subject attributes to its own gaze. Thus, the subject is not only the one who is surveilled but also the agent who turns the gaze into power. Structures such as the symbolic order, the law, and the “name-of-the-father” become operative through this transformation of the gaze into power. Through the artistic research and the practical works produced within the scope of this study, the constitutive gaze of the subject is rendered visible, exposing not only the mechanisms of representation but also the power that makes representation possible. In this way, art emerges not as a passive site of display but as a field that activates the subject’s potential to redistribute and transform power.