Through gaze (le regard), we recognize others, and therefore, they emerge by virtue of our gaze. Could we affirm that alterity (l’altérité) allows us to exist? In such a case, the Cartesian expression would be modified into: “I am being observed, therefore, I exist.” And when others observe and judge us, do they alter our way of skiing? For example, during a group lesson, we tend to reject the gaze of other people when it is our turn to descend. In this manner, we become aware of our resistance to being objectified by the gazes of others and by other consciousnesses (consciences).
In our interactions on the ski slopes, when we are observed, we recognize that we are being-with-others (être-avec) and being-for-others (être-pour-autrui), and that being observed constitutes a restriction of our freedom of action. The Sartrean gaze represents the being-seen-by-another (être-vu-par-autrui). The Other is the one who looks at us, and thereby, we attain consciousness of being looked at; yet at the same time, the Other is also the one whom we look at. By looking, we see that the existence of the Other is demonstrated to us. Our relationship with others on the slopes encompasses them as objects and as probabilities of actions. By being looked at by others—by being looked-at-objects—we perceive a state of shame (honte) or pride (fierté) since, through our technical gestures, we become ashamed or proud of our skiing before the alien gaze.
Shame arises from the gaze of others because we believe that our actions are objects of critique. The alien gaze judges our actions, transforms us into objects (reification / chosification), and automatically, we tend to repress them. We consider and judge our actions as appropriate or inappropriate, generating emotions of pride or shame. However, another situation emerges: that of believing ourselves to be looked at without actually being so. And, if this is the case, the shame or pride becomes inauthentic (bad faith / mauvaise foi), since no one is watching how we ski. In the spirit of Sartre, “When we make a certain gesture and it is not looked at by anyone, we do not feel judged or reified, but when we realize that we are not alone and that we are being observed, then we observe the possible commonality of our gesture.”
What Sartre signified by this is that, when skiing, we are our own possibilities of action, but the gaze of others restricts them and generates within us the fixation of being looked at. This tends to disorganize our skiing. The presence of another individual with their gaze creates a circumstance undesired by us. And this disorganization of our actions is provoked by the alien gaze because it ruptures the structure of our spatiality.
In Sartre, to apprehend ourselves as looked-at is to apprehend ourselves as spatialized. In addition to the spatialization produced by the alien gaze, it is also temporalizing through its simultaneity: we look at how others look at us. By looking at us, others indicate their presence-to-us. Being looked at by other people generates a new spatio-temporal dimension to which we must adapt.
With our actions, we attempt to reduce the distance between ourselves and others. We adapt our trajectories to the spatiality and temporality of others. When we are looked at, the Other looks at our possible actions to determine their own. The irruption of the alien gaze constitutes us as beings in peril because we remain ignorant of their intentions or their abilities. In being-for-others, this Other creates an internal tension within us by converting us into looked-at-skiers.
Beyond making us feel that we are not alone on the slopes, the Other, by looking at us, irrupts into our skiing as the arbiter of our actions—something we can describe a posteriori of being looked at, or a priori of being conscious of the possibility of being objectified by the alien gaze.
