The Gaze was brought into prominence through the psycho analytic language of Jacque Lacan. But he emphasized only one kind of gaze, the phallic gaze. Here I would like to disseminate various typologies.
I would like to begin a narrative of Lacan’s Gaze, the Phallic. The phallic has strong libidinal connotations, meaning the gaze is of a sexual one. The phallic embraces masculine sexuality to its very core. It’s typical of the male libido that when he sees an attractive woman his adrenalin surges in the brain, he kind of preys upon the subject with a symptom of aroused, libidinal gesture. For example even in today we use in language the phrase: ‘she is hot and not he’.
For commenting on the Feminine gaze especially the erotic one, I would like to go back to the language of courtly love. You have to literally please a woman to win her subjective affections and that too being a very difficult task. Wooing a woman is the most difficult thing in the world. You have to please her with words, cajole her with affections and animate her soul with love. Sexuality for her unlike males is a secondary concern. Her genetic makeup is tuned to courtly love and courtly love has not undergone any significant revisionism.
Next I would like introduce a new terminology for the gaze called as the animistic gaze. This gaze is related to the primitive man’s fascination towards animistic objects and they being ritualistic totems. When one is undergoing an animistic gaze, one is awed, one is in rapture, or one feels an intense repulsion. The animistic is entirely subjective and embraces the human tendency to be intensely emotional and subjective.
Then there is the causal gaze or the stare. For example: I stare upon the chair and reflectively acknowledge its existence, but I do not let it allow to disturb the contents of my consciousness. The chair exists, and I longer ponder of its existence.
The next gaze that I would like to put into framework is the objective gaze. The objective gaze is an analytic one. One, through the gaze probes reasons, causes, effects or solutions. The objective gaze is a scientific, mathematical, logical and philosophical gaze.
Next I would like to classify the gay gaze. I would like to introduce two new typologies derived from Jungian psychology. They are the anima for the feminine or the lesbian gaze and the animus for the homosexual. What is the gaze of the anima? I would like to trace the footprints of Jung and leave it at the doorstep of the archetypal feminine. The anima is a feminine one, invested with the feminine psyche and her libido. What is the gaze of the animus? The animus depicts the archetypal masculinity. We can see it work in the famous Michael Angelo’s nude sculpture of David. David is adorned as poetic youth with metaphor that shows beatification with the nude. The animus portrays homosexuality vividly.