The Cocked Eye: Robbe-Grillet, Lacan, and the Desire to See It All

Abstract

Discusses J. Lacan's (1978) psychoanalytic work on the Gaze as it applies to Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel, The Voyeur. The voyeur wants to master a real situation of desire by seeing everything from a sequestered, secret place but does not want to acknowledge that seeing involves an already being-seen within the circuit of signification. The Gaze as consciousness pretends to be transparent to itself but is actually constructed around a misperception of fullness and self-identity. The end result is an ambiguity between what is real and what is not, a trick of the eye. The trick of the eye for the voyeur is the substitution of looking in place of actually participating in the act of desire and not knowing that this creates something unreal.