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THE THEATRICALIZATION OF ENDGAME... constellation of objects as they appeared before him. As a conseguence, his whole perception of this view starts to shift; the background of previously well-measured and fixed objects disintegrates, as the distance between this man and his environment enfolds outside of him. Nevertheless this new relation of the object-man to the object-lawn has a particular character; it is simultaneously given to me as a whole, since it is there in the world as an object which I can know [...] and at the same time it entirely escapes me. [...] The distance appears as a pure disintegration of the relations which I apprehend between the objects of my universe. It is not I who realize this disintegration; it appears to me as a relation which I aim at emptily across the distances which I originally established between things. It stands as a background of things, a background which on principle escapes me and which is conferred on them from without. Thus the appearance among the objects of my universe of an element of disintegration in that universe is what I mean by the appearance of a man in my universe. [...] The appearance of the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of the whole universe, to a decentralization of the world which undermines the centralization which I am simultaneously effecting.” The world as it appears to one’s consciousness may all of a sudden become disrupted because a man crosses one’s sight, and re-divides the space from a completely different perspective. He literally cuts through one’s environment and rearranges the lines, distances and areas that have composed one’s space. In the gaze of the other, one is confronted with the realization that the world is arranged from a position and perspective that is impossible for one to occupy, that is, in other words, entirely other or alien. In this awkward and threatening confrontation, one feels reduced to nothing more than an object. For Sartre, the loss of his self as a result of the look of the other pushes him into the position of object, thus turning him into a passive victim. The hierarchy of foreground and background is unsettled. Or, more precisely, subjectivity undergoes a process of disintegration due to the changed perspective as the subject all of a sudden becomes the object of someone else’s gaze. In Endgame, this interference by the gaze of the other comes from some small creatures, be it a boy or a flea. Both threaten to destabilize and redefine Hamm’s space. One of the most vehement critics of the impact of the gaze, Sartre felt intimidated by the awareness of being watched. The gaze of the other is considered an intrusion into his personal world. In fact, no less than his self is being threatened under the other’s gaze. His phenomenological world is decentralized as it shifts due to the alternating perspective of the other that literally comes into the field and turns him into an object. Sartre understood 27 Tbid., 254-255. +4] »
