Meeting the Other: From the Gaze to the Face
What does it mean to truly meet another person, rather than merely see, understand, or name them? This discussion invites us to look at the concept of the Other in twentieth-century philosophy. Jean-Paul Sartre described the Other as a gaze that objectifies us and takes away our place at the centre of the world. Martin Buber contrasted the thing-like “I–It” relation with the living, reciprocal “I–Thou” encounter. Emmanuel Levinas understood the Other as a face that never fully yields to our knowledge and that speaks to us first and foremost as an ethical demand: “Thou shalt not kill.” Jacques Lacan distinguishes the small other, our mirror reflection, from the big Other, the order of language and the symbolic, which shapes us before any encounter and in which our desire is always the desire of the Other. Julia Kristeva reminds us that the stranger also lives within ourselves, while Jacques Derrida raises the question of unconditional hospitality: is it possible to welcome the newcomer without domesticating them?
Cinema, as an art that shows faces in close-up and lets us look at another for a long time, seems especially suited to these questions, yet it also carries the risk of turning the Other into a spectacle. In this discussion we will ask whether the screen can become a place of encounter where the other remains other: irreducible, unsettling, and placing an obligation on us. Or perhaps cinema merely reaffirms the power of our gaze?