When we consider the work of Jean-Paul Sartre in terms of identity and LGBTQI activism, we are instantly immersed into the world of the Other. In conjunction with the work of Simone de Beauvoir, we can better understand the role of the Other in the context of forming identity from the void. This
ultimately raise questions concerning how we come to situate our selfhood in relationship to the Other, and thus leading us to our own conceptions of freedom. I believe that, to understand this, we must ask how can we situate our sense of freedom and bondage in relation to the idea of nothingness. In addition, we will want to ask how can we be free of the Other and, if so, what is the condition in which this can take place? As we will see in “Being and Nothingness,” he suggests that the Other is revealed to us as itself being free but that it removes us from our freedom.
Sartre asks us to consider how we use our ability to perceive and constitute both our own selfhood and the role of that selfhood in the context of the Other. To do so he plays on the idea of nothing and the condition of absence. In this discussion, I will ask if and how this idea of nothing arises in his thinking, and how looking at the Other can help us understand our own relationship to nothingness and identity.
Looking to another text, we see that the idea of nothing is ancient and inspires the imagination. In Frank Close’s text “Nothing,” he suggests that nothing is a paradox. From the void, we stand in the face of all that is and has come into being. Close points to Thales in 600 BC, who rejected the idea that nothing can only exist if there is no one there to contemplate it. This relationship makes nothing a type of discursive space that is significant to understanding if things are contingent on the Other. This helps us understand Sartre’s starting point and brings us near to understanding how we can, as Close notes, “define nothing other than the absence of something.”
For Sartre, this empty space was fodder for examination of one’s position in the universal. As part of his thesis in “Being in Nothingness,” he examines this very point. He notes that “in fact [the ego] is separated from me by a nothingness which I cannot fill since I apprehend it as not being for me and since on principle it exists for the Other. Therefore, I do not aim as it could someday be given me but on the contrary insofar as it on principle flees from me and will never belong to me. Nevertheless, I am that ego.”
Nothingness for Sartre is, therefore, a product of and a refection on the condition of a position and orientation that must take into account the Other. This thesis reflects a continuum of thinking about nothingness throughout his text. He further notes that, “the ego is precisely out of reach. In fact it is separated from me by a nothingness which I cannot fill since I apprehend it as not being for me and since on principle it exists for the Other.” This is not to deny the self exists, only that the self is a part of the Other in a way that is a part of the process of self-reflection that makes us aware of our own subjective position.
Here, the concept of shame brings us into an even-deeper discursive space on queer culture. When a person is alone, they are not subject to the same pressures of the Other. Sartre gives us the analogy of one looking through a keyhole unobserved and then, once the action is observed, he is made aware of his own vulnerability. In this, Sartre recognizes that there is a phenomenon that occurs when one becomes aware of being looked at. He observes a point of tension arises from what he calls the situation. Here the situation is defined as a type of position that one is in.
He notes, “I cannot truly define myself as being in a situation: First, because I am not apposition consciousness of myself. Second, because I am my own nothingness. In this sense, I am not what I am. I cannot define me as truly being in the process of listening at doors. I escape this temporary defining of myself by means of all my transcendence.”
We define Transcendence not as the metaphysical transcendent, but rather as a logical claim. Here, Sartre is forcing us to define our relationship to our identity as being constitutive on the concept of nothing. He notes that at this point there we are in relationship to pure nothingness, or “encircling a certain objective complex and throwing itself into relief upon the world.” In this, we should be immediately reminded of his influence of Martin Heidegger and Edmond Hurrsel. Particularly in his conclusion that it is this action of thrownness that pulls us into a bad faith or self deception.
However, there seems to be a break in his thinking that allows us to reach a freedom. We are therefore in some ways alienated from Sartre by the Other while at the same time brought into being by the realization of the Other. The overcoming of the Other seems to be at the root of Sartre’s own goals. The freedom in which he himself lived by is an example of an attempt to constitute the self not by the Other or the situation that we find ourselves in, but from a place where we escape the Other in limitless possibilities that free us of what he famously notes is the hell of the Other. Or as he notes, “the Other is the hidden death of my possibilities insofar as I live that death as hidden in the midst of the world. The connection between my possibility and the instrument is no more than between two instruments, which are adjusted externally to each other to an end, which eludes me … I experience a subtle alienation of all my possibilities.”
What we may want to call into question is the validity of the claim that we take actions outside of the structure that we are born in. This rampant individualism, if left unchecked, slips back into nothingness by stripping us of meaning in a way that is too overly simple to take seriously. The condition of sociality is of course one that takes place in a field or matrix of responsibilities. These are not taken as positives by Sartre as I believe my crass reading of the text supposes. The responsibility that is required for the freedom that Sartre desires is in essence one that takes positive historical meaning into seemingly no account.
In what may appear a conservative rebuttal, I would suggest that we are dependent upon history in a way that puts us into a chain of being that disrupts the concepts of nothingness. The role of things that have come into being must be taken into account regardless of their first cause. In this, I feel as if Sartre claims we are trapped in this framework, but I would suggest that he does not allow fully the positive aspects of that chain of events that enhance the world for the good.
It is almost overly simple to only look at the role of the Other as a negative force to our existence. However, if the Other was fully negative, then we would not be able to see the positive aspects of care that make collective living so appealing to so many. The role of the collective as a control mechanism is not necessarily one that does not take into consideration the act of care and the power of the collective to act not simply for the subject but as a unified whole to act on other objects and subjects. We can come to know our being through shame — yes, that is true — but we also are able to tap into and learn from other, better ways to love as a group. This may be a fundamental aspect of culture that Sartre does not seem to take into account.
The moral restraints that this places on us is not a means to an end as Sartre seems to have suggested. They have, through the process of history. created a great deal of stability and joy that is the result of the collective Other’s sacrifice. To say that both the Other or Others have not produced things that allow the subject to be more free is to take a limited and childish view of the world. If this is an over-simplification, then I would suggest that it is in the simplest of collective bonds that we see communities thrive and grow.
I conclude that this concept of Other as an alienating force is limited. We know intuitively that unlike Sartre’s explanation, the role of the Other, the Other or Others can free us to take risks and grow in ways that would be out of reach if were here looking into the nothingness alone. We can therefore be free in the act of collaboration, of being situated in the possibilities and creativity through restraint, just as much as the pure limitlessness of the free-acting unlimited subject is a key to coming to terms with the development of our queer identity.
Justin Dowdall is a recent honors graduate of Temple University, curator of Guest Room Studios in Kensington and freelance writer. His work focuses primarily on LGBTQI advocacy, aesthetics and philosophy. For more information, see http://justindowdall.wordpress.com.