Introduction

Abstract

Seeing and being seen deserve consideration as existential, human experiences. They cannot be avoided as they represent ways of human contact in everyday life. And yet, seeing and being seen have not been at the forefront of public awareness in the same way as, for example, touching and being touched have been. Most of us are well aware of the importance and the healing qualities of touching and being touched, and also of the immense potential damage that is caused by being touched against one’s will. We see and are seen every day, and, as with touching, seeing has the potential to be healing or damaging, depending on the way in which one sees. I ask in this book what it means to see and to be seen, and I discuss in the process both positive and negative ways of seeing—positive ways that are respectful of that which is seen, and negative ways that are potentially damaging to the being that is opposite, the being upon which the gaze is resting.