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“Hell
is other people” – J.P. Sartre
“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses affections, passions?
Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases, healed by the same
means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and
summer as a Christians is?” – W. Shakespeare The
Merchant of Venice
In Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit a mirror serves
to devastate the relationships between the members
of a group trapped in a room with no egress, and
therefore with one another.
The mirror serves to bring dysfunction to the group,
as the characters use it to gain awareness of themselves.
With this awareness comes conflict.
What kind of play would Sartre have written if he
(or his characters) had knowledge or the use of
personal video cameras?
Would it look anything like the following? A motorist
captures police officers beating a historically
underprivileged member of a minority on videotape.
The police are subsequently charged with and acquitted
of depriving the motorist of his civil rights. Concomitant
with the acquittal the city of Los Angeles becomes
a blazing inferno of anarchy.
If self-awareness is defined today by not just mirrors,
but also videotape, still- photography, and sound
recording, has humanity come to a more enlightened
self-understanding?
The cautionary tale of the Los Angeles Riots is
that when a mirror is held up to a society of individuals,
it becomes a catalyst for destruction.
Sartre characterized human existence as being in
a state of radical freedom. Human relationships
are a struggle between competing free entities capable
of signifying and understanding the world around
them. Thus, human relationships in Sartre’s view
are in a constant state of tension.
The tensions in Sartre’s play No Exit arise when
the signifier capable of understanding the world
around her, comes into an understanding of self
via the mirror, which is inherently egoistic. When
the characters in the room come to realise that
they are being characterized in a manner which is
inherently different from that which they understand
themselves to be, as their understanding of self
changes when they can see themselves as others see
them externally through the mirror, they begin to
fight to control access to the mirror, which is
the power to control signification.
When the characters understand that they can control
both their ability to understand others, as well
as the ability to control how others see them, through
the power inherent in the mirror, the French theatrical
version of the L.A. Riot takes place.
In modern society, our understanding of self is
the result of a complex intermingling of internal
and external stimuli. Our individual understanding
of self results from the experience of biological
and chemical sensations that are regulated by the
brain and organized as perceptions. This reception
of stimulus and regulation of it through perception
becomes the foundation of signification, which is
the basis of the mind. The mind is characterized
by Descartes as the sum of existence in his famous
(and intensely scrutinized) aphorism: cogito ergo
sum (I think therefore I am).
The mind (the existence of which is much disputed
by biological materialists) is a distinct creation
of human biology and chemistry, which filters stimuli,
organizes them as perceptions, and accords them
significance. The understanding derived from the
process of signification (e.g. “this is what something
is and why”) is the starting point for human experience.
What is curious about modern society is that our
human experience is now defined largely by external
factors. Though the mind’s primary function is to
receive stimulus and accord it significance for
our own use (the most important being mere survival),
much of our present lives are caught up in manipulating
the picture of ourselves that is returned to us
through sensation and perception by way mirrors
(of which our technology is an example) in order
to control the significance that others accord to
us (which may be another example of a survival technique).
The
powerful know that in controlling the mirror, they
control society. Thus, a huge superstructure is
maintained that creates an ideal understanding of
self (beauty, wealth, power) and sells it to us
through images of other selves reflected through
T.V., and video. This idealized self in turn becomes
the reflection we receive of ourselves in the looking-glass.
Through adopting certain social norms of talk and
expression; through dressing in a manner which is
acceptable to those who share your understanding
of social norms; through curling your hair, or plucking
your eyebrows, or refraining from picking your ears
on public transit one feels that they are able to
gain control over the signification process, that
they can control how others characterize and understand
them.
Those
who do not fit into these modes of understanding,
those who are unable, or unwilling to accept and
control this process of signification become outcasts.
They are said to have a negative “self-image.” They
become “Punks” or “Goths” or some other media controlled
mode of existence. They sometimes take up arms against
their sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.
What
is at the heart of this struggle is not the fact
that these individuals think that they are somehow
disadvantaged or abused because of their difference.
They are raging against the power which controls
the process of signification. Which tells them they
must reflect a certain self, in order to be welcome
in a community.
The process of emancipation begins by understanding
that those who seek to control through signification
are caught in an illusion of their own creation.
The illusion is that power is the salve to the tension
inherent in the complex relationships arising from
a room full of people with no exit and one mirror.
The
solution is to first smash the mirror.
The next step is to seek to understand the other
rather than to control him.
The
final solution, is to forgive when the other is
unable to understand and seeks to control as a substitute.
Forgive
in the expectation that when you fail, the other
will forgive you in return.
Relationship with the other does not have to be
one of conflict. If we can recognise that others
will sense, perceive and signify us in a manner
which is consistent with their own experience and
needs, a truce can be called, and we can begin the
process which may lead to a certain peace.
The
only purpose mirrors serve is to prove that all
around the world the other’s eyes, nose, and mouth
serve the same function as those staring back at
you – to collect sensations.
The
attempt by the afraid to control sensation, is as
futile as the attempt to stifle a sneeze on a crowded
subway train. In both cases, there is no exit. The
only solution is to utilize a hanky, and apologize
for the inevitable tension that results from the
noise and discomfort you’ve caused to those around
you.
Copyright © 1999 Robert Delamar All
Rights Reserved
Robert
Delamar enjoys staring at himself in the mirror
in the morning. On those notable occasions when
he doesn’t see his reflection, he becomes rather
happy, and endeavours to return to his dark room,
and to sleep. He is the Managing Editor of *spark-online.
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