Gendering the Phallic Gaze: Masculinity, Body and the Erotic Spectacle

Abstract

The paper attempts to present a feminist critique of the theory of gaze and its consequence in the representation of gender and sexual difference in western culture’s phallogocentric discourse and the privilege to masculine vision that this discourse asserts in the construction of the feminine body as passive, erotic and corporeal. The purpose of this study is to elaborate on the patriarchal ways of seeing, highlighting the role that vision plays in the masculine production and propagation of the feminine corporeal body, predominant in the visual and textual language fabricated in an androcentric society.