Evil Eye Books

“Another prominent examination of this gaze is the analysis of the voyeur. This example does not concern the voyeur’s gaze, which might be considered an evil eye on its own terms. Instead, the gaze of interest is the one the voyeur encounters in discovering himself watched by another. The voyeur peers through a keyhole, attempting to see without being seen. In this situation, he finds himself in his total facticity and freedom, a being unto itself, making choices and dealing with limits. However, the moment he hears footsteps and notices someone looking, the entire situation changes. Previously, he could focus on what he was perceiving. He may have been a “peeping Tom,” but he did not think about himself in those terms. When another gaze arrives, and the voyeur encounters the look, his freedom is turned back on himself. He experiences shame as he is revealed to himself for who he is. In this new situation, the other becomes his master, and he experiences himself alienated, removed, and disconnected from his possibilities, no longer master of his situation. As such, “[t]he Other is the hidden death of my possibilities.”
― Brian W Becker, Evil and Givenness: The Thanatonic Phenomenon