The gesture of the contemporary viewer's gaze: neither saint nor goat, emancipated

Abstract

The article discusses the gesture of the contemporary viewer's gaze in the light of discussions about the real in its unstable relationship with artifice. There is a criticism of the look that crosses the history of Western theater to the present day, proposing aesthetic outputs or solutions to a crisis that is currently thickening, especially from the studies of philosophers J. Baudrillard and A. Badiou. As the very distinction between reality and representation is lost, the spectator inserted in the core of the problem becomes the target of pressure, being questioned in his position, polarized between “saint” or “goat”. Together with Rancière, we seek to demystify the belief of the passive spectator in order to find the emancipated spectator.