ABSTRACT

J. P. Sartre’s phenomenological account of intersubjectivity inverts the standard theory. Sartre’s treatment of appropriation and assimilation underscores his contention that they inevitably lead to conflict precisely because both attitudes are driven by the desire to be God. Sartre’s theory of intersubjectivity focuses mainly on conflict rather than cooperation in human relations. There is no denying that, in Being and Nothingness, bad faith garnered significantly more attention from Sartre, leaving authenticity; it’s opposite, an underdeveloped concept. Sartre’s theory of intersubjectivity, especially his idea of the look, provides an important ontological framework for understanding identity, power relations, and autonomy in postcolonial, race, and gender studies. In Black Orpheus, his essay on the negritude movement, Sartre depicts the piercing of the white gaze by the look of black men. Sartre was speaking to white colonizers from his own country who constructed for black people an inferior essence that stood in binary opposition to whiteness as the norm.