THE LOOK THAT RETURNED: GESTURE, LANGUAGE AND HOLE IN THE ANALYSIS OF AN URBAN IMAGE

Abstract

This article proposes a discursive reading, in conjunction with Lacanian psychoanalysis, of the urban image in which two black boys, standing in front of a wall, inscribe themselves as subjects of reality. One of them paints around the statement: "They are afraid of us"; the other looks back at the camera, disorganizing the spectator's place. Based on Lacan's theory of discourses, Michel Pêcheux's ideological analysis and Frantz Fanon's critique of coloniality, it is argued that the image operates as an act of language and symbolic hole. It is not about representing racialized childhood, but about sustaining the scene as a return of the jouissance that hurts the Other. The article argues that analytical listening and the social reading of the photograph imply recognizing the point at which language fails — and the subject emerges as a remainder, as a cut, as a fragment. The returning gaze does not seek to be understood; it imposes presence.