Conceptualizing Otherness with Lost: Foucault, Lacan, and the Mediation of the Gaze
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Among the numerous references to philosophy that permeate its narrative universe, Lost seems to be predominantly traversed by Foucauldian themes, mostly related to articulations of looking dynamics and surveillance. Themes related to panopticism and discipline constitute notable underpinnings for the series’ plot, as several previous analyses have pertinently demonstrated. This article proposes an examination of the spectatorial repercussions related to this facet of Lost, most importantly by establishing ties between the panoptic gaze and the gaze in its psychoanalytic conception, elaborated by Jacques Lacan. By examining both these concepts of a gaze deployed around the position of the Other, this article focuses on the series’ exploration of subjectivity in the era of panopticism. By exploring the importance and narrative deployment of these notions of the gaze within Lost, it is suggested that the series articulates a certain radicality around the notion of Otherness, as well as its expression through the televisual mediation of the gaze.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.078 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".