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a possibility to differentiate between the visibility of thesubject and the other, more or less habitual non-subject modalities of the visible.4.The topic of the visibility of the subject arises in France during theperiod of penchant for phenomenology, but the optimum conditions for itstheorizing are developed in the waning days of (post)structuralism within whichcomplication of relations between the aspects of activity and passivity of thesubject, and also between the language and visibility gains a strategic value ofovercoming the one-sidedness of the structuralistic subject of submission.5.In the contemporary French philosophy, it is possible to discern threebasic strategies of articulation of the visibility and subjectivity: being-visible of thesubject(Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty),becoming-visible ofsubjectivization (Jacques Rancière) and completing the Subject in the visible(Jean-Luc Nancy).

Each of these three strategies is ambiguous in its own way - notso much removing the contradiction between visibility and subjectivity, as more orless successfully exploiting it in its interests:a.Within the limits of the first strategy, Sartre managed to propose adescription of the visibility of the Other-subject in the encounter, but the radicaldualism of his ontology did not make it possible for him to theorize it.b.Not going far beyond this strategy, the philosophy of late Merleau-Ponty lays the grounds for theorizing the visibility of the subject by introducing apolarizing source common for Sartre's dualisms – the flesh of the world.

It is ascommon, shared that the visibility can also further become one of the15characteristics of the subject. And still the unfinished “The Visible and theInvisible” in itself cannot yet serve as “a firm basis” for the theorization ofsubject’s visibility: on the one hand, it risks running into total indiscernibilitybetween the subject and the object, and, on the other one, to neutralize this risk, itpartially retrieves the position of the conscience entering into inconsistent relationswith the flesh of the world.c.Within the framework of the second strategy, Rancière does extensivephilosophical work to theorize the “becoming-visible” as an imperative of politicalsubjectivization in the strong sense of the word.

Even if his proposition on thevisibility of the subject are limited to solely radical political subjectization and donot extend, in particular, on the aesthetics.d.Within the framework of the third strategy, Nancy proposes aningenious reflection on the topic of visibility of subjects in art – in portrait art, inparticular.

This understanding appears to be extremely ambivalent: on the onehand, Nancy shows that it is an aesthetic visibility that makes the subject complete(in sense of accomplished); and on the other one, he demonstrates that it is in theaesthetic visibility that the Metaphysics of the Subject is completed (in sense ofbringing to a close) – it is there that the transition to the nancean ontology of thesingular plural obviating the subject takes place.Theoretical and practical outcome of the studyThe study results could find their application when preparing the courses onthe history of contemporary philosophy and aesthetics, on the theories of the imageand the visual – both on their own right and with reference to ontology andphilosophical anthropology.

They can also get traction when conducting theresearch on different aspects of visibility/visuality in the contemporary philosophyand culture.Study results approbationSome of the particular statements of this study were presented at thefollowing conferences:16XXIst International Student, Postgraduate and Young Scientists Conference“Lomonosov-2015”, organized by Lomonosov Moscow State University,13-17 April 2015 (Paper “Ranciere Reads Schiller: New Relations withClassic Aesthetic Texts”)VIth Annual Conference “Philosophy. Language.

Culture”, organized by theSchool of Philosophy of the National Research University Higher School ofEconomics, 29-30 April 2015 (Paper “Jacques Ranciere: The Philosopherand his Subject”)European Summer School of Cultural Studies «Politics of Еaste» (Paris,France), 7-13 September 2015 (Paper “Suspension and Equality in JacquesRancière’s Interpretation of Judgement of Taste”)International“Transparency/Opacity”,WorkshoporganizedbytheAmsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, 21-23 March 2016 (Paper“Subject’s Opacity Taken Literally.

Merleau-Ponty revisiting Sartre’stransparent consciousness”)10th AnnualSeminar“Imagination asanAct:PhenomenologicalApproaches”, organized by the “Phenomenology” research group of theUniversity of Liege (Belgium), 25-29 April 2016 (Paper “Le regard del'autre chez Sartre: l'entre-deux de l'imagination et de la perception”)VIIIth Annual Conference “The modes of thinking, the ways of speaking”,organized by the School of Philosophy of the National Research UniversityHigher School of Economics, 27-30 April 2017 (Paper “Subject as a blindzone”)17MAIN BODY OF THE THESISIn the first part of the thesis, our attention is focused on the texts of the keyFrench authors identifying themselves with the phenomenological tradition (JeanPaul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty) who manifest the first attempts toconsider the topic of visibility of the subject within the frameworkofcontemporary French philosophy.

By and large, this part shows, how the topic ofour study first arises in the works of the two above-mentioned French philosophersin the context of their major theoretical efforts aimed at “opening” the solipsisticconscience to the other and to the world. Which is linked to the concept of “gaze”,specific to the French context, being, on the one hand, the inheritor of theocularcentrism, a trademark of the phenomenology, and on the other hand, itsantagonist, that is the sight both seeing and visible. Here we also analyze theintricacies encountered by these authors in their attempts to theorize the topic ofthe subject's visibility in the terms of “gaze”. The intricacies, which become, as wewill try to show, difficult to be resolved within the framework of the approachpracticed by them.In chapter 1, we give a minute analysis of the fragment on the gaze fromSartre's “Being and Nothingness” as a kind of inaugural appearance of the topic ofvisibility of subjects in the contemporary French philosophy.

The chapter centersaround its key feature – the irresolvable character of the appearance of thesubject’s visibility in “Being and Nothingness”. First of all, this irresolubilitytranspires in the possibility of double reading of this fragment. We try to show thatit can be interpreted not only in the traditional way, as a demonstration of thepower of the gaze of the Other objectifying the conscience, but equally as thepeculiar description of the subjectifying visibility of the gaze of the Other-subject,i.e. as a visibility which makes the encounter with the Other as other subjectpossible. These two interpretations seem not so much to exclude than tocomplement each other.

Secondly, the irresolubility in question is ultimatelyrelated to the fact that the description of the gaze of the Other-subject suggested byus, despite the evident legitimacy of such reading, is at odds with the underlying18grounds of Sartre's dualistic ontology laid down in his early texts – “TheImaginary” and “The Transcendence of the Ego”. An attempt to bring thedescription of the gaze of the Other-subject from “Being and Nothingness” intoaccord with the theses of these two early texts by Sartre forms the topic of the firstand second section of Chapter 1, accordingly.Section 1.1.

shows the discrepancy between the Sartre's description of thespecific visibility of the Other's gaze in “Being and Nothingness” and theunderpinning arguments on the visible of his “The Imaginary”, based, let usremind here briefly, on a sharp opposition between the imagined and the perceived.To do that, the paragraph 1.1.1. first raises the question of an “aesthetic” (i.e.sensible) dimension of the encounter for Sartre, which mainly occurs on the levelof the visible. A special emphasis on the “encounter” as Sartre's main achievementin this fragment enables us to shed some light on the reversibility between theobjectivization by the gaze of the Other (on which traditional interpretation of thisfragment insists) and the subjectivization of the gaze of the Other, i.e.

to show thepossibility of the double reading on which our analysis is based. The paragraph1.1.2.considers the interpretation of the specificity of the Other's gazemanifestation in Sartre’s text proposed by Rudolf Bernet, a well-known Belgianphenomenologist. After considering its merits (emphasizing the link between thegaze manifestation manner and the subjectification) we put into question Bernet’sinsistence on the invisible character of Sartre's gaze of the Other-subject(according to his terminology, the gaze for Sartre appears to be an “invisiblephenomenon”). Thus, it is the first hypothesis that is subjected to test: the gaze ofthe Other-subject is invisible. In paragraph 1.1.3., Sartre's description of theencounter with the gaze of the Other-subject from “Being and Nothingness” iscompared with his description of the work of imagination from “The Imaginary”on the basis of their negative definition: suspension of perception.