“Slapping gaze” vs. “caressing gaze”: The guilt of shame and the solution offered by Buber and Camus

Based on ethnographic research, this article focuses on the subjective experience of people placed in isolation during the first wave of COVID-19 in Israel. The method is urgent ethnography and experimental ethnography combining anthropology, philosophy, and literature. Informed by 53 interviews with Israelis isolated due to COVID-19, diary excerpts, a field journal, and photographs, this study projects from the local story to Western culture. Specifically, I examine the differences between the subjective experiences of different individuals, tracing the cultural construction through which feelings of guilt and shame emerge as cultural roles. In doing so, I apply the neologism “slapping gazes” used to punish, rebuke, or impose social sanctions during the global crisis, and examine how they affect the isolated individuals by generating feelings of shame and guilt. I offer a solution in the form of “caressing gazes” as suggested in Martin Buber's work. Finally, as the recent protest against the regime overhaul in Israel has added relevance to the study, I also include the initial findings of an urgent ethnography thereof, as a potential basis for understanding cultural perceptions in Israel and the Western world during the pandemic, political crises, and beyond in that spirit.