What makes the gaze the seemingly paradigmatic (over)bearer of evil, envy, malice, diseases, and all sorts of ills? Why is the gaze so susceptible to everything uncanny and repressed? The evil eye is not merely a superstition. Rather, the various gaze phenomena can also be described as a cultural technique beyond magical thinking, thus positioning them within a rational discourse. The starting and reference point is the concept of the evil eye, which is examined in the context of Southern Italy from a phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspective, and is primarily related to literary texts that fundamentally stand in a function of desire and reveal a very specific truth at the level of representation. The 'Malocchio' (Italian for 'evil eye') embodies desire in the field.