We are making a portrait of the citizen from FYROM in a Sartrian way. As Sartre entitles his study on Gustave Flaubert ‘The Idiot of the Family’ we entitle our little study ‘The Portrait of the Citizen from FYROM – the Idiot of the Politics’. In the light of this title we draw upon Sartre’s study of Jean Genet in which Genet is explained and understood as being defined by his decision to be what other people define him to be. The Citizen from FYROM is unbearably defined by what others think of him. He experiences, in Sartrian erms, the look of the Other – the look of any Other who makes him Nonmacedonian.   The problem of identity of the Macedonian points to his inevitable confrontation with the Other. He is aware that the Other is constantly present – as the one who allows/does not allow him to be for-itself, who is both Hell and his foundation. Sartre’s questions how can I understand a man and what can I know about a man? are transformed into the questions how can I understand a Macedonian and what can I know about him? His reality is complex, hardly understandable even for him, but the attempt to comprehend it should not be pointless. ‘The Portrait of the Citizen from FYROM’ offers an attempt in which the life, the character, the worries, and the wishes of the Macedonian have an explanation in the ‘experienced reality’, outside the psychical , but also outside the sociological. The world of the Macedonian is defined by the Other. In this world nature fascinates him no more, nor does the abyss of the soul challenge him. All these external and internal horizons are subordinated to the Other. He is turned towards and preoccupied with the Other. The Other is his fascination. As Sartre would put it, the fascination with the look or gaze of the other makes my being-for-the-others a substantial permanence of my being. One should understand what happens when the being-for-the-others (the character or person) that one has (that one is homosexual, thief, pervert – like Genet; uneducated, rude, Stalinist, a communist construction, Slavomacedonian, then again, Bulgarian, Serb – like the Macedonian) as a fascination with the Other, becomes the ‘incomprehensible ne varietur’ that has to be taken over. The sickness of metaphysics, the sickness to death is replaced by the sickness of being-seen. So the Macedonian (just like Genet) takes himself up in reference to the look of the Other. What Sartre calls ‘the look’ or ‘the gaze’ – is the Other that reduces me, strips me of my transcendence, robs me of my own subjecthood and turns me into an object. I exist ‘in the presence of the look’. But, this taking up gives birth to the struggle to regain the sovereignty. The taking over is reflected in the state defined by Sartre as a situation when the character is taken up as one takes an oath. I am what I am for the others. I am being-for-the-others. The look of the Other constitutes one’s character as something that has to be taken up and maintained. Thus, it depends both on the Other and on my position towards the Other. But Genet and Flaubert want to escape this. The Macedonian too. The Other is my foundation, but, despite it, I want to be my own foundation. Therefore, in words of Sartre, my essential project towards the other is double: on the one hand, I must defend myself from the danger that my being-externality-in-the-freedom-of-the-Other imposes on me, and, on the other hand, I must use the Other to finally totalize the detotalized totality that I am, I must close the open circle and finally be my own foundation. Sartre’s fundamental message is that taking over is a deceit, bad faith. From a Sartrian position, there should be only a project for oneself, and not (to have it) for the Other (as a character ascribed to me that I have to bear and don’t know whether I should overcome). You made a thief out of me. All right, I will be a thief (Genet); you want me to be the mad one in the family, I will! (Flaubert) – this is the being-for-the-others that tortures. You want me to be something else (Nonmacedonian) – this is the anguish of being-for-the-others of the Macedonian.   Genet transcends his ‘original position’, choosing the systematic deconstruction of his own life. That path to sovereignty is the path of sanctity; for Genet, the paths of sanctity as paths to sovereignty, are impossible to avoid and when one finds oneself following them it is impossible to turn, to go back. Each of his books, says Sartre, is a ‘crisis of cathartic obsession, a psychodrama’, with each book he becomes more and more ‘master of the demon that haunts him. Ten years of literature is worth one psychoanalytical cure’. With each book, each picture, essay, song, the Macedonian becomes more and more master of the demons that haunt him. Jean Genet is obsessed with sovereignty, strives for it, is overwhelmed by the effort to reach it. The path to sovereignty, to one’s own foundation is the path that breaks the ties with the world, with the world of others in which I exist with my false self. The Portrait of the Citizen from FYROM shares Genet’s obsession. The need of the citizen of FYROM for transcendence is a need to reject the definitions that the Other gives for him and to reach his own definition – to overcome the bad faith.