Responsibility, Foreignness, Intimacy: Embodying Ethical Subjectivity in Emmanuel Levinas, Edmond Jabès, and Rosmarie Waldrop

MLN ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (5) ◽  
pp. 1295-1324
Author(s):  
Teresa Villa-Ignacio
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
Edmond Jabes

scholarly journals The Trace of the Untranslatable: Emmanuel Levinas and the Ethics of Translation

PhaenEx ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
DOROTA GLOWACKA
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
National Language ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Fundamental Structure ◽  
Ethics Of Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity

Looking at Holocaust testimonies, which in her view always involve some form of translation, the author seeks to develop an ethics of translation in the context of Levinas’ hyperbolic ethics of responsibility. Calling on Benjamin and Derrida to make explicit the precipitous task of the translator, she argues that the translator faces an ethical call or assignation that resembles the fundamental structure of Levinasian subjectivity. The author relates the paradoxes of translation in Holocaust testimony to Levinas’ silence on the problem of translation—puzzling if one considers Levinas’ focus on the ethical essence of language, his multilingualism, and the fact that he wrote his texts in a second language. She proposes that the trace of the philosopher’s displacement from his linguistic community can be discerned in his exilic conception of ethical subjectivity and in the testimonial impetus that animates his work. Thus, although Levinas’ Saying is posited as a translinguistic horizon that transcends the boundaries of a particular national language, it carries the remainder of the disavowed loss of the mother tongue.

scholarly journals Revolution without Guarantees: Community and Subjectivity in Nancy, Lingis, Sartre and Levinas

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-128
Author(s):  
Andrew Ryder
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Georges Bataille ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
Inoperative Community ◽  
Marxist Tradition

Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community, a collection of writings first published in 1985 and 1986, suggests an understanding of community as irreducibly linked to finitude. Alongside this, he advocates a redefinition of the project of revolutionary communism. This endeavor draws equally on the writings on communication of Georges Bataille and the insistence on finitude found in Martin Heidegger. First, we should recapitulate Nancy’s argument in order to determine his presentation of a novel politics as well as the links and disjunctions of his predecessors. More than this, I would like to suggest that a reading of Alphonso Lingis’s The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, published almost a decade later, suggests an intriguing and promising extension or modification of Nancy’s argument. In particular, Lingis suggests an understanding of revolution that appears somewhat closer to the Marxist tradition. I argue that this is partly a result of an inheritance from Emmanuel Levinas, and in particular his account of ethical subjectivity, which, surprisingly, can be productively allied with the political thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. This friendship between the ethics of Levinas and the politics of Sartre suggests the best groundwork for Lingis’s development of Nancy’s insights.

Off the Record

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 41-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Boothroyd
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Ethical Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Existing Structure

This article aims to demonstrate how the formation of ethical subjectivity must be considered in conjunction with the techno-politics of secrecy and disclosure, and it proposes an account of the ways in which the technical transition and ‘democratization’ of archival upload/download capacity associated with digital communications fundamentally challenges the existing structure of control over such things as censorship and cultural memory understood in terms of power of recall. It argues that it is against this background and in view of the mediality of communications that the question of responsibility with respect to secrets and their disclosure must ultimately be posed. It seeks to establish the difference between a purely political and an ethico-political understanding of the secrecy/disclosure dyad as this functions, on the one hand, in relation to philosophical inquiry itself and, on the other, in relation to normative representations of informational events, and it contextualizes its theoretical account of this difference in relation to the ‘Wikileaks phenomenon’ viewed as a disclosive event. It examines how ethical subjectivity is formed in relation to ‘information’ and in the wider context of a digital culture of archivization, characterized by the ubiquitous recording of communications of all kinds. Drawing centrally on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, for whom ‘infinite responsibility’ is ‘incarnated’ as the ‘ultimate secret of subjectivity’ in me, and Derrida’s account of both the necessary technicity of the human and the impossibility of ‘saying the event’, it proposes a way of thinking the ethico-techno-politics of secrecy and disclosure in terms of the singularity of the event and the unique responsibility of the ethical Subject in relation to that.

scholarly journals Thinking-of-the-Animal-Other with Emmanuel Levinas

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jan-Harm De Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Relational Structure ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity

This article situates the texts in which Emmanuel Levinas directly addresses questions of animality against the backdrop of his larger oeuvre and argues that, despite an explicit attempt to arrange a privileged ethical (dis)position for humans, Levinas' ethical logic opens onto a deeper conception of ethics without boundaries or a priori content. Juxtaposing Levinas' ethical subjectivity with the relational structure underlying the prominent models of animal rights, it proceeds to examine the implications of Levinas' ethics for a theory of animal rights. The article concludes that Levinas' theory is not logically consistent with a thematisation of the ethical claims of animals in the language of rights and that it is best utilised as a framework within which to deconstruct the inherent anthropocentric character of current models of animal rights.

scholarly journals SUBJEKTO TAPATYBĖ ETINIAME DISKURSE

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 102-116
Author(s):  
Danutė Bacevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The Subject

Šiame straipsnyje susitelkiama į etinio diskurso problematiką, konkrečiai – į tai, kaip etiniame diskurse apibrėžiama subjekto tapatybė. Šiuo tikslu analizuojamos Immanuelio Kanto ir Emmanuelio Levino filosofinės pozicijos, kurias sieja etikos viršenybė teorinės prieigos atžvilgiu. Vis dėlto, nepaisant šio bendrumo, minėtos pozicijos radikaliai išsiskiria apibrėždamos etinio subjekto tapatybę. Kantiškasis etikos pagrindimas remiasi subjekto valios autonomija, o Levino aprašytas etinis santykis randasi kaip reikalavimas iš Kito pusės. Taigi pirmuoju atveju postuluojama „kieta“ subjekto tapatybė, antruoju – tapatybės netekusi pažeidžiama subjektyvybė. Straipsnyje keliamas klausimas, ar šių pozicijų radikalumas netampa kliūtimi suvokti etinį matmenį jo neredukuojant į savitą estetinį žavesį turinčią patologiją. Radikaliai tapatybės ir kitybės priešpriešai mėginama atrasti alternatyvą iškeliant kitybės manyje sampratą, grindžiamą konkretaus santykio su kitu asmeniu aprašymu.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: Kantas, Levinas, subjekto tapatybė, kitybė, kitas manyje.IDENTITY OF SUBJECTIVI TY IN ETHICAL DISCOURSEDanutė Bacevičiūtė SummaryThis article deals with the problem of the ethical discourse, specifically with the manner in which ethical discourse describes identity of subjectivity. The positions of Immanuel Kant and Emmanuel Levinas are being analysed to this end. Both philosophers give precedence to the ethical over the theoretical. However, despite this common feature, these positions radically diverge when they describe identity of ethical subjectivity. Kantian grounding of ethics appeals to the autonomous will of the subject, whereas Levinasian ethical relationship emerges with the Other’s demand. Thus in one case there was postulated “firm” identity of subjectivity, in another – vulnerable subjectivity without identity. The question is: whether the extremeness of these positions not turns into the peculiar pathology or aesthetical perversity which is perceived as obstacle for the ethical? The article makes attempt to find an alternative to the opposition of identity and alterity. The description of concrete relation with another person enables us to speak about oneself as another.Keywords: Kant, Levinas, identity of subjectivity, alterity, oneself as another.

scholarly journals La vulnerabilidad fundando la ética de la solidaridad y la justicia

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Marta Palacio
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Urban Vulnerability ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mature Work ◽  
Radical Shift

  Resumen  Palabras clave: - Vulnerabilidad – Subjetividad ética - Levinas – Solidaridad – Justicia   El texto reconstruye hermenéuticamente el concepto de vulnerabilidad de la filosofía de Emmanuel Levinas tal como aparece en su obra madura. Analiza el giro radical que la filosofía levinasiana comporta para la tradición ética y política al establecer como fundamento de la justicia y la solidaridad a la vulnerabilidad del sujeto. Finalmente, el artículo valora el aporte levinasiano ante la demanda contemporánea de fundamentos del obrar humano para establecer argumentativamente lógicas de justicia y solidaridad frente a la creciente vulnerabilidad urbana.   Abstract Key Words: - Vulnerability - Ethical Subjectivity - Levinas - Solidarity - Justice   The text make a hermeneutical reconstruction of the concept of vulnerability in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas as displayed in his mature work. Analyzes the radical shift that Levinas's philosophy entails for ethical and political tradition as the basis for establishing justice and solidarity to the vulnerability of the subject. Finally, the paper assesses the contribution to the contemporary Levinas demand fundamentals of human action to establish argumentatively logic of justice and solidarity in the growing urban vulnerability. 

LÉVINAS Y CIORAN: UNA EXPERIENCIA DEL INSOMNIO

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Cristóbal Cea Bustamante
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
Emil Cioran

<p>Desde el pensamiento ontológico de cautiverio que realizó Emmanuel Lévinas, es decir, desde su concepto de Il y a y su descripción de la experiencia más próxima al ser anónimo e impersonal, el insomnio, el presente artículo tiene el propósito de efectuar una conversación o un acercamiento con el pensamiento pesimista de Emil Cioran.<br />Todo para graficar el horror de esta patología y de la importancia del sueño o el inconsciente frente a ella, presentado este, el inconsciente, como una salida necesaria.</p>

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