The Other: Feminist Reflections in Ethics

The Other Feminist Reflections in Ethics Edited by Helen Fielding, Gabrielle Hiltmann, Dorothea Olkowski and Anne Reic...

Author: Helen Fielding | Gabrielle Hiltmann | Dorothea Olkowski | Anne Reichold

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The Other Feminist Reflections in Ethics

Edited by

Helen Fielding, Gabrielle Hiltmann, Dorothea Olkowski and Anne Reichold

The Other

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The Other Feminist Reflections in Ethics Edited by

Helen Fielding Gabrielle Hiltmann Dorothea Olkowski Anne Reichold

Editorial matter, selection and Introduction © Helen Fielding, Gabrielle Hiltmann, Dorothea Olkowski and Anne Reichold 2007; all remaining material © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identiﬁed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9780230506879 hardback ISBN-10: 0230506879 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The other:feminist reﬂections in ethics/edited by Helen Fielding [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 9780230506879 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0230506879 (cloth) 1. Other (Philosophy) 2. Feminist ethics. I. Fielding, Helen, 1963 BJ1395.O84 2007 170.82“dc22 2006048011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

Notes on the Contributors

vii

Introduction: Accounting for the Other: Towards an Ethics of Thinking Gabrielle Hiltmann

1

Part 1 The Other and its Impacts on an Ethical Relation to Oneself 1 The Gift of Recognition: Self and Other in the Multicultural Situation Annemie Halsema

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2 Relational Identity: An Interpersonal Approach to the Body–Soul–Consciousness Problem Gabrielle Hiltmann

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3 Beyond Narcissism: Women and Civilization Dorothea Olkowski

Part 2

The Other in Relational Ethics

4 The Relational Ontologies of Cavarero and Battersby: Natality, Time and the Self Rachel Jones 5 Mothers/Intellectuals: Alterities of a Dual Identity Gail Weiss

Part 3

71

105 138

The Ethical Otherness of the Body

6 Embodiment and the Ethical Concept of a Person Anne Reichold 7 Recognition beyond Narcissism: Imaging the Body’s Ownness and Strangeness Jenny Slatman v

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186

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Contents

8 Becoming Animated Cathryn Vasseleu

Part 4

205

Otherness and Ethical Perspective

9 The Contemplative Conditions of a Moral Action Christina Schües

227

10 Plural Perspectives and Independence: Political and Moral Judgement in Hannah Arendt Veronica Vasterling

246

Index

266


Helen Fielding is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She has published articles on L. Irigaray, M. Heidegger, J.L. Nancy and M. Merleau-Ponty including: ‘This Body of Art: the Singular Plural of the Feminine’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 36.3; ‘Questioning Nature: Irigaray, Heidegger and the Potentiality of Matter’, Continental Philosophy Review, 35.1; and ‘White Logic and the Constancy of Colour’, in Feminist Interpretations of Merleau-Ponty, edited by Dorothea Olkowski and Gail Weiss (2006). She is currently working on a book manuscript on sexual difference that takes up the works of these thinkers. Annemie Halsema is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and teaches philosophical anthropology, psychoanalysis and gender studies. She has published in the field of feminist philosophy, especially on Irigaray (Dialectiek van de seksuele differentie, 1998), edited a volume on Butler ( J. Butler, Genderturbulentie, 2000), and a book with D. Van Houten on humanism (Empowering Humanity. State of the Art of Humanistics, 2002). She is currently working on a project that aims at developing a notion of ‘horizontal transcendence’ starting from the work of Luce Irigaray, Paul Ricoeur and Jessica Benjamin. Gabrielle Hiltmann teaches philosophy at Basel University, Switzerland. In summer 2002 she was invited professor for feminist philosophy at the University of Hanover. She was invited scholar at the Centre de Recherches Phénoménologiques, University of Paris XII and at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as invited teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University. She co-edited ‘Les disciplines en jeu’, an issue of the journal Nouvelles Questions Féministes 23(2004)1, and is the author of a work on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s method, Aspekte sehen. Bemerkungen zum methodischen Vorgehen in Ludwig Wittgensteins Spätwerk (1998). She has published articles on French contemporary philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, methodology, interdisciplinarity, ethics and feminist philosophy. Forthcoming is a book developing a reflection on otherness in the late ontology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. vii

viii


Rachel Jones is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee where she also teaches on the Postgraduate ‘Women, Culture and Society’ Programme. She has published articles on feminist aesthetics, Kant, and Lyotard (see ‘Aesthetics in the Gaps: Subverting the Sublime for a Female Subject’, in Differential Aesthetics, edited by N. Foster and P. Florence, 2000) and has co-edited a collection on Australian feminist philosophy (Going Australian: Reconfiguring Feminism and Philosophy, Special Issue of Hypatia, Spring 2000). Her current research is focused on the work of Adriana Cavarero and Luce Irigaray. Dorothea Olkowski is Professor of Philosophy and former Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She has authored The Universal (In the Realm of the Sensible) (2006), and Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation (1999). She has edited Feminist Interpretations of Merleau-Ponty (with Gail Weiss, 2006), and Resistance, Flight, Creation: Feminist Enactments of French Philosophy (2000). Anne Reichold is Professor for Philosophy at the University of Flensburg from 2003. Between 2003 and 2006 she was a member of the international, interdisciplinary research group ‘Mystics and Modernity’, University Siegen (founded by V.W. Stiftung). From 1997 to 2003 she was a teaching and research collaborator in the Department of Philosophy, University of Kaiserslautern. Recent publications include Die vergessene Leiblichkeit. Zur Rolle des Körpers in ontologischen und ethischen Persontheorien (2004), A corporeidade esquecida (2006), Neuser, W./Reichold, A. (eds), Das Geheimnis des Anfangs (2005). Christina Schües, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the University of Vechta. Her areas of interest are: history of philosophy, phenomenology, feminist and political philosophy, and ethics. Her publications include: ‘Feminist Perspectives on Freedom, Justice, and Power’, in Cultural Otherness and Beyond, M. Krausz (ed.) (1998); Die andere Hälfte der Globalisierung. Menschenrechte, Ökonomie und Medialität aus feministischer Sicht, editor with B. Hartmann, S. Hobuß, J. P˘ atrut, N. Zimnik (2001); Changes of Perception. Five Systematic Approaches in Husserlian Phenomenology (2003); ‘Generative Phänomenologie in feministischer Perspektive’, in Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik, L. Fisher, S. Stoller, V. Vasterling (eds) (2005). Jenny Slatman studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and at Université Paris XII. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the


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Philosophy Department of Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Among her publications are numerous articles on phenomenology and a booklength study on Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics: L’expression au-delà de la représentation. Sur l’aisthêsis et l’esthétique chez Merleau-Ponty (2003). A book on bodily identity in the age of plastic surgery, transplantations and protheses is forthcoming. Cathryn Vasseleu teaches in the Master of Animation programme at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her publications include Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (1998), and articles on animation, visual, tactile and biomedical technologies. She has taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales, and made several animated films, including De Anima (1991) and BubbleGum Girl (2004). Her current work investigates contemporary animation as a new philosophical arena, for which she has been granted research fellowships by the Australian Research Council, the University of New South Wales, and Cornell University. Veronica Vasterling is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Gender Studies of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her recent research focuses on feminist theory, political philosophy and philosophical anthropology. She is especially interested in phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to feminist theory, and political approaches to psychoanalytical theory. English and German key publications include: Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik, edited with Silvia Stoller and Linda Fisher (2005); ‘Body and Language: Butler, Merleau-Ponty and Lyotard on the Speaking Embodied Subject’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 11.2, 2003. Gail Weiss is Director of the Human Sciences graduate programme and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the George Washington University. She is the author of Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (1999), and co-editor of Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2006), Thinking the Limits of the Body (2003) and Perspectives on Embodiment: the Intersections of Nature and Culture (1999). Her new monograph, Refiguring the Ordinary, is forthcoming with Indiana University Press, and an edited volume, Intertwinings: Intercultural Encounters with Merleau-Ponty, is forthcoming with SUNY Press. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled, Beauvoir’s Ambiguities: Philosophy, Literature, Feminism.


Introduction: Accounting for the Other: Towards an Ethics of Thinking Gabrielle Hiltmann

Approaching ethics through a reflection on the fundamental ethical concept of the other challenges traditional Western conceptions of modern ethics, since these either exclude, or have an exclusively negative conception, of the other. An ethics of value, for example, such as that developed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, focuses on universal and eternal ethical values which are supposed to be the same for everyone. The subject – understood as a general and rational being – approaches the universal rationality of ethical values through reflection. In this conception the (implicitly white male) subject is a free and autonomous legislator of rational ethical laws and values which implies that the subject is supposed to be free from physical desires; thus rational values are not grounded in physical drives. This freedom from physical urges is understood to be the ground for the freedom for (a rational) morality. In this universalizing and unifying approach, the other is only taken into consideration in a negative way. Immanuel Kant states, in a version of the categorical imperative, that the subject should act in such a way that it does not abuse humans, in terms either of his [sic!] own person, or of any other person, by using them as a means. Instead, the others have to be considered as an end in themselves. Value ethics thus follow a monist and universal rationalist logic which excludes the positive recognition of the other’s individuality. Utilitarian ethics, on the contrary, seem to acknowledge the other’s right to happiness since they exclude an egoistical pursuit of happiness. In this conception, an action is considered to be ethical if it provides (at least a certain amount of) happiness for all persons concerned. Nevertheless this seems to work only when one considers small groups and is not concerned about persons who may be excluded from such a group. If all humankind is taken into consideration, then the optimum of happiness inevitably implies the unhappiness of some people, since resources are limited. Ethics then becomes a problem of distribution. 1

2

The Other

One of the questions raised by utilitarian ethics is: what counts as happiness? And further, how can these different happinesses be measured and weighed against one another? What would be the common standard for comparing different happinesses? Utilitarian ethics become entangled in complicated measuring problems where the other, in its individuality and diversity, finally disappears. If the optimum of happiness is achieved when the greatest possible number of people are happy, it is possible to be satisfied with the happiness of a majority of only 50.1%. This means that the other 49.9%, who might not be happy, are neglected. Thus, utilitarian ethics also do not acknowledge the other in its otherness and diversity. The only negative concept of the other, as developed in modern Western ethics, is not sufficient for an ethical reflection. It is necessary to develop a positive concept of the other, which can allow for a relational ethics. This reflection on a positive concept of the other can not be limited to an ethical approach, in view of the fact that the neglect of the other in its otherness and diversity is not only a characteristic feature of modern ethics, it is a problem in modern Western philosophy in general. What are the reasons for this difficulty? It is possible to trace back the difficulties in modern Western philosophical accounts of the other to the subjectivity-turn in early modern philosophy. René Descartes’ meditation on the I’s capacity to think, and to gain a clear and distinct conviction that this thinking I is, necessitates a methodical doubt in the existence of the other. The outside world, including the I’s own body as well as other persons, is considered to be a res extensa (an extended thing), of which the thinking I, understood as res cogitans (the thinking thing), can not gain clear and distinct knowledge through thinking. The I has to eliminate them through a procedure of methodical doubt. This leads to an isolated monadic I without a body, without relations to others, and without world. One consequence of this is that external objects become the unthinkable other of the I. Based on this delimitating reflection, the I confirms itself as a thinking being. The I is only in and through thinking. It is per se. Consequently, the I who constitutes itself in reflection seems to be autonomous, self-sufficient and even self-constituting. It appears not to need other(s). Furthermore, it is independent of the world of deception. Due to the I’s methodical self-assurance, the existence and the status of the other person become problematic. This constellation of a categorical separation and distinction of the thinking I and the irrational other is of determinative influence for the further development of Western philosophy, not only for epistemology, with its separation of subject and object, but also for

Gabrielle Hiltmann 3

questions of ethics. When the other’s existence is dubious, the other cannot be a subject of ethics. René Descartes’ methodical separation of the thinking I and the other was of considerable consequence for the further development of modern Western philosophy. In the nineteenth century, German idealism developed all the possible consequences of this reflexive solipsism. These consequences do not exclude a shift in perspective. From an epistemological problem in René Descartes, the question of the other became an ontological one. In German Idealism the I constitutes the other following its own categories. This means, the I is an absolute, autonomous and self-sufficient creator of the external world and of other persons. The I is, in fact, the standard for the other who is conceived as the I’s antithesis. Idealistic philosophy cannot consistently think a constitutive other in so far as it starts with an absolute constitutive self. This implies a double exclusion of the other. First it is subsumed under the standards of the I as a mediated other, and second is not recognized in its otherness – it becomes a complete other. This applies to the other person as well as to the world as another of the I. The world is object of the I’s research and knowledge. In short, German Idealism only accounts for a mediated otherness which is subordinated to the solipsist rationality of the I. What are the consequences of modern Western philosophy’s focus on solipsist thinking? Notably, it cannot account for a positive and heterogeneous otherness. The exclusion of otherness not only concerns women in general, conceived as they were as the irrational other of the rational man, but also other men who developed a different rationality than the (dominant) one. The differentiation of subject and subordinate other is not only epistemologically, but especially ethically, problematic. The other – be it the world or the other person – has no autonomy, no right in itself. The absolute I might eventually concede that it will not harm others, that it will respect their bodily and psychic integrity, a concession considered to be a free act of the autonomous I. Since others are constituted by the I, they have no right to claim recognition as ethical subjects with an acknowledged ethical status. They can expect even less to receive care from this autonomous and self-sufficient I. If the world is understood to be constituted as another by the absolute I, it is not a lebensraum (life-world) for the I. The world too is not given to its responsibility and care. This development of the absolute subject, starting with the Cartesian distinction between the thinking I and the extended thing in Western philosophy, was not a necessary development. It was just one of several possibilities and it is possible to conceive of other developments arising

4

The Other

out of R. Descartes’ work. In his philosophy the concept of the other has a double sense. In the Meditations of First Philosophy, for example, the other is the other of thinking. The I delimitates itself from this other in order to achieve the clear and distinct insight that it is while and through thinking. The I can gain no direct knowledge about this other, which is outside the thinking soul, through thinking. This impossibility to gain clear and distinct knowledge of the exterior world, including one’s own body, remained the basic epistemological problem of Western philosophy in the centuries that followed. It was not, however, a problem for R. Descartes. In his Meditations, he refers to the Christian god as the creator of the world and thus as the ground for the ontological existence of the outside world. Furthermore, for R. Descartes, god created not only the world as rationally cognizable, but also the person with the capacity for clear and distinct thinking. This double constellation of a hidden rationality, provided by god, and the capacity god gave the subject to think rationally, allows for clear and distinct knowledge of the exterior world, and of the I’s own body. Otherness is acknowledged through god as a mediator between the radically separated dimensions of res cogitans and res extensa. Despite this reference to god as guarantor of a scientifically mediated otherness, the question of the relation to the other person continued to challenge René Descartes. In his last book The Passions of the Soul, he starts with the everyday experience of our contact with the other, including the I’s own body, the other person, and the world as other. This contact with the other is experienced in a double way. On the one hand, the external other arouses affects, and on the other hand, the external other is the object of passions. This experience of an affective relation to the other allows for conceiving of body and soul as a unity as the other affects the soul through the body of the I. The other affecting the I can be an animal causing fear, or a plant which might be poisonous; yet it concerns especially other persons, who excite diverse emotions such as love and sympathy, but also irritation or anger. In The Passions of the Soul, the I is not looking for the truth of the other epistemologically. The other is as it excites the I’s emotions. One could transform the famous formula of the Meditations of First Philosophy into the following two claims: I feel you, thus you are; and, I feel you, thus I am a unity of body and soul. Due to the experience of being affected by the other, soul (the thinking, feeling and willing part of the I) and body are experienced as a unity. In the experience of being affected by the other, the soul is passive. Nevertheless, the soul does not only experience the affections aroused by another person, it can also act on them through its will. In


the cases of anger and sexual violence, René Descartes argues that it can be necessary to block the physical acting out of one’s anger or of sexual violence in order to avoid harming the other person. This self-control is not only imposed due to the respect for the other person, but also due to the respect for oneself. Through the wilful self-control of the passions, the I achieves a certain independence with respect to its bodily drives. The affective relation to the other not only necessitates control of one’s affects, but furthermore, the other, be it one’s children, one’s friend, or one’s mistress, can make a claim for positive recognition and care from the I. Thus The Passions of the Soul, which was written as a reflection on the mutual interaction of body and soul, can be read as an ethics accounting positively for otherness. It is noteworthy that R. Descartes’ last work, The Passions of the Soul, with its reflection on the unity of body and soul, and its positive recognition of the other, did not attract the same interest as the Meditations and the Discourse. The further development of modern Western philosophy focused on the clear separation of thinking (soul) and body and one could certainly speculate on the reasons for this. The aim of this volume however is to take up the possibilities that a reflection on the other in its otherness offers, not only for a critique of the solipsism of modern Western philosophy, but also for developing an ethics of thinking. Feminist research criticizes the exclusion of the otherness of woman as well as that of different rationalities as one of the fundamental problems of modern philosophy. This critique of transcendental solipsism concerns different aspects: 1) the tendency to hypostasize the I as an absolute, autocratic and self-sufficient legislator of reason, 2) the hierarchical subordination of the other to the I, 3) the negation of the otherness of the other, 4) the exclusion of the manifold by focusing on the one. It appears then, that Western philosophical theories were orientated towards universal conceptualizations. Since the paradigm for the human in this universal perspective was the white man, there was no space for woman conceived as the other of man. There was no space for rationalities which do not reject the other. For this reason, woman and female experience were excluded from philosophical reflection. This neglect of the female perspective is still the dominant attitude of contemporary philosophy. What is called for by the essays in this book is a rethinking of the implicit and explicit ethical structures of Western philosophy insofar as they continue to exclude women as subjects who contribute to the conceptualization of world and society. This volume, which gives voice to women philosophers, is a contribution to that task. Furthermore,

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The Other

the book considers an opening towards cultural and social differences as a necessary condition for rethinking philosophy. The volume brings together feminist philosophers from the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe, thus allowing for a certain diversity of perspectives. All the authors share the in itself diverse background of a phenomenological approach to philosophical questions. They investigate the concept of otherness as a basic ethical concept that calls for a fundamental rethinking of the structure and content of ethics, one that takes different rationalities, and the feminine other in its social and cultural diversity, into account. Phenomenology is one of the most important philosophical movements developed in the twentieth century that reflects on the other as an other who is co-constitutive for the I. Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, introduces the concept of transcendental intersubjectivity. In this conception of intersubjectivity, the other is a necessary and constitutive feature of the transcendental Ego. The I only understands an objective sense and gains knowledge of an objective truth through transcendental intersubjectivity. In Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, the I can – by acknowledging its own individual possibilities and impossibilities – accede to an ‘authentic being with’ others. Emmanuel Levinas even gives the Other priority before the I, making ethics a first philosophy. For Hannah Arendt ‘being with others’ is the dimension of the political. Maurice Merleau-Ponty develops a nonhierarchical figure of relation in which the other and I are mutually constitutive. Based on these and several more phenomenological approaches to the other, feminist phenomenologists reflect on the possibility of thinking the other in a way that neither integrates the other into categories of the same developed by the I, nor excludes the other as a complete other, for which thinking can not account. This fundamental reflection on the status of the other leads to questioning if (and if so, how) the other can be conceived as necessarily related to the I. Can the I in fact approach its self and its own otherness only through the other? These questions require a new approach which replaces the categorical distinction of I and other with conceptions in which I and other, other and I, are interrelated. In contrast to R. Descartes’ early philosophy, the reflection on the constitution of one’s identity and on one’s relation to oneself does not start with the reflective thinking of an isolated, monadic I. The concept of thinking must be freed from auto-reflexivity and be opened towards the other of thinking. It is possible to approach this other of the Cartesian concept of thinking by taking experience into account.


Experience demands openness to the other and constant reorientation towards new possibilities. Experience demands acknowledgment of the mutually constitutive relation of other and self. Once the supposition of an absolute and neutral thinking subject is put into question, it becomes possible to explore subjectivity as tied to corporeal experiences. Phenomenology, defined here as the description of the ways in which the world, things and others appear to an embodied subject, lends itself to the exploration of alternate experiences. In a feminist perspective which starts from the position of an embodied person, it becomes obvious that questions of otherness imply a reflection on respect for the other and its body. In this perspective it is also possible to account for the ethical recognition of the other which has been until now obscured by the universalizing and solipsist approach of modern philosophy. A self who continually constitutes itself through its interaction with the other is open to the other as well as to new experiences, and to relations with people from the same and different cultures. Due to this ungrounding openness, the self is not autonomous and self-sufficient. It can acknowledge that it is vulnerable and that it is itself an ethical subject who needs recognition and care from the other. In difference to the idealistic tradition, the self, which is open towards the other, can no longer act as an autonomous ethical legislator. The ethical dimension itself has to be developed in and through interaction with the other. To approach this aim, it is essential to show how the other is necessary for the constitution of the self and its personal and bodily identity. This ethical dimension of the relation with the other is experienced in a manifold way. We encounter it for example through the impact of otherness on identity. In what sense is the other necessary to constitute a non-solipsist self? Although the body was excluded as the other of thinking in modern philosophy, is it nevertheless possible to understand the body as an other which is constitutive for personal identity? In what respects can artworks which reveal the body’s otherness allow for new ethical perspectives on the body? The question of otherness in ethics also concerns reproduction since otherness in female experience is still linked to giving birth and motherhood. How does the recognition of these experiences allow for constituting a political theory and an ethics based on the fact that all humans are born? How do the female experiences of giving birth and of motherhood change the conceptualization of language? Otherness can not be limited to the relation of male and female sex/gender. Instead, diverse otherness-relations are at work within the sex/gender groups challenging contemporary feminist

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The Other

philosophy to reflect, in multiple ways, on a differential ethics of the other, and thus allowing for a diversity of experiences and perspectives, which finally undercuts a binary conception of sex and gender. By focusing on the ethical significance of the concept of the other, the goal is not to develop a concrete ethics of the other. Instead, the volume offers a meta-ethical reflection on the problem of how the concept of the other can be conceived in a way that allows for integrating the ethical dimension into philosophical reflection – be this in political philosophy, in epistemology, in ontology, in aesthetics, in applied ethics, or in hermeneutics. This integration of the ethical dimension into philosophical reflection allows for a change of paradigm towards an ethics of thinking. The concept of the other – not only in ethics – is not a uniform concept. It covers a multiplicity of diverse significations. This multiplicity is not reduced in this volume. Instead every text offers different possibilities for the conceptualization of the other and of otherness. This openness to multiple senses is necessarily accompanied by the challenge to develop an argument which is convincing because of its differentiated rationality rather than its reliance on the violence of a monist and absolutistic logic. If this succeeds, thinking can open up multiple possibilities for how to live an ethically good life. This capacity to be open to different and new possibilities is one of the features of an ethics of thinking. Part 1 of this book, ‘The Other and its Impacts on an Ethical Relation to Oneself’, focuses on the impact of otherness on identity. Although it is possible to argue that the question of a good relation to oneself is an ethical question which does not concern the other, the first three articles in this book advance the position that an ethically good relation to oneself necessarily has to be developed in and through the relation to the other. This other has multiple features, and consequently a different impact on the development of the self and its identity. In contemporary multicultural societies, the traditional conception of a homogeneous cultural and accordingly a national identity, is called into question. The Dutch scholar Annemie Halsema reflects in her article, ‘The Gift of Recognition: Self and Other in the Multicultural Situation,’ on the impact of multiculturalism on personal identity. Numerous studies that address the issue of identity within the context of multiculturalism focus on cultural, group or political identity but not on personal identity. This paper focuses on personal identity instead. Within the multicultural situation the question of personal identity is most often addressed in relationship to recognition. But what does ‘recognition’ imply? In many studies recognition is understood in the Hegelian sense, and is the result


of the struggle between self and other. This implies that the relationship self – other is an adversarial one, and that the other is opposed to the self. Annemie Halsema develops a critique of the Hegelian notion of recognition, as she fears that within a multicultural context, such as that of the Netherlands, notions of recognition that start from the self – other opposition reinforce already existing tendencies to oppose self and other. Since the murder there of the film director Theo van Gogh by a young radicalized Dutch Muslim, oppositions along the dividing lines of religion and gender have become more apparent. Muslim, foreign and not emancipated is distinguished from secular, Dutch and emancipated. Yet, Annemie Halsema maintains that if we were to acknowledge the constitution of the self by the other, in other words, accept that our selves are formed by the others around us with whom we live together, the strong self–other opposition could perhaps disappear. For her critique of the oppositional self – other distinction she refers to the works of Jessica Benjamin, an American object relations psychoanalyst, and Paul Ricoeur, the French phenomenological hermeneutist. Both criticize the Hegelian notion of recognition and provide for a self that is constituted by otherness. By bringing the other inside as an intrapsychic other, Benjamin breaks the autonomy of the self that prevails in Hegel’s notion of recognition. By internalizing the struggle between self and other, and understanding the other as the ‘other inside’ the subject, she provides a psychic basis to recognition. Ricoeur criticizes the Hegelian notion of recognition as a model in which struggle is central, and complements it with a notion of recognition as reciprocal gift. Such a notion helps us to understand recognition not merely as something that newcomers can gain by assimilating to the norms and practices of the old residents of the state, that is, as something one receives according to certain conditions (which is the current Dutch policy), but more importantly as a gift in which both consider the other as a person who is similar to the self, and who already, on that ground, deserves recognition. In the essay ‘Relational Identity: an Interpersonal Approach to the Body–Soul–Consciousness Problem,’ Gabrielle Hiltmann argues that in order to conceive of personal identity it is necessary to reconsider the body–soul–consciousness problem in relation to the other. If the concept of identity is not understood as forming an autonomous monadic self, but as developing in the relation with other persons, it is necessary to ask how it is possible to account for this constitutive interpersonal interaction from which the self as an individual emerges. For her concept of relational identity, Gabrielle Hiltmann refers to two philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as to the

10 The Other

African American artist Kara Walker. Kara Walker’s reflections on bodily, cultural and intellectual identity cast a differentiating light on the philosophical approach. Since art is a necessary other of thought, it allows for observing a non-rational otherness at work in philosophy. In the Western philosophical tradition the question of identity aims at the definition of a being’s essence. By transforming the traditional ‘What-is question’ that philosophy asked, to define this essence into the question ‘Who are you?’, Hannah Arendt shifts the exclusive approach of the essence towards an interpersonal conception of personal identity. Hannah Arendt’s philosophy allows for understanding the importance of the other for the concept of individual and personal identity. Nevertheless, although she acknowledges that the indefinable Who of a person can be seen by the other in a movement, a glance, a gesture, as well as in the sound of the voice of the I, her philosophy does not allow to account for the bodily features of personal identity. To better understand the intercorporeality constitutive for the development of an individual person, Gabrielle Hiltmann refers to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s relational conception of the person. M. Merleau-Ponty develops a conception of intersubjectivity which starts with intercorporeity. This inevitably leads to the question of how the relation of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity can be conceived. Gabrielle Hiltmann argues that M. MerleauPonty’s interrelational understanding of the human person necessitates a new conception of the body–soul–consciousness relation. The separation of body, soul and consciousness is the reason why idealistic philosophies can not account for an other which is not constituted by the I. Instead, M. Merleau-Ponty does not start with thinking, but rather with the perceptual experience of the other in the ‘being in and towards the world’ (être au monde). In this relational ontology, the person is always already and necessarily open towards the other. Due to this constitutive openness, the self is always already in a (potentially ethical) relation to the other and to itself. This interrelated constellation allows for a differentiating interaction with the other person and the other of the world on the level of the body, but also in terms of feeling and thought. In the process of a continuous differentiation of these several aspects of a person through the other, a self, which is constantly changing and remains open to otherness and further differentiation, is constituted as a unity of body, soul and consciousness. It is not the body, nor the soul, nor consciousness, which would ground the identity of a person, but rather the unlimited process of intertwinement which is constantly opened towards the other.


In the third article of this first section, ‘Beyond Narcissism: Women and Civilization’, Dorothea Olkowski analyses the concept of narcissism traditionally used to explain female identity development. According to the dominant psychoanalytic theories, women are fundamentally narcissistic and their narcissism is strongly correlated with, if not the cause of, their inability to engage in intellectual and cultural practices identified with the creation of civilization. And yet, many women have engaged in the creation of civilization. Notably, women have written philosophy; they have directed films; they have created works of art and contributed in every possible way to the creation of civilization. Feminists have reinterpreted psychoanalytic statements about women’s narcissism to mean that what makes the narcissistic woman attractive is precisely that she has what the man has lost. The woman keeps her original narcissism, her high quality libidinal energy – she is an open system, open to new flows of matter and energy. But the male wants this libido, insofar as he appears to be a closed system, lacking new matter and energy and is subject to libidinal dissipation. This essay posits going beyond these interpretations by theorizing that what is called narcissism is woman’s ‘indifferentiation’, her ability to change forms and exceed the binaries the theory of narcissism entails. The concept of indifferentiation allows for the possibility that women’s libidinal energy is precisely the source of her creativity as well as of her ethical relation to the world. In other words, women seek to express themselves in a manner that is not subject to the binary structure of closed or open systems, so that their behaviour can be comprehended as neither masculine aim-inhibited production nor narcissistic self-love. In this manner, it has been posited that women have ‘too much’ love rather than not enough. And what traditional psychoanalysis called sexual over-esteem may be, instead, the exaltation of the loved object, attributing beauty and value to it insofar as it serves as a substitute for an underlying, allembracing, unity of nature and self, a symbol of abundance, of excess, even enriching the source from which it arose. In other words, it is only in the cathexis, in the love of others, that the libido is manifested as something in itself. Thus, without the love of others, no self even emerges. It is then, this essay argues, only out of such an emergence of love, in which one’s own boundaries are continually recognized but surpassed, that there arises not only the self, but friendship and ethics as well. In Part 2, ‘The Other in Relational Ethics’, the authors consider how taking the experiences of birth and mothering into account radically alter conceptions of the self as well as the form and content of linguistic expression in order to argue that the concept of otherness is

12 The Other

fundamental to conceiving a relational ethics. In ‘The Relational Ontologies of Cavarero and Battersby: Natality, Time and the Self’ Rachel Jones conjoins the work of two contemporary feminist philosophers, Christine Battersby and Adriana Cavarero. Both thinkers build on Irigaray’s analysis of the repression of the maternal in Western thought and culture by developing philosophical frameworks that are attentive to sexual difference and that take birth as their orienting term. Like Irigaray, Cavarero works closely with Greek philosophy and myth in order to recover the contours of a maternal order in which female identity is constituted in the relation between mother and daughter in ways that are irreducible to a phallocentric logic. Rachel Jones shows how, by drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Cavarero expands her position into a model of relational identity rooted in birth, according to which who we are as unique existents emerges in the ways that we appear to one another, and is captured not in philosophical definitions, but in the narratives that trace our singular life stories. She argues that Cavarero’s work points to, but does not fully develop, the importance of attending to the temporality of the event of appearing, and in particular, the event of birth as the primary event via which singular existents make their first appearance in the world. Rachel Jones expands Cavarero’s framework by using Françoise Dastur’s account of the unmasterable and generative temporality of the event, which is exemplified for Dastur in the always surprising event of birth. Finally, she turns to the work of Battersby who draws on Kierkegaard’s refiguring of Antigone to develop a model of time in which past, present and future intersect via complex patterns of repetition and echo. Such a temporality, Rachel Jones argues, is better able to do justice to the transformative capacities of birth as an event, and is hence appropriate to the relational ontology rooted in birth that Battersby and Cavarero differently develop. Implicit in the paper is the view that it is crucial that such feminist approaches do not give birth to an unjustified metaphysical privilege as a moment that determines identity and fixes relations. Instead, by developing Cavarero’s thought via that of Battersby, we can position birth as an event that inserts each singular being into a plural relationality whilst simultaneously transforming those relations and opening a multiplicity of future possibilities. In the second article of this section titled ‘Mothers/Intellectuals: Alterities of a Dual Identity’, Gail Weiss reflects on the logical relaters which structure the dual identity of mothers/intellectuals. Traditionally, the relationship between mothers and intellectuals has taken the form of an ‘either/or’, that is, of a choice one has to make between living as a mother and living as an intellectual. Although numerous examples


can be provided of individuals who have managed to transform this disjunction into a conjunction in their daily lives, even in these cases the either/or seems to resurface to the extent that the mother/intellectual often lives out her dual identities by switching back and forth from one role to the other depending upon the situation in which she finds herself. In this scenario, success at both endeavours is a reflection of one’s success at leading a ‘schizoid’ existence, that is, it is dependent upon one’s ability to be able to ‘switch gears’ from one role to the other at a moment’s notice. Regardless of how successful one may be in separating one’s existence as a mother from one’s existence as an intellectual (and an upset child calling at the office is all it takes to collapse even the most elaborate means of dividing the two), one nonetheless lives these dual existences simultaneously in what Merleau-Ponty would call a ‘chiasmic’ relationship whereby one shifts back and forth between the two roles without the one ever being reducible to the other. This article seeks to explore critically the nature of this ‘reversibility’ between being a mother and being an intellectual. Beginning with a discussion of how identities are socially constructed, Gail Weiss then turns to an examination of alternative models for conceptualizing the lived duality between motherhood and intellectual life, in order, ultimately, to get a clearer sense of the political as well as personal stakes at work. A central goal of this essay is to show that even the seemingly inclusive identity mother/intellectual enacts its own exclusions. Once we acknowledge that the demands of motherhood and the demands of intellectual life are often in conflict with one another, we are faced with the question of how an individual can successfully integrate her existence as a mother/intellectual in a manner that is not alienating to non-mothers and/or non-intellectuals. Put more positively, how does the chiasmic relationship between being a mother and being an intellectual break down artificial barriers between what have traditionally been viewed, to use Wittgensteinian language, as alternative ‘forms of life?’ Insofar as different horizons of significance seem to be operative in each sphere of existence, an individual’s ability to navigate between these different spheres on an ongoing basis can potentially serve as a useful model for understanding how people can possess more than one identity simultaneously. We are our body; nevertheless this body, which changes throughout our lives, has an otherness we can not monopolize with either theories or bio-sciences. Female contemporary artists working on the body are freeing the female body from its monopolization by the patriarchal view at work in theories and recent development of the sciences. Referring

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to these artists’ work on the otherness of the (female) body can allow feminist philosophers to re-conceptualize ethics. Thus, in Part 3, ‘The Ethical Otherness of the Body’, the otherness of the body is addressed as an ethical otherness in a double sense. In what ways does the approach to the body through a reflection on contemporary art allow for respecting the body as an ethical other? And how is it possible to conceive a different ethics by taking into account the otherness of the body? In the article ‘Embodiment and the Ethical Concept of a Person’, Anne Reichold observes a significant gap between ontological and ethical reflections on being a person that can be found in recent theories about the concept of a person. In ontology, analytic philosophers stress the importance of an embodied concept of person. In ethics, by contrast, the concept of a person is characterized by mental ascriptions only. Anne Reichold argues that an exclusion of embodied features of the person leads to an incomplete and misleading ethical concept of person. Vulnerability and mortality of human beings are basic features of every moral subject and have to be reflected in an ethical concept of a person. These features, as well as the relationship to others and the intersubjective frame of ethics, are conceptually rooted in the embodied nature of persons. She suggests that phenomenological conceptions of embodiment, in contrast to physicalist conceptions of the body, reflect on ethical features of the body. In phenomenology embodiment is not conceptualized within the dualist framework of body and mind, but it does include mental and bodily features. Emmanuel Levinas’ conception of ethics seems to be fruitful for an integration of embodiment in an ethical concept of the person since he points to the genuinely ethical features of the embodied nature of a human being. The concept of embodiment in Levinas is clearly value-laden. It forms a metaphysical basis of personhood and it precedes all mental terms like reason, thinking or intentionality. In contrast to the presented ethical theories of person in analytic philosophy, Levinas explicitly denies the fundamental role of consciousness, memory, autonomy and personal identity in conceptualizing an ethical subject. He attempts to destroy the modern idea of an autonomous, rational, and self-conscious subject of experience that is identical over time by pointing to a sphere that precedes consciousness and lies beyond reflection. A fundamental passiveness, vulnerability and exposure to others are some of the characteristics he cites. In contrast to the self-reflective structure of consciousness, the ethical sphere is characterized by the structure of embodiment. In naming sensibility and embodiment, Levinas hints at a significance that lies beyond representation and consciousness. By referring to Levinas’


philosophy, Anne Reichold argues that an integration of phenomenological reflections on embodiment might help to avoid the dualist gap between mental and physical concepts within ethics. In ‘Recognition beyond Narcissism: Imaging the Body’s Ownness and Strangeness,’ Jenny Slatman seeks to explore the way in which contemporary medical imaging of the interior body changes the experience of one’s own body. An image can affect our experience of ourselves since we recognize (something of) ourselves in it and, subsequently, identify ourselves with it. However, contemporary images of the interior body are hardly recognizable, and it is not very likely that one wants to identify oneself with, for instance, an endoscopic image taken of the intestines. Jenny Slatman’s thesis is that in spite of this, we do recognize something in these images, but this recognition is not exclusively based upon the visual. To found this thesis, she dwells upon the idea of ‘body image’ by taking seriously the double meaning of this expression. On the one hand, it simply refers to representations of the body or body parts, be it in a clinical or an artistic practice. On the other hand, it has the psychological meaning of a mental image that one has of one’s own body. Psychologically, ‘body image’ refers to the body’s unity, ownness and identity. Although these two meanings of ‘body image’ have to be distinguished, they do not exclude each other. It is through recognition that they are linked to each other. One’s bodily identity comes into being by means of a process of identification with (ideal) images, and this process is only possible if one can recognize something from these images. Since images of the inner body, such as those provided by MRI, PET, CT, endoscopy and ultrasound, are fragmented and hardly recognizable, they cannot easily be integrated within our own mirror image of the body. To understand what kind of recognition is at stake here, it is necessary to go beyond the theory of narcissism that reduces the body image to a ‘visual image’. Jenny Slatman makes clear that the body image can also be understood in terms of an ‘affective image’. To explain her concept of the visual body image, she draws on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical conceptualizations. Furthermore her idea of the affective body image is based upon the work of Merleau-Ponty and Melanie Klein. Jenny Slatman claims that visual recognition is a form of appropriation which therefore constitutes the body as one’s own body. By contrast, she understands affective recognition as a confrontation with (one’s own) strangeness without appropriation. The author illustrates her idea of the affective image and affective recognition by means of an analysis of an artwork by the Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum. Hatoum’s work corps étranger (1994) consists of a video-installation which shows endoscopic

16 The Other

images of the artist’s own (inner) body. The work makes visible and ‘palpable’ one’s own body’s strangeness. In her essay ‘Becoming Animated’, Cathryn Vasseleu reflects on the ethics of technically generated animation. The author suggests that to be animated is to exhibit a spontaneity that is associated with the innate volition of living beings. In giving spontaneous movement a ‘life’ form, the art of animation demonstrates that spontaneity is open to manipulation through externally imposed laws of figuration. Spectacles of animated states introduce the problem of seeing, or becoming aware of one’s body being given foreign animation. The author considers spontaneous movement and foreign animation together, as simultaneously lived, inextricable states; becoming (being in continuous movement) and animated (altered by an outside agency). Cathryn Vasseleu begins her essay by analysing two opposing critiques of foreign animation represented by Rey Chow and Hélène Cixous in their different responses to Freud’s interpretation of the woman-automaton in Hoffman’s tale ‘The Sand-Man’. Chow’s cultural analysis indicates that animation, entrenched as a feminized ontological state, imposes its own gendered forms. Animation prevents those who embody its machinations from escaping the life of becoming-an-automaton. Cixous’s literary analysis understands animation in terms of the spectral invasions that enter into any claim to self-authorization. Erupting into the scene of writing, the ghostly life of fiction becomes a mechanism for precipitating unpredictable movement. Cixous speculates about animating the mechanical doll Olympia in her analysis, a move which Chow criticizes as a godlike stance that raises the spectre of the ethnographic other. In the second section of her essay Cathryn Vasseleu takes up this problematic figure that Chow’s and Cixous’s critiques generate together: the woman-animator. For this she turns to Caroline Leaf, an animator who developed a technique for animating with sand. C. Vasseleu analyses the particular way Leaf creates spontaneous movement, focusing on how her sand-painting method stirs up entrenched ideologies of the relation between animator/animated image. In the final section Cathryn Vasseleu argues that Leaf has devised a medium for the technical figuration of becoming as an animated ontological state. She compares Leaf’s enactment of spontaneous recurrence to Deleuze’s definition of cinema, Merleau-Ponty’s depiction of painting, and Irigaray’s figuration of touch. The essay ends with a discussion of another animator: Lee Whitmore has successfully married Leaf’s animation technique with digital-video technology in a way that allows her to make an acute observation of how spontaneity arises within the temporal immediacy of the


instant replay. Rather than conforming to the laws of animation, the author concludes that these three woman-animators – Cixous, Leaf and Whitmore – express a desire to actively participate in both analysing and reinventing the medium itself. In the process, they each translate a ‘naturalized’ condition of becoming animated into a heterogenous, cultural form of life. In Part 4 of the book with the title ‘Otherness and Ethical Perspective’ the question of thinking itself as an ethical challenge is approached. What is necessary to conceive of thinking as ethical? Christina Schües and Veronica Vasterling focus specifically on two instruments of reflexion: contemplation and judgement. Christina Schües’ article, ‘The Contemplative Conditions of a Moral Action’, is directed toward the Kantian question ‘what shall I do?’ in reference to some aspects of discourse ethics which emphasize the problem of legitimizing norms and moral decisions by way of rational arguments. The focus on the Kantian question and its transformation into discourse ethics is motivated by an interest in the aspects of moral thinking that seemingly necessitate a person to act morally. Christina Schües attempts to show that not every kind of thinking is adequate for answering the question of how to think morally and, moreover, that discourse ethics has to be enlarged with the functions of insight, such as hermeneutic, situational, generative and normative insight, and complemented with a weak notion of responsibility in order to adequately show how a person turns her moral thinking into a moral action. The notion of insight is taken to be an act of thinking which can be based on intuition; it refers to the grasping of a phenomenon, a situation, a relation or a need of an other human being. Insight provides the missing link between the general moral norm and the concrete situation and needs of the other; it also elicits the urge somebody must feel in order to actually act. The concept of responsibility, which has to complement discourse ethics, is implemented in the concept of an asymmetrical and generative subject– subject relation between human beings. Consequentially, morality is directed towards the initiation and caring of human relations. In order to initiate human relations within the framework of morality, responsibility must rely on personal insight, that is, a reflection in regard to the needs and rights of other human beings and their and our relations. To think about, to have insight, in-seeing, can be the first step toward taking the initiative to stop the course of events and to become active in order, for instance, to help. Personal insight is not based simply on reflective judgement, that is directed towards considerations of right and wrong, and which can come to the conclusion ‘something must

18 The Other

be done’ or ‘one must do something’. Rather, the sentiment of ‘I must do something’ is based on assuming responsibility and taking initiative, which are grounded in moral discourses as well as the personal insight in its manifold functions. Insight turns the moral consideration into an initiative to act with and for other human beings. In the last article of the volume ‘Plural Perspectives and Independence: Political and Moral Judgement in Hannah Arendt’, Veronica Vasterling considers judgement, a very important topic in Hannah Arendt’s conception of human existence. Arendt’s well-known notion of plurality – it is not human kind but human beings, in the plural, who inhabit the earth – is fleshed out in her phenomenological analyses of action and judgement, two activities that constitute the humanness of human life. Judgement would have been the topic of the third part of the trilogy, The Life of the Mind, but Arendt died before finishing her book on the mental activities of thinking (Volume I), willing (Volume II) and judging. There are, however, lectures on the topic of judgement and various references and discussions pertaining to the topic throughout her work. It is not so much the lack of material as its inconclusiveness that constitutes the main problem for assessing Arendt’s notion of judgement. Against what appears to be the standard interpretation of this notion, Veronica Vasterling argues that there is a shift in Arendt’s work that makes for distinct and apparently contradictory features of judgement. Political judgement, with its requirement of representativeness, takes centre stage in the earlier work, while moral judgement, with its requirement of independence, appears to become a central concern in later work. Though Arendt herself does not refer to it in these terms, the distinction between political and moral judgement is implicit in her work. The reason to foreground this distinction is that it helps to clarify the tension between the apparently disparate features Arendt attributes to judgement. An important common source for both types of judgement, however, is Kant’s Critique of Judgment or, rather, Arendt’s specific appropriation of it. Therefore Veronica Vasterling discusses the distinction between moral and political judgement against the background of Arendt’s interpretation of Kant. She concludes that good (political and moral) judgement not only requires the independence of critical thought, but also the representativity of the erweiterte Denkungsart (enlarged thinking). When we lack the imagination to engage with the viewpoints of others in the process of forming a judgement, our judgement may be critical and independent with respect to the prevailing powers, but it will not be convincing – not even to ourselves – because of its subjectivity. One of the most important phenomenological insights of Arendt’s philosophy


is that our sense of reality is dependent on a plurality of perspectives, illuminating a state of affairs from all sides, whereas subjectivity, or the condition of being trapped in just one general perspective, robs us of our sense of reality. A judgement that merely expresses the subjective perspective, or just one general perspective, and omits to look at the issue from as many sides as possible, is not representative in the literal sense of not revealing or saying much. It is its disclosing or revelatory character that renders representative – moral and political – judgement convincing, both to others and ourselves. The articles in this book provide for a variety of reflections on the ethical impact of the concept of the other in different philosophical disciplines such as ontology, political philosophy, hermeneutics, methodology and aesthetics. They do not develop a unique and universally valid concept of otherness. Yet, they have in common a phenomenological background. The phenomenological method allows for an open concept of otherness which interlinks the different disciplines thereby undermining the seemingly clear-cut delimitation of philosophical disciplines. The explicit and implicit methodical work of all of the articles is an important feature of an ethics of thinking. The articles develop a discourse which on several levels is open to the other/s of thinking and of its disciplinary limitations. Due to the work inbetween the borders of disciplines, the articles could be configured differently. There is a net of diverse strings linking up the reflection on otherness in one approach with an aspect of the reflection of another article. An aesthetic approach of otherness, such as that developed in Jenny Slatman’s and Cathryn Vasseleu’s articles can help understanding ontological, hermeneutic and questions of political philosophy of otherness. Veronica Vasterling shows in her text that the literary device of story telling allows for a new understanding of otherness and plurality in political philosophy. Her conception of the hermeneutic concept of understanding allows for the methodical respect of different logics and differences in experience. Annemie Halsema argues – linking hermeneutic concepts and political positions – that it is not necessary to share an identical context or situation to understand the other. This makes it possible to ground recognition, e.g. political recognition, in the hermeneutic concept of understanding. The texts of Rachel Jones and Gabrielle Hiltmann show that an ontological conception of otherness which relates to aesthetic and literary experiences, is fundamental for an ethical conception of political, hermeneutic and aesthetic otherness.

20 The Other

In some respects one could say that all the articles of this book are – explicitly or implicitly – concerned with the methodological question of how to think the relation to the other. This is a challenge as the attempt to think the other in its otherness does not permit to subordinating the other to a logic of the same. Anne Reichold shows that the otherness of the body is multiple in itself as the otherness of the physical body is not the same as the otherness of the phenomenal body (Leib). Considering these non-reducible but nevertheless related othernesses allows for new ethical conceptions of the body. Relations are conceived with different strictness in the different philosophical disciplines. Aesthetic relations offer more creative possibilities than the formal relations of logics which claim to work within an unambiguous and non-contradictory framework. Gail Weiss makes clear that the relation at work in the dual identity of mothers/intellectuals activates logical relaters but also undercuts the logical claim of unambiguous coherence. Christina Schües’ concept of insight questions the logic of discursive thinking by linking situative, generative, hermeneutic and normative aspects of insight in a way which shall allow for moral action. The question of how to conceive the relation to the other necessitates fundamental methodological reflections. The book offers diverse approaches to these methodical questions of a non-universalizing, and non-monopolizing reflection on the other. This methodological dimension is also an ethical one as the ways in which relations are conceived are crucial for the question of whether a philosophy can account for the otherness of the other or not. An ethics of thinking demands openness for that which can not be controlled by a univocal logic of thinking. The articles in this book show that considering the otherness of the other necessitates philosophical techniques and styles which allow otherness to be at work in thinking and writing.

Part 1 The Other and its Impacts on an Ethical Relation to Oneself


1 The Gift of Recognition: Self and Other in the Multicultural Situation Annemie Halsema

Numerous studies that address the issue of identity within the context of multiculturalism focus on cultural, group or political identity but not on personal identity.1 They address the question of the identity of a culture, or of different cultures within one society, and their relationships to the society as a whole – that is, to ‘dominant values’ held within that society – or they address political identity, in other words, citizenship.2 This paper aims instead at a reflection on personal identity. What first comes to mind with respect to multiculturalism are socio-economic problems that are related to the redistribution of political rights and economic resources, as well as social problems of discrimination and the recognition of minorities.3 Yet, these influence one’s sense of self. The ‘clash between cultures’ for newcomers in European countries leads to feelings of insecurity, not knowing how to act, not knowing what rules or values to follow. The significance of personal identity has also manifested itself in central debates in the context of multiculturalism, such as whether or not Muslim women are allowed to wear headscarves in public space. Young women sometimes decide to wear headscarves to show their Muslim identity, but face problems doing so in the context in which they want to wear them (school, work). Others are forced by family, or feel they must adhere to the norms of their immediate social circles. Even though it is seldom explicitly discussed, questions of ‘who one is’ and ‘who one wants to be’ play an important part in debates such as this.4 Yet, cultural and/or group identity on the one hand, and personal identity on the other, cannot be separated so easily. Several recent publications support this thesis. Most of the authors in John Rajchman’s volume on the question of identity – a question that came up in the context of the debate on multiculturalism and political correctness in 23

24 The Other

the 1990s – discuss both notions of identity.5 Additionally, Bhikhu Parekh, in his influential study on multiculturalism, directly relates personal identity and group identity. Distinguishing different sorts of diversity within society, he shows that self-understanding as an individual is, to a large extent, derived from the lifestyle, culture, or worldview that one shares with others (1–5). Charles Taylor’s famous essay, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, and Axel Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition also explicitly address the question of personal identity in relationship to recognition of the cultural, ethnic or religious group to which one belongs. They show that recognition is a vital human need and that misrecognition can be severely wounding for the self. Not only is personal identity difficult to separate from collective identities, but also, in reflecting on personal identity in the context of multiculturalism, the theme of recognition comes to the fore. That is why in this paper the question of personal identity will be addressed in relationship to recognition. More specifically, my paper aims at a critique of the Hegelian notion of recognition, which is central in studies such as Taylor’s and Honneth’s. The problem I want to discuss is not that the Hegelian self in the end absorbs the other – which is also highly problematic in a multicultural context, because the other is in that case assimilated. My problem is rather that in Hegelian theories of recognition otherness is not constitutive for the self from the very beginning. In these theories, recognition is the result of the struggle between self and other. This implies that the relationship self–other is inherently adversarial, and that the other is opposed to the self.6 It is my fear that within a multicultural context, as is the current situation in the Netherlands, notions of recognition that start from the self–other opposition reinforce tendencies to oppose self and other. Opposing ‘us’ to ‘them’ has become one of the dominant ways of dealing with otherness, and does not exactly stimulate dialogue between different groups within society.7 In contrast, if there were an acknowledgment of the constitution of the self by the other, in other words, if we allowed ourselves to be formed by the others around us, the strong self–other opposition might possibly disappear.8 Put differently, this paper is inspired by the hope that the realization that alterity lies at the base of personal identity could form an important step in the recognition of the other. White Westerners should come to see that they are not mono-cultural selves that live and develop identities in isolation from the context in which they live and the others with whom they live, and that, in relating to others, those others become part of who they are.

Annemie Halsema 25

The American psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, and the French phenomenological hermeneutist Paul Ricoeur, both provide us with a self that is constituted by otherness. Benjamin presents a notion of the self that relates to the other psychically; Ricoeur’s self relates to the other ethically. I will show in what respects both criticize the Hegelian notion of recognition, and will begin with Benjamin in The Bonds of Love.

A phenomenology of recognition relations9 For Jessica Benjamin, ‘Hegel posits a self that has no intrinsic need for the other, but uses the other only as a vehicle for self-certainty’ (Benjamin, The Bonds of Love 33). The Hegelian self is, in psychoanalytic terms, ‘an omnipotent self’ that considers everything as an extension of itself and its power. The self wants to affirm its omnipotence in the encounter with the other whom it considers to be like itself. Hegel’s subject searches for affirmation of the self through the other. The omnipotence of the Hegelian self is the result of perceiving the self as developing without the other, a view that Benjamin also traces in classical psychoanalysis.10 She claims that most theories of the self fail to recognize the need for mutual recognition, which implies not only the need to be recognized by the other, but also the recognition of the other as an independent and distinct being. Benjamin’s alternative is a notion of the self that is intersubjective from the start, and for which recognition constitutes a paradox between independence and dependence. In the Hegelian master–slave analysis, the need for recognition results in a conflict between two consciousnesses. Each consciousness wishes for absolute independence as well as for recognition. For Benjamin, Hegel presents us with a paradox that is characteristic of relationships between self and other in general, and that can eventually result in a relationship of dominator to dominated, of master to slave. The paradox arises because the self wants to affirm its omnipotence in the encounter with the other, but cannot do so, for ‘to affirm itself it must acknowledge the other, and to acknowledge the other would be to deny the absoluteness of the self’ (33). In other words, the self is dependent upon the other for recognition, but needs to be recognized as independent at the very same moment. Thus, Benjamin envisages another outcome of the struggle between two consciousnesses than Hegel: while for Hegel, one of the two dominates the other, Benjamin aims at a balance. She defines recognition as the possible outcome of the conflict between being independent of the other, while wanting to be independent. This

26 The Other

conflict sometimes leads to intersubjectivity, but can also result in a relationship of domination. Yet, even while criticizing Hegel’s omnipotent self, Benjamin also retains the Hegelian model. In fact, in taking Winnicott as her point of departure, she ‘internalizes’ the conflict between self and other. Whereas Hegel’s self is omnipotent because it does not have an intrinsic need for the other, Benjamin’s self can only come to relate to the other as a reality outside of the self, by relating to the ‘other inside’. The ‘other inside’ is the other as object, as part of the subject’s mind. This other is not experienced as real, external to, or independent of the self (37). At first, for the baby, the other is an object inside, but in the development of the subject, there comes a point at which this kind of relatedness must give way to an appreciation of the other as an object outside. Recognition of the other outside, for Winnicott and Benjamin, involves a paradoxical process in which the other as internal object is destroyed (38). Destruction is not as negative as it seems; it means refusing, negating the other, saying: ‘You do not exist for me’, only to find out that the other does not cease to exist, and to take pleasure in that. Destruction, therefore, ‘is an effort to differentiate’ (38). It is the act of the child who begins behaving aggressively towards the mother when it arrives at the awareness that she is an outward and resistant reality, someone who says ‘no’. Consequently, destruction implies that intersubjectivity does not come into being by relating to an other outside with whom we fight a life-and-death struggle, as Hegel wants it, but by destruction of the other ‘inside’ who at the same time survives as an outside reality. Benjamin explains:

in the struggle for recognition each subject must stake his life, must struggle to negate the other – and woe if he succeeds. For if I completely negate the other, he does not exist; and if he does not survive, he is not there to recognize me.

So far, her formulation remains close to Hegel’s. In the rest of the paragraph, she connects Winnicott’s findings with the Hegelian scheme:

But to find this out, I must try to exert this control, try to negate his independence. To find out that he exists, I must wish myself absolute and all alone – then, as it were, upon opening my eyes, I may discover that the other is still there. (Benjamin, The Bonds of Love 38)

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Discovering that the other is still there opens the way to love and to an intersubjective relationship with that other. The survival of the other makes it possible to love and to recognize him or her as ‘not subject to our mental control’ (38).11 Therefore, for Benjamin, ‘the ideal “resolution” of the paradox of recognition is for it to continue as a constant tension’ (36). That implies acknowledging that one’s freedom depends on the other’s freedom, and that both recognize each other’s independence. By bringing the other inside, as an intrapsychic other, Benjamin breaks the autonomy of the self that prevails in Hegel’s notion of recognition. Her main reason for criticizing Hegel’s concept of the self is that it is not a self that develops in relationship to others. By internalizing the struggle between self and other, and understanding the other as an ‘other inside’ the subject, the autonomy of the self is broken and intersubjectivity is possible. Thus, intersubjectivity is the happy resolution of a process of destruction of the other inside, while the other outside withstands the destruction, survives and maintains the relationship to the self.

Recognition and intersubjectivity Returning to the notion of the self that prevails in recognition theories, it can be asked whether Benjamin’s critique of the Hegelian model applies to these notions of the self. Are the selves that Taylor and Honneth develop Hegelian selves that have no intrinsic need for others? Taylor’s self is not simply omnipotent, developing on its own without the need for others; rather, it comes into existence in relation to significant others. Taylor considers the self to be dialogical. We use language to articulate our thoughts and are in a constant dialogue with significant others, which defines our identity. So, language is central to the constitution of identity; webs of interlocution between the self and others generate identity as something interwoven with others. Not only is the self only in relation to interlocutors, it also achieves its self-definition in relation to those conversation partners (Sources of the Self 36). The fundamental dialogical character of human life makes that identity comes about through interaction with others, more specifically, through exchange with others who matter to us. ‘We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us,’ explains Taylor (‘The Politics of Recognition’ 33). This implies that it is not only language that we share with others, but also that which is articulated about us by means of language. Yet, it can be objected that Taylor’s selves are only superficially intersubjective.

28 The Other

For his selves remain ‘whole’ and autonomous selves which relate to others, but are not broken up from the inside by their relations to others. Benjamin, however, presents us with another who is capable of limiting our omnipotence, our narcissism. Precisely this limitation is the condition for true intersubjectivity. She enriches intersubjectivity theories, such as Taylor’s, with an intrapsychic dimension by claiming that in order to reach true intersubjectivity the intrapsychic dimension should be taken into account as well.12 More specifically, she points to the importance of mutual influence (as for instance between mother and child) in developing the capacity for mutual recognition (Like Subjects, Love Objects 33). And also, she explains that discovering the other as an outside other does not occur without the conflict between destruction and survival: the wish to assert the self absolutely and deny everything outside one’s own mental omnipotence must sometimes crash against the implacable reality of the other. (Like Subjects, Love Objects 39) When the other does not survive, a defensive process of internalization takes place. As a result, the self is either plunged ‘into unbearable aloneness, or escapes into merger with like-self beings, creating an identity that demands the destructive denial of the different’, Benjamin explains (Shadows of the Other 96). Shared reality is only established on the basis of countering destruction with survival (Like Subjects, Love Objects 41). This psychic dimension of recognition is never discussed by Taylor. Axel Honneth’s notion of the self is much more thoroughly elaborated in this respect. The central thesis of his pathbreaking, The Struggle for Recognition, is that self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem are central for the capacity for human flourishing and for being able to develop into an individuated person. These characteristics, he claims, can only be acquired and maintained intersubjectively through being granted recognition by others whom one also recognizes. Honneth’s systematic renewal of Hegel’s speculative suggestions starts from the latter’s early Jena writings and not from the later Phenomenology of Spirit in which Hegel works out the master–slave dialectic. These early works reveal that Hegel’s inspiration for developing the notion of recognition derives from a rejection of atomistic conceptions of natural law that presuppose the existence of subjects who are isolated from each other (Honneth 12). Hegel replaces the atomistic conception of society with one in which individuals constitute social bonds. To quote Honneth, Hegel wants to say: ‘every philosophical theory of society must proceed

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not from the acts of isolated subjects but rather from the framework of ethical bonds, within which subjects always already move’ (14). Accordingly, these early works reveal that Hegel does understand subjects as coming into existence intersubjectively. Does that imply that Benjamin wrongly criticizes Hegel’s self for being ‘omnipotent,’ and that it is already an intersubjective self? For Hegel the self is necessarily shaped by social bonds such as the family, civil society and the state. The notion of recognition that he derives from Fichte grants him the possibility of understanding the mutuality between subjects and of understanding why subjects leave one sphere behind to enter another (why they leave the family in order to become part of civil society, for instance) (Honneth 16). Recognition includes learning something about one’s particular identity: to the degree that a subject knows itself to be recognized by another subject with regard to certain of its abilities and qualities and is thereby reconciled with the other, a subject always also comes to know its own distinctive identity and thereby comes to be opposed once again to the other as something particular. (Honneth 16–17) In being recognized by another, the subject experiences its own distinctiveness. This is close to Benjamin’s notion of differentiation. Recognition for her is the resolution of the struggle within the subject between wanting to be independent while being dependent of the other. Thus, Benjamin’s ‘paradox of recognition’ is already prefigured in Hegel’s early thought (26/7).13 But Hegel’s self, which was worked out long before Freud’s discovery of the psyche, is not yet a psychoanalytical self with an intrapsychic dimension. Honneth, however, does explicitly take into account psychoanalysis. To be more specific, he uses object-relations theory to describe recognition in the sphere of primary relationships. On the basis of Hegel’s early Jena writings, and Mead’s social psychology, he distinguishes three different ‘patterns of intersubjective recognition’ in society, namely love, rights and solidarity (92 ff.). The sphere of love is characterized by primary relationships constituted by strong emotional attachments among a small number of people (friendships, parent–child relationships and erotic relationships between lovers) (95). Love represents the first stage of mutual recognition, in which subjects recognize each other as needy creatures. Recognition in this sphere means affective approval and encouragement of one another as creatures that depend on each other for the fulfilment of needs and for emotional confirmation. Honneth

30 The Other

uses object-relations theory in order to show that Hegel’s understanding of love as ‘being oneself in another’ implies ‘a process whose success is dependent on the mutual maintenance of a tension between symbiotic self-sacrifice and individual self-assertion’ (96). Thus, love becomes a particular form of recognition that succeeds only when the child is able to strike a balance between symbiosis and self-assertion (98). With the help of Winnicott, Honneth furthermore describes the development from the early intersubjective relationship between mother and baby, ‘the holding phase’, towards ‘relative dependence’, the phase in which the child gradually comes to see the mother as outward reality and in which the mother expands her field of attention towards objects other than her baby. It is for that phase that Benjamin suggests the Hegelian ‘struggle for recognition’ as an explanatory model, as we have seen earlier (Honneth 101, Benjamin, The Bonds of Love 38). In introducing Winnicott’s and Benjamin’s theory of intersubjectivity, Honneth reformulates the Hegelian notion of the self, and develops it into a notion of the self that is intersubjective. Because he works out the relationship to the other with the help of both psychoanalysts, the intrapsychic other and the intersubjective other can be distinguished, and destruction of the first can lead to a loving relationship to the other outside. This implies that for Honneth, the subject is no longer seen as autonomous, and intersubjectivity and recognition both are seen to have a psychic basis. In other words, the relationship self–other as an intersubjective relationship begins in the early development of the psyche, and recognition in the primary sphere, love, prepares the ground for a relation-to-self in which subjects acquire basic confidence in themselves (Honneth 107). Honneth’s and Benjamin’s notion of recognition have far-reaching implications for the multicultural situation within the European states. Recognition of others with different cultures and religions comes to imply that we let the other in, instead of keeping him or her outside of us. It means that the joy of recognition and true intersubjectivity can only come about by breaking open the autonomy of the self, by admitting our dependence upon the other, and aiming at a balance between dependence and independence. Of course, love forms the first sphere in which recognition comes about, and within the multicultural context we do not only relate to others who are close to us, but also to strangers. But as Honneth phrases it, love relationships cannot be extended at will, beyond the social circle of primary relationships, to cover a larger number of interactive partners (107). Legal relations in the sphere of rights and social esteem are also part of mutual recognition

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within society (121–39). Yet, what Benjamin’s insights imply, is that intersubjectivity on the level of ‘strange others’ finds its basis in the relationship to others in one’s direct surroundings, in other words, that one can ‘learn’ to relate to others in an intersubjective way in the relationship to one’s caretakers. In that sense, recognition in the sphere of love forms the basis for recognition in the other spheres Honneth distinguishes (see Honneth 107). Thus far, we have criticized the Hegelian notion of recognition for understanding the self as autonomous. We have seen with Honneth that acknowledging that the self develops in interaction with others not only breaks the solipsism of the subject, but also gives recognition a psychic basis. In the next section we examine a notion of the self for which otherness is ontologically constitutive, leading to a notion of the self that is intersubjective on an ontological level.14 This self is relevant because it makes us understand how we are able to relate to others, in other words, it explains our capacity to deal with otherness, and founds this capacity within the ontological structure of the self. Such a notion of the self is worked out by Paul Ricoeur in Oneself as Another. His intersubjective self also leads ultimately to another notion of recognition, for which it is not exchange between self and other that is central, but rather, for which recognition is a reciprocal gift. This notion of recognition complements the Hegelian struggle model, and will be worked out in the last part of the paper.

Ricoeur’s dialectic between self and other Ricoeur’s notion of the self in Oneself as Another is characterized by two dialectics: the dialectic of selfhood (ipse) and sameness (idem), and the dialectic of selfhood and otherness. The first dialectic entails the relationship between two conceptions of identity: idem and ipse. Idem refers to sameness, that is, to identity in a numeric sense, in a qualitative sense, or as continuity between the first and last phase of development. Ipse does not refer to what remains the same, but rather to selfhood. For Ricoeur personal identity, which he works out as narrative identity, consists of a dialectic between idem and ipse. This dialectic shows itself in the two models of permanence in time we use in speaking about ourselves: character and keeping a promise. In the case of character, identity is very close to sameness (idem). Character is ‘the set of distinctive marks which permit the re-identification of a human individual as being the same’ (Oneself as Another 119). In keeping a promise, identity refers to holding firm under changed circumstances.

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Even though one’s opinions, values, desires, inclinations, and so forth, change – in other words, notwithstanding the fact that one is no longer the same, one does hold firm (124). In both character and keeping a promise the dialectical relationship between idem and ipse shows itself. In promising, ipse is strongest; it is a sense of selfhood almost in absence of sameness – although something needs to remain the same in order to keep the promise. In character, idem is central because sameness and the permanence of disposition constitute the self, but it is the same of a self and so there remains a dialectic between idem and ipse. The second dialectic of selfhood and otherness turns Ricoeur’s notion of identity into an ethical one. It implies that the question ‘Who am I?’ – one that demands a description of the self, that is, narrative identity – should be related to the ethical stance in which the self takes responsibility for her deeds. This ethical aspect brings in the other, and thereby the dialectic between self and other. Within this dialectic, the other has ethical primacy over the self which shows itself in that there remains little of the self (it is not constant, does not own itself, effaces itself), except that it must hold firm when it is faced with the demand of the other, or when it evaluates its own deeds. Hereby, Ricoeur joins the ethical position of philosophers such as Marcel and Levinas. Yet, in breaking through the enclosure of the same, this irruption of the other should not, in the same movement, also efface the self: ‘For the effect of the “crisis” of selfhood must not be the substitution of self-hatred for self-esteem’ (168). The central notions that Ricoeur applies to the development of the ethical self are ‘self-esteem’ and ‘self-respect’. Self-esteem corresponds to the teleological sphere of the ‘good life’; self-respect to the deontological sphere of moral obligations (171). The aim of the good life, ethics, takes primacy above the sphere of moral obligations. That does not mean that ethics could do without morality, but morality constitutes ‘only a limited, although legitimate and even indispensable, actualisation of the ethical aim’ (170). Mainly because of the existence of evil, moral norms are necessary to ensure that the good life is aimed at with and for others, and not at the cost of others. For the relationship between selfesteem and self-respect, this implies that self-esteem is primary, and that self-respect is ‘the aspect under which self-esteem appears in the domain of norms’ (171). In what follows, I will concentrate upon self-esteem to show in what way Ricoeur connects self and other. Self-esteem results from judging one’s actions as good in the light of what one envisions as ‘the good life’. However, if self-esteem were to solely depend upon an evaluation of one’s own life, it would be

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solipsistic. Ricoeur’s ideal notion of self-esteem is instead interwoven with solicitude (180). The model for solicitude is the Aristotelian notion of friendship. For a good life, we need friends. Friendship includes reciprocity or mutuality, which entails that ‘each loves the other as being the man he is’ (183). For Ricoeur, friendship makes a crucial contribution to self-esteem because it adds the idea of reciprocity or mutuality to the intersection of persons who esteem themselves. Furthermore, friendship serves as a transition between the aim of the ‘good life’ and the third component of Ricoeur’s ethics: justice. Friendship borders upon and points towards justice (Dauenhauer 148). But whereas friendship relates small numbers of people, justice must encompass many and govern them in and through institutions. Thus, one is capable of self-esteem when aiming at the good life, with and for others, in just institutions (172). In this way, Ricoeur provides us with an ethical notion of the self in which self-esteem is intrinsically connected with doing good to the other. The self that he develops is autonomous, yet tightly ‘bound up with solicitude for its neighbour and with justice for each individual’ (18). Yet, Ricoeur’s self is not only ethical because self-esteem and solicitude are closely connected, or because self-respect includes respect for others,15 but also because selfhood means to relate to otherness, and not to add otherness on to selfhood: ‘[otherness] belongs to the tenor of meaning and to the ontological constitution of selfhood’, he writes (317). ‘Otherness does not come from outside selfhood, but is part of the meaning and the ontological constitution of selfhood’, explains Reagan (28). The ontological constitution of the self by otherness separates recognition theories – in which the self is confronted with the other with whom it enters into struggle – from Ricoeur’s perspective. Similarly to Benjamin, he thereby no longer opposes self and other, but aims at a self that is constituted by, and open to, otherness, which, in the multicultural situation, offers an important contribution to recognizing different others. The ontological basis of the self as constituted by otherness is worked out in the final chapter of Oneself as Another, in which Ricoeur distinguishes three different experiences of passivity that account for otherness on a phenomenological level (318). These three experiences are: the experience of one’s own body, the relation of the self to the other person, and the relation of the self to itself, that is, conscience. Our embodiment, the first passivity, implies that we are at once experiencing our body as our own (Leib), and that we are a body amongst other

34 The Other

bodies (Körper). Largely following Husserl, Ricoeur claims that in our embodiment we experience ‘lived’ otherness. Because we are a body amongst other bodies, in the experience of our body we already experience otherness. On the basis of that first encounter with otherness, we experience the otherness of other people. The second passivity, the other person, entails the relationship to what is foreign. Ricoeur seeks a balance between the Husserlian and the Levinasian notions of otherness. For Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations, the other is authentically given, and not constitutable by the self. The givenness of the other cannot be converted into presentations, and is therefore named: appresentation. Levinas is opposed to Husserl in so far as the latter’s phenomenology belongs to a philosophy of representation that in the end assimilates otherness to itself. For Levinas, the Other radically escapes all representation and is absolutely exterior to the self. Yet, Ricoeur argues that Levinas renders unthinkable the formation of a concept of selfhood that is defined by its openness and its capacity for discovery (339). That is why earlier in the book he introduced the notion of ‘benevolent spontaneity’ that, on the side of the self, corresponds to Levinas’ primacy of the other (190). Thus, Ricoeur balances the Husserlian self with Levinas’ primacy of the other. Conscience, as the last place ‘of an original form for the dialectic between selfhood and otherness’, enables Ricoeur to take up issues such as injunction and debt (341). He suggests interpreting the act of injunction as ‘being-enjoined by the Other’ (351). Ricoeur’s ‘oneself as another’ ultimately implies that the relationship to the other is not the relationship to the other outside, but that it is already prepared within the ontological structure of the self. The self already relates to itself as other, engaging in a relationship with another who is foreign as well as having others included in its conscience. Hegel’s definition of love as ‘being oneself in another’ is here complemented with a self that not only comes to itself in another, but also relates to itself as another. Put differently, the capacity for being oneself in another is developed by Ricoeur as a capacity to relate to others in the same way as the self relates to itself. He introduces a self that is ontologically capable of relating to others. Of course, ontological capability is not reality per se; in other words, being ontologically constituted by otherness does not necessarily imply that every relationship we engage in is a truly intersubjective one in which we fully respect the other. Yet, without an ontological foundation, it becomes hard to understand how we are capable of engaging in intersubjective relationships at all.

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Recognition as gift This notion of the self that ontologically relates to otherness also leads to another notion of recognition, namely to recognition as a reciprocal gift. In one of his last works, The Course of Recognition, Ricoeur discusses and comments on Honneth’s notion of recognition. After having carefully explained Honneth’s notion of recognition in the three spheres as discussed earlier, and while paying Honneth much tribute, he questions the centrality of struggle for the Hegelian notion of mutual recognition. Ricoeur suggests that the exclusive emphasis on struggle in Hegel’s notion of recognition should be complemented with more peaceful experiences of recognition (The Course of Recognition 216–46). Ricoeur claims that the struggle for recognition would lose itself in the unhappy consciousness if it were not given to humans to be able to accede to ‘an actual, albeit symbolic, experience of mutual recognition, following the model of the reciprocal ceremonial gift’ (The Course of Recognition 153). His motivation for the complementary notion of recognition is the infinity that inheres in the desire for recognition – an infinity that can also be seen in the way in which old and new residents in the multicultural situation act towards each other. Ricoeur asks: ‘Does not the claim for affective, juridical, and social recognition, through its militant, conflictual style, end up as an indefinite demand, a kind of “bad infinity”?’ (218). When we apply this infinity to the multicultural situation, it is not only misrecognition that forms a permanent threat and daily reality, but also recognition becomes a lasting demand that can hardly be satisfied. Understanding recognition not only as struggle, but also as a gift, helps to consider it not as a continuous demand, but as something one receives because of being a person who is similar to an other. In what follows, I will first say more about Honneth’s model of recognition as exchange, and then compare it with Ricoeur’s model of the gift. For Honneth, like Hegel, affection and liking are restricted to the sphere of love (the sphere of the family in Hegel) (110). Recognition in that sphere is characterized by the doubleness of independence and emotional dependence, which Honneth works out with the help of object-relations theory, as we have seen earlier in this paper. This form of recognition is prior to other forms because it prepares the ground for a relation-to-self in which subjects acquire basic confidence in themselves (107). Psychologically, emotional confidence is a precondition for self-respect. Yet, these feelings of love are limited to the social circle of primary relationships. In relationships to others outside of one’s primary

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social circles, the forms of recognition are respect for someone as a legal person and social esteem. Honneth describes how both forms in traditional societies were closely connected, but that for post-conventional morality legal recognition is distinct from social esteem (111). Whereas legal recognition must intrinsically be directed toward every subject to the same degree, social esteem depends upon value-systems and can differ in degree. The practical relations-to-self that correspond to respect in the legal sense as well as to social esteem are, respectively, self-respect and self-esteem. Self-respect refers to the capacity to view oneself as a person who shares with all members of one’s community the qualities that make participation in discursive will-formation possible (120). It is closely connected with the realization that one is the bearer of socially recognized rights that are shared by others. Self-esteem refers to feelings of self-worth that result from being recognized as valuable by other members of society (128/9). When we compare Ricoeur’s notions of self-esteem and self-respect with the ones Honneth suggests, we find that for Ricoeur the self can only esteem itself when it acts well towards others. We have already seen that, for him, one is capable of self-esteem when aiming at the good life, with and for others, in just institutions. That means that each self is judged in accordance with his or her own actions, and that it is not the other who in the end makes one esteem oneself – as in Honneth’s definition. For Ricoeur, in contrast to Honneth, self-esteem is not something one receives indirectly, because of being recognized as valuable, but is a reflexive act of the self. The same applies to selfrespect: while for Honneth self-respect comes into being because of being acknowledged, and considering oneself as part of a community, for Ricoeur’s self, it starts with respecting others as one respects oneself. As a result, the notion of reciprocity also receives a different meaning in both theories. For Honneth, morality is central, and not ethics, which implies that ‘an obligation to reciprocity’ is built into relationships of recognition (37). This obligation entails: if I do not recognize my partner to interaction as a certain type of person, his reactions cannot give me the sense that I am recognized as the same type of person, since I thereby deny him precisely the characteristics and capacities with regard to which I want to feel myself affirmed by him. (38) This obligation is experienced as an obligation precisely because one wants for him- or herself what one gives to the other. The structure

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of this obligation is, according to Honneth , reciprocity, or to be more precise: exchange. The self–other relationship in recognition is a relationship of exchange. For Ricoeur, reciprocity does not imply exchange, but rather considering the other as similar to oneself, which is not the same as equal. We have seen that in Oneself as Another aiming at the good life is intrinsically connected to acting with others, for which the Aristotelian notion of friendship serves as a model. As the transition between the aim of the ‘good life’ and justice, friendship functions as an intermediary between the realms of the personal and the political (justice), or between what Honneth calls the spheres of love and solidarity. For Honneth, the second, the juridical sphere is the sphere of rights, of equality for the law. For Ricoeur, we are equal as well, but not before the law, rather, in the sense of mutuality, reciprocity.16 Reciprocity in this sense does not mean giving the other what you need yourself (exchange), but loving the other for what he or she is. Accordingly, the notion of recognition implies that reciprocity is not only considered as exchange, but also includes giving to the other what one desires for oneself. Ricoeur complements the notion of recognition as exchange with one in which the reciprocity of the gift is central. Let me summarize the argument of the paper. I began by expressing the hope that the acknowledgement of otherness as part of our personal identity could form the first step towards recognizing the other. We have seen that the notion of recognition that is central to many contemporary studies on identity within a multicultural context opposes self and other. With the help of Benjamin, we have furthermore seen that this opposition of self–other need not necessarily be one outside of the individual, but that the omnipotent self can be broken open by taking into account the intrapsychic other. In confronting Honneth and Ricoeur we have further elaborated the problems with recognition theories: the relationship between self and other is one of exchange, which means that the self is dependent upon the other for recognition, as is the other on the self. With the notion of recognition as reciprocal gift, Ricoeur helps to partly overcome the oppositional character of recognition, for recognition does not only include struggle between self and other, but also the exchange of a gift. Also, he points to the motivation for giving recognition, and thereby perhaps cannot prevent the indefinite demand that is part of the desire for recognition, but at least makes it possible to understand how people come to feel misrecognized. In the end, the reciprocity of the gift refers back to the self in that the idea that the gift must be returned presupposes, as Ricoeur quotes

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Boltanski, ‘that the other person is another person who must act as I do, and this return gesture has to confirm for me the truth of my own gesture, that is, my subjectivity’ (Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition 227). Considering the other as an other self, which entails not projecting all negativity upon the other, but rather acknowledging the otherness within oneself, provides us with a notion of the self that addresses the hope with which I started this paper. Within the multicultural situation, recognition should not only be considered as something that newcomers can gain by recognizing the norms and practices of the former inhabitants of the state, that is, as something one receives under conditions, but also as a gift in which both consider the other as a person who is similar to the self, and who already on that ground deserves recognition.

Notes 1. Note that ‘multiculturalism’ signifies different problems in the European and American context: whereas in the European context the term refers to the political and social-cultural situation of being faced with different ethnic, cultural and religious groups within the nation-state, in the US ‘multiculturalism’ is often related to political correctness and refers to the demographic diversity of different ethnicities within, for instance, colleges and universities, that has its repercussions for the university curriculum (see for instance Scott in Rajchman, Rogers). 2. See for instance Kymlicka, Carens, Benhabib. 3. See Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange in which Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth discuss whether redistribution or recognition should be the central claim for minority groups within society (ethnic and religious minorities, but also women, and homosexuals). 4. See for instance Seyla Benhabib’s ‘Multiculturalism and Gendered Citizenship’ (in Benhabib 82–104), in which she discusses the French scarf affair, thereby pointing to the juxtaposition of private identity and public sphere that the girls wearing a scarf manifested. Wearing a scarf cannot simply be seen, as some feminists do, as an indication of oppression; for many girls it has the symbolic meaning of expressing a Muslim identity and of claiming difference within a context that does not support being a Muslim. In that sense, it can be seen as a political gesture. Benhabib compares it to Antigone’s deed in Sophocles’ tragedy: using ‘the symbols of the private realm to challenge the ordinances of the public sphere’ (97). 5. For instance, Etienne Balibar explicitly speaks about cultural identity, but defines cultural identity as ‘a collection of traits, of objective structures (as such spontaneously thought of in the dimension of the collective, the social and the historical) and as a principle or a process of subjectivation (spontaneously thought of in the dimension of ‘lived experience’, of ‘conscious’ or ‘unconscious’ individuality)’ (Balibar in Rajchman 174). He claims that both

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6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

structures can be in correspondence or in conflict, in the first case leading to recognition of the individual within the objective cultural identity, in the second to a discrepancy. Stanley Aronowitz, in the same volume, revives Georg Herbert Mead’s notion of the social self in order to think through the present-day politics of identity. Mead’s social self entails the interaction of the individual and significant others (family members, civil authorities, peers). The individual’s experience is a process of assimilation of the environment that inescapably forms part of the self (Aronowitz in Rajchman 114). Kelly Oliver’s problem with the Hegelian notion of recognition is close to mine: ‘In various ways, these theories [on subjectivity and identity that have inherited the Hegelian notion of recognition, AH] describe how we recognize ourselves in our likeness as the same or in opposition to what is (or those who are) different from ourselves. Relations to others are described as struggles for recognition’ (4). Except for critical theories, such as Honneth’s, Oliver discusses poststructuralist theories, namely Butler’s, and shows that they are all indebted to the Hegelian model. Her main problem with these notions of identity and subjectivity is that the other in this struggle-model is not seen as a subject anymore, but as an object, and that the subjectivity of those who are othered is seen as silenced, or is left out, or forgotten. She even claims that the notion of recognition itself is a symptom of the pathology of oppression (9). Instead, she aims at an ethics of witnessing (6). See Korteweg for an analysis of the recent political reaction in the Netherlands after the murder of Theo van Gogh. The English version of this paper can be found in Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos: Incorporation Regimes in Germany, Western Europe and North America, Eds Y. Michal Bodemann and Gökçe Yurdakul. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. To be more concrete: how can we keep on talking about ‘Dutch identity’, when our children – especially in the larger cities – play with children from other cultures, learn about religious holidays in non-Christian religions, are confronted with the habits and practices in families with different cultural and religious backgrounds? Do we not need a notion of the self that takes into account otherness, and understands otherness as constitutive for the self, instead of notions that oppose self and other, and that reflect on how to deal with others outside of us? This subtitle is taken from Honneth (98). Benjamin’s argument in The Bonds of Love is that the self in traditional psychoanalysis can be compared to the Hegelian self. She concentrates upon a critique of the psychoanalytic self, and not of the Hegelian. For my argument, I extract her critique on Hegel from this analysis. Winnicott’s notion of destruction also implies a revision of the psychoanalytic idea of reality: it suggests that reality can be pleasurable instead of repressive as in Freud, pleasurable, because an other that you wanted to destroy keeps on existing, so that you can connect to her, and love her. Thus, a reality that is not wholly created by the self is discovered, and that gives one pleasure (Benjamin, The Bonds of Love 40–1). Benjamin concentrates upon the intrapsychic, that is, psychoanalytical theories and criticizes them by means of intersubjective theories, which she

40 The Other

13.

14.

15. 16.

mainly derives from Critical Theory (Habermas). In this paper I use the same argument, but start from the other side, namely that of intersubjective theories, to show that the dominant theories of recognition forget the intrapsychic dimension, and thereby assume an autonomous self. Hegel also thinks about the paradox of dependence and independence when regarding humans as emotionally needy beings. The sphere of the family is characterized by ‘practical feeling’. For Hegel, the relationship between parents and children is central in the family, as a relationship in which the dependent child has to be raised to independence. How both relate is still open: Should we say that the phenomenological notion of the self as already open to, and relating to otherness, underlies the relational psychoanalytical account of the self? Does the ontological intersubjective self form the subject’s capacity while his or her psychoanalytic development forms a specific realisation of this capacity? Ricoeur develops this relationship between self and other in the eighth study of Oneself as Another, ‘The Self and the Moral Norm’ (203–39). Honneth also speaks about friendship: in the context of the sphere of love he mentions Winnicott’s claim that the ability to be alone, that is, to have a basic trust in oneself, is ‘the stuff of which friendship is made’ (104–5). As such, friendship does not seem to be structurally different from the mother– child relationship.

Bibliography Benhabib, Seyla. The Claims of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love. Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon, 1988. ——. Like Subjects, Love Objects. Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995. ——. Shadows of the Other. Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. New York & London: Routledge, 1998. Carens, Joseph. Culture, Citizenship, and Community. A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Dauenhauer, Bernard O. Paul Ricoeur. The Promise and Risk of Politics. Lanham.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Fraser, Nancy, and Axel Honneth. Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange. London: Verso, 2003. Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: the Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Translation J. Anderson. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Korteweg, Anna C. ‘De moord op Theo van Gogh: Gender, religie en de strijd over de integratie van migranten in Nederland’. Migrantenstudies 4.21 (2005): 205–23. Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship: a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Leeuwen, Bart van, Erkenning, identiteit en verschil. Multiculturalisme en leven met culturele diversiteit. Leuven/Leusden: Acco, 2003. Oliver, Kelly. Witnessing. Beyond Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Annemie Halsema 41 Parekh, Bhikhu. Rethinking Multiculturalism. Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Rajchman, John. The Identity in Question. New York & London: Routledge, 1995. Reagan, Charles E. ‘Personal Identity’. Ricœur as Another. The Ethics of Subjectivity. Eds R.A. Cohen & J.L. Marsh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 3–31. Ricœur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Translation K. Blamey. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ——. The Course of Recognition. Translation D. Pellauer. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 2005. Rogers, M.F. Multicultural Experiences, Multicultural Theories. New York: McGrawHill Inc, 1996. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989. ——. ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Multiculturalism. Examining the Politics of Recognition. Ed. A. Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 25–73.

2 Relational Identity: An Interpersonal Approach to the Body–Soul–Consciousness Problem Gabrielle Hiltmann

Introduction In everyday life the word identity is rarely used – although in many states one is expected to carry an identity card that designates one as the citizen of a specific country. It confirms one’s status as a subject under the law of this state, with rights and obligations. The specific link with this state founds the person’s rights in foreign countries in contexts determined by contracts between different states. With the identity card or the passport, the state assures that it really is this specific person, who is accepted as citizen and not another one who is not entitled to claim, for example, social rights. We touch here on the problems of (illegal) immigration and international crime with forged papers. To assure that it actually is this person who has the attributed status, and not some impostor, the state relies on certain criteria such as height, the colour of skin, hair and eyes, the date and place of birth. These criteria are not always sufficient to determine the identity of a person. The police also use finger prints and more recently, numerical checks of the iris. The question that arises here is, what concept of identity is at work in these practices? The notion of identity has multiple senses in diverse contexts, for example in logic, in psychology and in law. New techniques in biotechnology, especially the technique of cloning with the possibility of producing a genetically nearly identical being, challenge the traditional concept of personal identity. The concept of relational identity, which I put forward in this article, implies that a person constitutes her or his 42


identity through interaction with others, interaction which is, at the same time, enriching, challenging and, due to the unpredictable possibilities inherent to interaction, even perhaps threatening. I will begin to approach the question of personal identity with the notion of the ‘Who’, developed by Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition. This will allow for a sketch of the interpersonal aspects at work in the constitution of personal identity. Afterwards, I will enlarge H. Arendt’s concept in the direction of the corporeality of the Who. In order to understand the intercorporeality that I will argue is constitutive of the development of an individual person, I will refer to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s figure of the chiasm. When I started investigating my relationship to my identity and what my identity means, it was in the context of artists doing identitybased art. I envy and have a love for people who research in great detail history or some moment in history, say feminist history, and then present it in a way that’s somewhat didactic and matter-of-fact. And really with an effort, a sincere effort to throw meaning out to an audience that maybe isn’t conscious of this aspect of history. But I’m incredibly suspicious of that impulse too. I think that it’s all going to be filtered through one’s subjectivity and my subjectivity, as a young person, as a person at the end of the 20th Century, my subjectivity is of a sexual woman, as a person who makes sometimes really bad decisions There was no nobility in trying to do research like that and in trying to filter my sense of self through the lens of a larger history. It was going to get complicated and I liked the complications that I was finding. (Walker, Interview 2003).1

1. Hannah Arendt’s concept of the Who All the above mentioned criteria used by states to identify their citizens can be measured; yet, the identity of the identity card is a qualitative identity. We can approach it with the notion of the ‘What’. The qualities of this What can be stated explicitly; they can be shown, and we eventually can measure them.2 Nevertheless, this merely qualitative identity leads us astray in our search for the personal identity of the human being. Qualitative criteria cannot grasp the individual specificity of this particular person. H. Arendt calls this specificity the unique personality which is aimed at in the question: Who are you? The unique and personal Who escapes all attempts to grasp it. There is no technology, be it the most refined, which could account for the Who. It

44 The Other

escapes all control – even that of the person herself. We have to attend to this subversive character of the Who with all its implications in order to see what the concept of relational identity means. The personal Who escapes our own attempts to seize it. There is an anarchic moment at the heart of each person, something that resists rules and norms. ‘Il ne se laisse pas avoir’3 – as they say in French. This means, the Who is not in a possessive relation either to anyone else or to us. ‘Who’ is the question pronoun used for the nominative. The nominative implies the Latin nomen, which signifies name. The Who asks for the name. But the paradox of the Who is that we cannot name it. We cannot define it. It is not possible to put limits – which is the literal sense of to define – on that which is at the core of our identity. With the concept of the Who, H. Arendt indicates a blind spot in Western philosophy.4 In quest of essences, philosophers traditionally ask the ‘what-is question’. The response to this question defines the essence by abstracting from the individual and the concrete. Nonetheless, the question ‘Who are you?’ has not been asked in philosophy. It seeks the individual. By reflecting on the Who H. Arendt challenges Aristotle’s (disputable) claim that the individual can neither be said nor thought. Thus, questioning the Who leads towards a realm where no definition is possible. What are the implications of this approach for philosophy? Philosophy has to reflect on that which is not stabilized by a definition. It has to be open to that which is always changing and to reflect on the impact of change on our existence and our thought. In this perspective definitions do not cover all reality, but are in some respects a helpful means of orientation.5

Can there be an expertise in this inexpressible, indefinable Who? The Who escapes us, but sometimes others can see it, feel it. H. Arendt argues that it shows itself as the daimon in Greek antiquity. According to myth, a daimon follows a person throughout her life, looking over the shoulders of her or his protégée. So the daimon can be seen by others but not by the person herself (Arendt, The Human Condition 179–80). The daimon in Greek mythology, and in the philosophy of Plato, especially in the Symposium, is a being that is neither human nor divine. It moves between these two distinct and describable spaces. It opens up an inbetween space that escapes dichotomous definition. This means that the daimon of a person’s identity cannot be defined. Despite the possibility that others can see the daimon, it is not possible to take hold of this unique Who through language (Arendt, The Human Condition


181). We cannot say what the Who is, and we cannot name it.6 There is a limit to our desire to say things, to name qualities. Nevertheless, it may be possible to catch a glimpse of that Who in the way it shines through in what we say about another person. As the Who cannot be approached directly, we have to find indirect ways to come to know the inexpressible of the other and ourselves. This ineffable Who can be seen in a person, in the way s/he walks, s/he touches, s/he smiles, s/he speaks. It shows up in all s/he does. It changes with a person as s/he grows up and becomes old – and it stays the same. We sometimes can see in the gesture of an adult a movement that recalls the child s/he was. This is another paradoxical moment of the Who. The word identity is constituted by two Latin words: idem, which means the same, and ens which means being.7 So the word identity means a being that stays the same. But as we know from experience, the being of personal identity does not stay identically the same. It changes throughout our life. Nevertheless we know that it is in some sense the same being. So the Who allows us to recognize the others and ourselves as the same – a same that is not necessarily identical in the logical sense, in the sense of an eternal and unchanging entity. Of course we can recognize the numerical identity of something that changes and becomes different from the being it was; but H. Arendt’s concept of the Who aims not at a numerical identity. It points to the ‘specific uniqueness’ (Arendt, The Human Condition 181) that is linked to continuous change. The Who can be seized as a sort of not-yet-composed aria in the life-long development of unconstrained variations. The concept of the Who is useful in many respects. It is of importance to art and music historians, for example, who sometimes have the task of attributing a work. To do so they seek the Who of the author. Their eyes and ears are finely attuned so that they may seize the inconceivable. They draw from their experience in describing the artist’s technique, the specificity of her way of looking – visible in the artwork – the rhythm of her hand, or her unique way of using tonalities and reiterations. In this approach to the nuances of a style, the artist’s Who can appear for others who have the eye or the ear. In all these cases it seems to be possible to see something invisible. In the second part of the Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein reflects on this capacity to see the invisible, such as similarities, or relational qualities. The capacity to see the invisible is a necessary condition for seeing the Who of the other. By refining this capacity to see the invisible, it is possible to improve one’s knowledge of human nature and character. But as L. Wittgenstein says, this apprenticeship cannot be done at school. It is

46 The Other

experience that teaches us. Another person can give us some indications that may help us to find our way around in a field without general rules, but unlike mathematical rules, which can be understood intellectually, we need experience to apply our knowledge. Since there is no regular repetition of human behaviours, there is no technique for knowing human nature. People change throughout their lives especially when they are in contact with different persons. This is why someone we believe we know profoundly sometimes surprises us, disappoints us, and even shocks us.

The relation of the Who to the body Hannah Arendt says that the Who is invisible for the person herself, that it appears in a person’s acting and speaking.8 Furthermore, it is after death only that the accounts of her life by others can give an impression of the Who. For H. Arendt, the body does not participate in the Who. It belongs to the realm of the What.9 By approaching the Who uniquely through a person’s actions and through narration, Arendt neglects nonverbal interaction between people. Yet, since the Who is incarnated, it can be seen by others in the person’s gestures, her ways of walking, of speaking, and of being here. This implies a certain relation of the Who to the body – or in the case of art expertise – to the materially given object. H. Arendt herself scarcely reflects on questions of the body. Nevertheless, there is a paragraph in The Life of the Mind concerning ‘Body and soul; soul and mind’ (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 30–6). Its objective is to think the soul in its double relation to the body on the one hand and the mind on the other. In this context, H. Arendt remarks that conceptual ‘metaphorical language’ is well suited to building up abstract systems of thinking but is not apt to express ‘the life of our soul’ (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 31). The intensity of the soul speaks much more directly in ‘a glance, a sound, a gesture than in speech’ (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 31). This means that she is aware that some aspects of the Who shine through in bodily acts. Surprisingly, she nevertheless considers psychological experiences to be inevitably internal. The expression of anger, for example, is for H. Arendt already a reflective act. It shows only what we allow to be seen of our feelings. I do not think – as H. Arendt does – that our emotions are completely under our control. Some bodily reactions can, despite our control, escape and become visible for other people. We see somebody flush or tremble due to her feelings. These reactions allow a glimpse of the Who, its way of feeling love, anger or fear. And even the culturally different ways of expressing emotions,


which are a certain standardization of communicating inner states to others, allow a broad range of variations. The way a person acts in the differential space opened up by the cultural standard also gives an impression of her Who. Hannah Arendt’s main interest in The Life of the Mind is to understand the distinction of the mind as exterior to the body and the soul as internal to it. Due to the book’s focus on our reflective capacities, the question of how to understand the intrinsic relation of the emotions with the body and their verbal and corporeal expression is not further developed. Consequently, H. Arendt does not consider the bodily appearances of the Who. Her focus on narration for capturing the identity of the Who allows for the conclusion that Arendt conceives the Who as relational. It is by and through others that the Who of a person receives definite verbal shape. H. Arendt’s concept of identity is intersubjective but not intercorporeal. Her focus on intellectual and verbal aspects of the Who exclude not only the bodily dimension of an interactional constitution of identity but also the manifold ways of giving shape to it in art and music. A second point missing in Hannah Arendt’s concept of relational identity is a reflection on the possibility that aggression and violence emerge due to the fact that the other (at least as the other of oneself) is part of one’s own identity. Thus a relational concept of identity has to account for the possibility of positive and negative relations with the other and oneself as an other. Is there a link between H. Arendt’s lack of interest in the possibility of violence emerging from a concept of identity which is open to the other, and her blindness to the corporeal moments at work in interpersonality? As Anne Norton convincingly shows, interracial violence related to corporeal aspects at work in the hierarchical relational identity constitution of black and white Americans, is a blind spot in H. Arendt’s reflection.10 To better understand the twofold constitutive and limiting moment of intercorporeality and the possibility of violence for an interrelational concept of identity, let us turn to the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In the mid twentieth century he developed an ample reflection on the intercorporeal and intersubjective aspects of relational identity. His work is of specific importance since he was aware of structural problems which arise due to the shift from a traditional concept of a solipsist and monadic identity to a relational identity. His concept of intercorporeal intersubjectivity also allows taking into account the possibility of aggression and violence at work in the constitution of personal identity when it can not protect itself by monadic isolation

48 The Other

from the other, but has to partially integrate the other into the self. Violence in this mutual process can be double: It can start with the other imposing herself on the I, for example by not acknowledging the I’s otherness. On the other hand there is violence when the I dismisses the other, enclosing itself in the apparent protection of a monadic isolation. Nevertheless, M. Merleau-Ponty’s chiasmatic concept of interrelated identity also grounds the possibility of love and respect for the other in this ambiguous encounter of two corporeal beings. I knew that if I was going to make work that had to deal with race issues, they were going to be full of contradictions. Because I always felt that it’s really a love affair that we’ve got going in this country, a love affair with the idea of it [race issues], with the notion of major conflict that needs to be overcome and maybe a fear of what happens when that thing is overcome – And, of course, these issues also translate into [the] very personal: Who am I beyond this skin I’m in? beyond this place where I’ve been changed? (Walker, Interview 1999)

2. The body–soul–consciousness–mind problem: from H. Arendt to M. Merleau-Ponty – the shift of a philosophical problem Maurice Merleau-Ponty did not know Hannah Arendt’s work. Nevertheless, it is possible to develop a link between the two thinkers concerning their interest in what H. Arendt calls the ‘inconceivable personal identity’, the Who, and what M. Merleau-Ponty calls ‘individuation by differentiation’. M. Merleau-Ponty considers individuation by differentiation to be a life-long process in a relational field, which he names flesh.11 For H. Arendt it is action which weaves the ‘web of human relationships’, an ‘in-between which consists of deeds and words something which interest, which lies between people and therefore can relate and bind them’ (Arendt, The Human Condition 182). M. Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the Who is ontological, H. Arendt’s political. H. Arendt’s concept of the Who, which avoids the traditional ‘what-is question’, opens a space of reflection on the ‘ineffable individual’. The comparison of this concept with Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the self in his indirect ontology allows for a better understanding of what he aims at in his last writings. Ontology, as the ancient Greek word says – ontos means being, and logos means language and spirit – speaks of what is. This speaking of what exists is, in traditional ontology, structured by the ‘what-is question’. M. Merleau-Ponty’s indirect approach to ontological


problems tries to avoid this form of questioning. As soon as we speak of what is, we frame it in a specific logic. To avoid such a pre-structuration M. Merleau-Ponty proposes an indirect approach to ontology. His style of writing allows for grasping something he can not say directly. On the one hand, the aim to avoid the traditional what-is question shows an obvious proximity with H. Arendt’s thinking. On the other hand the two philosophies differ fundamentally concerning the conception of the relation of body, soul and consciousness. The question of how to conceptualize relational identity as intersubjectivity and intercorporeality necessitates a new and different approach to the body–consciousness problem. The modern philosophical tradition, starting with René Descartes, conceives body, soul and mind as separable. H. Arendt takes up this concept of a separable mind, but considers the soul to be intrinsically linked to the body. This means that she distinguishes soul and mind, a distinction that can be traced back to Aristotle’s concept of the soul. In his book, De anima, Aristotle differentiates an inferior soul with diverse levels and a superior soul with rational capacities. The different capacities of the somatic soul are: the vegetative, the nutritive, and the sensitive.12 Aristotle thinks that these levels of the so-called inferior soul grow up together with the body (Aristotle, De Anima I 406 b 27–28); they live and die with it. In contrast to the inferior soul, the rational soul, considered by Aristotle to be the highest soul, comes from outside and is immortal (Aristotle, De Anima II 414 a 34–414 b 18). Aristotle links this outside with the divine. Through the rational soul the human partakes of the divine. Referring to the Aristotelian position that thinking is a capacity without intrinsic relation to the body, H. Arendt is critical of M. Merleau-Ponty’s reflections regarding the chiastic cross-over of body, soul and consciousness. She cites from his last book The Visible and the Invisible: ‘there is a body of the mind, and a mind of the body, and a chiasm between them’, and she concludes: ‘Precisely the lack of such chiasmata or crossings over is the crux of mental phenomena’ (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 33).13 Nevertheless, there is also a positive reference to M. MerleauPonty’s late philosophy concerning the body–soul relation. H. Arendt cites approvingly the idea that the soul ‘encroaches upon it [the body], is hidden in it – and at the same time needs it, terminates in it, is anchored in it’ (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 33). H. Arendt’s criticism concerns M. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the interrelation of body and consciousness, but not his concept of the interrelation of body and soul. This has consequences for her concept of relational identity. Given her thesis that there is an intrinsic and inseparable body–soul relation, she conceives

50 The Other

this complex as inherently private and personal. It is only through the mind, separable from body and soul that the person has the capacity of interaction with the other by using language. For this reason H. Arendt conceives of relational identity as intersubjective but not intercorporeal. Alternatively, M. Merleau-Ponty conceives of both the consciousness and the soul as – in different ways – inherent poles of the bodily being of a person. Body, soul and consciousness are inseparable. This does not imply that the relations of body and soul, body and consciousness, soul and consciousness follow exactly the same pattern. As a consequence of the triple interrelation of body, soul and consciousness, M. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of relational identity links up intersubjectivity and intercorporeity. This is a fundamental difference to H. Arendt’s approach, which scarcely accounts for the corporeal incarnation of the Who – despite the fact that, as she says herself, it can be seen by others in the movements, the gestures, the smile, the way of looking of another person. Thus, we have to turn to M. Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on the (phenomenal) body and on intercorporeity linked up with intersubjectivity to reflect on the corporeal existence of the Who.

Philosophical starting points for a reflection on identity In the philosophical tradition the activity of thinking was dissociated from the other activities of the soul. This activity was situated in the mind or the consciousness. Consequently, instead of talking of a body– soul–mind problem it would also be possible to call it the body–soul– consciousness problem. Of course this distinction implies conceptual shifts. The problem of the body–soul–mind or consciousness-relation was opened in modern philosophy by René Descartes’ self-constitution of the I as thinking entity – a res cogitans.14 He conceived thinking to be a specific activity of the soul; there are others such as will and emotions, for example. At the end of the Meditations (Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 6th meditation § 15), R. Descartes makes a brief allusion to the relation of body and soul. But this relation is only developed in his last work The Passions of the Soul (Descartes, The Passions of the Soul §§ 30–44). Here he conceives the union of body and soul in the embracing realm of the passionate relation to the other. Interestingly, M. Merleau-Ponty uses the same procedure to conceive the relation of body and soul/consciousness, that is, to situate them in a more complex dimension – the dimension of the relation to the other.


In R. Descartes’ last work, thinking is related to the body in the passion of admiration. Admiration is the passion that is active in research. R. Descartes’ description of the passion of admiration conceives of it as a complex interplay of interaction with and independence of body and soul with the aim of keeping the intellectual activity of epistemology free from bodily inference. The soul comes in contact with the outside world through the body. Due to the perceptive contact with an external object, the soul experiences a strong astonishment that immobilizes the body. Now the thinking can become active and seize the unknown object according to clear and distinct rules. As the body is immediately immobilized, the independence of the res cogitans is confirmed. (On the other hand, the res extensa is also independent from the res cogitans. The world, the other person and the body are created by god. They exist independently of thinking.) Problems arise in an idealist philosophy when the res cogitans, conceived as consciousness, constitutes the res extensa. This philosophical conception is caught in a contradiction. It cannot think otherness in the form of another constitutive consciousness. This is the crucial point from which M. Merleau-Ponty starts. The question of otherness is in the centre of his late philosophy. He develops a thorough and differentiated critique of a certain philosophical tradition based in solipsism. In the approach of – as he calls it – reflective philosophy there is a narcissistic ‘I’ creating itself and the world who finds itself locked up in the immense mirrored cabinet of idealism. M. Merleau-Ponty traces the possibility of establishing idealist systems back to several basic assumptions, mainly to the Cartesian thesis that body, soul and mind are separable, and to the thesis that the being of the I is rooted in its capacity to think. M. MerleauPonty states rightly that an idealist philosophy that separates body and mind cannot consistently think another being capable of constitutive thinking. If the other is also a thinking I, the other is also constitutive of the supposedly absolutely constitutive I. The consequence is that the I would become constituted by the other. It would lose its absolute transcendental position. Idealist thinking is caught up in a fundamental contradiction. The impossibility of accounting for otherness is at the core of transcendental idealism. As a solution to the contradictory thesis of transcendental idealism, M. Merleau-Ponty proposes to anchor the constitution of the other and the I neither in the one nor the other but in an ongoing process of reversibility. The thesis that the interactional process is primary also distinguishes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of otherness from Emanuel Lévinas’ concept.15 For E. Lévinas it is the Other who is primordial, constitutive

52 The Other

of the I and the world. E. Lévinas’ philosophy of visage, in which the I exists as a person because it is faced by the Other, gives absolute priority to the Other who is in the last instance god. It is the response given first by the Other that calls the I to ask the question. In this mode, E. Lévinas’ philosophy is transcendental, rooted in the religious belief that god is and that this absolute authority created the world and man. In his philosophy the I is not a closed monad, but an ethical being, open to the other because of its primordial relation to the divine Other, which is eternal. M. Merleau-Ponty, on the contrary, aims at a philosophy of immanence that allows for change. He does not accept a transcendental, eternal and unchanging instance as foundational for his philosophy, neither in the form of a transcendental I nor in the form of a transcendental Other. In his approach it is neither the other nor the I, perceiving, feeling and thinking that is the basis for the interlinking of the two relatas. Both emerge in one as personal self and other in the course of their interaction. In contrast to transcendental idealism, in which the I constitutes the world and the other, and to E. Lévinas’ philosophy, where god creates the world and the I, M. Merleau-Ponty’s approach implies the – as he calls it – naïve assumption that body and world exist. This does not mean that body and world would be simple facts in a realistic understanding. They find their sense – which is open and never completely given – in an ongoing creative process. Thus Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy is neither idealist nor realist. The separation of body and mind is at the core of the difficulty in conceiving otherness in all transcendental approaches. Transcendental idealism, on the one hand, privileges the constitutive I not only over the other, but also over its own body. This body is constituted by the I. It has no rights of its own. E. Lévinas’ philosophy, on the other hand, accounts for the bodily relation of Other and I by their face-to-face encounter (Lévinas, ‘La trace de l’autre’ 195). Nevertheless, E. Lévinas’ concept of the body is hierarchical. The primordial Other assures the consciousness–soul–body union of the I. To develop a new, non-hierarchical concept of otherness, it is necessary to undercut the traditional separation of body, soul and mind as well as the dominance of the Other. This problem, how to integrate (pure) thinking in the conception of a corporeal being, which is constituted by reversible relations to the other (other person and world), M. Merleau-Ponty considers to be the most difficult task of his philosophical enterprise. To prepare the field in which this integration becomes possible he starts with a reflection on the corporeal capacity for openness to and non-


hierarchical integration of the other. This necessitates a new notion of the body.

3. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of relational identity as reversibility before I even started working with a narrative that circled around representations of blackness, representations of race, racial history, minstrelsy, and everything that I wanted to investigate, I was making work that was painterly and about the body and the metaphorical qualities of the body. So I always think about this work and think about history in terms of the body. And this act of excavating that’s been such a current and recurring theme (particularly in the histories of feminist artists, feminist writers, African-Americans, people of color) is about investigating and eviscerating this body of a collective experience, a history, sometimes to the point – at least in my reckoning – to the point of leaving nothing intact. (Walker, Interview 2003 [emphases G.H.] ) An interrelational concept of the body It is only in his last and unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible that Merleau-Ponty dissolves the subject–object opposition fundamental to the modern concept of the subject. The I is no longer a subject facing or confronting an alien object, and the other person is not only a subject for whom the I would be a mere object. Other and self, self and other are intermingled. The relation to the other is not a relation of a thinking subject to an other that is given in thought. The relation to the other person or the world is always already an affective relation where both are – as the word says – affected by the other.16 This is due to the self’s and the other’s corporeality. There is a contact with things and other persons which is not mediated by the intellect, and nevertheless does not exclude it. Projections came about as one of a series of steps. It’s an easy answer to the idea of projecting. Projecting one’s desires, fears, and conditions onto other bodies, which all of my work has tried to engage with using the silhouette. And it also created a space where the viewer’s shadow would also be projected into the scene so that maybe they would, you know, become captured and implicated in a way that is very didactic. Overhead projectors are a didactic tool, they’re a schoolroom tool. So

54 The Other

they’re about conveying facts. The work that I do is about projecting fictions into those facts. (Walker, Interview 2003) M. Merleau-Ponty conceives the constitutive intercorporeity of the person with other persons and the world through the figure of reversibility. It is this movement of folding back on itself through which there emerges a self in contact with itself and at the same time necessarily open to an other. He introduces this figure of reversibility through the constellation of the mutual touching of the two hands (MerleauPonty, The Visible and the Invisible 9/24). The bodily sensation of the touching can be distinguished from the reflective feeling (Empfindung), constitutive for the self. Yet, it is one and the same touching which opens towards both of these experiences. In the experience of one hand touching the other it is possible to become aware of the fact that both hands belong to the same body and to the same self. This constellation has several implications: 1) In this mutual crossingover the hands are not mere external objects, but by touching themselves they participate at the constitution of an ‘inner’ realm of self. 2) ‘Belonging to’ is a relational moment, which is not a simple given, but something more complex. Traditionally, the capacity to build up complexes, to discern connections and their structures, is considered to be a mental activity. M. Merleau-Ponty locates this awareness of the two hand’s belonging to the same body in the experience of a corporeal self-reflection. The consciousness of the belonging to the same body has so to speak grown out of the corporeal constellation. The body also has a sort of capacity for reflection. Of course, it is not the same as that of consciousness, but there is a relationship between these two capacities that links them. This differentiated connection of the two capacities undercuts the traditional body–mind distinction. 3) Connected with the relational moment of reversibility is another distinctive one. The I can differentiate between and at the same time link an outer, physical, and an ‘inner’, invisible realm of ‘feeling’ (better Empfinden), the dimension of the self.17 This invisible dimension of the self becomes accessible to the I and partially to others, by the I’s openness for the other.18 The ‘inner’ realm of ‘feeling’ (Empfinden), which appears in the process of an external sensation is, of course, not a physical space.19 It is another invisible dimension, which is, due to the distinction, inevitably linked with the experience of physical space and of perception in physical space.20 In this dimension of the self the body is not only an exterior perceptible thing, and consciousness is not a hidden, completely private dimension. Both partake of outer and inner, both are dimensions of perception and


feeling (Empfindung). The relating of another, a transcending dimension, with a given one without the possibility to separate them into two completely distinct entities, is characteristic for the figure of reversibility. Furthermore the figure of chiasm itself – modelled on the reversibility of the self-touching – can be transposed into different dimensions, linking different aspects in various ways. This concerns especially the contact between two or more people. Shaking hands, exchanging a glance are moments of a corporeal reversibility which opens towards a more complex interaction between the two participants. It is possible to grasp the personality of the other – her or his Who – through this corporeal contact, which allows for perceiving the imperceptible. This means that the I ‘feels’ (empfindet) the other person as a being with an inner, invisible realm of self.21 Obviously there is no common body linking up different persons which would allow for ‘feeling’ (empfinden) the other as one ‘feels’ (empfindet) oneself. The dimension in which people interact is that of culture and language. It is the dimension of intersubjectivity. Culture and language structure one’s feelings and the way one ‘feels’ (empfindet) others. M. Merleau-Ponty calls this ambiguous dimension, because it grows out of a corporeal reversibility and integrates the imperceptible, the dimension of the flesh. The flesh is neither completely public nor completely private. It is the dimension wherein, through perception, language and thinking, it is possible to approach the other’s imperceptible. The flesh is a transcendent, in several ways general, realm. The element of the flesh is built up by the mutually constitutive reversibility of intercorporeity and intersubjectivity. The concept of intercorporeity, conceived as reversibility, is a fundamental ontological concept in M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. It is not limited to occasional corporeal interactions between two or more people, but constitutive for the development of the human person. Although M. Merleau-Ponty introduces this new relational figure of reversibility by drawing on the reversibility of the mutual perceiving and ‘feeling’ (empfinden) of the two hands, it is obvious, that the experience of self-touching is neither temporally nor logically prior to the experience of intercorporeity. The person who experiences the self-touching, always already was in mutual corporeal as well as emotional contact with the other. The experience of intercorporeal contact with the other and the experience of reversibility through touching or looking are themselves intertwined. Both experiences are concurrent, mutually holding the other. This means that one’s own body emerges as one’s own in close interaction with the other. It is never an objectified body, neither for the I, nor for the other. The individual body is not just a given

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for the I. It is the other’s touch and the other’s view that makes the I specifically conscious of its own body as tangible and visible for an other person. This becoming conscious of being perceptible through contact with an other changes the corporeal being of the I. The body itself becomes part of a general realm – the flesh – not as an object, but as a being with a different sense – a sense for others. The I becomes conscious that through its body others have contact with it as a self. M. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body is intrinsically interrelational. By transferring the problem of the body–soul relation into another dimension – that of interpersonality – Maurice Merleau-Ponty transforms the traditional dichotomy. Since the person is not a monad, but a bodily-interrelated being, in his philosophy the dimension of emotions and ‘feelings’ (Empfindungen) is necessarily linked up with that of the body and its intercorporeity. Soul and body form a reversible constellation of neither one nor two. It is important to note that the body and the relation between different bodies is not conceived as a primordial ground, but as a field of forces within which bodies develop as changing and interrelated corporealities. They interact in the realm of the flesh. This constellation is comparable to the solar system which has no specific site in the universe, nothing on which it rests. Rather, it holds itself in the elliptic movement of the planets turning around two poles, one of them being vacant. In this movement, centrifugal and centripetal forces create an equilibrium that holds the system through its being in motion. The relation to the other is – metaphorically speaking – located in a comparable system of forces. Neither I nor the other are founded as stable entities. Human bodies themselves change during the course of their lives, and even one’s own body becomes an other. It is through the body as a constantly altering non-locus that the Who of a person appears. The interrelational body constitutes the écart (which means in one a strut and a chasm) where this identity that is never identical with itself escapes the grip of the What. It is this identity in motion that the I lives all its life in its specific and individual way. And it is due to the fact that others also experience this continuous change through their bodies, that they are able to catch a glimpse of the other’s Who. This leads us to question the implications of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity for the concept of the Who. The Who emerges with its corporeality out of these complex and lifelong interactions taking place between the I and the other – other persons, things, the world. Intercorporeity is the unfounded given necessity for the development of the Who. But intercorporeity in itself is not sufficient to explain the concept of the Who. What is needed still is to understand how


intercorporeity is linked up with intersubjectivity. Before questioning the link between these two concepts, the concept of intersubjectivity has to be developed in reference to M. Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy.

An intersubjective concept of the person Given this new intercorporeal concept of the body, the body–soul–mind problem itself is transposed. To solve the problem of the intrinsic interrelation of body and soul, M. Merleau-Ponty draws the focus away from the subject and its relation to its body, and towards the dimension of the corporeal interrelation of different persons. It is only when we start with the corporeal reversibility of the other with the I that the question of the relation of soul and body can be settled through the partial integration of the other into the constitution of the I. Thus it is in a more complex dimension, that the connection between body and soul becomes evident. To understand the reversibility of body, soul, and consciousness we have to proceed in a similar way. The focus on the subject and its capacity to think has to be enlarged in the direction of the intellectual interaction of several persons. This interaction takes place in the dimension of culture and language. They form a sort of general space which individuals partake of in different ways. The general realm of language and culture is itself constituted by the interactions of the participating persons. In M. Merleau-Ponty’s concept, the relation of constitution between the general realm and the individual intellectual exchanges taking place within it, is itself structured as reversibility. Language and cultural patterns form a common dimension in which communication takes place. The common realm nevertheless also implies divergences.22 This is due to the openness of the given sense-structures. New and unforeseeable meanings can be transmitted by using the given instruments. For this reason, all participants are constantly challenged to put into question their acquired sense-systems and to open them up towards different or new possibilities. Understanding the other and the different vision with which s/he confronts the I, requires the I to turn back on its own assumptions and to eventually change them. This turning back is a reflective moment which confirms the I’s individuality and at the same time allows it to have some distance from itself. The I opens in one and the same move towards its own otherness and towards a general dimension of meaning through interaction with the other in the common realm of culture and language.

58 The Other

The question then arises: How does M. Merleau-Ponty structure the necessary openness for the otherness of intersubjectivity? In his ontology I and other do not form an oppositional couple as in dialectical concepts. The other is ‘born [on/] from my side’ (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible 59/86). In this constellation the I and the other face, side by side, both a common and a different world. However, due to the chiastic interrelation of their different perspectives, they can exchange their point of view and act in comparable ways. Nevertheless, their perspectives are not and never will be identical. There is space for disagreement.23 In M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, the encounter with the other is also an experience of passivity and estrangement. Faced with the experience of being seen by the other, the I experiences its own alterity. Although the other is not in front of the I, but lateral, its presence, its looking at things from her or his point of view at the I’s side is a fundamental calling into question of the I and its vision: ‘the intervention of the foreign spectator does not leave my relationship with the things untouched’ (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible 58/85). The looking of the other at the I and the world is a second opening – comparable to the one the I experiences. As it is not identical with the I’s view, the look of the other can give rise to (a potentially violent) divergence between the I and the other. Furthermore, the I can become conscious of its own incoherence through the look of the other. This means that the I’s own situation is not necessarily clear to itself. The I integrates an otherness in itself. There are aspects of the self the I misses and that can be seen from another’s view. It is exactly due to the fact that the I is not opposite the other that the other is the opening towards an ‘internal’ otherness, to which the I itself does not have access. This otherness, which escapes the I and the other, is excluded by the traditional idealistic concept which conceives I and other as an oppositional couple, making one the negation of the other. This plus–minus logic constitutes a totality without space for a more complex structure of otherness. Relational identity, on the contrary, cannot be caught up in dichotomous structures. The ineffable Who shines through in this escaping otherness. And, what I would ordinarily say about these pictures is that when I was coming along in Georgia, I became black in more senses than just the kind of multicultural acceptance that I grew up with in California. Blackness became a very loaded subject, a very loaded thing to be – all about forbidden passions and desires, and all about a history that’s still living, very present the shame of the South and the


shame of the South’s past; its legacy and its contemporary troubles. Race issues are always at the heart of these matters. (Walker, Interview 1999) It is not in the solipsist realm of consciousness in which the I can confirm its existence, but in the challenge of the interaction with the other. The general dimension of intersubjectivity situates a space of mutual reversibility in which the I, through the interaction with the other, constitutes itself as an individual. The constitutive relation of self and other proceeds by different vehicles: perception, sexuality, language, thought. All of them imply a fundamental openness for the other and the new, the unforeseen. The general realm that opens up in the reversibility of different visions is not the sum of all concrete intersections of individual persons. It is not universal but general. This means that it is not transcendental in the traditional philosophical sense. Language and culture offer structuring patterns for experiences. These patterns are continually reiterated and changed, and through this process immanent in socio-cultural practices. They can be lived – maybe in a similar way, maybe in a very different way. It is only necessary that these experiences are comparable in one or several perspectives. Sexuality for example can be lived in many different ways. There are individual differences, but also social and cultural differences. The experience also changes with different partners. It is an intimate experience. But even here we are not in a realm where the general other has no access. Our sexual experiences are influenced by cultural and social images of sexuality. The other is always already there. The driving force – there’s a lot of them. They’re crashing into one another a lot of the time. I wanted to, at first, investigate interracial desire. I think it maybe started from that. And the ways in which it seemed, in my life, to challenge set stereotype notions about blackness and whiteness and how they’re operating in Georgia, where I was. (Walker, Interview 1999) The general realm of intersubjectivity is not a uniform totality in which the I and the other become anonymous. It is not a coherent dimension, but gives space for a multiplicity of differences. Consequently the interlinking of two and more persons through reversibility is not consistent, and never complete. It does not build up a totalitarian system that imprisons the participants. The constellation of multiple enlacements of the other and the I, which also include

60 The Other

differences, opens towards that which escapes them. What escapes the interrelation of other and I is neither an enclosing dimension nor a complete other which could be understood as a negation of the interrelation itself. What escapes the interrelation of other and I is punctuating the flesh of their interrelation in the form of a multiplicity of écarts (in one struts and chasms), which at the same time hold together the common dimension of the flesh and open it.

Flesh – the reversibility of intersubjectivity and intercorporeity The generality of intersubjectivity is a social and historical generality. It cannot account directly for the realm of pure thinking. Idealist philosophy claims that this realm of consciousness is not subject to corporeal compulsions and constraints. It develops a philosophy of self-constitution of the thinking I. Hannah Arendt takes up this claim that there can be complete independence of the mind from the body against M. Merleau-Ponty’s argument for the reversibility of body and consciousness. M. Merleau-Ponty himself acknowledges that the question of linking pure ideas with the body is the crucial point of his philosophy of the flesh. How is it – if it is – possible to account for reversibility between body, soul and consciousness? Pure thinking and the physical body cannot be interrelated directly. The concepts themselves have to be transformed and there have to be intermediary links constituting a common realm in which the relation of consciousness and body can be conceived. In M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, the concept of the body is not the Cartesian concept of the res extensa. The body is a thing in between things; but it is also an interrelational body enlaced in an intercorporeity with the other. The same is the case for the concept of consciousness. It is not a monadic res cogitans that could not communicate with others, themselves constitutive consciousnesses. This means that both constituents of the traditional body–consciousness problem are transformed into something else, in relational entities. Both concepts always already imply otherness. As relational entities, they can interrelate with each other constituting by this a living person. It is through the process of reversibility that a moment of thinking becomes active in intercorporeity and a corporeal moment in intersubjectivity. Both moments are subliminally at work in the other one. This double reversibility transfers them into a new dimension – the flesh. The concept of the flesh is used by Merleau-Ponty to gather together all the different forms of reversibilities, from concrete ones such as the touching


of the two hands, to more abstract ones such as art and its sense. The flesh nevertheless does not constitute a closed set of reversibilities. It is not a synthesis (as in dialectics) that links together intercorporeity and intersubjectivity. The flesh itself is constituted by the open process of unforeseeable reversibilities. What is the status and the sense of the two concepts in question which are interrelated in the dimension of the flesh? To answer this question M. Merleau-Ponty proceeds in three steps: First he integrates the physiological body through the concept of institution into the cultural realm, then he distinguishes between embodied ideas, and pure ideas and finally in a third step he argues for the integration of pure ideas into intersubjectivity. It is notable that Merleau-Ponty does not explain the general dimension of signification by the body. He carefully avoids grounding the symbolic in nature and its specific laws. The body is considered a given with the status of a ‘primordial institution’ (MerleauPonty, La prose du monde 63 fn.). Institution is an ontological concept. It transforms nature in culture and society. This means the institution is the instance of a qualitative difference. It is at once a locus of distinction and encounter. The institution gives space to reversibility. 1) M. Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the body is neither idealist nor materialist. The body is in itself double – a thing between things, and the perceiving and feeling body that is open towards When he says that the human body signifies in all it does, this means that the body transcends its physiological given. This transcendence is a moment of institution that transfers a given into a new dimension – the flesh. Through this the transformed entity acquires a different sense without losing its previous characteristics (Merleau-Ponty, La prose du monde 60). The reversibility of the institution opens the interrelated body to a specific sort of generality.

This is a picture of an 18th century silhouette-making device, a little window to the world. While I was working on drawings, keeping a notebook, I was really searching for a format to sort of encapsulate, to simplify complicated things – it’s very difficult to look at words and images over and over again. And some of it spoke to me as: ‘it’s a medium – historically, it’s a craft – and it’s very middle-class’. It spoke to me in the same way that the minstrel show does – it’s middle class white people rendering themselves black, making themselves somewhat invisible, or taking on an alternate identity because of the anonymity and because the shadow also speaks about so much of our psyche. You

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can play out different roles when you’re rendered black, or halfway invisible. (Walker, Interview 1999) 2) Ideas can take form in music, art and literature. The idea of love in art or music for example is linked to a specific matter: notes, rhythm, melody in music, colour relations, structures, brushwork in a painting. The concrete artistic design makes visible and audible the abstract, invisible idea. It gives a concrete form to it that can differ from other forms of the idea of love in other artworks or pieces of music. These ideas are not accessible for supposed beings without bodies, for transcendental subjects. It is only corporeal beings who can feel and understand them, who can have the fleshy experience of them. The creation of artistic sense is anchored in the body. It is not the mind that creates it. In the interaction with the artwork sense emerges out of an attitude of creative receptivity. The body is part of the world it perceives. But in the process of the expression of this perception – for example in painting – a new world takes form. It is the crossing of perception with expression and culture that builds up this new sense. 3) The general realm of pure thinking on the other hand is only indirectly linked up with the body through the dimension of intersubjectivity. In M. Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy pure ideas are part of the invisible. They are ideal rules of orientation. Algorithms, for example, are rules of how to proceed in formal mathematical systems. Rules in logic have a similar status. To follow rules in logic as to follow any rules takes place in the intersubjective dimension. None can follow a rule only once and by herself. Rule following implies repetition, and a community. This also concerns pure ideas. Logical and mathematical rules are rules due to the fact that they are taken up and repeated by members of the scientific community. This taking up of rules by a community is a form of reversibility. The concrete act orientates itself towards the idea of the rule or the set of rules and by doing this it reinforces the rule together with its setting as well as its acceptance in the community. This means that even pure ideas of logic and mathematics are part of the intersubjective dimension. Moreover, there is no direct communication between two minds. New insights in science, even in mathematics and logics, have to be transmitted to the scientific community by using and transforming the acquired language of the discipline. This specific language is rooted in everyday language and through it linked with the relational body. Therefore, even the abstract languages of mathematics and logic imply, at a basic level, the expressivity of the body and its intercorporeity.


The abstract dimensions of intersubjectivity, for example language and thinking, constitute themselves in the realm of the flesh through an abstract reversibility. The ability of language to turn back on itself in order to reflect its limits and possibilities for producing new meaning with that which is given constitutes an open structure of sense. Furthermore, it is possible to reflect on this process through language. This is a moment of the reversibility. Abstract systems of thinking in mathematics or logics are also constituted by a form of reversibility (MerleauPonty, L’institution. La passivité 89–104). This allows for reflection on their possibilities and limits of (self)organization. Despite the impression that abstract systems form a closed transcendental totality, they do develop and furthermore, their future developments cannot be predicted according to given structures. Once a new systematic level is attained, it is through a movement of reversibility that new mathematical or logical systems integrate older ones into their realm as special cases.24

4. Conclusion This essay began with the question of how to conceive relational identity. The reference to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the Who allowed us to move away from a qualitative as well as an essentialist approach of identity as What. The concept of the Who undercuts the traditional philosophical approach of definition. An answer to the question ‘Who is she?’ is not a definition of that person. It is a narration which always implies the person telling it. The identity of the Who is intersubjective. Since the Who not only shines through in language but also appears in a glance, a gesture, the way a person walks, it was necessary to question the intercorporeal moments of the Who. This necessitated a critique of the mind–body dichotomy developed by philosophy and further reflection on how to conceive a concept of identity which integrates otherness. It is through M. Merleau-Ponty’s last philosophy that a way out of the traditional aporia was found. His anthropological reflection on a new body–soul–consciousness conception integrates a different philosophical dimension, which is inevitably linked to that of ontology. By an indirect ontological approach he tries – starting with perception and the body – to approach the invisible caught up in the visible. One of these invisibles is the Who of personal identity. His indirect ontology does not focus on the being of persons, things or the world as perceptible entities. He aims at the invisible, the imperceptible in-between them. This in-between is the realm of the flesh, wherein the constitution of the

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identity of a person takes place through a complex process of multiple mutual reversibilities. This multiplicity of incongruent relations does not constitute a unity. The flesh is a dimension, in itself ambiguous, giving space to unexpected developments. The linking up of bodily and abstract moments inevitably implies tensions. The ineffable and invisible Who is an aspect of this interlinking of several incompatible moments, which nevertheless constitute the living person. The Who lives in the flesh. Partaking at bodily, emotional and intellectual features, it shines through in the reversible contact with the other. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflection on the otherness of the self offers a convincing new conception of the body– soul–consciousness relation. It implies a new concept of individuality in which the person develops a relational identity through interaction with the other. In M. Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the relational person, it is neither the body nor consciousness that are founding. The (physiological) body is a necessary given for the constitution of the person, but it can not constitute the person in its emotional and intellectual complexity. Consciousness in itself does not found the person either. The person is not just a thinking subject. Body and consciousness are transformed into relational concepts, participating in the complex interrelations of different realms which constitute the person as an intercorporeal and intersubjective being. Based on the new thought-figures of reversibility and interrelation, M. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy allows us to formulate a fundamental critique of the traditional conception of the subject with its reduction to mental phenomena, and to conceive at the same time a convincing new concept of the person which integrates otherness.

Annexe: a methodological reflection Experience is the store of our thinking and writing, namely in philosophy and especially in phenomenology. The progress from experience to a coherent reflection on experience is complex and requires different steps. Hannah Arendt describes this proceeding as follows: Before we raise such questions as what is happiness, what is justice, what is knowledge, and so on, we must have seen happy and unhappy people, witnessed just and unjust deeds, experienced the desire to know and its fulfilment or frustration. Furthermore, we must repeat the direct experience in our minds after leaving the scene where it took place. To say it again, every thought is an after-thought. By


repeating in imagination, we de-sense whatever had been given to our senses. And only in this immaterial form can our thinking faculty now begin to concern itself with these data. (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 87)

Thinking and conceptual activities are intrinsically grounded in experience. (It is only in logics, which form a coherent system of thinking following unequivocal rules, that the connexion to experience is nearly inexistent.) But thinking and conceptual activities are not experience itself. In difference to Hannah Arendt’s conception of de-sensing, what has been given to the senses, M. Merleau-Ponty insists on the necessity of integrating sensible experience in the expression of thought. This is a phenomenological quest. It becomes obvious in his literary style of writing where he uses metaphors and ambiguities to cope with the multiplicity of meanings and aspects of experience. Nevertheless, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work also is philosophical, with a stratum of abstract and general reflections. Philosophy’s task is to propose general reflections which allow for a different orientation than that of literature or art. This general approach is not only useful, but also necessary. However, the process of abstraction from the concrete given implies several risks, particularly: 1) The risk of an inadequate generalization of one’s own perspective. It is well known how dangerous it is to generalize from one or even several individual experiences to a system used to explain experience in general. Feminist research criticized this tendency in traditional maledominated research. Being critical about the problems of a general discourse however does not imply abandoning the attempt to open up a general – not universal – realm, in which different and diverging experiences can be named and communicated. It was and is philosophy’s task to open up such spaces of differentiated reflection of our existential givens, constituting by this patterns of orientation. 2) The process of abstraction is also a process of desensualization. Philosophy produces objects of reflection which – in Hannah Arendt’s concept – are not related to our body. This may be true in some cases but with respect to many philosophical problems, the production of immaterial objects of reflection implies an undue reduction. Questions of identity are such a subject. They concern the person with all her being, with body, consciousness and emotions. As Maurice MerleauPonty’s late philosophy shows, it is possible to open the abstract realm towards corporeal experience.

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As a result of these methodological reflections I deliberately introduced an artist’s view on identity in my paper to provide a different stratum of reflection on identity. Throughout this article which reflects on structural moments in the development of relational identity, I placed citations from interviews with Kara Walker. I purposely do not interweave these excerpts into a coherent whole with my theoretical reflections. The reason for this is, that I did not want to take her differentiated and intelligent reflections, with all their qualities of expression, as a (critical) paradigm for a concept of relational identity. On the contrary, I tried to build up a kind of clear contrast. Kara Walker’s experiences as an African American artist, working on questions of identity against the background of the racist history of the United States, are clearly not my experience as a white European researcher in philosophy. It is neither her nor my experience that is generalized in this attempt to understand the process of building up a personal identity in relations with others. Further, I clearly do not wish to illustrate general reflections starting from close readings of two different white philosophers by referring to a black artist’s work. This would imply the danger of reducing the artist’s work to a mere ornamentation, or example. The juxtaposition of the two spheres – philosophy and art – remains unmediated. Kara Walker’s statements and her artistic work are clearly situated socio-culturally and historically. In this way they form a contrast to the general approach of philosophy. I hope that this might allow for a critical analysis of the philosophical sketch, and a deepening and diversification of the possibilities and limits to express and give form to our experiences. I intended that this article would open up a space of resonance and maybe dissonance, in which the works of the two philosophers I refer to in my article are tuned differently. And I hope there will be rifts that may appear more clear-cut through this process. Otherness embodied and otherness that embodies herself and otherness that plays at otherness. But who is she? Is she one or all of the characters in the work? (Walker, Interview 2003)

Notes 1. Kara Walker is an African American artist, born in 1969, who works on the political question of black and white identities in the United States of America at the end of the twentieth century. The aim of the juxtaposition – in the form of a close confrontation – of quotes from Kara Walker with

Gabrielle Hiltmann 67 the at least threefold philosophical reflection of this article, is to underline the difficulty of approaching the concept of identity. There are several ways of speaking about identity, and of course the abstract and general way of philosophy does violence to the individual and personal way of speaking about one’s identity. Art is another way of investigating the concept of identity. It does not stay imprisoned in an individual solipsism. It manages to touch other people by opening a sort of general realm which is not abstract. Thus, the artistic reflection on identity allows for an alternative to the philosophical discourse. The second reason for inserting quotes from Kara Walker into my text is the fact that the socio-historical background of the speaking and writing person is also present in the general and abstract approach of philosophy. The white Swiss woman I am cannot get out of her socio-cultural and historical setting; but I can try to open it up for other voices. I hope that by this process, an inbetween space of multiple resonances can develop, one that allows also for hearing the violence inherent in this essay that sketches a reflection on relational identity. By shaping non-hierarchical relational figures in the general way philosophy can offer, I can not speak for others, but I can contribute to a realm where other voices can be heard with respect. (See also the annex at the end of this article.) 2. I use ‘qualitative’ here in the sense of the category of quality as developed by Aristotle. Qualities, in difference to essence, can be seen for example in the figure or the shape. You can compare things and persons in respect to their qualities. We can ask for characteristic qualities of a person, which distinguish them from others. Nevertheless, as H. Arendt says, the answer to this question does not allow us to seize the Who of this person. Physical qualities of a person can be measured. Here a quantitative aspect is taken into account to distinguish one person from another. Standardized measures can be verified worldwide. This is the reason why states use these qualities to identify a person. Bonnie Honig, referring to H. Arendt’s distinction between the What and the Who, characterizes the identity of the What as constative and shows in what sense it is possible to find a performative identity of the Who in Hannah Arendt’s work (Honig 149–56). 3. ‘It can’t be caught’, ‘It can’t be had’, would be literal translations of this French expression, which means, that you cannot get hold of it. The sentence is a pun playing with the multiple sense of avoir (to have, to possess, to be caught). 4. Hannah Arendt herself also had her blind spots, for example, concerning the situation of black Americans. This is one of the reasons why I confront her reflections on identity – to which I refer generally in a positive way – with Kara Walker’s notes. Concerning Hannah Arendt’s blind spot Anne Norton says clearly: ‘Arendt quotes, approvingly, Tocqueville’s judgment that the threat to the American nation arose not from slavery, but ‘from the presence of a black population upon its territory’ (Crises of the Republic, New York 1972, pp. 89–90). She recalls the preference for segregation and deportation among the abolitionists. She forgets those abolitionists – and certain opponents of abolition – who argued for integration. Arendt recalls Lincoln’s efforts to persuade African Americans to accept colonization. She is indifferent to the African American insistence on remaining. These, and other events

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5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

and practices that might suggest that African Americans claimed America, that they made that territory, that history, that complex of ideas their own through labour and will, are elided. Historical agency, cultural work, and constitutional will are denied to African Americans. Arendt’s readers are to remember African Americans only as slaves’ (Norton 255). Change always challenges philosophy, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the insight into historicity lead G.W.F. Hegel to develop a philosophy of historicity by using a figure of thought which reflects change: dialectics. ‘The moment we want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he necessarily shares with others like him; we begin to describe a type or “character” in the old meaning of the word, with the result that his specific uniqueness escapes us’ (Arendt, The Human Condition 181). A reflection on identity always activates ontological problems. ‘In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and the sound of the voice’ (Arendt, The Human Condition 179). See: Zerilli 181. This, as far as I know, is the only article investigating Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the body, and on gender differences. See Norton 255. Flesh is a ‘spatial and temporal pulp where the individuals are formed by differentiation’, (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible 114/153 (the first number refers to the English translation, the second to the French original) ). Aristotle’s conception of the soul raises many questions. How can one understand this double distinction? Is it one soul with a superior and an inferior level? Why then can the higher soul of the mind be separated from the lower soul at the end of life? Does this suppose that there are two souls, if so, how are they linked? What is the status of the three different levels of the lower soul? Are they different souls? There is no definitive answer to these questions as Aristotle himself is not clear about these points. Her next citation from M. Merleau-Ponty’s text does not prove, as she believes, that he himself recognized the lack of crossing over between consciousness and body. His reflection on the fundamentality of thought as bottomless, as an abyss, on the contrary confirms his conception of the crossing over between body and consciousness. It is the chiasm between body and consciousness which founds thought in the abyss at work in the core of the crossover. This self-constitution only concerns the I as thinking, not the person as a union of res extensa and res cogitans. This union is created by god. It is important to note, that the self-constitution of the Cogito takes place in a time and vision of the world which still allows for conceiving the person as a divine creation. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority; as well as the differentiated description of E. Levinas’ notion of transcendence and its importance for an ethical concept of the sex/gender relation by Gürtler.

Gabrielle Hiltmann 69 16. See Olkowski concerning the moment of desire in our perceptive relation to the world and the others. 17. This ‘inner’ realm of self in M. Merleau-Ponty is not the same as in H. Arendt. In difference to H. Arendt M. Merleau-Ponty does not consider that the ‘inner’ is completely private and inaccessible to others. The ‘inner’ dimension of self develops in the intertwinement with the other, in the mutual process of ‘feeling’ and ‘being felt’ (empfinden und empfunden werden). 18. This openness for the other even implies that the things outside of the I are felt as inside (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible 137–8/181). It is important to note here, that M. Merleau-Ponty regularly refers to the German words empfinden and Empfindung, as there is no French word for this experience of the flesh, where the outside things are also inside the I, and where the I ‘feels’ itself empfunden. English has no word for this either. Feeling, empathy and emotion translate fühlen und Gefühl, two words which have to be distinguished from empfinden and Empfindung. It is due to the ambiguous status of empfinden and Empfindung that the co-institution of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ and based on this their intertwinement is possible. In the Phenomenology of Perception M. Merleau-Ponty speaks of language as the expression of ‘the intimate being’ as well as the relation to the world and the others (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 229/229). Thus language has a similar status for the chiastic intertwinement of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ as Empfindung. 19. The possibility of distinguishing ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ based on their coinstitution grows out of the experience of the chiastic touching or seeing of two persons. In this experience it is possible to distinguish in one and the same process the perception of the other and the Empfinden (‘feeling’) of her. Furthermore in this reversible interaction, her way of perceiving the I as well as the way she empfindet (‘feels’) can be empfunden (‘felt’) by the I. In this chiastic interweaving the two dimensions ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ do not form a contradictory couple. They transgress one into the other. 20. In The Visible and the Invisible this ‘inner’ dimension is part of the flesh. M. Merleau-Ponty assumes that the visible and the tangible can see and touch themselves from the inside in the anonymity of the flesh. (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible VI 123/164). 21. ‘I do not content myself any more to feel [empfinden]: I feel [empfinde] that one feels [empfindet] me, and that one feels [empfindet] me while I am feeling [empfinde], and in this, the fact itself, that one feels [empfindet] me can be felt [empfunden] ’ (Merleau-Ponty, La prose du monde 187, my translation). 22. ‘ there would not be a common world, without a multiplicity of subjects, their relation implying not only that every one of them is different from the other, but that his identity does not disappear in the communication’ (Lefort 20–1, my translation). 23. More about the (im)possibilities of communication and understanding, in: Hiltmann. 24. The theory of relativity, for example, integrates Euclidian geometry as a special case.

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Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958 ——. The Life of the Mind. One volume edition. San Diego, New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt Inc. [without year or copyright]. Aristotle. De Anima. Edited, with introduction and commentary, by Sir David Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. Descartes, René. The Passions of the Soul. Translated and annotated by Stephen Voss. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., c. 1989. ——. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by Donald A. Cress. 4th edn. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., c. 1998. Gürtler, Sabine. ‘Eine Metaphysik der Geschlechterdifferenz bei Emmanuel Lévinas.’ Phänomenologische Forschungen 1(1996): 22–43. Hiltmann, Gabrielle. ‘Grenzen des Verstehens – Ansätze einer Hermeneutik des geschlechtlichen Anderen.’ Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik. Eds Linda, Fisher, Silvia, Stoller, Veronica, Vasterling. Reihe: Orbis Phaenomenologicus. München: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005. 113–38. Honig, Bonnie. ‘Toward an Agonistic Feminism.’ Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Ed. Bonnie Honig. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1995. 135–66. Lefort, Claude. Préface. L’institution. La passivité. Notes de cours au Collège de France (1954–1955). By Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Paris: Bélin, 2003. 5–28. Levinas, Emmanuel. ‘La trace de l’autre’, in: Emmanuel, Levinas (ed): En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris 1982, 187–202. ——. Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht, London: Kluwer Academic, c. 1991. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. ——. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge Classics, 1982. ——. La prose du monde. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1992. ——. L’institution. La passivité. Notes de cours au Collège de France (1954–1955). Paris: Bélin, 2003. Norton, Anne. ‘Heart of Darkness: Africa and African Americans in the Writings of Hannah Arendt.’ Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Ed. Bonnie Honig. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1995. 247–61. Olkowski, Dorothea. ‘Flesh to Desire: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, Deleuze.’ Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics 15.1 (2002): 11–24. Platon. Symposion. London: Collins Harvill, 1989. Walker, Kara. Interview with Kara Walker. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, ©1999. http://www.moma.org/onlineprojects/conversations/kw_f.html. ——. Interview with Kara Walker. art in the twenty-first century, art 21(2003). http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/walker/ clip1.html. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. [2nd edn.]. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958. Zerilli, Linda M.G. ‘The Arendtian Body.’ Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Ed. Bonnie Honig. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1995. 167–93.

3 Beyond Narcissism: Women and Civilization Dorothea Olkowski

New York Times article recounts a tale of two film makers. Fernando Meirelles (may-RELL-es) forty-seven years old, director of a ‘véritéstyle’ drama about crime among the street-children of Rio de Janeiro, nominated for an Oscar award for best foreign-film director. Kátia Lund, thirty-seven years old, a Brazilian who began filming in the Rio slums in 1996 for a Michael Jackson video and has since filmed a documentary about the favelas as well as other music videos in Brazil, was named co-director but is not included in the Oscar nomination. Meirelles is referred to as a prominent director and producer. His oeuvre consists of hundreds of commercials but he has served as co-director on his only two films. He is dismayed at the implication that Lund deserves more credit: ‘She didn’t do all the jobs that a director has to do; she did only part of the jobs.’ ‘You can’t direct a film without talking to the director of photography, choosing the music, editing. This is codirecting, not directing.’ ‘She asked me for co-director, and I agreed because she was helping me a lot.’ Lund demurs. Not surprisingly, Lund provides a different account. She and Meirelles collaborated on opening an acting school in the Rio slums and they shared directing credits on a previous short film, a dry run for the Oscar-nominated film. She cites a misunderstanding: ‘The first time he said, “I’m going to put a ‘co’ in front of your name,” the school was already together, the cast was already together, we’d already shot the short. I was thrown off by it, but I decided to accept it because he was in fact carrying the film financially, and his was the last word’ (Gussow). Meirelles depicts it differently. ‘Everyone who was there knows who was directing.’ ‘Her work in fact was very very important for the film. She spent four months working with the boys. The boys are the soul of the film. She was like a mother for all the crew, with such important input that we decided to create this credit. But it was very clear for us that it’s 71

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like pilot and co-pilot’ (Gussow). Lund’s reply is that she and Meirelles went to the set together and went home together daily to talk about what they were doing. They were behind the monitors together the entire time; they discussed every scene: ‘If I was not directing, what was I doing?’ (Gussow). Nonetheless, he had the final say and put the money in, she concurs, ’his portion is bigger than mine’ (Gussow). In this manner, her own ideas, thoughts and work become the ideas, thoughts and work of the director, the master. In this manner, Lund has become a woman caught, against all of her own expectations, in the ‘Héloïse complex’ Michèle Le Doeuff’s term for women who, like Héloïse, are limited to a secondary role in relation to their mentor (Abelard, in the case of Héloïse) (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 163–4). In the article, Meirelles is described as a director and producer, even though he had only previously co-directed two films. Lund’s work, on videos and as sole director (and presumably producer) of a documentary, is described throughout only as ‘filming’. He is a director, she films. He talks to the film personnel and claims credit for aspects of the film which she implies they constantly discussed. She, on the other hand, co-establishes and runs the acting studio, and is the mother to the crew and boys. Of course, ‘mother’ is not one of the designated titles in filmmaking. In the end, even Lund gives in, saying ‘his portion is bigger than mine’. At some point, and, in part, because of the money, he got the final say. At some point, they went from the collaboration of the school and the short film to the roles of director and mother. In the capitalist economy, where all immediate connections are decoded and axiomatized, her knowledge of the slums and of the children who inhabit them is worth less than finding the money to produce the film. Lund’s access to the film is the minimalist version of the Héloïse complex. In the maximalist version, she would have had access to ‘directing’ (let us at least begin by calling her a director not a filmer) only through the work of the man. In the minimalist version, the male’s work is used to validate the work of the female (Le Doeuff, The Philosophical Imaginary 107). She is not alone. Unlike ancient and medieval women, women of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, modern and contemporary women have access to directing or to philosophy as well as many other arenas through several sources. For Le Doeuff, Simone de Beauvoir is the paradigmatic case of a woman philosopher who had ‘her own’ direct relation to philosophy yet was taken ‘under the wing’ of a male thinker. Beauvoir was offered the role of co-director. She was to become and to remain an ‘amateur’, a woman who stays within the permitted range open to her in philosophy, a

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woman whose relation to philosophy was to be mediated through the personal relation to ‘a’ philosopher, a philosopher who seeks admirers and disciples. She was never to create her own ideas or to write her own philosophy. For a while, this seemed to be the case. Le Doeuff notes that past versions of the Petit Larousse dictionary list Beauvoir as ‘Disciple of Jean-Paul Sartre’ (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 170).1 Cast in the light of what Sartre writes about women in Being and Nothingness, Sartre does in philosophy what the Brazilian ‘director’ does in film; the director makes a film in a documentary style, the style practiced by Lund, then names her ‘mother of the crew and boys’, implying thereby that she is daughter to him, the master-director. Like the director, Sartre puts forward an image of philosophy coloured by masculinism: a power of the ego-philosopher whose megalomania is based on a contrast with, and then endangered by, something Sartre thinks of as ‘feminine’ (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 165). For Le Doeuff, Beauvoir saves her own skin, but at a certain cost. The Héloïse complex seems not so crippling as I formerly meant it to appear. Can one escape it on the quiet and produce philosophy independently, on condition of course that one does not attempt to pose as a philosopher? Producing philosophy unawares? (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 165) Certainly this has been the case and many women continue to produce not only philosophy but works of art and literature ‘unawares’, relegating themselves and their ideas to the so-called private sphere, refusing to become either the mother or the daughter. As Le Doeuff argues, only insofar as she escapes either choosing or being chosen by a unique and solitary master, only insofar as she reads many different philosophers, including women, will the woman feel ‘condemned’ to invent or think what has never been thought before, she will then have to create a philosophy of her own (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 162).2 Prior to reading Le Doeuff’s, The Sex of Knowing, I thought that, whether by accident or by design, I myself had managed at least to escape ‘whoeverianism’, Le Doeuff’s term for anyone who pursues the philosophy of a single master. I had struggled to resist the powerful pull of a charismatic graduate school professor. Although the principal feminist philosophers, when they were taught at all, were always interpreted in relation to the work of a male master, I was able to read the work of feminist historians, sociologists and legal theorists. Although I was drawn to the ideas of the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,

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I did not develop appropriately as a scholar of his oeuvre. Additionally, although I read and wrote about Gilles Deleuze for many years, I blindly denied being a ‘Deleuzian’. The price for even these small gestures of independence may have been high. In the light of my choice not to produce identifiably scholarly texts, confusion about the content and meaning of my ‘work’ ensued. What I identified as desirable teaching positions appeared and dissolved in front of my eyes, sometimes before I even left the campus interview. I became wary and this did not go unnoticed. I isolated myself, dropping in and out of or never joining the societies named for great men. Eventually, I tried to work from the inside, establishing a Women’s Studies programme on my campus, joining the executive committee of a major philosophical organization in an effort to contribute to giving women a larger place within the field of philosophy. Yet, in the end, in order to be published, I wrote a book ‘following’ Deleuze in which I freely attributed to the philosopher not only his own ideas but most of mine as well. Although one might easily claim that the book has many masters so that at least in that respect it is not the work of an amateur, the disciple of one, single, solitary master, nonetheless, without the great man’s name, it would not have been published. Moreover, I am shocked by the frequency with which that name is invoked in the text itself, amounting nearly to a mantra. The irony of this is that my own recent work seems to indicate that I am not, in fact, a Deleuzian, that the account of philosophy I gave in that book is my account, not that of the great philosopher, and that our ideas may differ enough to be incommensurate. The Héloïse complex takes many routes and this is just one. Its consequences are sometimes difficult to anticipate. To the extent that I continue actively participating in the annual conference of at least one group of ‘whoeverians’ – who are overwhelmingly considerate and thoughtful persons, and who would be upset to be labelled ‘whoeverians’ – I am in a position to understand the devotion certain philosophies and philosophers inspire. Nevertheless, possibly because my own publications in this area are limited to scattered articles in scattered collections and journals and have never been assembled into a single authoritative volume, I found that some members of the group – male and female – had begun using my very phrases, not merely my ideas, but with no attribution in sight, possibly implying, that in their eyes, my ideas remain subject to those of the great philosopher. The question is, now what? According to Louise Bassett, whose brilliant thesis on Le Doeuff, I hope will soon be published:

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Le Doeuff notes in Hypparchia’s Choice, that Beauvoir abandoned several of the key ideas in Sartre’s system, bad faith, and all other ‘masculinist elements’ as she puts it. Le Doeuff’s explanation of the absence of this ‘masculinism’ in Beauvoir’s work leads back to the imaginary. She argues that their disappearance in the work of The Second Sex, reinforces the idea that the imaginary and philosophical concepts are bound together. (Bassett 73) The point is that it would have been truly pathetic had Sartre been able to transmit even his masculinist imaginary to Beauvoir, and not merely his ideas. Bassett emphasizes Le Doeuff’s work of ‘critical epistemology,’ the interrogation of the tension between pairs of the non-philosophical in philosophy (Bassett 110). What this term implies is not the logical relation characterized by the law of non-contradiction in which if ‘A’ is true, ‘not-A’ must be false. Rather, starting from the mathematical definition of this term, what it means is that, on a given plane, any event has both real and imaginary components, but they are independent with regard to their value. So, it appears that for Le Doeuff, imagery and theory are a pair held in such a tension; they do not define one another’s truth value but together define the plane that they inhabit. Since they are not contradictories, their tension must be of another nature. Le Doeuff argues that imagery and theory, held in tension, function in at least two ways. One, imagery points to unresolved questions in the theoretical exposition of the philosophical work even as, simultaneously, it may conceal critical and sensitive moments in that theory. Two, the images tend to substantiate what the theory cannot, thus, the meaning of the images is often incompatible with the system’s explicit theoretical possibilities (Le Doeuff, The Philosophical Imaginary 3). Nevertheless, insofar as they are held in tension, images and theory would occupy a single plane. In principle, there is nothing here to prevent their closure to anything outside of this single plane. In this regard, we can see that in general, the body of philosophy, in particular, and what we will call ‘civilization,’ in general, exist only through the exclusion of women and like the image, the meaning of women in philosophy is incompatible with the accepted possibilities of socalled civilization. Thus, as Basset has argued, for Le Doeuff, Sartre’s subject is supposed to be free, even to the point of choosing its inferiority and oppression. Yet, in his discussions about freedom, women are never presented as choosing careers or politics, only their sexuality is relevant. In other words, each woman functions on only one plane, and on that plane, her role is to attract the desire of a lover, not to

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disappoint his interest. Male and female are held in tension; they do not define one another’s truth value; together they define the plane of sexuality. Apart from women, men go on to exist on a multiplicity of other planes, but women do not. Moreover, women’s sexual refusals become instances of bad faith based on the claim that the women show so-called objective signs of pleasure, yet still refuse the man. However, if each person’s freedom demands that they give a situation its meaning, there can be no objective signs. Le Doeuff points out that given Sartre’s definition of individual freedom, the usual theoretical requirements are missing; rigour is missing from this argument. Possibly for Sartre, the situation of women is not important enough to demand rigour. This kind of sexism, the reduction of woman to a single plane of existence, the sexual plane, is integral to Sartre’s existentialism and thoroughly informs it. References to women in his texts conceal (although barely) and support the megalomania of the Sartrean ego, which is a male ego. This may be why Le Doeuff proposes a second methodological orientation. Provisionally, we will call this an open system, the acceptance and maintenence of multiple relations to multiple philosophies and sites, although, in the end, this concept will require further consideration. Le Doeuff maintains that a multiple relation in philosophy to what is multiply outside philosophy makes possible the flows of new energy and information essential to the creation of a unique theoretical viewpoint. In addition, as Bassett notes, this implies that there is no ranking of subjects and disciplines for philosophy (Bassett 86). All subjects and all disciplines are not only welcome but desperately needed since on its own (in some pure and self-enclosed form), philosophy would dry up. Philosophical theory needs the imaginary in tension with it and it needs a structure open to new energy and information in order to be influenced by what is outside philosophy. Predicating one’s own philosophy on nothing but the continual rebuttal of previous thinkers makes one’s own work a dead end in a closed conceptual system. By opening philosophy to the outside, many paths in philosophy for women could be discovered or created by women engaged in philosophy. Le Doeuff urges women to invent their own philosophies, to read and learn from many philosophies and many sources, and to cease being the disciples of a single master. In this manner, what may be called provisionally, an ‘open system’, open to new flows of ideas, images and influences will more likely yield a philosophy of one’s own. What I would suggest this implies is that, for Le Doeuff, not only philosophy but life itself, are not closed systems, not a field of immanence with no relation to an outside; it implies that they are created and exist

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in relation to a multiplicity of sites, matter and energy, and that they arise from and in relation to these sites, this matter, this energy. With respect to philosophy in particular, connections to what is multiply outside philosophy indicate that it may not be simply self-founding, for this would return philosophy to megalomania. Of course, if theory and imagery are conceptualized as held in tension, there are related issues begging to be addressed. What we might want to consider, for women who are attempting to create a philosophy of their own, is the question of what images are mingled with the theory of one’s own? What does one’s own mean philosophically and so what has been held in tension with the philosophical concept of one’s own? This is particularly crucial in two respects. First, philosophically, the very idea of one’s own seems to imply a closed conceptual system and the notion of mastery. And secondly, if women, insofar as they are women, female human beings, have been allowed into philosophy only when it is mediated through their personal relation to a philosopher who seeks admirers and disciples, then it appears that not merely all philosophy, but all thought and all life may be circumscribed by the very idea of a closed system.

Women and narcissism Le Doeuff’s account of the philosophical imaginary opens philosophy to the tension between theory and images. If imagery conceals critical and sensitive moments in a text and substantiates what the theory cannot, then we might wish to be sensitive to the use of images in certain theories. Given the preceding analysis, we might want to pay attention to theories that address or concern the tension between a closed system and an open system as it relates to women in particular. That is, can we analyse the tensions within a closed system to discover how women find themselves in situations in general where whatever may be characterized as ‘one’s own’ is circumscribed by that system so that, in the end, one’s own work, ideas, creations, or philosophy are impossible and, like the film-maker Kátia Lund, women are relegated to the role of co-director or amateur? Why, we might wonder, does even Lund start to agree that her share in the work was less than that of her male counterpart? It is, of course, difficult to know where to begin such an investigation. As Le Doeuff argues throughout her work, philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the present appear to exclude women from the intellectual and artistic realms, except as amateurs. So, in principle, we can start anywhere, with any philosophical system and any set of images. However, let us begin with a particular concept, for reasons that

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have to do as much with the dependence of a system’s existence on the exclusion of women as with its exclusion of multiple sites and sources. That is, let us begin with the examination of a concept that leads to the conclusion that women are not only amateurs in making philosophy and film, but that they are incompatible with the accepted possibilities of so-called civilization. In other words, let us begin with a well-known and much discussed idea that women are fundamentally narcissistic and that their narcissism is strongly correlated with, if not the cause of, their inability to engage in intellectual and cultural practices identified with the creation of civilization, practices such as philosophy and film. Strangely enough, we find in Simone de Beauvoir, a general acceptance of the idea that women are fundamentally narcissistic. Certain ‘conditions’ lead women, more than men, to devote her love to herself. Since she is largely unoccupied, she does nothing, she contributes nothing to the building of civilizations and so she finds reality, absolutely, in herself, offering herself only to her own desires (Beauvoir 629–30). Although Beauvoir denies that narcissism is an anatomical fate, she is inclined to think that the narcissistic little girl who wishes to be looked at is stifled in her attempts to cease making herself an object (Beauvoir 279). Bored with the unwholesome and prissy occupations into which she is directed, the girl, who is both victim and co-conspirator, has no choice but to immerse herself in narcissistic fantasies in which she plays the role of coquettish heroine, full of self-pity (Beauvoir 279–80). The adolescent girl admires herself in the mirror and pours out her soul in her diary. Day dreaming, she seeks escape from the mediocre life she has been handed. At school, she may form crushes on other girls that are ‘hardly distinguishable from narcissistic enjoyment’ (Beauvoir 343). Finding herself only dimly reflected by the male’s ‘erected flesh’, the adult narcissistic woman often prefers to recreate herself through another woman whose resemblance to herself is pleasure in itself (Beauvoir 416). But the narcissistic woman does not always turn to lesbian self-realization. Beauvoir cites the case of Marie Bashkirtsev; a cerebral woman, conceited, seeking only the high regard of men, for whom other women represent only rivals or enemies (Beauvoir 417). As she ages, such a woman will search for desperate remedies: cosmetics, plastic surgery, dyed hair, anything to maintain her youth and beauty. And insofar as she has undoubtedly spent her life in useless passivity, she attempts to reinvent her past, present and future as a fascinating adventure (Beauvoir 577–8). What the narcissistic woman lacks and will always lack, for Beauvoir, is independence. She will marry for money or else, in order to pay

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for her pleasures and luxuries, she must attract admirers and lovers to whom she is enslaved. She would cease to be narcissistic only if she could obtain recognition in the ‘free estimate’ of others through activities (Beauvoir 640). The independent woman, we are told, makes her own living and finds meaning in her life through her work in order to escape the yoke of men (Beauvoir 703). As true as this seems to be, nevertheless, this assessment leaves us with a serious difficulty. Kátia Lund began filming in the Rio slums in 1996 for a Michael Jackson video, and then filmed a documentary about the favelas as well as other music videos in Brazil. Yet, in order to make a major film, she is clearly dependent on the financial resources and industry contacts of Fernando Meirelles. Does this make her a narcissist or an amateur? And if not, then what really makes a woman a narcissist? And if she is a narcissist or an amateur, can her work be considered a contribution to civilization? Perhaps unfortunately, these questions lead us back to another master, one who developed the modern concept of narcissism that Beauvoir appears to be utilizing, and who declared that, due to their narcissism, women do not, perhaps cannot, contribute to civilization. From the point of view of this essay, any retrieval of the name ‘Freud,’ and the concepts associated with that name threatens to return us to an out of date concept of nature, a view that long ago has been superseded. Yet, in spite of this risk, there is also the possibility that an examination of these ideas, with an attunement to the various tensions making this theory possible will open onto something new, namely it will disclose the fundamental structure of the closed system of life and thought and the possibility of thinking in some other manner. If it is the case that the closed system exerts a powerful influence on philosophy, on women and on concepts of life in general, examining this structure might be crucial to the project of opening philosophy and life to the new sites as well as new flows of matter and energy. The result of this might be the awareness that, in fact, women can do philosophy or that they can make films, or contribute to civilization in general, not only in secret and unawares, but openly and with the acknowledgement of others, female and male both.

Women and civilization It has been argued that in spite of the advances of civilization, for all human beings, life is difficult, that there is too much pain and disappointment, and that in order to manage this, we who have become civilized, turn to something called ‘auxiliary constructions’, although

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that to which these constructions are auxiliary remains to be explored (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 22). In any case, such supports or supplements are definable as secondary to something larger or as backup processes for a primary system. They include powerful deflections, substitute satisfactions and intoxicants, each of which offers some relief from the otherwise ongoing and endless distress (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 22). Among the more powerful deflections are the pursuit of art and science, as well as philosophy, religious systems and ideals, all of which apparently develop as a result of the cultivation of our higher mental faculties. But how and why are the so-called higher mental faculties cultivated? Why do not human beings simply deflect their apparent misery with substitute satisfactions and intoxication? One answer to this question, an answer that has become nearly standard, returns us to the psychoanalytic explanation of the origin of our discontent. This brings forth a fundamental image, that of the id– ego, for which Freud provides a simple diagram in a number of different texts.3 Generally, it is a kidney-shaped or oval structure separated from the world by a surface which is indicated by a more or less thick black line. In its initial version, the ego, with its ‘cap of hearing, skewed to one side’ (perhaps listening little and selectively) is the surface of the unknown and unconscious id, and the lower portions of the ego merge into the id (Freud, The Ego and the Id 15). The id is modified by the direct influence of the outside world, or by the proximity of the external world but it is modified through a medium, that is, through the ‘Pcpt.-Cs’, perceptual consciousness, although the ego is also said to be unconscious (Freud, The Ego and the Id 15).4 Lacking significant forces of its own, the ego must borrow most of its strength from the id, which is always said to be incomparably larger and more powerful than the ego which is merely the rider on a horse, but a horse over which the rider has little, if any control (Freud, New Introductory Lectures 77, 79).5 Although it is proclaimed here to be a surface, the ego is, nevertheless, ‘first and foremost a bodily ego’, a projection of a surface (implying a lower-dimensional projection of a higher dimensional reality), as well as analogous with the cortical homunculus of anatomy which ‘stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces backwards and has its speech area on the left-hand side’ (Freud, The Ego and the Id 16). The cortical homunculus is a humanlike representation of the primary sensory-motor cortex, that part of the human brain directly responsible for the movement and exchange of sense and motor information such as touch, sensitivity, cold, heat and pain, in the rest of the body. It is represented by the image of a grotesquely disfigured human with disproportionately huge hands, lips,

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and face in comparison to the rest of the body. These exaggerated parts of the body are, however, in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception.6 And so, the ego appears to be grotesquely large in proportion to the rest of the psychical apparatus, and significantly, it faces backwards; it looks backwards at the id from which all its force is derived. Thus the size of the ego is proportionate only to the size of the id. All this is initially bewildering, especially as at least some of what is claimed, in The Ego and the Id (1923), is potentially self-contradictory as well. Thus we might need to look elsewhere for clarification of this model even while keeping this original image in sight. Elsewhere and later (Civilization and Its Discontents [1929–30] ), Freud begins with the statement that our own ego often appears to us to be autonomous and unitary, but if so, we are deceived; in fact the ego is anything but autonomous insofar as it serves as a front; literally, it is a façade, a face for the id. Equally important, in this image, is that only with respect to the outside world, does the ego retain clear and sharp lines of separation. The separation of the id–ego from the outside world is an aspect of Freud’s theory that may call for greater attention than it has usually received (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 13). The separation appears to be somewhat ameliorated by the ensuing qualification that, in love, the boundary between ego and world threatens to melt away and that the boundaries of the ego are never constant. However, it is important to notice that what Freud says here is that, in love, ‘I’ and ‘you’ are ‘declared’ to be one. What is declared to be the case by the person in love and what Freud thinks actually happens along the well-defined border between the id, its projection or façade, and the outside world, which is separate from it, may not be one and the same (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 13).7 This can be ascertained more clearly by examining the process of development of so-called adult ego feeling. Infants cannot originally distinguish between self and world and learn to do so only gradually when they must cry out in order for some object to appear. For the most part, the infant is said to seek a pure pleasure ego separate from anything unpleasant but also separated from the outside, which confronts it as strange and threatening. In this process, what becomes apparent, even to an infant, is that some of the pain and suffering that confronts it is not separable from itself, that it is, in fact, inseparable from itself (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 14). Exactly what this implies is not yet entirely clear, but in any case, the infant is said to learn what cannot be separated from itself and what is apparently separated from itself through trial and error. This

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learning process is given the name ‘reality principle’, and the latter is defined as what serves the pleasure principle using the same method in the defence against sensations of unpleasure, whether coming from within or without. And the method? The method, we are told, is for the ego to separate off the external world from itself (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 14–15).8 But this is hardly necessary, since the external world is already and originally separate from the ego. This is, perhaps, the first illusion. The little id at first felt itself to be one with the world, but in the process of developing, it discovers that it is not, that it is in fact quite separate from the world. Still, the primitive feeling of oneness often remains, confusing the ego, producing strange memory-traces that may be inconveniently brought back to life (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 15–16). In most cases, it seems that pain and pleasure are what ‘force’ a recognition of the outside world upon the child, that is, a recognition that the world is, in some fundamental manner, separate from itself. The effect of this sort of recognition (in contrast to the Hegelian use of this term), is to disengage the child from its own mass of sensations (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 14). The task of the pleasure principle is, to the greatest extent possible, to keep the child engaged with its own mass of sensations, insofar as they are pleasurable and to expel them insofar as they are not, thereby reinforcing the notion that the ‘outside’ is alien and threatening, a source of pain. The so-called pleasure principle, which is said to be an instinct, tries to create a pure pleasure-ego by keeping that ego engaged with its own mass of sensations, but even when it does so, it finds that pain persists (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 14). Eventually, it becomes clear to the infant that some of the unfamiliar and threatening things do not go away, but that they belong, inseparably, to itself. It is this discovery of its own unpleasant sensations that gives rise to the reality principle. The reality principle defends much less (if at all) against the outside world than against one’s own unpleasant sensations; it functions inside the boundary of the infant’s psyche and fights off all sensations of unpleasure. As such, it can be said to create the world outside the id–ego, or at least create the impression that such a world exists (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 15). These vast powers may well account for the grotesquely huge size of the ego in Freud’s original image. Unfortunately, in Freud’s view, the primitive and mistaken feeling of unity persists even after the ego attempts to separate itself from its own unpleasure. This leads to the conclusion on the ego’s part that the ego is one with the world, that the ego and the world are not separate, when in fact, as the image of the psyche tells us,

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they are originally and therefore radically separate (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 15–17). And yet, as widespread as the oceanic feeling of unity with the world is among human beings, it is not the source of religious belief. The latter is better traced back to the infantile feeling that life is hard and full of pain and that all children need the protection of a good Father, or some ‘auxiliary construction’, to take the place of the satisfaction a good Father would presumably offer. Still, the benefits of such a Father are questionable insofar as what we want is determined largely by the pleasure principle which, as we must recall, regulates the pleasure and pain coming from the ego’s own self and not from the world. As such, there is no direct contact with an outside; the outside world is completely mediated through the id– ego’s pleasure-pain, and the boundary between self and world remains solidly in place. To cope with this, the reality principle uses a variety of methods – powerful deflections, substitute satisfactions, intoxication – to try to obtain as much pleasure as possible. And what is this thing we call pleasure? Certainly it is difficult to affirm that the infant id–ego partakes of the experience of pure pleasure, for it is defined as nothing less than the sudden satisfaction of needs that have been dammed up. This would seem to put into question even the infant’s oral and anal satisfactions, which are not, strictly speaking, dammed up needs whose satisfaction could be described as ‘sudden’. Pleasure, to be true pleasure, we are told, must be purely episodic and, for most women, reading this text, this concept of pleasure is unquestionably described in terms of male orgasm (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 23). Intense pleasure, the only kind worth pursuing, ‘comes’ from strong contrast, a situation that occurs only under specific conditions; prolonged pleasure produces only mild contentment; real pleasure must be sudden and episodic, the satisfaction of some purely internal (what comes to be called instinctual) need (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 23). Such pleasures are, not surprisingly, difficult to procure, a statement that reinforces their instinctual and sexual specificity, and so, we humans experience much suffering. We suffer, it is claimed, from our own bodies, from nature and from our relations with other persons, until the idea of happiness is transformed; no longer the episodic pleasure of intense and sudden satisfaction, it is merely the avoidance of or escape from suffering (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 24, 33). It seems that such suffering could be avoided or lessened by various means, but in fact, it is totally unavoidable and the reason for this lies entirely with our own nature. In the end, it will be seen that, given the presuppositions of this view of reality,

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only the satisfaction of instinctual impulses produces happiness and, as we have already implied, this type of satisfaction is limited. Of the three sources of suffering, surprisingly, it is so-called social relations that produce the greatest misery. Famously Freud argues that this is the result of civilization, but this once again evades the question of what produces civilization and, if civilization makes us so unhappy, why we do not simply forgo it, either returning to a more primitive state or never developing it to begin with? Freud provides a long list of specifics that characterize civilization, from simple tool-making to advanced technology, to the creation of beauty, cleanliness and order, to religion, philosophy and other lofty ideals, culminating in the social contract, the modern concept of justice (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 37–43). But such a process, far from being the grounds for celebration is little more than the renunciation or sublimation of instinct, the channelling of internal impulses into outlets that offer only the illusion of satisfaction. The question remains unanswered, why? ‘We must ask ourselves to what influences the development of civilization owes its origin, how it arose, and by what its course has been determined (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 45). Let us then ask, to what does civilization owe its origin and by what the course of civilization has been determined? Here Freud’s utilization of what may be called a closed system comes to the fore, so in order to answer his own question, let us turn briefly to the psychoanalytic use of closed systems.

The closed system It is well known that Freud attempted a psychology that would be, in his own words, a ‘natural science’, that is, he wanted to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of material particles (Freud, ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ 295).9 To this end, he argued that the nervous system tends to divest itself of quantities of energy in order to maintain itself in a state that can be described as immobile, uniform, homogeneous, constant and regular. In this view, the discharge of energy through the muscles is the primary function of the nervous system which regulates itself in order that its inertia or constancy is not ‘upset’ by any stimulus but remains proportional to the total quantity of energy present at any time. But the nervous system’s inertia is perturbed by factors that are purely internal, arising, not in relation to energy and material flows coming from outside, but rather, as purely ‘endogenous’ stimuli, coming from the inside and only from the inside and demanding to be discharged (Freud, ‘Project for a Scientific Psycho-

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logy’ 296–7).10 This is difficult insofar as, for the nervous system, the boundaries between inside and outside are apparently impermeable. Thus, there will be a set of neurons on this border whose sole function is to receive and discharge stimuli coming from outside, guarding the borders and keeping the entire internal structure closed to outside influences.11 Insofar as the internal system is totally out of contact with the external world and impermeable, its neurones are unable to discharge. Their energy is instead utilized to construct some sort of memory. This may be the basis of the claim that even when conscious memory fades, the memory-trace is not destroyed and that in mental life, nothing perishes, all is preserved and can even be brought back to life (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 16). Preservation of this type surely demands a closed system in which nothing is lost because nothing either enters or leaves the system. Nevertheless, something forms in the internal nervous system that takes over from the mechanical processes under conditions characterized by pain or the avoidance of pain. Insofar as it is deduced that any painful mnemic ‘image’ is regularly abandoned by its energy cathexis as soon as possible, something new forms utilizing this very same energy. This organization is the ego, a totality of the internal nervous system’s cathexes, at a given time, a concentration of psychological energy that becomes a permanent component of the nervous system (Freud, ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ 323, 297). And so, out of the psyche’s own painful processes arises an ego! And if the ego arises in a closed system out of its own pain, then surely there is more to these psychic processes than is described by the claim that seeking pleasure and avoiding unpleasure is the fundamental instinctual process. But let us also keep in mind the claim that psychology is to be a natural science in order to fully understand the term ‘closed system’. In the nineteenth century, the French physicist Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832), found that maximum efficiency in a steam engine depends on the temperature difference within the mechanism. He quantified the relation between heat and work and founded modern thermodynamics. Moreover, he discovered that although energy is conserved, not all heat can be turned into work. These discoveries became the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. The First Law concerns quantity: In a closed system the total quantity of energy, whatever its transformations, will remain unchanged. The Second Law concerns quality: In a closed system, high-quality energy is lost to friction in the form of heat. This erosion of the quality of energy implies that the universe is not symmetrical with regard to time. Complex processes, such as life,

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have tendencies and directions (Margulis and Sagan 29). Classical or equilibrium thermodynamics studies closed systems, meaning systems closed to new energy flows. The term entropy was introduced in the nineteenth century to measure the one-way conversion of energy into heat and friction in a closed system. Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) explained the one-way conversion of energy into heat and friction by showing that in a mapping of gas particles distributed in two chambers, there are far more disordered states (mixtures of particles in various states) than ordered states (mixtures of particles in a limited number of states). In other words, there are many more ways for particles to be distributed evenly rather than in one chamber or the other, thus probability is on the side of disorder and mixing, the dissipation of particles into two chambers. Thus, in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in a closed system, disorder or entropy increase. This means that there will be greater mixing and dissipation. The total amount of energy will remain the same, but its quality will decline. As such, thermodynamic systems are structures whose complexity decreases; they are machines that lose the capacity to do work and are closed and isolated, sealed to incoming matter (Margulis and Sagan 30, 31, 32). Judicious readers are perhaps surprised by the claim that there is a psychoanalytic use of the thermodynamic conception of closed systems. What, after all, can be the basis of such a claim? Let us try to be clear about this. We have seen that pleasure, true pleasure, and not mere contentment, has been defined as the sudden release of dammed up needs, thus it will not be surprising to read that sexual ‘love’ offers the greatest happiness but also the most suffering, since it can easily end, whether in rejection, unfaithfulness or death (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 48). However, even if love is a feeling, it arises first as an instinct characterized by the emergence of the pleasure principle which establishes boundaries for the first time and separates the emerging ego forever from its pre-instinctual unity with the world, a sense of unity that is not shared by all and certainly not by Freud who strongly doubts its reality (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 15–16). But there are other objections laid out here, objections to the claim that love, which in its instinctual form is directed to one person only must, in the end, be directed not to a single object but to mankind in general. In other words, to protect oneself from unhappiness, instinct is to be transformed into an impulse with an inhibited aim; affection rather than love. Serious objections have been raised against the possibility of a generalized affection for humanity. One, that love must discriminate or it loses all value and two, that mankind in general may not deserve to be loved, that in

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fact most strangers deserve hostility if not hatred (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 48, 49, 57). But what after all is love? Love, it turns out, is instinctual, that is, it operates in what can be called a closed psychic system, a psychic structure in which the boundaries between id–ego and the world are firmly delineated and impermeable. This is why the original, instinctual love can only be narcissism, since nothing enters or leaves the psychic closed system. If the original, instinctual love is narcissism, then the ego (which arises out of the cathected energy of unpleasure, unsatisfied libido) must be full of libido seeking satisfaction. And so, the original love, the truest love, the love that gives pleasure, is self-love and all other object-directed love is ‘just this original narcissism turned outward’ (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 65). No wonder that to love another, one must either love oneself in the other or somehow find one’s ideal self in the other (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 56). No wonder that love comes into opposition with the interests of civilization and civilization threatens love with substantial restrictions (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 50)! To fully develop narcissistic self-love, the male child, in particular, must separate from his family, breaking apart family ties and depriving himself of someone who can care for him. But insofar as children are taught that object-choice must be limited to the opposite sex, their pleasure in the narcissistic impulse is limited, as is the possibility of the sudden satisfaction of dammed up needs. Additionally, extra-genital sexual satisfactions – including presumably, masturbation, which would apparently be the most pleasurable form of sexual self-love – are strictly controlled and judged to be perversions. In short, in civilization, sexual pleasure, the narcissistic and sudden satisfaction of dammed up needs, is severely impaired and libido, rather than being directed narcissistically to self-love, must be sublimated into ‘aim-inhibited libido’, building civilizations, strengthening communal relations with so-called bonds of friendship, even though most others deserve our hostility and not our love (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 56). But this is not what men want. What men want is clear. Men want the unrestricted satisfaction of every need as defined by instinct (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 24). They are denied this narcissistic satisfaction, not merely by civilization, but by the workings of their own closed psychic system. Following the laws of thermodynamics, high quality instinctual energy directed toward narcissistic self-love breaks down over time into low quality energy and so it is not surprising that men eventually settle for the mere avoidance of unpleasure rather than trying to satisfy the pure pleasure ego. Attempts to head off such a

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breakdown are numerous and different men try a number of different routes. Some voluntarily isolate themselves from others, but this means there is no one to feed and clothe and care for them, so, in the end, most join a community. Others use alcohol and other intoxicants to alter their own sensations. A few even try to kill off the instincts by practicing asceticism, hastening the qualitative decline of instinctual energy without affecting its quantity (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 24–5). Since only the satisfaction of instinct produces happiness and lack of this produces suffering, men displace those instincts, they sublimate, they produce pleasure in psychical and intellectual work, finer and higher but less intense, less satisfying forms of pleasure, which are also less dangerous, but which are inevitable anyway insofar as with age, those high quality instinctual energies will break down into low quality instinctual energies (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 26). But the production of such work, through sublimation, yields, in turn, a society that restricts the male. Aim-inhibited libido strengthens communal relations with bonds of friendship, leaving fewer and fewer possibilities for the satisfaction of pure narcissistic pleasure. What this implies is that narcissistic high-quality love is redirected. The first object-choice is that which best satisfies the aim of the instinct – and since pain is produced by an increase in instinctual stimuli and pleasure by a decrease in stimulation – preferably a sudden and powerful decrease, then clearly, it makes sense to argue that sexual instincts are first directed to the ego – in other words – to oneself, a ‘libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation’, a ‘primary and normal narcissism’ (Freud, General Psychological Theory 87, 68, 56). Psychologically, it is argued, libido is directed away from auto-eroticism and towards the mother or caregiver due to the extreme dependence of the infant on the parent – the mother or her substitute (Freud, General Psychological Theory 68). But let us not forget the conclusions reached in Civilization and its Discontents, that love in the family is both narcissistically auto-erotic and aim-inhibited affection, and that when the son must leave the family, he is expected to associate with other men in a civilization created by men (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 50, 51). In other words, work and love, (ananke and eros, necessity and love) are the ‘parents’ of civilization (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 48). But of course, to love one’s neighbour is a difficult task; in a closed system, to love another, you must either love yourself in him or find your ideal self in him. Few or no strangers will prove worthy of either of these options. Therefore, most strangers deserve your hostility, if not your hatred, and not your love, since they show not even the least trace of love or consid-

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eration for you, jeering, slandering, and insulting you, to show their superior power, which is to say, their own narcissistic self-love, supposed emblem of the high quality of their instinctual energies (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 56, 57). The reality of narcissistic self-love is aggression and as the high quality libido of the pleasure principle declines, what is left, what emerges ever more forcefully is aggression. The effect of the closed psychic system is that human beings show a lot of aggression. They exploit other’s labour, they would gladly sexually abuse them, seize possessions, humiliate, cause pain, torture, even kill them. Given the existence of the primary mutual hostility, civilization is constantly threatened with disintegration. It is apparently this hostility and aggression, this so-called death instinct (thanatos) that has led to the restrictions on sexual life in favour of aim-inhibited relationships, friendship in place of self-love, monogamy instead of auto-eroticism (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 66). Of course, thanatos is mostly visible as aggression directed against the world. Any restriction of outward aggression would turn the aggression against the self, and sadism would be replaced by masochism (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 68). But aggression has its own rationale. In aggression, the satisfaction of libido is accompanied by the greatest possible amount of narcissistic enjoyment, fulfilling wishes for omnipotence, undoing any claims about the need for a protective Father. Somewhat tamed, aggression can still be reflected in the ego’s control over nature (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 69). This instinct for aggression is original and self-subsisting, constituting the greatest impediment to civilization. Thanatos is opposed to the programme of eros, which is now taken to be the programme of aim-inhibited civilization building. In fact, even if we were to abolish the family and allow complete freedom of sexual life, aggression would still persist (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 61) Why? Because in the face of civilization, the product of aim-inhibited instinct, only aggression achieves the end of complete narcissistic satisfaction. It is the only narcissistic satisfaction that is permitted but also, given the inevitable decline in the quality of instinctual energy, the only one left. No more pure pleasure, no sudden satisfaction of dammed up needs since such needs have long since dissipated; all that is left is the possible feeling of pure omnipotence. Hatred and aggression satisfy narcissism to the bitter end, the dead end. In other words, in a closed system, the probable state of particles is one in which their energy – once unconcentrated – is of little use. Just as heat is useless relative to the sunlight that generates it, aggression does nothing to increase the quality of libidinal energy

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but insofar as it produces the feeling of narcissistic satisfaction, the feeling of mastery, it provides a powerful and intoxicating solution to the problem first posed by the pleasure principle (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 65). Moreover, whether one calls this aggression ‘superego’ or instinct matters little insofar as the same instinctual forces are at work.

Beyond open or closed Women, however, appear as an exception to this general process and what women want is highly problematic for men. Like ‘perverts’, like ‘homosexuals’, women, it is said, retard and restrain civilization because they refuse to give up their narcissism (Freud, On Narcissism 69). Women are said to represent the family and sexual life, while men alone carry out the instinctual sublimations which women are incapable of (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 50). This is dangerous to men and to society as it inhibits the spread of brotherly love, but simultaneously, it also inhibits the ‘instinct’ for aggression. Moreover, it is claimed that women’s refusal is not just behavioural, but that somehow, with puberty, the original narcissism of women re-emerges and it intensifies (Freud, On Narcissism 70). According to Beauvoir’s descriptions of the narcissistic woman, her narcissism never diminishes, not even in old age. In other words, in women the original instinct does not follow the laws of classical thermodynamics, it does not break down into lower quality energy. How is this possible? Let us keep in mind Le Doeuff’s notion that in addition to the male model of philosophy according to which one follows and repeats the ideas of a single male master, there is also the possibility for another kind of philosophy, one that she urges women to create. Le Doeuff urges women to invent their own philosophies, to read and learn from many philosophies and many sources, and to cease being the disciples of a single master (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 170). And so, she emphasizes the importance of a ‘heterogeneous genesis’, thought that starts from outside philosophy but from a plurality of outsides, a polygenesis in which mastery fades away (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 170). This too because the intellectual modes, the ready-made philosophies, available to women are intractable with respect to the problems they wish to take up. Polygenesis makes possible a plurality of starting points, so that the intrinsic and structural obstructions to women doing philosophy – and here specifically we name the often neglected requirement

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for self-assertion, the ability to set one’s own light above other’s – so that these obstructions are less of a barrier to women (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 140, 141). Perhaps no feminist philosopher has taken the critique of the intrinsic and structural limitations of what she calls corporate philosophy farther than Le Doeuff, who, in her efforts, has been led to drop the so-called project of systematization and the intellectual war of every philosopher against every philosopher, male or female. With these caveats in mind, what we have provisionally called an ‘open system’, open to new flows of ideas, images and influences will more likely yield a philosophy of one’s own. Let us also consider the reminder, concerning narcissism specifically, that comes from Sarah Kofman (Kofman 210–11). Kofman reminds us that Freud’s text on narcissism was written at a time when he was particularly taken with Lou Salomé, who attended his seminars and with whom he maintained a long and enduring friendship. Lou Salomé, author of some fifteen books and a practicing psychoanalyst, of course, had her own ideas about narcissism, ideas that, following the warnings of Le Doeuff, we may have good reason to resurrect. According to the classical model, a woman, especially if she is beautiful, develops a certain self-sufficiency such that ‘strictly speaking such women love only themselves with an intensity comparable to that of the man’s love for them’ (Freud, On Narcissism 70). They wish to be loved rather than to love, since, after all, object oriented love is banal and unsatisfying in comparison with love that would enhance one’s self-love. And men are fatally attracted to them. They attract the same interest and level of fascination as children, as animals such as cats and beasts of prey, as well as of great criminals and humourists.12 Men envy their blissful state of mind, their unassailable ego position; perhaps they even hate such women insofar as no man will ever see his ideal self in a narcissistic woman. Kaufman expresses the enigma presented by women in clear terms. What makes the narcissistic woman so attractive is not so much her beauty – although clearly it is thought that primarily a beautiful woman has such narcissism, can maintain it, or has the right to it. What makes the narcissistic woman attractive is precisely that she has what the man has lost; she has her original narcissism, her high quality libidinal energy – and he wants it (Kofman 212)! The woman keeps her enigmatic reserve, never abandons herself, remains inaccessible, independent, nonchalant, with high esteem; her nature can be said to be ‘more natural’ than man’s (Kofman 213). In short, she is an ideal candidate to be a feminist philosopher ‘Oh Utopia, you won’t let go ’ (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 141).

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This difference between men and women in particular, is not, we are assured, any sort of misogyny – after all as Fernando Meirelles says of Kátia Lund, she played a very important role! Rather, the difference seems to be that men do not have unlimited quantities of psychical energy. For the man, the primary narcissism of the child breaks down. Once directed only to self-love, it is redirected first to the mother or caregiver, then possibly to the ‘sexual over-estimation’ of a woman, a state known as ‘being-in-love’ (Freud, On Narcissism 69) Given the neuroticcompulsive aspect of this transferral of sexual energies, the man is thought to be better off, in the end, to take what little is left and direct it to the previously discussed ‘auxiliary constructions’, supports or supplements which were defined as secondary to something larger and which we can now see are simply backup processes for primary narcissism. Their powerful deflections, substitute satisfactions and intoxicants, offer some relief. So-called happiness remains ‘a problem of the economics of an individual’s libido’; the question is, how much real satisfaction can each man expect to get from his ego projections on to the world (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 30)? In this regard, the pursuit of art and science, as well as philosophy, religious systems and ideals, all of which apparently develop as a result of the cultivation of our higher mental faculties, are the most favoured, for they remain most directly connected with original narcissism. Erotic males will project their libido onto external objects, meaning other people. And for the man who fails in this, whose narcissistic libido has diminished so much that he is least like a woman, there is always the satisfaction to be found in aggressive acts which leave his imprint directly on the social and political realm, and where his efforts may be marked by narcissistic, ego-libidinal monuments to his accomplishments. After all, for men, withdrawing from women what civilization requires is merely an expedient distribution of libido (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 50). But women, what happens to women? If women displace their narcissism, they become like men, and if they do not, they remain women, but narcissistic women (Freud, On Narcissism 71). The implication seems to be that ‘narcissism is indeed the ground of all love’ (Kofman 217). Parental love for one’s children is, after all, nothing but the reborn hope for one’s own narcissism. We are assured that there exists a highly complicated biological connection maintaining women in a cool and narcissistic state. This biological connection appears with puberty, which in women brings about an intensification of the original narcissism, rather than its diminishment (Freud, On Narcissism 70). Moreover, with respect to their masturbatory practices, little girls are

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said to experience spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement manifested in the ‘twitching of the clitoris’ (Freud, ‘Three Contributions’ 78).13 Taking their own experience to be primary, girls who remain aloof and self-sufficient, whose self-love does not diminish, such girls come to understand male sexuality by simply transferring to the boys the sensations of their own female sexual processes. What could possibly induce them to do otherwise since their entire libido is directed nowhere but to themselves? In other words, for the girl, the clitoris is primary and the little girl assumes that the boy has one too! The primacy of female narcissistic self-love is further revealed in the ‘refusal’ of the clitoral zone to ‘give up its excitability, a condition brought on by abundant activities in infantile life’ (Freud, ‘Three Contributions’ 78). And so, it is said, there must be a biological explanation for women’s intensified narcissistic energy. But if there is, then what might it be? The implication developed here so far is that, for women, unlike men, the psychic system is open, not closed; it is open to new influxes of energy and matter; thus the woman’s high quality libido does not necessarily diminish and even increases, and no aggressive instinct need emerge to satisfy women’s narcissistic longings. Given this interesting conclusion, we might briefly explore the concept of an open system, first on the level of thermodynamics and then, with respect to its psychological and philosophical consequences. We began by noting that that our own ego often appears to us to be autonomous and unitary, but that for Freud, the ego is really the surface of the id. However, it appears that the psychic apparatus, overall, is conceptualized as a closed system: self-bounded, self-generating and selfperpetuating. Biological science supports the idea that living things must continuously recycle their components ‘autopoetically,’ to maintain themselves, however, the aloofness and self-identity of living systems is partial.14 It is no exaggeration to claim that as living beings, humans are connected to the cosmos (Margulis and Sagan 22). Energy from the sun in conjunction with energy from chemical elements is the primary source of living matter. The energy of growth and reproduction as well as the energy of living beings to move and act is nothing but a product of sunlight, so for example, fossil fuels are the result of plants like giant seed ferns that photosynthesized autopoetically trapped sunlight, turning it into carbon-based living matter (Margulis and Sagan 23). The energies of life, the energy for the evolution and colonization of the biosphere are solar. In fact, the entire universe seems to have been formed in accordance with these principles. If it is the case that the universe began in a singularity, an explosion from an immensely hot, infinitely dense

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point 13.5 billion years ago, a simultaneous effect of gravity and hot gases, and that, within one second, its matter spread out three light years, and that by three minutes, cooling, it spread out 40 light years, then the matter was simply travelling on the space (Margulis and Sagan 24). It is the space that expanded. Observation of the (red) light-wave pattern of the stars shows that galaxies are still flying away from one another at immense speeds. So we live on the surface of a space like objects on a balloon that continues to be blown up without popping, that continues to expand outward (Margulis and Sagan 24). Moreover, we receive information from some of the planets and stars in that space, those not too far away for their information (elements) to travel to us at the speed of light. Carbon, essential to living matter was formed out of these lighter elements, baked by the nuclear fission of exploding stars and, in this way, living matter evolved from the pre-sex mergings and nuclear explosions, bombardments and stellar interactions (Margulis and Sagan 24). Thus it appears that, in addition to closed thermodynamic systems, systems whose energy is dissipating, the universe also consists of open thermodynamic structures, structures that increase in complexity and in their capacity to do work – open systems through which matter and energy flow (Margulis and Sagan 32). Simply stated, most so-called natural pleasures such as eating, drinking, sex, hearing, smelling, seeing involve orifices and flows into and out of our bodies; they involve open systems. In this way, humans and other living things are open biological systems dependent on matter and energy flows and sexually, humans are thermodynamically and informationally open, combining DNA from both parents (Margulis and Sagan 33). The point here is that if psychically, women are open systems, there is nothing neurotic or pathological about this; just the reverse; they are simply part of the universe. In spite of this more positive interpretation of narcissism, do we still want to claim that women are fundamentally narcissistic, that Simone de Beauvoir and Kátia Lund, for example, are narcissists and nothing but narcissists? Apparently thinking through precisely this sort of question, Luce Irigaray argues that woman is neither an open nor a closed system, that instead woman is indefinite insofar as form is never complete in her, such that her morphology allows her continually to become something else (Irigaray 229). Possibly then, the idea of open and closed systems is one more example of ‘tension’ and insofar as they are held in tension, they would occupy a single plane. Auto-eroticism, self-love as defined from the male point of view, individualizes both the subject and object of love, as well as the (genital) instrument appropriated to produce ‘pure’

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pleasure. But insofar as Irigaray would define the/a woman ‘beyond all pairs of opposites, all distinctions between active and passive’, then the/a woman is neither a closed system (thereby analogous to the male), nor an open system, narcissistic, but unable to contribute to civilization. ‘There is another topo-(ology) of jouissance’, one that is ‘alien to masculine self-affectation’ (Irigaray 230). In the context of narcissism, this is possible, to some extent, insofar as the woman does not have one sex organ nor a unified sexuality, but a multiplicity of potential and actual sexual sites, ‘body, breasts, pubis, clitoris, labia, vulva, vagina, neck of the uterus, womb’ none of which can be standardized as the model of female sexuality (Irigaray 233). ‘If woman is sometimes experienced as all-powerful, this is precisely insofar as she is “indifferentiated” and so much so that from the point of view of the dichotomy “closed – open” she appears insatiable, for no one single thing – no form, act, discourse, subject, masculine, feminine – can complete the development of woman’s desire’ (Irigaray 227, 229). And can we not utilize this concept to make sense of women’s cultural productions? For if it is the case that women are seeking to express themselves in a manner that is not subject to the binary structure of closed or open, so that their behaviour can be comprehended as neither masculine aim-inhibited production nor narcissistic self-love, then there would be nothing for them to say. Thus even though Lund and Meirelles went to the set together and went home together daily to talk about what they were doing, even though they were behind the monitors together the entire time and they discussed every scene, the only words left to Kátia Lund are ‘his portion is bigger than mine’. In this sense, there is nothing for a woman to say or tell; no account or story, insofar as ‘any telling would already be dominated by the laws of a language, the intent, meaning and thought of a subject who rapes and robs women of their own – jouissance – their own understanding of themselves and their work’ (Irigaray 230). Perhaps surprisingly, Lou Salomé, inspiration for and friend to the founder of psychoanalysis, appears to have anticipated precisely this sort of conclusion and her own solution to it is ingenious, possibly even approaching Le Doeuff’s and Irigaray’s conceptions of the self-assertive or indifferentiated woman. For viewed from a different perspective, the problem that Salomé was interested in, and what brought her to the study of narcissism, was not implicated with psychology as a natural science or equilibrium thermodynamics. Rather, the problem that interested Salomé was the problem of love, including self-love (Mazin Sect. 1). To a certain extent, Salomé even admonishes the woman who isolates

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her sexuality from the rest of her experience and overvalues her cultural achievements, her marital fidelity, her ethics, her happy home and devotion to children. Such a woman may ‘think too poorly of herself and requires a sanction’ so as not to be ashamed of her instinctual life, her narcissistic eroticism. (Salomé, The Freud Journal 81) Such a woman saves nothing of this energy that might serve to build a house, however, ‘there is no limit to the available forms into which her eroticism might flow without limit’ (Salomé, The Freud Journal 81). But how? How can women let their eroticism flow into a multiplicity of forms without limit? Narcissism is not, for Salomé, an infantile stage that is transcended; it is, unexpectedly, the ‘persistent accompaniment of all our deeper experience, always present’ though we are unable to be conscious of it (Salomé, The Freud Journal 110). The so-called primitive or natural self, Salomé argues, is not a stage or obstacle to be overcome for the sake of civilization. Rather, we might envision nature and culture, civilization and libidinal energies, as present together everywhere. Persons who are creatively gifted and not pathological express themselves in cultural activities. Nature and culture are thus not opposed to one another, they do not express duality (Salomé, The Freud Journal 146, 147). Then what and by what means? The mythical Narcissus is not, for Salomé, the one who looks at his image and falls into self-love, but rather, Narcissus is the discoverer of himself, the self-knower (Salomé, The Freud Journal 111). This follows, perhaps, from a memory Salomé records, a memory of an experience of looking into a mirror and seeing her own image. She believes she was about seven years old at the time, but is quite clear that she had already abandoned the pious beliefs of childhood. She was in this sense beyond the possibility of either the oceanic feeling or the good Father. Looking into a mirror, she see herself, her own existence ‘separate from all others’ and standing forth as a bounded individual (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 7). The sight, she writes, left her feeling ‘homeless and impoverished’, reduced to a ‘ghostlike facsimile of existence’ (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 7). How does she interpret this? Remember, she advises us, that Narcissus never looked into a man-made mirror. Narcissus looked, instead, into the mirror of Nature (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 9). And what he saw there was not just himself, thus he did not fall into self-love. What he saw was ‘himself as if he were still All: would he not otherwise have fled from the image instead of lingering before it (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 9)? What he saw was the unity of nature and culture, of joy and sorrow, and what he thereby departed from was the self and self-absorption, self-devotion and asser-

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tion through sublimation. Love of others, rather than arising from the diminishment of our libidinal energies, arises out of an excess of love; not even self-love but simply ‘love belonging to ourselves’ (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 9). It is that we have too much love rather than not enough. And what Freud called sexual over-esteem, Salomé takes to be the exaltation of the loved object, attributing beauty and value to it, in substitution, yes, but not in substitution for the self, rather, in substitution for the underlying, all embracing, unity of nature and self, a symbol of abundance, of excess, even enriching the source from which it arose (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 10). ‘Only in the cathexis of objects is the libido manifested as something in itself’, and so, without the love of others, no self even emerges (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 9). So out of this emergence of love, in which we make light of our boundaries, arises not only the self but friendship and ethics as well. Given the abundance of love, given that objects provide the occasion for unburdening an excess of love; given the pleasure of rediscovery, the ‘tendency to rediscover the beloved in all manner of things in the hostile world outside’; and given as well, the so-called sexual passivity of the female which ‘enables the erogenous zones to play their original roles, guided by the principle of conserving and waiting – in contrast to the forward thrust of activity; given all this, narcissism in the female is the condition of the possibility of tenderness, spiritualization, refinement. But it is these things only in so far as it is not a duality but a tertium quid that allows the world to be experienced not from the vantage point of the omnipotent ego, but á deux’ (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 9– 13). Without this, it appears there can be no autonomous ethical stand (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 18). Thus, it may be that problems of value, value judgements are indeed libidinal problems but on the level of becoming the ‘creative activity par excellence’ (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 22). Rather than consisting of laws, rules, principles, prohibitions, regulations, all of which reflect the attempt to ward off the wish to be omnipotent and the so-called instinct for aggression, ethics is precisely, the unprescribed, even the poetic, the tenderness of the third thing where dreams venture into the realm of reality. Thus it is just possible that as Lou Salomé claims, ‘the ethical is a venture, the highest stake of narcissim, and its sublime audacity, exemplary adventure and the eruption into life of its ultimate courage and abandon’ (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 22). But also, let us not forget that this freedom and complexity are closely connected to our autopoetic closure, our self-referential complexity, something not found in inert objects (Margulis and Sagan 22). There

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must be, Salomé speculates, an experience of inner differences, libido as the connecting link between the emergence of the self and our original state. This inner difference, she urges might be preserved through ‘dual nomenclature’ but what matters is that it is not forcibly unified out of existence (Salomé, ‘The Dual Orientation’ 4). On the level of life itself, living systems metabolize; living tissues or cells take up and convert into their own proper substance the nutritive material brought to them by the blood, or by which they transform their cell protoplasm into simpler substances, which are fitted either for excretion or for some special purpose, as in the manufacture of the digestive ferments. They are, in this sense, closed systems, self bounded, self-generating and selfperpetuating. Even sex, is part of the natural tendency to dissipate, to mix things up, to randomize, to lose discrete identity (Margulis and Sagan 21). Simultaneously, the aloofness and self-identity of living systems is partial, in other words, we are connected to the cosmos as well (Margulis and Sagan 21). As we have stated above and as Salomé likewise theorizes, we are indeed impelled to make light of our boundaries and to recognize our identification with totality insofar as life depends on the cosmic ocean of energy transformation, energy from the sun in conjunction with energy from chemical elements, the primary sources of living matter (Margulis and Sagan 23). In short, creatively, philosophically and ethically, we are led to the concept of indifferentiation, neither open nor closed but both. In short, neither Kátia Lund nor Simone de Beauvoir should be called narcissistic women, but rather director and philosopher. And so, let us not forget the ‘brutality’ of thinking in terms of dualisms and let us abandon it (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 24) Philosophical narcissism, which has been, historically, the province of men, is eager to situate its rationality inside, at the heart of a structure that could then place women and all other disciplines outside itself in the open, mingling freely, while philosophy retains its pre-eminence over all other discourses and philosophers – men – enforce the exclusion of women and the absolute value of philosophy (Le Doeuff, Hypparchia’s Choice 25, 26 ). Let us recall that at equilibrium, when molecules diffuse from higher to lower concentration, when molecules are most disordered (unstructured) then everything is homogeneous and nothing interesting can happen (Margulis and Sagan 35). So let us consider ourselves indifferentiated, unfinished in our form, and let us posit that the autonomy of a closed ‘self’ is a dead end, and, then, let us seek the realm of the ‘third thing’ in which the unprescribed tenderness of value emerges.

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Notes 1. For a complete account of the idea of the amateur see: ‘Women and Philosophy’ (Le Doeuff 181–209). 2. This text is cited by Louise Bassett who adds that analysis of Beauvoir’s case led Le Doeuff to formulate a revised notion of the complex (Bassett 73). 3. See also Freud, New Introductory Lectures. Lecture XXXI. Sigmund Freud. The Complete Psychological Works, Vol. XXII. Trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1964), p.78 and Vol. V, p. 541. 4. See also Freud, The Complete Psychological Works, Vol. XXII, p. 77. 5. The analogy brings to mind Plato’s story of the soul in the Phaedrus. 6. ‘Because of the fine motor skills and sense nerves found in these particular parts of the body they are represented as being larger on the homunculus. A part of the body with fewer sensory and/or motor connections to the brain is represented to appear smaller. The Cortical Homunculus is a visual representation of the concept of “the body within the brain” that one’s hand or face exists as much as a series of nerve structures or a “neuron concept” as it does a physical form.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus This can be viewed at: http://owen.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=87494, the website of the Natural History Museum, London. 7. There are also pathological cases in which the boundary becomes uncertain or incorrectly drawn, but this does not mean it dissolves. In any case, it is the normal situation that we have to pay attention to for the moment. 8. Of course, since these are two quite distinct types of objects using the same methods against both may prove hopeless. 9. Commentators have frequently dismissed this project as a mistake or a view that Freud abandoned. On the contrary, it seems to me to be an idea that Freud never abandoned. See Olkowski, ‘Catastrophe’, in Traumatizing Theory: the Cultural Politics of Affect in and Beyond Psychoanalysis. Karyn Ball, ed., New York: Other Press, 2007. 10. ‘With an [increasing] complexity of the interior [of the organism], the nervous system receives stimuli from the somatic element itself – endogenous stimuli – which have equally to be discharged’ (296–7). 11. Sigmund Freud, ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’, p. 307. 12. Sarah Kofman has addressed each of these comparisons, tracing them to their likely source or model in ‘The Narcissistic Woman: Freud and Girard’, 210–26. 13. Sigmund Freud, ‘Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex’, trans. A.A. Brill (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962). Such a reading is not uncontroversial. First published in 1910, this text appears to anticipate later remarks about female narcissism. 14. As Margulis and Sagan explain this, reproduction is a form of autopoiesis, the Greek term for self-making (poien). Living things are exposed to continuous material and energy flows. Living things are also autopoeic networks – continually recycling their components to maintain themselves (21–2).

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Bibliography Andreas-Salomé, Lou. ‘The Dual Orientation of Narcissism.’ Psychoanalysis Quarterly 31 (1962): 1–30. ——. (1964) The Freud Journal. Trans. Stanley A. Leavy. London, New York: Basic Books, 1964. Bassett, Louise. ‘Paradoxe assurément: Michèle Le Doeuff’s Philosophical Imaginary.’ Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, July 2003. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. and ed. H.M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1953. Originally published in French as Le deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. ‘Cortical Homunculus.’ Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopedia. 21 August, 2006. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus] Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962. ——. General Psychological Theory, Papers on Metapsychology, ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Collier Books, 1963. ——. ‘On Narcissism: an Introduction’, in The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. ——. The Ego and the Id. Trans. Joan Riviere and James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962. ——. ‘Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.’ Trans. A.A. Brill. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962. ——. New Introductory Lectures. Lecture XXXI. Sigmund Freud. The Complete Psychological Works. Vol. XXII. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1964. ——. ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. I. Trans. James Strachey London: Hogarth Press, 1966. Gussow, Mel. ‘From Brazilian Slums to Hollywood Storm: a Second Wind for a Director’s Gritty Slice of Life.’ New York Times. Thursday 19 February, 2004, Section E, Page 1, Column 6. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. Kofman, Sarah. ‘The Narcissistic Woman: Freud and Girard.’ French Feminist Thought. Ed. Toril Moi. London: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 210–26. Le Doeuff, Michèle. ‘Women and Philosophy.’ French Feminist Thought. Ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 181–209. ——. The Philosophical Imaginary. Trans. Colin Gordon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. ——. Hypparchia’s Choice: an Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc. Trans. Trista Selous. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. ——. The Sex of Knowing. Trans. Kathryn Hammer and Lorraine Code. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Published originally in French as Le Sexe du Savoir. Paris: Aubier, 1998. Margulis, Lynn and Sagan, Dorion. What is Sex? New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

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Mazin, Victor. ‘The Femme Fatale – Lou Andreas-Salomé.’ Journal of European Psychoanalysis. 14 (Winter-Spring 2002): [http://www.psychomedia.it/ jep/number14/mazin.htm]. ‘Sensory Homunculus.’ Natural History Museum. London, 2005. [http://owen. nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=87494]


Part 2 The Other in Relational Ethics


4 The Relational Ontologies of Cavarero and Battersby: Natality, Time and the Self Rachel Jones

In the opening chapter of In Spite of Plato, Adriana Cavarero steals a glance past the imposing presence of heroes and philosophers, to catch sight of Penelope as she sits patiently weaving and unweaving, and weaving together again. As she waits for Odysseus to return, the unbroken rhythm of her movement generates an ‘anomalous’ space, outside the patriarchal order (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 12). Penelope’s refusal to finish her work holds off her suitors and the possibility of re-marriage. Her endless weaving and unweaving allows her both to retreat from ‘the great events of history – the history of men, of heroes’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 13), and to escape the order of domestic productivity, for her work is never brought to a useful state of completion. The narrative scene is further complicated, on Cavarero’s reading, because Penelope does not turn to the solace that philosophical reflection might offer her in her seclusion: on the contrary, the infinitely repeated process of entwining and undoing is at odds with the time of philosophy in its orientation towards eternal and unchanging Being. Cavarero suggests that the bodily rhythms and gestures of Penelope’s repeated movements instead hold open a space for a female symbolic order that encompasses Penelope and her handmaids, and that is ‘so evidently gendered in the feminine that this life shared in a common horizon allows every woman to recognise herself in another woman’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 30) Cavarero proceeds in her own writings to develop the space configured by this common horizon, a horizon that takes its orientation from birth and natality, she argues, rather than orienting human beings towards death. In this emphasis on natality, her work resonates strongly with that of another contemporary feminist philosopher, Christine Battersby, for whom rhythmic patterns of repetition and echo are the key to 105

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a relational female identity construed in terms of becoming and birth. Cavarero and Battersby, following Irigaray, demand of us an attentiveness and attunement capable of discerning a female form in its differential specificity, irreducible to the object of male desire. In what follows, I will show how both thinkers build on Irigaray’s work by developing relational ontologies that enable them to articulate non-oppositional ways of thinking difference: difference not as the cut separating one from its other, but as a movement of differentiation that allows uniqueness to emerge through unfolding patterns of relations, and specificity to be scored into being through processes of becoming. Hence, I would argue that their projects are intrinsically ethical, both in offering us alternatives to a phallocentric economy of the same which reduces woman to the ‘other’ of the (male) subject; and in the attentiveness to specificity and uniqueness which is the logical consequence of their feminist perspectives rooted in sexual difference (and which has implications that reach beyond the issue of female identity per se). In short, both thinkers seem to me to offer powerful ways of responding to an ethical demand succinctly expressed by Moira Gatens when she writes that: ‘to treat all beings as “the same” is to deny some beings the most basic ethical principle, that is, acknowledgement of its specific being’ (Gatens, ‘The Oppressed State of My Sex’ 127). As Gatens’ language of ‘being’ and ‘beings’ indicates, ethics is here inseparable from ontology. Reconfiguring the ontological is thus a condition for the emergence of an ethics of sexual difference capable of acknowledging the ‘specific being’ of each singular existent.1 Cavarero and Battersby, I want to suggest, each offer us such reconfigurations: Cavarero by elaborating Arendt’s insistence that ‘Being’ and ‘Appearing’ coincide;2 Battersby by intervening in a more Nietzschean tradition where being – and ‘beings’ – are thought in terms of becoming.3 In both cases, it is a commitment to a feminist thinking of difference which makes the difference, allowing both thinkers to creatively transform the philosophical resources they appropriate. In this paper – loosely structured around the figures of Demeter, Eurydice and Antigone4 – I want to begin by exploring the radical shift in perspective engendered by Cavarero’s relational ontology and her reorientation of thought towards birth. I will therefore offer a brief account of some of the key ideas and arguments from Cavarero’s first two books to be translated into English, In Spite of Plato and Relating Narratives. The latter includes a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice which I will examine in some detail, contrasting Cavarero’s version with that offered by Maurice Blanchot. Here I will suggest that

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whilst Cavarero’s emphasis on being as appearing holds open a space for a relational ontology rooted in birth, it also partially occludes the temporal complexities of the event of appearing, and of birth itself as the primary event whereby, as Cavarero notes, unique existents make their appearance in the world. By returning momentarily to In Spite of Plato, we can see that Cavarero herself emphasizes the entwining of spatial and temporal dimensions in Penelope’s subversive weaving: it is a ‘time of cadenced repetition’ that ‘carves out a feminine space where women belong to themselves’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 19, 17; my emphasis). Hence attending to female specificity demands a rethinking of temporality adequate to the unfolding of a space for sexual difference. More specifically, an ontology that takes human existence to be rooted in being born of a mother demands an account of time that does justice to the temporality of the event of birth – to birth as originary event.5 While Cavarero points the way towards such an account, I will seek to extend her insights first via the work of Françoise Dastur,6 and then by turning to Battersby’s appropriation of Kierkegaard in The Phenomenal Woman. Placing Cavarero alongside Battersby allows the ‘cadenced sameness’ of Penelope’s ceaselessly repeated gestures7 to be seen as generative repetition – weaving temporal depths whose complex patternings attest to the philosophical turn towards natality and birth.

1. Demeter’s daughter: towards an ontology of reciprocal appearing Cavarero’s work aims towards a fundamental paradigm shift which would turn Western philosophy away from what she sees as its foundational orientation towards death, and towards an ontology taking birth as its pivotal term. As part of this project, and in ways that echo Irigaray’s analysis, she has offered a critique of an originary displacement of the maternal, locating the ‘founding rite of matricide’ in the identification of human finitude with mortality, rather than natality (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 9). In the Platonic tradition that Cavarero seeks to unpick, it is this foundational orientation towards death, she argues, that leads to the positing of an eternal realm that will supposedly save ‘man’ from the transience of an individual life destined to dissolve into nothingness. Death itself is thereby reconfigured as a pathway to a higher truth and a realm of Being which knows no change – so no birth and no death. This higher realm is positioned as the only ‘true’ reality, in opposition to a deceptive realm of becoming and flux.

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Cavarero argues that this metaphysical architecture has two profound consequences for the way birth is thought. First, between Parmeneides and Plato, the world of appearances is figured as the coming from and returning to nothingness of that which lacks being. Becoming is reduced to no more than a ‘sorrowful foreshadowing of death’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 44), while birth itself becomes deathly, producing only the undoing of being and its temporary descent into non-being. At the same time, the deathly process of birth and physical reproduction that condemns human beings to mortality becomes the allotted function of woman. Cavarero offers a detailed reading of the myth of Demeter to make her point. Demeter, like Orpheus to whom we will later turn, loses one she loves to the underworld. As is well known, the goddess of fertility responds to the loss of her daughter, Kore, by withdrawing her powers from the earth. Later she accepts a compromise: Kore will be returned to her for part of the year, before departing for the underworld again, whereupon the earth will once more become cold and sterile for a time. The myth symbolizes the cycles of fertility that bind woman and nature together in the Western imagination, and charts the inscription of these cycles into a patriarchal order as ‘a norm that requires and prescribes reproduction’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 67). But Cavarero points out that in the original scene, prior to the drama of separation that establishes this cyclical logic as woman’s destiny, Demeter had already given birth to her daughter. It is the disruption of the already existing relation between Demeter and Kore that leads to the suspension of generation and the desolation of the earth. The myth thus barely obscures a maternal power to generate which ‘is coextensive with the reciprocal visibility of mother and daughter’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 60). In this shared gaze (a gaze that Demeter and Kore shared prior to Kore’s abduction), each woman can recognize her sex in the other: instead of their existence as women being defined in relation to man, reducing both to the ‘Other of the same’, their individual differences can be inscribed in relation to one another, in a horizon of sexed similarity which affirms ‘the female gender, in which birth is embodied’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 64). Cavarero can here be read as reappropriating the gaze in the light of Irigaray’s critique of the phallogocentric specular economy that has structured sexed relations in Western thought and culture. It is thus crucial that the gaze Cavarero invokes is reciprocal: rather than objectifying the other, each woman, mother or daughter, looks at another who actively returns their gaze. Implicit in this reciprocity is the idea that it is the shared sex of the two women that makes it possible

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for the gaze to be returned, becoming a mode of contact between them rather than a process of objectification.8 Although this shared gaze constitutes an affirmation of a shared sex, interrelating mother and daughter as each belonging to ‘the female gender, in which birth is embodied’, crucially (and as Cavarero repeatedly insists), this affirmation of maternal power does not require that each daughter must necessarily become a mother herself in turn. The generation of daughters who share the sex of the mother is what makes it possible for birth to happen again, but the reciprocal gaze that sustains a sense of sexed specificity for both mother and daughter depends only on the fact that every daughter is born not from nothingness, but from a mother who is also a woman. Hence, this reorientation towards birth and an originary maternal power does not permit the reductive identification of women’s entire being with a reproductive function. Instead, it means seeing with the eyes of a daughter who does not have to give birth to confirm her specifically female existence, but who can see herself as a woman – that is, as belonging to the female sex that embodies the capacity to birth – because she can turn her gaze towards the woman who first gave birth to her, that is, because she can relate her own embodied existence to that of her mother. A daughter is therefore able either to generate, or not to generate, without losing touch with the maternal power specific to her sex. On this reading, then, ‘Demeter does not represent a continuous and rhythmically uninterrupted birthing’; instead, she ‘reveals a sovereign figure of female subjectivity who decides, in the concrete singularity of every woman, whether or not to generate’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 61, 64). In this maternal order of birth, Cavarero writes, ‘nothingness has no place’. Instead, the maternal power of engendering is extended between ‘two sequences of infinity: the infinity of a maternal continuum that lies in the past of every human born, male or female; and the infinity of a maternal continuum that presents itself as a future possibility when a woman generates a daughter’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 60). The reciprocal visibility of mother and daughter thus attests to the infinite creativity of a primordial life which generates a ‘boundless space of metamorphous appearances’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 115).9 It is these double infinities of generative relations that constitute the originary scene which the familiar Demeter myth interrupts and against which it unfolds. Cavarero is working to keep us from forgetting an originary relationality rooted in the maternal and the contingencies of birth. Unlike death, which comes to us all and makes no distinction according to gender, birth is always rooted in the female specificity of maternal

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power, producing human beings who are always sexed, and a world ‘engendered in difference’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 56). To begin to remember this would be to begin to respond to Cavarero’s challenge to think finitude in terms of natality, rather than mortality. In her more recent Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, Cavarero draws closely on Hannah Arendt’s emphasis on story-telling and natality to further develop an ontology of reciprocal appearances linked to a model of narrative identity.10 It is therefore fitting that Cavarero continues to deploy her own methodology of subversively retelling the stories of well-known literary and mythic figures, turning to Oedipus, Ulysses and Scheherazade, as well as Orpheus and Eurydice. In relation to the first of these, Cavarero re-examines the riddle posed to Oedipus by the Sphinx, who famously asks what creature walks sometimes on four legs, sometimes on two, and finally on three (Graves, The Greek Myths xxx, §105.e). In the familiar tale, Oedipus’ answer – ‘Man’ – solves the riddle and frees Thebes from the fearful Sphinx. However, Cavarero suggests that something of this creature’s strange and monstrous nature remains in Oedipus’ answer, and that the universal idea of ‘Man’ is itself ‘constitutively monstrous’ insofar as it ‘applies to everyone precisely because it is no one’, thereby negating the singular value of each unique human existent (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 8–9). In keeping with this insight, Cavarero rejects philosophy’s traditional (but monstrous) quest for the universal that best corresponds to the question of what we are, and, like Arendt, turns instead to the power of narration to capture the fragile uniqueness of who we are.11 On their journey through the unplanned contingencies of life, she suggests, every human leaves behind a pattern, which can be discerned only after the events and actions from which it results, and which is ‘nothing but their life story’. Hence: ‘The meaning that saves each life from being a mere sequence of events consists in leaving behind a figure, or something from which the unity of a design can be discerned in the telling of the story.’ The story can only be told by ‘someone who does not participate in the events’, but its telling corresponds to a primary desire on the part of the one whose story it is (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 2). Human beings long to hear their life-stories, for their identity – the unique and unrepeatable figure of who they are – is ‘rendered tangible’ only in the narratives through which others trace the pattern of their lives (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 12). As the myth of Oedipus tragically reveals, the story of a life is rooted in the contingency of birth, ‘in being born of a mother, this and not another’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 11). The desire to hear the

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story that begins in one’s birth, coupled with the incompleteness of human memory (we never remember our own birth), gives an initial clue as to why someone’s life story has to be told to them by others.12 A deeper reason is found in the ontology of reciprocal appearances that grounds Cavarero’s conception of a self – a self that is not to be thought in terms of a mysterious interiority or underlying essence.13 On the contrary, Cavarero draws on Arendt to reject the inside/outside, appearance/reality distinction, and to affirm the complete coincidence of ‘being’ and ‘appearing’, where for appearing to occur, it must always be an ‘appearing to’ an other.14 Thus, each individual reveals themselves from the moment of their birth, here understood as originary exposure (‘the mother is also the other to whom the existent first appears’), such that who they are, the whole of their being as a unique existent, is fully constituted in the finite plurality of their appearings to others (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 21).15 On this model, then, the self is wholly expositive and relational, disclosed in a scene of plural and reciprocal appearings, in what Cavarero calls ‘an intimate exteriority’: ‘a unique being is such only in the relation, and the context of a plurality of others, who, likewise unique themselves, are distinguished reciprocally – the one from the other’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 113, 43). If the self is thus ‘totally constituted by the relations of her appearance to others in the world’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 36), then the story that traces the pattern of who one is must always be told by another, one of the many others to whom each existent appears. The structure of the ontology on which Cavarero is here drawing, where who one is emerges (only and fully) in one’s appearings to others, means that memory is not only lacking as regards the event of our own birth. The spontaneous auto-narration of memory is crucial, according to Cavarero, insofar as it gives each individual a sense of themselves as a narratable self, but it also tempts us into thinking we can fulfil for ourselves the desire for our story. Memory, deceptively, claims to have seen that which could be revealed ‘only through the gaze of another’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 40), that is, the unique pattern of our appearings through which we show who we are. But no individual can see who was exposed to others’ eyes in their own appearings, and as their identity is wholly constituted in this exposure, identity always postulates another – or rather, a plurality of others. Much more could be said about this expositive, relational model of narrative identity – for example, about the way that according to this logic of reciprocal appearings, plural relationality and uniqueness are mutually constitutive: if the uniqueness of each existent generates an

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irreducible plurality, this uniqueness is itself engendered solely because of the way that each existent constitutes a specific and irreplaceable nexus in a complex web of relations with others. Thus each existent and each life-story ‘is different from all others precisely because it is constitutively interwoven with many others’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 71; my emphasis). However, for now, I want to turn to the particular story of Orpheus and Eurydice, to examine more closely the central symbolic importance of this myth in the context of Cavarero’s thought.

2. Eurydice and the logic of un-relation Eurydice dies; Orpheus seeks consolation in his art. The poet sings for himself, narrating about her on the solitary bank, but his song is heard by others – listeners who grow in number and let themselves be seduced by the poetic verse: men and beasts, infernal gods and dead souls. In this way, the memory of Eurydice is circulated and the song can be repeated, from generation to generation, becoming immortal – even beyond the lifetime allowed to Orpheus. (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 94) In stark contrast to the notion of a relational, expositive self, for Cavarero, the myth of Orpheus symbolizes the logic of un-relation that binds together poetry, love and death in a Western imagination mesmerized by the invisibility, unreachability and absence of the other. Despite this familiar logic, Orpheus’s role as the archetypal poet makes him an alluring figure for Cavarero, who links him to the role of the storyteller. What is most important about Orpheus from this perspective is that by singing in memory of his lost beloved, he exemplifies the retrospective gaze of all narrators, who tell of ‘what has been and is no longer’, of that which has already ‘completed [its] sojourn in the world of sensible appearances’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 98). On closer examination, however, Cavarero becomes suspicious of this archetypal narrative scene. For the condition of Orpheus composing his enchanting songs on the solitary bank is not simply that Eurydice dies, but that, in dying for a second time, she disappears in the very moment Orpheus turns back to look at her. This implies, Cavarero argues, that it is not only crucial that the things of which the poet tells are no longer present events in which he might play a part; it also seems essential that the poet must not be able to see the one whose story he narrates. Eurydice’s dissolution enacts the ideal death of the one whose story is to be told. Here death, and Eurydice’s second death in particular, becomes

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the figure of a constitutive lack of relation at the heart of the narrative scene. ‘Drawing his inspiration from the now-dead Eurydice, Orpheus sings of her but not to her’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 101). Cavarero proceeds to examine Rilke’s poetic rewriting of this myth in his poem, ‘Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes’.16 Here a third figure mediates between the tragic lovers: Hermes, the messenger god, leads Eurydice by the hand along the path behind Orpheus. More remarkably still, Rilke’s text seems to allow Eurydice to voice her perspective on events. When Hermes suddenly halts, sorrowfully observing that ‘He has turned round’, Eurydice answers: ‘Who?’17 Cavarero argues that this simple question in fact seals Eurydice into the logic of un-relation more irreversibly than ever. For the only answer to the question is a name – Orpheus – yet the question alone shows that Eurydice has no memory of Orpheus, or of the context of relations which would allow her to understand what is happening to her, or indeed, any sense that anything is happening at all. In Rilke’s poem, Eurydice is dragged uselessly up the path, until the fateful moment when Orpheus looks back and Hermes, without answering her question, simply turns and leads her down again. For the god knows, Cavarero says, that this shadowy figure, ‘serenely immersed in the unintentional time of the pure present’, could not follow the temporal thread of the story that would be necessary to explain the name that would answer her question. Sealed in the mute plenitude of her own death, ‘she no longer has a past or future, and thus she cannot have any story’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 105). Without memory, even her sense of herself as a narratable self has vanished. For Cavarero, Hermes’ silence confirms Eurydice’s role as ‘the sublime figure of absolute un-relation’. Orpheus, left gazing after his beloved’s disappearing shadow, will find his vocation in his relation to her absence; but, ‘She, so-loved, is now in her absolute solitude without any relation to the other, without any memory, and without any story’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 104). In place of this logic of un-relation, Cavarero seeks to return the power of narrative to the scene of a contextual relation holding the one who narrates and the one whose story is told in close proximity. She is aware of the risk implicit in her desire to ‘tear Eurydice and Orpheus away from the funereal pathos of the ancient myth. to imagine a different outcome for the story and picture the lovers, together once again, enraptured in the delight of a reciprocal tale’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 109). Against the background of a Western cultural imaginary in which the most profound measure of ‘true love’ is its continuation in the face of the death of the beloved, Cavarero risks

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the disbelief that accompanies the rewriting of the Orpheus myth in Gluck’s opera. By reuniting the lovers at the end, Gluck’s restaging of the story seems to reduce their passion to what Cavarero calls ‘a banally happy love, a love accessible to all’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 101). Nonetheless, Cavarero seeks to make space for a different drama, one where love unfolds in the intimate exposure and fragility of a reciprocal appearing, and where ‘the questions “who am I?” and “who are you?” form the beat of body language and the language of storytelling’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 109). Rather than being supplemented by the absence of the one whose tale is told, the invisibility of the events narrated would here be counterbalanced by the irresidual appearance of the one who asks for and receives their narration. Storytelling would then constitute a repetition affirming the already existing relations in which singular living beings appear to one another and reveal who they are. Restaged in this context, Orpheus’ fatal turning could take on a different meaning: it would correspond to his desire to sing this story to his beloved, to respond to ‘the living’s desire for narration, not the desire for the immortal fame of the dead’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 100). Thus reconfigured with eros in place of death, storytelling would unfold in the space of ‘a relationship that constitutes an existence as an intimate exteriority, as a singular unity always already exposed to the other’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 113). In the course of her argument, Cavarero refers briefly to Blanchot, whose own retelling of the Orpheus myth forms the heart of his book The Space of Literature.18 Given Cavarero’s project of turning philosophy away from death, it is clear from the start that her perspective will be in tension with Blanchot’s, for whom Orpheus ‘links the “poetic” to an immeasurable demand that we disappear a call to die more profoundly, to turn towards a more extreme dying’ (Blanchot 142, 156). For Blanchot, it is the moment when Orpheus looks back and consigns Eurydice to a second death which is crucial. Orpheus turns, Blanchot suggests, because his desire exceeds the task of recovering the familiar figure of his lost beloved; instead, he desires to see her as she never was or will be, to see her in death, and thus to grasp the obscurity of death in her: [Orpheus] does not want Eurydice in her daytime truth and everyday appeal, but wants her in her nocturnal obscurity, in her distance, with her closed body and sealed face – wants to see her not when she is visible, but when she is invisible wants, not to make her live, but to have living in her the plenitude of her death. (Blanchot 172)19

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But when he turns, Orpheus sees nothing: Eurydice disappears into the night, an imperceptible shade within a more familiar darkness. She becomes ‘the centre of night in the night’, the other night (‘l’autre nuit’), who reveals the essence of night’s darkness precisely because she does not appear in the night, or rather, because she appears only as that which disappears, as that which withdraws when the gaze falls upon her. Hers is a ‘veiled presence which did not hide her absence’ (Blanchot 172). According to Blanchot, although Orpheus sacrifices his task in this impatient glance, nonetheless, he simultaneously makes his work as a poet properly possible for the first time. Through his imprudent desire, Orpheus’ song is ruptured by ‘the presence of her [Eurydice’s] infinite absence’ (Blanchot 172), yet only by thus carrying the work beyond what assures it does Orpheus hold open the space for the song, for literature. Eurydice’s second death makes the work possible, for in this more profound absence, ‘writing begins’ (Blanchot 173, 176). By sabotaging his task, then, Orpheus is in fact obeying the ‘deep demand’ of the work (Blanchot 173).20 In this retelling, literature is founded not on the death of the beloved whose life could be commemorated in song, but on the more unfathomable loss of one who was never present: Eurydice in her deathly, self-contained plenitude, an immemorial absence which nonetheless makes the song possible. As its title suggests, Blanchot’s text is concerned with the ‘space of literature’, not ethics; nonetheless, his refiguring of Eurydice belongs with a particular mode of the ethical which demands that the subject allow itself to be fissured by an immeasurable responsibility towards a radical alterity. I would suggest that this is an ethics of questionable use for those who, like Irigaray, seek to think from the side of those positioned as ‘other’ in the first place.21 And it is an ethics which moves in a quite different direction to Cavarero, for whom each unique existent is able to attest not to an abstract alterity, but to ‘the distinct and unrepeatable face of each human insofar as he is simply another’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 90), to the plurality of inassimilable others to whom she happens to appear and who in turn appear to her. Cavarero argues that the ontology of reciprocal appearances corresponds to a ‘relational ethic of contingency’ that neither reifies nor assimilates otherness (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 87). Rather, it ‘desires a you that is truly an other, in her uniqueness and distinction. No matter how much you are similar and consonant, says this ethic, your story is never my story’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 92). Hence, the fundamental principle of this ethic is found ‘in the recognition that every human being, whatever her qualities, has her unjudgable splendour in a personal

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identity that is irrefutably her story’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 87); this is put into practice most immediately in the shared activity of reciprocal storytelling to which Cavarero would like to return Orpheus and Eurydice. Cavarero’s desire to reinstate a relation between Orpheus and his beloved by returning Eurydice to the world where singular existents appear to one another is quite at odds with Blanchot’s alignment of Eurydice with an irrecuperable alterity. As a shadow that retreats into an already dark night, this Eurydice is a figure for that which in appearing, does not appear. Her ‘unapproachable profundity’ (Blanchot 175) contrasts tellingly with the complete coincidence of being and appearing that characterizes Cavarero’s ‘totally expositive’ self (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 20). For despite the all-too-familiar identification of absolute ‘otherness’ with the figure of a woman (and a twice-dead woman at that), I want to suggest that Blanchot’s Eurydice still gestures towards something that remains partially occluded in Cavarero’s account of a relational and narratable identity. Although this occlusion concerns a shadowy depth, in seeking to address it, we need not be returned to an account of identity opposing superficial appearances to an underlying essence or mysterious interiority. Rather, that which in appearing does not appear, but which remains a condition of our expository co-appearing, is time: the shades not as ghostly presences, but temporal depths. And the latter, as I aim to show, can be figured in ways that are not only very much in keeping with Cavarero’s project, but that complement and extend her philosophical turn towards natality and birth.

3. The event of birth For Cavarero, as we have seen, who we are is rendered tangible in the stories that trace the patterns made by our appearings. Moreover, as each one of us appears to a plurality of others who in turn are constituted in their appearings, ‘appearing’ archetypally takes the form of co-apparition, and the narration of one’s life story belongs ideally to a reciprocal scene. But it is not clear why everything that happens in the event of co-appearing must take the form of something that appears and that is necessarily representable in narrative, either by ourselves or, crucially, by others. In fact, I will suggest, it is both the relational and the specifically temporal nature of the events of which any life story tells that makes those events profoundly inassimilable, in ways that are

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archetypally instantiated in the temporality of birth, the event in which all life stories are rooted. In an article that appeared in German in the same year that Relating Narratives was first published in Italian (1997), Cavarero emphasizes the primacy of birth as the ‘originary event’ [das ursprüngliche Ereignis] whereby the one who is born appears in the world in their unrepeatable and bodily uniqueness (Cavarero, ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 207). This appearing is never a ‘coming from nothing’: ‘each one who is born knows quite well, from whom she/he came. She/he came from the mother.’22 As each singular existent appears in the world always with and to another – the mother – the event of birth reaffirms the constitutively relational character of existence, where appearing is always co-appearing.23 Drawing on Lyotard, Cavarero shows that this fundamental relationality is doubly manifested: although I am dependent on others (those to whom I appeared) for the story of my birth,24 equally, it is the stories of others’ deaths that tell me of my own death (this being an event whose tale I can neither hear nor tell).25 Birth and death are events which escape their sole and irreplaceable protoganists.26 The dependency on others revealed in relation to these primordial events indicates a general principle of being as appearance, reflected in Relating Narratives in the insistence that one’s story can only be told by another: someone who does not themselves participate in the event of one’s own appearing, which remains unmasterable for the one who appears.27 The possibility that here seems foreclosed, however, is that the event of appearing may be unmasterable not only for its protagonist(s), but also for the others who bear witness. Such events may refuse to be fully captured either by others’ gazes or in their stories. Indeed, the recalcitrance of the event may be most marked in the event of birth, precisely because of its ontological primacy as affirming the constitutively relational character of existence. For the event of birth, in ways that are archetypal, does not only affect the one who is born; rather, it incorporates all those others who stand in any relation to this event, and who thus become – albeit to differing degrees – inseparably part of it. The event of birth transfigures a manifold web of relations all at once, interleaving them with an arrival whose effects remain unpredictable and openended, indeterminate and for the time (of) being – that is to say, the time of appearing, of co-appearing, of the event – indeterminable. This means, first, that ‘my birth’ is never simply ‘my own’, so that while we may agree that the event of birth escapes its protagonist, the thoroughly relational character of existence means that all those caught

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up in the manifold event of co-appearing count as its ‘protagonists’, each in their relationally constituted differential uniqueness. Secondly, however, the relational character of the event is not in itself sufficient to explain its inassimilable quality, which does not arise as a merely contingent result of the sheer quantity of relations (and therefore existents) involved. Rather, as the impossibility of grasping ‘my own’ birth already suggests, the unmasterable nature of this event stems from its temporal dimensions, that is, from the specifically temporal quality of the transformation of relations it effects.28 The temporality that I would like to invoke here resonates with accounts of ‘the event’ offered by thinkers such as Lyotard and Foucault. However, I want to draw more closely on the work of Françoise Dastur: although she is working within a more strongly phenomenological frame, informed by Husserl and Heidegger rather than Arendt, Dastur links the notion of the event to birth in ways that are very much in keeping with Cavarero’s project. An event, for Dastur, can initially be defined as ‘what arrives unexpectedly and comes to us by surprise, what descends upon us something which takes possession of us in an unforeseen manner, without warning, and which brings us towards an unanticipated future’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 182). The unforeseen and unforeseeable nature of the event resonates strongly with Cavarero’s insistence that life cannot be lived like a story, as if according to a pre-existing design or plan, but rather, the story is the unforeseeable and singular result of the living of a life.29 As Dastur puts it, ‘Openness to the accident is constitutive of the existence of human being. Such an openness makes one’s life an adventure and not the anticipated development of a programme’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 182). As we have seen, for Cavarero, the unmasterability of the events of one’s own life is rooted in the way in which those events and that life are constituted by one’s appearings, and the impossibility of being able to see the one who appears to others.30 However, I would suggest that the event of appearing is not only unmasterable by the one who appears because of its nature as appearing; it is also unmasterable by those to whom one appears (and who are themselves inseparably part of this co-apparition) because of its nature as event. As Dastur suggests, the nature of an event is found in its temporality, and time ‘is not identical to being, it is a process which is always in becoming. It is always of the order of the process, the passage, and that which comes’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 179). When Cavarero writes of birth as the originary event [das ursprüngliche Ereignis] in the existence of each and every existent, she immediately emphasizes the way that this event coincides with

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the appearing [Erscheinen] of existents in the world.31 This emphasis is wholly appropriate to her project in that it foregrounds the coincidence of being with appearing in a relational scene: in the event [Ereignis] of being born, beings ‘come into their own’ by appearing to others in the world.32 What this emphasis leaves in the background, however, is the temporal nature of birth as event, a temporality which is not being and does not appear as such, but which makes the (wholly relational) event of (co-)appearing possible nonetheless. Dastur gives us a further insight into the temporality of the event when she writes that the latter ‘constitutes something which is irremediably excessive in comparison to the usual representation of time as flow. It appears as something that dislocates time and gives a new form to it, something that puts the flow of time out of joint and changes its direction’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 182). Thus described, the event both cuts across the apparent flow of time, and generates temporal transformations – as when a new instrument unexpectedly joins a complex improvisation, adding a new variation with a different beat. The addition risks throwing the other players off, to the point where the musical flow cannot be maintained and the improvisation collapses. If the new strand is successfully interwoven, the existing musical voices will still be transformed (even if they keep playing exactly as before), as each will gain new dimensions (rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic) in relation to the additional voice. Thus, throwing the rhythm of the players momentarily ‘out of joint’ simultaneously allows the beat to be picked up again differently, setting it on a new trajectory. It is this instant of transformation (which can be as destructive as it is potentially creative), what Dastur calls the ‘excessive’ power of the event to dislocate and reconfigure, that is lost once the events of appearing are gathered into a story and reinserted into time as flow via the form of narrative. For the event ‘in its sudden apparition disconnects the past from the future’ and in so doing, produces what Dastur calls ‘the reconfiguration of possibilities’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 186).33 This reconfiguration should not, I would suggest, be confused with determination; although the event reconfigures possibilities, these remain an inchoate multiplicity until drawn out and appropriated (rather like the multiple possibilities for further variation that are implicitly opened up by each new musical improvisation). Such appropriation always takes place after the event and could, indeed, take the form of selecting one of the many possible stories or narratives (or one of the many musical variations) through which events may be reinserted into the flow of time.

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In Relating Narratives, Cavarero quotes Arendt at several points to emphasize that without such narratives, all that would remain would be ‘an intolerable sequence of events’.34 What makes the accidents and contingencies that constitute a life tolerable is the ‘faithful’ telling of the tale, the ‘faithful’ tracing of the pattern or story that these events leave behind.35 But in the light of Dastur’s analysis, this risks betraying the character of the event of appearing in two related ways. First, to portray events prior to their appropriation in narrative form, not just as meaningless, but as a meaningless series or sequence, is to obscure the temporality of the event as non-sequential, as that which ‘does not integrate itself as a specific moment in the flow of time’, but which dislocates this flow so as to produce and reconfigure ‘the difference of past and future’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 182). In fact, Cavarero explicitly refuses the image of birth as a disruptive moment of discontinuity: ‘the newborn absolutely cannot be defined as discontinuous because time is not yet there, even if it begins to pass. straight away time begins to flow and the existence of the newborn, which carries on her exposure in time, becomes a story’ (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 38). Read in context, it is clear that Cavarero’s primary concern in making these comments is to avoid a particular kind of postmodern account of the self as constitutively fractured and fragmented, and to preserve the unity of uniqueness as it appears in the who. By drawing on Dastur’s account of the event, however, I want to suggest that time is already there in the initial appearance of the newborn, not as the temporal flow in which events unfold and individuals appear to one another, but as the time of appearing that exceeds and dislocates time as flow. Moreover, whilst this other temporality does indeed fracture the relation of past and future, it can be thought as a mode of discontinuity which – far from merely engendering fragmentation – operates as the condition of a continued regeneration of living (and narrative, and indeed musical) unity by allowing for the ‘reconfiguration of possibilities’ as time moves on. Such an account is not at odds with Cavarero’s insistence that the unsubstitutable unity of who one is remains ‘always the same’ throughout one’s life. On the contrary, because the who not only ‘persists in continual self-exhibition’, but also ‘consist[s] in nothing else but this exposure’, its continued existence cannot be thought on the model of enduring substance, but is assured only as long as appearance and exposure themselves remain possible. Hence, the persistence through time of the one ‘who is born and lives until she dies’ depends not just on time continuing to flow, but on the productively disruptive temporality that allows the event of appearing, and hence the process of

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constitutive self-exposure, to be constantly renewed (Cavarero, Relating Narratives 72–3; my emphasis). To turn briefly to the second concern alluded to above, the notion of a ‘faithful’ telling of someone’s life story extends the image of the event as something that appears at a determinate moment in a temporal sequence by implying that the significance of the events to be told is also – in some sense at least – already determinate, so that the narrator has a responsibility to find the most appropriate ways of representing them. But this seems to foreclose the possibility that the indeterminacy of the event of co-appearing, precisely because it exceeds both linear temporality and the unifying forms of narrative, might contain a manifold potentiality for the emergence or birthing of new meanings and unforeseen uniqueness: the event, Dastur writes, ‘changes drastically the whole style of an existence It does not happen in a world – it is, on the contrary, as if a new world opens up through its happening’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 182). Dastur’s attentiveness to the transformative potential generated by the temporal depths of the event seems to me to offer an approach to the question of time that is well-suited to a philosophy seeking to resituate human existence in relation to birth and a maternal generative power. Indeed, for Dastur, the unmasterable temporality of the event is best captured by the event of birth, or, more precisely, of being born: We can speak about the event only in the third voice and in a past time, in the mode of ‘it happened to me.’ We never experience the great events of our life as contemporaneous. This is quite clear as far as the first great event of our life is concerned. We did not ask for our birth, and this is testimony to the fact that we are not at the origin of our own existence. There is therefore a surprise in us in relation to our birth. It is the permanent surprise of being born which is constitutive of our being. It is testimony to the uncontrollable character of this proto-event. In each new event, there is a repetition of the proto-event of birth. It is as if we re-experience, in a new event, this radical novelty of what happens ‘for the first time’ as well as the impossibility of coinciding with the event itself, which in its sudden apparition disconnects the past from the future. (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 186) Dastur’s account suggests a way of positioning birth as the primary term in an ontology of becoming, where discontinuity sustains singularity by constantly renewing it. The repeated movement of the event, which

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disconnects past and future and thereby necessitates the reconfiguration of all relations and all possibilities, demands to be accounted for in terms of a non-linear, generative temporality taking the proto-event of birth as its model. Alongside a thoroughly relational account of the event, such a temporality, I would suggest, is necessary to complement Cavarero’s ontology of being as appearing if the singularity of the who is to be thought in terms that do justice not only to its differential uniqueness, but also to the event of its appearing as event – including and especially the event of its appearing in the world at birth. Cavarero herself moves towards a model of generative temporality in the final chapter of In Spite of Plato. As indicated in the introductory remarks above, the need to address the question of time when seeking to hold open a space for sexual difference is already foregrounded by Cavarero in the opening chapter of the book, on Penelope. Here space and time are intricately entwined: it is the rhythm of Penelope’s movements which ‘prolongs the time of her seclusion’ and keeps her ‘anomalous space’ open; it is the ‘dimension that comes out of her hands’ that allows her to weave ‘her quiet time of self-belonging’ which retreats from ‘the great events of history’ and refuses capture by the patriarchal order (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 11–14). Indeed, according to Cavarero, ‘Penelope’s time cannot be touched by events, precisely because it cannot be reduced to either one of the two tempos that are alien to it: the tempo of men’s actions and the tempo of wifely domestic production’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 16). In the gap that it introduces between Penelope’s time and the time of events, however, this comment signals that the issue of temporality remains a problematic one. The gap is reinforced when Cavarero contrasts the ‘unchanging’ space preserved by the ‘unchanging tempo’ of Penelope’s ‘monotonous, rhythmic, unending work’ with the order of events – heroic events, pressing events, the events that make history – that is aligned with Odysseus’s adventuring (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 11–13). Seen from this perspective, Penelope’s time – the time of the loom’s tempo rendered deliberately unproductive – ‘staves off any event and renders it impossible’, becoming ‘an absolute time removed from history’s event’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 13–14; my emphasis). Crucially, however, Cavarero also emphasizes that Penelope’s constantly repeated gestures only appear negative from a patriarchal perspective. In fact, she beats the measure of a different time, one rooted in a female experience that does not separate mind and body, and that pulses with ‘the quiet finitude of one born from the maternal womb’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 22). Such a time would not so much be ‘untouched by events’ as be oriented by the event of birth,

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rather than the horizon of death which drives Odysseus to seek ever-new adventures in a constant challenging of his mortality. Nonetheless, in this opening chapter, the strength of the alignment between the time of events on the one hand, and a time of action belonging to men on the other, leaves the issue of how to think the temporality of birth as event unresolved. That this needs to be addressed is clear from Cavarero’s own remark that, for all its appeal, ‘We women will have to leave Penelope’s Ithaca’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 22). Time will not stand still; it will not be possible to remain in Penelope’s quiet retreat forever; ‘we women’ will have to go back into the world. But for this world to be one that is attuned to sexual difference will require a time taking birth, rather than death, as the measure of human existence. In the final chapter of In Spite of Plato, Cavarero offers some of the resources for a positive account of this time, understood as a generative temporality proper to a female order of ‘birth and rootedness’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 22). She expands the account of maternal power initially offered via the figure of Demeter in the context of a discussion of a novel by Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.), and in relation to an image of infinitely creative, impersonal ‘life’, capable of engendering a ‘boundless space of metamorphous appearances’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 115).36 Maternal generative power is seen both as a repetition of this creative engendering, and as linking each singular individual that is born to ‘the incessant and internal labour of life’s metamorphoses’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 114). Thus, an infinitely fecund life is temporarily embodied in each existent, and as every living individual comes from a mother, ‘every woman contains the continuum of her past and future within her present’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 116). Here, time seems to be deepened, in ways that allow an infinite and always present lineage composed of both past births and future possibilities to inhabit the present of every woman. Nonetheless, this model of generative time remains constrained, I would suggest, by an overly linear image of infinity, according to which both each mother and each birth is positioned as ‘a link in a sequence’ extending infinitely into past and future (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 118).37 Insofar as this image represents the (temporal) relations between different births (and different women, as mothers and daughters) as both linear and fixed, the singular event of birth still seems to be an always already determinate moment caught up in an infinitely extending ‘chain’ of such moments: through ‘an infinite chain of mothers’, ‘maternal power links this chain of births into infinity’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 118, 112).38 Such an image of time, I would suggest, works against the possibility that, rather than

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containing a continuum of past and future moments, the event of birth may introduce a discontinuity that reconfigures relations and generates a multiplicity of unforeseen possibilities within the singular moment of being born, an indeterminate potentiality allowing for the future generation of differences. Thus, in the two books to which I have referred here, it seems to me that Cavarero points towards, but has not yet fully developed, a model of time that would be appropriate to her compelling ontological and ethical demand that we rethink human existence in terms of natality, rather than mortality. In the final part of this paper, I wish to turn to the work of Christine Battersby, whose feminist metaphysics can be read as constructively supplementing both Cavarero and Dastur insofar as it offers us a model of temporality more fully appropriate to a relational ontology privileging birth.

4. Echoes of Antigone: the infinite rebirthing of the singular In The Phenomenal Woman, Battersby seeks to rethink identity from a female subject position. This subject position does not refer back to a pre-given biological essence; rather, the ‘female’ is seen as a socially and historically variable construct linking women to a particular bodily morphology as well as to specific positionings in social networks of power.39 The complexity of these networks means that there will also be significant differences between women. Battersby argues that five key features make women’s position paradoxical as long as the male subject position is taken as the norm. Here I will only mention the first and most important, namely, natality, or the capacity to birth.40 As for Cavarero, Battersby’s claim does not depend on every actual woman giving birth or being able to give birth. Rather, the link is a conceptual one ‘between the paradigm “woman” and the body that births’, insofar as being positioned as a woman in Western modernity is tied to the notion of a body that can birth.41 Recognizing natality as the norm involves rethinking identity such that the self is ‘not a fixed, permanent or pre-given “thing” or “substance” that undergoes metamorphosis, but that nevertheless remains always unaltered through change. Instead, we need to think of identity as emerging out of a play of relationships and force-fields that together constitute the horizons of a (shared) space–time’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 7). In The Phenomenal Woman, Battersby goes on to develop a metaphysics of fluidity that can explain how an individual subject might be ‘scored into uniqueness’ by relationality (Battersby, The Phenomenal

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Woman 7). She uses Kierkegaard to displace the oppositional model of the self–other relation and to negotiate an alternative account in which self and other are no longer seen as discrete entities but instead are thought as constitutively entwined. Here the self is shaped together with an otherness that is not projected onto an ‘outside’, but carried within the unique identities that emerge through complex patterns of repetition and echo. This process is partially captured by Kierkegaard’s image of an alien wind blowing across an unfamiliar landscape, making unsettling shrieks and moans, until over time, landscape and wind mutually shape each other so that both are scored into a new and relatively stable – but always transformable – pattern.42 On this model, ‘identities are scored into specificity by repeated movements which pattern complex possibilities into actuality’, such that ‘ “self” and “other” take shape together’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 151). The aspect of Battersby’s account on which I particularly wish to focus here is the way in which she appropriates Kierkegaard to develop a non-linear temporality where ‘birth (and radical novelty) is the norm’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 151). Battersby examines in detail the ways in which Kierkegaard’s writings offer ‘a prolonged exploration of the positioning of “woman” ’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 149), drawing on woman’s paradoxical positioning to help him work towards an account of the singular individual that escapes masculine illusions about autonomy and free will. For reasons of space, I am going to discuss only one key aspect of her reading of Kierkegaard here, namely, her creative appropriation of Kierkegaard’s own radical retelling of the story of Antigone. In the section of Either/Or on the notion of the tragic in ancient and modern drama, Kierkegaard offers his own prose rewriting of Sophocles’ Antigone, though this rewriting is not offered in Kierkegaard’s own voice but is ascribed to the papers of an anonymous ‘A’.43 This retelling is strongly at odds with the Hegelian version of the story, in that it emphasizes Antigone’s relation with her father, Oedipus, rather than her brothers. Antigone’s tragedy is that she alone knows the family’s secret: that Oedipus, having killed the Sphinx, has married his mother Jocasta, with whom he lives, honoured, happy and admired. Moreover, she is ‘racked by uncertainty about whether or not he [Oedipus] had ever known his guilt and his fate’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 153). Once Oedipus dies, still universally admired in this version, Antigone loses the opportunity to resolve her doubts. Kierkegaard describes her as ‘hurled’ into the arms of an anxiety that does not take her over once and for all, but is ‘in constant becoming’ (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 152–3).

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This Antigone does not fit neatly with Kierkegaard’s definition of ancient tragedy as characterized by sorrow, because she feels the pain and guilt that he associates with the tragic destiny of modern individuals. Yet, her pain, as Battersby notes, does not fully fit the model of modern guilt and suffering either, for it concerns ‘something that is not her own fault as she tries to take responsibility for the “sins of the father” ’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 154). She (like Penelope) constitutes an anomalous figure, whose sorry fate is not straightforwardly her own but rather, as Kierkegaard writes, is ‘like an echo of her father’s, an intensified sorrow’ (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 154). Kierkegaard powerfully describes the conflicts which constitute Antigone’s singularity: like the people for whom Oedipus is remembered as ‘a king favoured by fortune’, she ‘has admired as well as loved her father’ (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 159); yet she knows his secret and so her love draws her into her father’s guilt, not least because she is the one who covers over the secret to preserve his memory from disgrace. Equally, though, she has no way of measuring the exact nature and extent of this guilt, for she can never know whether Oedipus himself was knowing or ignorant of his fate. Thus, Antigone’s life and identity are ‘grievously interwoven’ with her secret (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 160). She is pulled into an unstable relation to her past, as this past is taken up in her everyday life in conflicting ways: the memory of the admirable father and king coexists with the sorrow over his real fate; the pain at her secret knowledge does not exclude pride that she was the one chosen to keep the secret and save his name; her doubts over the extent of her father’s knowledge do not prevent her from loving him still. Hence, in ways that resonate with the multiple voices of Kierkegaard’s own writings, this Antigone fractures into multiple personae: the devoted daughter, the one alienated from her family and community because she carries a guilty secret, the one wracked with doubt about what her father knew. In this way, Antigone’s present and ongoing life depends on a relation to her past, but a past that is not simply given, that is neither determined nor straightforwardly determining. Rather, its complexity is retrospectively inscribed and reinscribed by the ways in which Antigone continues to take it up in her actions, moods and thoughts. Thus, the past itself on which Antigone’s identity depends is open to transformation, not randomly, but depending on which of the competing narratives concerning her father gain (temporary) ascendancy.

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On this basis, Battersby develops a model of time whereby the ‘now’ is a deepened moment that actualizes a potentiality already present in the past, but a potentiality which is nonetheless only brought into being as a determinate and apparently ‘given’ order of events through the movement of actualization in the present. Present and past are mutually interdependent and mutually determining. The ‘now’ is not an instant in a chain of present moments, but what Battersby calls a ‘nook’ in which past and present are gathered together, as the present echoes a past which only this echoing brings into focus. The ‘now’ constructs the coexistence of past and present, of finite actualities and infinite possibilities. Hence, in contrast to the order of birth as Cavarero sometimes portrays it, namely, as an infinite sequence of links in a chain, for Battersby, Kierkegaard’s Antigone ‘make[s] it impossible to think of “the moment” in terms of a single, linear series of “nows” that are linked together through one uniting history’. Instead, ‘the present is birthed within a multiple play of possibilities. The “now” emerges in a “nook” of intersecting paths, all of which contribute to the present and to the individualized egos and objects that emerge in this meeting’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 151). But it must be emphasized that these multiple paths or possibilities are not simply historically given, determining the now, but are inscribed by the way the past is taken up and repeated in the present, in a kind of echoing which does not passively repeat, but transforms past and present simultaneously. As in Antigone’s story retold by Kierkegaard, depth is here produced within surface appearances by ‘temporal folds which are established via the jostling of competing narratives’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 167). On Battersby’s account, then, the individual self is neither fixed nor wholly fragmented, but patterned (or as Penelope might say, woven) into singularity by a play of doubly productive echoes, by a set of relations to the past that are continually worked and reworked (woven and rewoven), so that the self becomes, as she says, ‘a kind of harmonic or vibration produced by the intersection of present, future and past’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 170). Moreover, if the indeterminacy of the past is the condition that allows it to be endlessly actualized in the present, the repeated movements of this actualization generate echoes and resonances which in turn demand renegotiation. Just like Antigone’s secret, then, this complex temporal relation holds open the space for infinite – though not random – reconfiguration and transformation, that is, for infinite rebirthings of the singular ‘in a “present” that is a generative caesura between future and past’ (Battersby, The

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Phenomenal Woman 184).44 Hence, I would suggest that this model of time (which echoes and extends Dastur’s account of the event of birth) is more fully appropriate to the challenge of taking natality and birth as central ontological categories. In conclusion, I want to turn to an intriguing passage, in which Kierkegaard introduces his version of Antigone. He describes her as a ‘vague outline’ and ‘nebulous form’, and goes on to write: I put words in her mouth, and yet to me it is as though I abused her confidence, she seems to stand reproachfully behind me; yet it is the other way round, in her secrecy she becomes more and more visible. [s]ometimes it is as if I had crept into her confidence, slyly, as if I must constantly look around to find her behind me, and yet it is the other way round, she is constantly in front of me, she comes into existence only when I bring her forth. (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 152) In this initial account, Kierkegaard is already figuring the double movement of productive repetition: his ability to rewrite the story of Antigone is dependent on a figure that seems to stand behind him, yet whose form is in fact brought forth and intensified in his own activity in ways that cast her shadow back in time. This in turn foreshadows the generative time which Battersby extrapolates from Kierkegaard, where repetition ‘births’ the present out of a past whose specific form or pattern only emerges from a multiplicity of possibilities in the echoes which repeatedly actualize it. Kierkegaard’s description of glancing slyly back to glimpse the nebulous figure standing behind him can itself be read as a productive repetition insofar as it again recalls Orpheus’s longing for the shadowy figure of Eurydice. Yet this is not the Eurydice whose second death locks her into a fundamental isolation and lack of relation; nor is it Blanchot’s Eurydice, sealed into immemorial absence; nor is it even Cavarero’s imagined Eurydice, returned to a lived relation of reciprocal appearances with her beloved. As Kierkegaard’s Antigone becomes Eurydice, she is not straightforwardly returned to the realm of the visible; instead, she is caught up in an infinitely redoubled movement between past and present through which her shadowy form slowly coalesces. This distinctive, and distinctively female, figure carries a new secret: she stands for the infinity of finitudes generated in productive repetition, and for the multiplicity of possibilities carried within each singular existent that assure it of a future repeatedly renewed by the event of birth.

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Notes I would like to thank the editors of this volume for their very helpful feedback on this paper. Thanks also to Kurt Brandhorst for his insightful comments and suggestions.

1. I use the word ‘condition’ here in a quasi-Kantian sense, in that I want to claim that reconfiguring ontological presuppositions is logically, rather than temporally or causally prior to the development of an effective ethics of sexual difference. Hence, I am not claiming that the way to move towards such an ethics is via a ‘top-down’ process of theorizing, a claim that would seem to reinforce the traditional privileging of theory over practice and rational thought over embodied existence. Rather, actions, relations, and judgements that express such an ethical stance will necessarily imply a reconfigured account of ‘being’ and ‘beings’. One role for feminist theorists consists in drawing out these implications, not only to allow them more consistently to inform our actions, but also to throw the existential and political situations in which women find themselves into a new light, and to make visible new possibilities for action. In this regard, it is crucial that Cavarero and Battersby theorize in response to both the paradoxical aspects of women’s situation in Western modernity, and the possibilities for reconfiguring the philosophical and cultural imaginary that have been generated by the activities of specific women (female writers and artists for Battersby; the women of la scuola delle 150 ore for Cavarero, for example [the ‘150 hour schools’ were founded by the Italian left to provide supplementary education for those who lacked formal higher education, such as workers and housewives] ). 2. See Cavarero, Relating Narratives 20, and Arendt, Life of the Mind, Volume 1: Thinking 19. As I have argued elsewhere, Cavarero’s position unfolds through a complex and changing dialogue with Arendt, whose emphasis on natality is crucial for Cavarero, though not uncritically adopted. See my unpublished paper, ‘Back into the World? Reconfiguring the Political with Cavarero and Arendt’, in which I argue that (broadly speaking) Cavarero first tears birth away from what Arendt calls the sphere of labour, where natality is reduced to a biological and reproductive function (this is achieved primarily in In Spite of Plato); and then, in Relating Narratives, Cavarero begins again from this reconceptualized notion of birth so as to extend the features via which Arendt defines the public realm of action (natality, plurality, unpredictability) to a relational and expositive ontology founded on sexual difference. 3. See Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 7. For Gatens’ own distinctive contribution to these debates, see her book Imaginary Bodies, in which she draws on Spinoza, Nietzsche and Deleuze to offer an alternative to mind/body dualism with important implications for feminist ethics and politics, particularly in relation to notions of responsibility. 4. Cavarero subversively rewrites the myth of Demeter in In Spite of Plato 57–90, and of Eurydice in Relating Narratives 94–108; she offers an original reading of Antigone in the opening chapter of Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy and the Question of Gender.

130 The Other 5. See Cavarero, ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 207: ‘das ursprüngliche Ereignis der Existenz jedes Existierenden die Geburt ist’, ‘the originary event in the existence of every existent is birth’. Quotations from this article are my own translations. In it, Cavarero initially situates her comments about the event in relation to Heidegger, and echoes of Heidegger’s thinking run through her account of the event (Ereignis) of birth (see also notes 11, 28, 31 and 32 below); nonetheless, it is the radical phenomenology of Arendt with its turn to natality that informs both Cavarero’s article, and her project as a whole, most significantly. 6. I would like to thank Johanna Oksala for drawing my attention to Dastur’s paper, ‘Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise’. 7. See Cavarero’s description of Penelope’s weaving, In Spite of Plato 14. 8. This model of the shared gaze might sound like the basis for an account of female identity based in mutual recognition, an appropriation of Hegel’s master–slave dialectic that replaces agonistic struggle with reciprocity perhaps. However, in her subsequent work, to be discussed later in this paper, Cavarero develops the notion of reciprocal visibility in the context of an ontology that equates being with appearing in ways that make the reciprocal gaze less a recognition of shared identity, and more an affirmation of sexed specificity that leaves it open how this specificity is lived out, or what cultural and symbolic meanings it acquires. 9. Cavarero’s notion of an infinitely creative, primordial life is strongly influenced by Nietzsche. In chapter four of In Spite of Plato, she positions the figure of Dionysus as both appropriating and attesting to a maternal power and a ‘symbolic web held in place by birth’ (In Spite of Plato 114). For Cavarero, it is individual mothers who function as a ‘conduit’ between ‘the vibrant process of pure life and the undeniable living individuality of those born from her’ (119), so that ‘individual life is generated via the feminine from impersonal life’ (117). Indeed, she suggests that impersonal life is pre-human yet still maternal (112). Life is here thought as ‘a primal flow where birth and death are but rhythm and cadence’, the measure of ‘the everlasting range of a birth process that has always generated and will always be renewed’ (113). Dionysus remains a key figure, but his centrality is displaced in favour of those moments where Nietzsche himself genders primal life in the feminine: see for example The Birth of Tragedy, section 16: ‘In Dionysian art and its tragic symbolism the same nature cries to us with its true, undissembled voice: “Be as I am! Amid the ceaseless flux of phenomena I am the eternally creative primordial mother, eternally impelling to existence, eternally finding satisfaction in this change of phenomena!” ’ (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy 104; see also Twilight of the Idols, ‘What I Owe to the Ancients’, section 4; and also section 4 of the Preface to The Gay Science, where Nietzsche privileges the affirmative power of Baubo, a key figure in some versions of the myth of Demeter. Baubo is interestingly absent from In Spite of Plato, though in Nietzsche’s writings, she too is aligned with the complete coincidence of being and appearance [‘Those Greeks were superficial – out of profundity’, The Gay Science 38], as well as with the eternal return figured as a maternal power to generate. For a reading of Baubo which intersects provocatively with Cavarero’s readings of both Nietzsche and the Demeter myth, see Kofman, ‘Baubo: Theological Perversion and Fetishism’.)

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10. See note 2 above. 11. The distinction between the who and the what has its roots in Heidegger, and in particular in the question of the who of Dasein. See Being and Time section 25 and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, section 12 9 (c) where Heidegger writes: ‘Even a rough consideration shows that the being that we ourselves are, the Dasein, cannot at all be interrogated as such by the question What is this? We gain access to this being only if we ask: Who is it? The Dasein is not constituted by whatness but – if we may coin the expression – by whoness. But we still ask: What is this who and this whoness of the Dasein But this only shows that this what, with which we also ask about the nature of the who, obviously cannot coincide with the what in the sense of whatness. In other words, the basic concept of essentia, whatness, first becomes really problematic in the face of the being we call the Dasein’ (The Basic Problems of Phenomenology 120). Cavarero also follows Heidegger – via Arendt and Nancy – in emphasizing that the who is a matter of existence and cannot be grasped in terms of traditional categories of substance or essence (see for example Relating Narratives 20). Nonetheless, her deployment of the who is crucially informed by Arendt, who, as Margaret Hull notes, resituates the question of the who in the context of plurality and interaction given an ontological status (Hull 47, 85). As Hull puts it, following Taminaux, ‘the essential question of Arendt’s The Human Condition – “Who are we?” – is in many ways a “reply and retort” to Being and Time’s essential question – “who is Dasein?” ’ (Hull 86, quoting Taminaux 56; for further comparative analysis of Heidegger and Arendt on the question of the who, see Hull 86–92, and Taminaux 56–87). It is Arendt’s focus on plurality and natality as conditions of human existence that allows Cavarero in turn to resituate the who in relation to birth, in contrast to Heidegger’s ‘Being-towards-death’. 12. See Relating Narratives 39. 13. See Relating Narratives 89. 14. See Arendt’s Life of the Mind, Volume 1: Thinking, which opens by refusing the constitutive split between Being and appearance that grounds metaphysical thought from Plato on. Instead, Arendt affirms the phenomenal nature of the world as ‘Being’, together with the necessity of spectators for all that is – i.e., all that appears; hence the equally necessary plurality of men [sic] who inhabit the earth: ‘In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide. Dead matter, natural and artificial, changing and unchanging, depends in its being, that is, in its appearingness, on the presence of living creatures. Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, insofar as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody. Not Man but men inhabit this planet’ (19). Note that Arendt here reinscribes the (Parmenidian) model whereby birth and death are figured as a coming from and returning to nothing, a powerful symmetry which Cavarero counters with her insistence that human beings do not come from nothing, but are born from a mother. See Cavarero In Spite of Plato 44–7, as well as the passage from her article ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ quoted later in this paper and referenced in endnote 22 below. 15. See also Relating Narratives 20–4.

132 The Other 16. In ways that there is not room to discuss here, Cavarero sets Rilke’s text alongside H.D.’s poem, ‘Eurydice’. She argues that although H.D. succeeds in reversing the usual perspective of the myth so as to allow Eurydice to reclaim her own self-presence, nonetheless, this Eurydice also lacks a relation to the other and thus remains a ‘figure of un-relation’ (see Relating Narratives 105–8). 17. See ‘Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes’, in Selected Poetry of Reiner Maria Rilke 48–53. 18. See Maurice Blanchot, ‘Orpheus’s Gaze’, in The Space of Literature 171–6. 19. Blanchot’s image of a ‘closed body’ and ‘sealed face’ links this figure of Eurydice both to the Heideggerian account of death as radically nonrelational (see note 28) and to the ‘logic of un-relation’ which Cavarero argues is symptomatic of the forgetting of birth in Western thought. It also links Eurydice to Antigone, another female figure whose body was sealed into death and to whom we will return in the final section of this paper. 20. Thus for Blanchot, the gaze of Orpheus ‘is the movement of desire that shatters the song’s destiny, that disrupts concern for it, and in this inspired and careless decision reaches the origin, consecrates the song’ (Blanchot 176). 21. Irigaray is not thereby merely reversing the oppositional logic of self and other, of course; rather, in texts such as Speculum of the Other Woman, she seeks to show how those (women) positioned as the ‘other’ of the subject refuse to be contained by that very positioning in ways that call into question the underlying logic that conceives of difference in terms of sameness, opposition and negation. 22. ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 208: ‘Aber jede/r Geborene weiss doch ganz genau, von wem sie/er gekommen ist. Sie/Er kommt von der Mutter.’ 23. See ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 211. 24. See also Relating Narratives 39. 25. ‘[M]eine von anderen erzählte Geburt, und mein Tod, von dem mir die Berichte über den Tod anderer erzählen’, Jean-François Lyotard, quoted in ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 209. The original reads: ‘Ma naissance racontée par les autres, et ma mort que ma racontent les récits de la mort des autres’, Lyotard 65. Lyotard’s essay concerns the thought of Arendt, and like Arendt, he continues to figure the event of birth as a ‘coming from and returning to nothing’ (‘Ce qui vient à la vie, c’est-à-dire l’instant comme événement – le venir hors du néant – est déjà voué à retourner au néant’, Lyotard 63), a rendering of birth which Cavarero explicitly critiques (see note 22). 26. Birth and death are ‘zwei Ereignisse, die gerade ihrem einzigen unersetzbaren Protagonisten entgehen’, ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 209. 27. See for example Relating Narratives 2 and 25: ‘it is imperative that the one who tells the tale is not involved in the action of its protagonist’. Here again Arendt’s influence is explicit, particularly her account of action in The Human Condition; see for example her claim that: ‘Action reveals itself fully only to the storyteller, that is, to the backward glance of the historian, who indeed always knows better what it was all about than the participants’ (The Human Condition 192). Again, Cavarero’s reading of Arendt around these points is a transformative one: whereas Arendt goes on to claim that the life story that discloses who someone is can only be told after their death

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29.

30. 31.

32.

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(see The Human Condition 193), Cavarero argues that this obscures a more primary desire to hear our own stories while we are still living (see Relating Narratives 33). There are obvious resonances here with Heidegger’s analysis of the impossibility of any particular Dasein grasping its own death, in the sense of experiencing, understanding or representing it (see Being and Time, section 47). Nonetheless, it is important to note that in their ungraspability, birth and death do not operate in straightforwardly symmetrical ways. This is already indicated in the passage from Lyotard quoted by Cavarero and referred to above (see note 25): whilst we are reliant on others for the story of our own birth, nonetheless, we can be told this story and can appropriate and repeat it, whilst the story of our own death is something we can neither hear nor tell; rather, we learn about our own death only indirectly, via the stories told of the death of others. This non-symmetry reminds us that Cavarero’s project of thinking human existence in terms of natality rather than mortality would not simply supplement the Heideggerian analysis of being-towards-death, but aims to produce a more fundamental shift in orientation. Exploring the implications of the role of birth for Cavarero in relation to the role of death in Heidegger’s thought is beyond the scope of this paper. However, one further difference which is immediately striking is Cavarero’s emphasis on birth as revealing the ontological primacy of relationality, in contrast to the essentially ‘non-relational’ character of death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility (see Being and Time, section 50). Thus whereas for Heidegger (or the Heidegger of Being and Time at least), ‘the non-relational character of death individualises Dasein down to itself’ (Being and Time, section 53), for Cavarero, as we have seen, the uniqueness of each existent is engendered by a plural relationality rooted in birth. Again, see Arendt’s account of action in The Human Condition (for example, 184); however, on this point, Arendt’s essay on Isak Dinesen is of particular importance (see ‘Isak Dinesen’ 170). Cavarero draws on this essay at a number of key points throughout Relating Narratives. See for example Relating Narratives 23 on the ‘constitutive unmasterability’ of the who. Cavarero, ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit’ 207: ‘das ursprüngliche Ereignis der Existenz jedes Existierenden die Geburt ist und somit dem Erscheinen in der Welt zusammenfällt’; ‘the originary event in the existence of every existent is birth, and therefore coincides with appearing in the world’. See also 208: ‘Das ursprüngliche Ereignis, das dieses Erscheinen eröffnet, ist aber die Geburt: Wer geboren wird, tritt in die Welt ein, indem er oder sie in ihr zum ersten Mal in seiner leiblichen Einzigartigkeit escheint und als solche bis ans Ende der Existenz erscheinen wird.’ ‘The originary event that opens this appearing, however, is birth: the one who is born enters the world, in that he or she appears in it for the first time in his bodily uniqueness and will continue to appear as such until the end of his existence.’ This emphasis is also appropriate to the etymological sense of Ereignis, which Dastur notes ‘pertains first not to eignen and to eigen, to propriety and appropriation, but to Auge, to the eye and to seeing’. (Dastur makes this observation in the context of exploring the turn of Ereignis in the later Heidegger.) Cavarero’s emphasis on the event (of/as birth) as coinciding with the

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33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

appearing of existents in the world is thus in keeping with Dastur’s insight that ‘Ereignen as eräugen thus signifies bringing to ownness by making visible’ (Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time 64). Dastur’s characterization of the event in these terms is offered after a consideration of the way that for Heidegger, ‘death, far from being an event, has been legitimately defined as the possibility par excellence’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 183; see also Heidegger, Being and Time, section 53). Given that Dastur goes on to position birth as the proto-event (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 186), a consideration of the difference between the event of birth as ‘the reconfiguration of possibilities’ and death as ‘possibility par excellence’ might offer another way of working through the difference that is made by an ontological orientation towards birth (in Cavarero’s sense) or death (in Heidegger’s). See Arendt: ‘the story reveals the meaning of what would otherwise remain an intolerable sequence of events’ (xx in Daguerrotypes; this is the volume containing Arendt’s essay on Isak Dinesen); quoted in Relating Narratives 2, 129. See Cavarero, Relating Narratives 140–1. The notion of a ‘faithful’ retelling is also drawn from Arendt’s essay on Dinesen. See also note 9 above. This image recalls and is reinforced by earlier references, in the chapter on Demeter, to the ‘two sequences of infinity’ between which a ‘maternal continuum’ is extended (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 60), and to an infinite ‘sequence of past mothers’ matched by ‘an infinite series of the engendered, of new beginnings’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 82). See also the description of ‘a perspective that regards birth as the wellspring of human life through a maternal continuum that stretches back in time in an infinite succession of mothers’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 111). Cavarero makes this comment in the context of positioning human maternal power as the link back to ‘a genetic prehistory of animal origin’ (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 112); the human and the animal realm are conjoined by a maternal generative power that is not necessarily (and has not always been) human. This argument does important work in terms of blocking a human/animal divide that has helped to reinforce a metaphysics privileging mind over matter and reason over the body, in ways that relegate sexual difference to a merely contingent and ‘inessential’ issue as far as human beings are concerned. Nonetheless, I still have some concerns about the way in which the rhetoric of an animal ‘prehistory’ and ‘origin’ deployed in these pages cannot but reinforce an overly linear image of temporal progression, and thus risks inadvertently reinforcing the very hierarchy that Cavarero seeks to challenge, in which a more primordial animal realm is implicitly contrasted with a more complex and ‘developed’ human one. See Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 20–1. The other four features follow from the first. For Battersby, the link between a female subject position and natality means that unequal power relations are here the norm, rather than a problematic interruption of ideal equality. The ontological dependence of the foetus on the mother points us to the third aspect of a female subject position which Battersby wishes to exploit,

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namely, that there is no clear division between self and other but on the contrary, the other emerges out of an embodied self. Fourthly, then, the female subject position is linked to embodiment, to what Battersby calls ‘fleshy continuity’ in contrast to the ‘autonomous and individualised “soul” or “mind” that merely inhabits the flesh’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 10). And finally, she argues that the above features have themselves made the female subject position a paradoxical one in Western culture. Women remain caught between ideals of freedom, autonomy and rationality on the one hand, and those of care, dependency and a fleshy capacity for generation on the other; female subjects are linked to an embodied self that is neither one nor two and hence is seen as a monstrous anomaly. Rather than seek to overcome or transcend the features generating such an anomalous entity, Battersby seeks to draw on them as the starting point for rethinking identity. This signals a difference in Battersby’s position and Dastur’s article on the ‘Phenomenology of the Event’: at times, Dastur places the emphasis more on ‘being born’ than on birth (‘It is the permanent surprise of being born which is constitutive of our being’ (Dastur, ‘Phenomenology of the Event’ 186)), whereas Battersby emphasizes birth and ‘the body that births’. This difference in emphasis is significant insofar as it indicates that birth is more explicitly tied to the issue of sexual difference in Battersby’s work: every human being, male or female, is born, but in Western culture, it is the specifically female body that has been positioned as the body that births. See The Phenomenal Woman 194; Battersby is drawing on Kierkegaard’s Repetition (collected in Fear and Trembling and Repetition) 155. See Kierkegaard, Either/Or 139–61, especially 151ff. I would want to think the notion of infinity in play here in terms of qualitative (and not merely quantitative) transformations, and to draw on a (transformed) model of the (Kantian) sublime to do so, developing in particular what Kant calls the dynamically (rather than mathematically) sublime. Battersby herself points to the radical reworking of the sublime implicit in Kierkegaard’s model of infinity in The Phenomenal Woman (see for example 162–3, 171–5). These comments also link Battersby’s development of a feminist metaphysics to her extensive work on the female sublime (see for example her articles, ‘Unblocking the Oedipal: Karoline von Günderode and the Female Sublime’ and ‘Stages on Kant’s Way: Aesthetics, Morality, and the Gendered Sublime’). Indeed, just as Battersby’s rethinking of identity takes a body that births as the norm rather than the exception, I would argue that it also builds in a kind of sublime infinity at the heart of every self, as a constitutive otherness within (in contrast to the exceptional encounter with external nature that triggers Kant’s sublime). Moreover, this line of thought provides a further way of linking the model of temporality developed by Battersby with Cavarero’s shared feminist concerns with the female body as the body that births: as the dynamic sublime in particular operates in terms of power, the sublimity of the ‘generative caesura between future and past’ (Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 184) that, on Battersby’s model, allows for infinite rebirthings of the singular can be directly linked with the generative power of the maternal that Cavarero seeks to reclaim.

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Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Life of the Mind, Volume 1: Thinking. San Diego, New York: Harcourt, 1977. ——. ‘Isak Dinesen (1885–1962).’ Daguerrotypes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. ——. The Human Condition. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Battersby, Christine. ‘Unblocking the Oedipal: Karoline von Günderode and the Female Sublime.’ Political Gender: Texts and Contexts. Eds Sally Ledger, Josephine McDonagh and Jane Spencer. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 129–43. ——. ‘Stages on Kant’s Way: Aesthetics, Morality, and the Gendered Sublime.’ Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Eds P. Brand and C. Korsmeyer. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995. 88–114. ——. The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. Blanchot, Maurice. ‘Orpheus’s Gaze.’ The Space of Literature; translated with introduction by A. Smock. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. 171–6. Cavarero, Adriana. In Spite of Plato: a Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. Translated by S. Anderlini-D’Onofrio and A. O’Healy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. ——. Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit.’ Phänomenologie und Geschlechterdifferenz. Eds S. Stoller and H. Vetter. Vienna: WUV-Universitätsverlag, 1997. 207–26. ——. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Translated with introduction by P.A. Kottman. London, New York: Routledge, 2000. ——. Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender. Translated by R. de Lucca and D. Shemek. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Dastur, Françoise. Heidegger and the Question of Time. Translated by F. Raffoul and D. Pettigrew. New York: Humanity Books, 1999. ——. ‘Phenomenology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise.’ Hypatia 15.4 (Fall 2000): 178–89. Gatens, Moira. ‘ “The Oppressed State of My Sex”: Wollstonecraft on Reason, Feeling and Equality.’ Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory. Eds M.L. Shanley and C. Pateman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. 112–28. ——. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London, New York: Routledge, 1996. Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Volume 2. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962. ——. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated with introduction by A. Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Hull, Margaret Betz. The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. London, New York: Routledge, 2002. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by G.C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling and Repetition. Edited, with translation by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. ——. Either/Or; translated by A. Hannay. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992. Kofman, Sarah, ‘Baubo: Theological Perversion and Fetishism.’ Nietzsche’s New Seas. Eds M.A. Gillespie and T.B. Strong. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 175–212.

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Lispector, Clarice, The Passion According to G.H. Translated by R.W. Sousa. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Lyotard, Jean-François. ‘Survivant.’ Lectures d’enfance. Paris: Galilée, 1991. 59–87. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. ——. Twilight of the Idols. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. ——. The Birth of Tragedy. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Edited, with translation W. Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 2000. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by S. Mitchell. London: Picador, 1980. Taminaux, Jacques. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Translated by M. Gendre. New York: SUNY, 1997.

5 Mothers/Intellectuals: Alterities of a Dual Identity Gail Weiss

Thinking through identity Hybrid identities, especially identities that are usually thought to be oppositional to one another such as ‘mother/intellectual’, can produce confusion and anxiety not only for those who embody them but also for those who witness their co-existence in another person’s life. Linda Martín Alcoff argues that ‘Identities must resonate with and unify lived experience, and they must provide a meaning that has some purchase, however partial, on the subject’s own daily reality’ (42). If it is indeed the case that identities help to make sense of and unify our lived experience, it might seem that the best way to accomplish this would be if our identities themselves were unified. Indeed, our proper names serve symbolically as unifiers of our identity and, as Louis Althusser and Judith Butler respectively maintain, they facilitate our interpellation as singular individuals.1 Both Althusser and Butler emphasize, however, that while it is through interpellation that we become subjects in our own right, at the same time, it is also through being interpellated by others that we are subjected to those others. This process of subjectivation is both enabling and disabling: enabling insofar as it grants us social recognition, disabling because we ultimately lack control over the forms that recognition will take since it issues from others and not from ourselves.2 To the extent that our identities are constituted out of multiple facets of our own experience including multiple encounters with (the experiences of) others, it is inevitable that our identities themselves will express that very multiplicity, even when they appear to be unified and coherent. Alcoff, appealing to Teresa De Lauretis’ work, reinforces these points when she claims that ‘The fluid historical context in which we negotiate our identities is a context in which we are both subjects of 138

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and subjected to social construction’ (146). If we view our identities as involving a constant negotiation between our own view of ourselves and the perspectives others have of us, or between what Alcoff refers to as our subjective lived experience on the one hand and our social identities on the other, it is evident that even the most rigidly defined identity is never fixed in stone but can always be transformed.3 There are countless examples of transformations in both individual and group identity. For instance, as Michel Foucault emphasizes in Discipline and Punish, a single illicit action may forever after brand an individual with the identity of criminal, an all-encompassing identity that has the power to fundamentally alter how that individual views himself and how he is viewed by others. And, as Lewis Gordon, Frantz Fanon and many other critical race theorists have argued, the very appearance of a black man in an antiblack world is capable of generating a phobic response that becomes part and parcel of his identity in a racist state, placing ‘ontological limits’ on his own subjectivation.4 Given the sheer complexity of the issues that must be addressed when one seriously raises questions about identity and its influence on ourselves and others, it can be tempting to avoid discussions of identity altogether. What mitigates this tendency is the fact that questions of identity arise continuously in daily life even though they often are not explicated as such. Alcoff emphasizes that questions of identity are part and parcel of mundane experience: ‘identities’ she claims, ‘are constituted by social contextual conditions of interaction in specific cultures at particular historical periods, and thus their nature, effects, and the problems that need to be addressed in regard to them will be largely local’ (9). The different ways even people in the same culture embody the identity ‘mother’ is a perfect example of this point. For instance, it is evident that the identity of ‘mother’ varies widely within and across cultures and time periods, as well as in different religious, social and political contexts. Even if to be a mother, at the most minimal level, means to be a pubescent or post-pubescent female and to have and/or raise a child, this ‘bare’ meaning is never all that is implied in our respective understandings of this particular identity. Our understanding of what it means to be a mother is influenced by the experience of being (or failing to be) mothered, having close (or distant) relations with mothers, social understandings of what it means to be a mother, and/or being a mother ourselves. Religious conceptions of what mothers are or should be also play a role, as do the legal and political rights that mothers have or lack within a given society. Especially influential has been the role of men, the non-mothers who are excluded by

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the very definition of motherhood from being mothers themselves and yet who, as the historically dominant sex, have largely been responsible for determining the daily expectations placed on mothers in particular societies.5 While the identity of ‘intellectual’ has perhaps not changed as much as that of mother within and across cultures, certainly the issue of who is qualified to be an intellectual has been contested for centuries. In virtually every culture that recognizes the identity ‘intellectual’, certain people have been viewed as incapable of being identified as intellectuals because of their allegedly inferior race, sex or lack of formal education (which was often a result of being the ‘wrong’ race or sex to obtain it!). And, to turn to the issue that is central to this essay, it has also been the case that certain identities, such as mother, have oftentimes been seen as so comprehensive that they seem to rule out the ability to simultaneously possess another identity, such as intellectual. Since it is clear that there may be contexts in which I ascribe a particular identity to myself that others do not ascribe to me (or vice versa), we must reckon in any discussion of identity with a traditional philosophical concern, namely, with how to resolve the self/other binary according to which there is a fundamental separation between my view of myself and the view the other has of me.6 Within this dualistic framework, identity is seen as encompassing both a ‘subjective’ perspective that reflects and expresses my own view of myself and, at the same time, the perspective of the other (or others) which is distinct from my own. Working within such a binary model, the central issue then becomes, how are these dual (and often competing) perspectives reconcilable into a coherent identity that is lived by and associated with a concrete individual? Merleau-Ponty raises this type of concern in relation to Sartre’s ontological distinction between the experience of being-for-itself (être pour-soi) and the experience of being-for-others (être pour-les-autres). MerleauPonty attempts to move beyond this oppositional framework by positing a chiasmatic relationship between the perspective we have of ourselves and the perspective the other has of us. To call the relationship between my own perspective and the perspective of the other chiasmatic means that it is a reversible relationship that allows us to experience the perspective of the other toward ourselves (even without having full access to it) even as the other can do the same for us, all the while preserving the differences between the two perspectives. In the essay Eye and Mind, he suggests that we chiasmatically enounter inanimate as well as animate others. On his account, we are reckoning with the

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perspective of others all the time, even if we can never know them with Cartesian clarity and distinctness. Insofar as we can enter into chiasmatic relationships with non-conscious entities, it should be evident that a chiasmatic relationship does not, for Merleau-Ponty, presuppose that one or both of us must be aware of that relationship in order for it to exist. In his most famous example of a mundane chiasmatic encounter, namely, one hand touching the other, one doesn’t have to be aware that one hand is touching the other in order to have the experience. Awareness does, undeniably, affect and transform the experience (of touching and being touched) and therefore alters its meaning, but it does not create the experience in the first place nor is it required to make the special reflexivity that is operative within the experience significant in our lives. Merleau-Ponty opposes the self/other binary then, because he maintains that even before the recognition of the unique perspective of the other occurs, we are always already acting within an intersubjective context and so are already affected by the perspective of the other, whether or not we are aware that this is occurring. This is why he proclaims that: what is given is the taking up of each subjectivity by itself, and of subjectivities by each other in the generality of a single nature, the cohesion of an intersubjective life and a world. True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest. (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 452) Luce Irigaray, though accusing Merleau-Ponty of ultimately privileging subjectivity (and male subjectivity at that) over intersubjectivity, agrees with his claim above that subjectivity is grounded within a fundamentally intersubjective experience. The experience of the look, as Sartre describes it in Being and Nothingness, or of the master’s need and demand for recognition by the slave, for Hegel, highlight the moments we are forced to acknowledge the radical alterity of the other but they fail, Irigaray argues, to acknowledge properly the significance of more primordial contacts with the other, most particularly, the encounters that begin even before we are born, as our bodies grow within the bodies of our mothers. Through a compelling historical analysis of the

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rationalist philosophical tradition, Alcoff reinforces Irigaray’s critique, demonstrating that the inherently intersubjective features of identity have most often been seen as a threat to our status as autonomous moral agents. Within this tradition, with relatively few exceptions, the role of others and of society, history, politics, etcetera in the formation of our identities has often been downplayed. More specifically, these latter have frequently been seen as collectively determining the ‘accidental’ features of our identities, not the essential ones. And, Alcoff contends, within these accounts the most essential aspect of identity turns out to be general and universal, namely the capacity for rationality itself. A major problem with such an ahistorical approach to identity is that there are countless individuals (all of whom possess their own distinctive identities) whose disabilities, sex, and/or race have precluded them from being seen as having the capacity for rationality in the first place.7 Not surprisingly, with regard to the self/other binary that frames these discussions, the emphasis is overwhelmingly placed on the autonomous self’s ability to express its own identity through its willed choices. All too often, those individuals who are unable to do this because of a serious mental disability, for instance, have their very humanity placed in question. On this Cartesian view, then, the perspective of the other is not granted the same legitimacy as one’s own perspective, and, as Heidegger illustrates in his condemnation of the perspective of the ‘they’ in Being and Time, the choice to give weight to the view of the other regarding oneself can even be regarded as potentially inauthentic.8 Existentialists, then, as well as rationalists have placed the primary weight upon the self in determining its own identity even while recognizing that to be human means, to use Sartre’s language, to be not only a being-for-itself but also a being-for-others.9 In his essay, ‘Identity: Cultural, Transcultural, and Multicultural’, Peter Caws reinforces this position, maintaining that, ‘There is a sense – the existentialists were good at dramatizing it, but I think they were also right – in which I am alone in the world and have to forge my identity in isolation’ (379). From this perspective, identity is an individual project and Caws distinguishes it from an identification, which can be imposed on one by others. This occurs, for instance, when one is identified as a citizen of a particular country (e.g. a Spaniard or a Turk). Caws observes that children are born into a ‘first’ or ‘native’ culture that is ‘imposed from without’. It is a culture, he claims, that they belong to but which they have not ‘made their own’ (371). For Caws and other existentialist thinkers, identity is something we fashion ourselves,

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working from the ‘raw’ (and not so raw) materials provided by the world around us including all the people, places and things we come in contact with on a daily basis. In Caws’ words, ‘Identity, psychologically as well as logically, is a reflexive relation, a relation of myself to myself, but it can be a mediated relation: I relate to myself through my interaction with others and with the world’ (379).10 Ultimately, for him as well as for Sartre, identity is something we individually choose, however, it also must be distinguished from the mundane choices we make from moment to moment throughout our lives. For Sartre, the choice of an identity should be understood as an existential choice that unifies my less momentous choices such as which outfit to wear in the morning, what to eat for lunch, and who to spend time with.11 In contrast to the strong individualist emphasis in the existentialist tradition, Marxists maintain that others play the crucial role in determining an individual’s identity and they undertand this identity to be primarily a function of one’s social class. Even when one emerges from the ‘false consciousness’ of believing one’s class status to be natural and inevitable, one does so not by affirming one’s individuality but by recognizing that one is a member of a socially constructed, subjugated (or dominating) economic group. In short, one attains class consciousness. While the recognition that others play a central role in the formation of one’s identity is a compelling feature of a Marxist position, on the other hand, this view also runs the danger of making it seem as if the individual has virtually no agency in determining her identity. Moreover, it is not only Marxists who are subject to this critique. In her book Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz calls positions that emphasize the role of society in determining the identity of the individual ‘outside in’ perspectives and she argues that Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari all ascribe to this model in which the individual’s identity is primarily constructed not by herself but by the society in which she lives.12 Pierre Bourdieu’s discussions of the power of the habitus to shape individual’s desires, hopes, fears and beliefs in accordance with the standards of taste operative for their social class, is a perfect example of this view. It should not be surprising that just as the Cartesian emphasis on the autonomous self has been critiqued for its ‘subjectivism’, so too have serious objections been made concerning Bourdieu’s reduction of individual taste to the taste that has been indexed for that individual’s social class.13 Rather than embracing one side of the self/other binary or the other, Alcoff attributes equally primary roles both to the self as well as to the other in the constitution of identity. Like Merleau-Ponty, she views

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subjectivity and intersubjectivity as inseparable from one another; as discussed earlier, both philosophers maintain that we always emerge as subjects in and through our interactions with others. Insofar as these interactions are multiple, it follows that our identities themselves are multiple. This helps us to understand why even if an individual has a dominant identity, for instance as a mother, the meaning of being a mother is never fixed in her life but changes over time and in different situations in accordance with her own experiences of mothering and/or being mothered as well as with the way society as a whole and other individuals respond to (or fail to respond to) her as a mother. While society may promulgate specific standards for motherhood, it is clear that even the woman most devoted to these standards will inevitably end up embodying them in her own way. This is why Alcoff declares that ‘social identities are relational, contextual, and fundamental to the self’ (90). Up to now, I have focused more generally on the complexity of the issues that must be addressed when one seeks to make claims about the meaning of particular identities. As we have seen, there is a variety of conflicting perspectives regarding how much weight to give to the self and how much weight to attribute to the other (including society at large) in the construction of an individual’s identity. With regard to the hybrid identity ‘mother/intellectual’ that is the focus of this particular discussion, it is evident that both terms have long social and political histories that must be reckoned with. Since I cannot do justice to all of the possible issues that can be raised with regard to the changing meanings of both mothers and intellectuals over time, I would like instead to focus in-depth on a particular set of concerns, namely, how this hybrid identity seems to be very inclusive insofar as it provides access to two different worlds (with their differing horizons) simultaneously, and yet, the demands placed upon one by both motherhood and intellectual life respectively are frequently so all-encompassing that it is virtually impossible to live this identity in a unified, coherent manner throughout one’s life. Rather than abandoning this (or a comparable) hybrid identity as an impossible project, being both a mother and an intellectual is, I would argue, an excellent example of the limits of privileging a unified identity as a goal we should be striving for to live meaningful lives.14

The inclusive exclusivity of the both/and When I first began to ponder seriously the meaning of the hybrid term, ‘mother/intellectual’, my thoughts moved from a consideration

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of its significance in my own life to a more sustained reflection concerning the way in which this very expression and the dual existence implied by it, is simultaneously inclusive and exclusive. The expression, ‘mothers/intellectuals’ is inclusive because it encompasses two identities that have traditionally been seen as oppositional. That is, the inclusivity of the term is directly a function of the way in which it brings together two identities customarily conceived to be mutually exclusive, even antagonistic to one another. The opposition between mothers and intellectuals respectively has been due not only to the different spheres with which they are associated, namely, the world of the home for mothers and the ‘world of ideas’ for intellectuals, but also, to the totalizing quality of these two identities. I call them totalizing because, as mentioned above, each has typically been seen as completely defining the individual who is associated with motherhood, on the one hand, or intellectual life, on the other hand. While striving to overcome the tensions between these two roles is an important and ongoing project for many of the women who share them, I argue that it is impossible to integrate fully these two respective identities into a single, harmonious whole.15 Further, I maintain that the attempt to be inclusive by coordinating the respective demands of motherhood and intellectual life will never eliminate the specter of exclusivity but, in fact, will produce new forms of exclusivity between those who live the life of a ‘mother/intellectual’ and those who do not. Before turning to consider what is at stake in the attempt to integrate the practice of mothering with an intellectual life, more needs to be said about why these two identities have most frequently been seen as exclusive of one another. Let’s start with the intellectual. Ever since Socrates’ famous injunction to ‘know thyself’, the pursuit of wisdom has been viewed, at least in democratic societies, as intrinsically rewarding and therefore as self-justifying.16 Moreover, those who devote their life to this endeavour tend to be defined by their commitment to it. What this has meant, historically speaking, is that the intellectual’s ‘extracurricular activities’ including her past, present home life, likes and dislikes, friendships, and daily routines are typically seen as irrelevant, except insofar as they offer the promise of enabling us to better understand the individual’s intellectual development. Martin Heidegger, in his ‘Letter on Humanism’ provides us with a wonderful example of the unsettling effects of being forced to recognize that the intellectual can also have a home life. He describes a group of travellers who come to visit the famous pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, in his home, hoping to catch him in the act of thinking

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great thoughts. Instead, they find him humbly warming his hands by a fire. Taken aback, they prepare to leave. Before they can go, however, Heraclitus urges them to enter his domestic domain. Challenging the very dichotomy between the life of the home and the life of the intellect, he tells them, ‘Here too the Gods come to presence’17 (Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’ 257). Not unlike the situation of the intellectual, a mother’s prior life before she became a mother, her current non-mothering activities, and future non-maternal aspirations are most often deemed to be superfluous except insofar as they provide insight into the kind of mother she has turned out to be. If one discovers that a particular mother also engages in intellectual activities, these are usually seen as providing her with another identity completely separate from her identity as a mother. That is, she is seen as someone who possesses dual identities, identities that are independent of one another. The fact that historically men have been associated almost exclusively with the role of intellectual and women almost exclusively with the role of mother creates additional difficulties for the woman who seeks to live as both an intellectual and a mother. To think these two identities together, as the very expression mothers/intellectuals seeks to do, requires that we buck a long tradition and challenge both the exhaustiveness of these two identities as well as the contradictory associations that present them as incompatible. One of the appealing aspects of the inclusivity invoked by the expression mothers/intellectuals, is that the use of the plural implies the presence of a community of women who are both mothers and intellectuals, rather than a single, exceptional figure who is somehow able to be a mother and an intellectual. On the other hand, the very attempt to be inclusive by acknowledging that there is, in fact, a community of women who are both mothers and intellectuals, at the same time performs an exclusion. Not only are women (and men) who are neither mothers nor intellectuals placed outside this special group, but so are nonintellectual mothers and women who are intellectuals but not mothers. Additional problems surface when one acknowledges the instability of all of these groupings. For, as I will go on to show, the more one reflects on these various groups in relation to one another, the more artificial the distinctions between them seem to be. As Patrice DiQuinzio has so compellingly argued, there is no way to talk about the practice of mothering without having to contend with the ideological effects of the institution of motherhood that underlies it. Similarly, there is no way to talk about what it means to live an intellectual life without having to address the dominant ideologies that help

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to establish the parameters within which such a life unfolds and attains significance. For instance, it is impossible to discuss the maternal and intellectual domains seriously without acknowledging how the former is thoroughly feminized and the latter masculinized. This means that anyone who engages in the activities of mothering (whether male or female) has to reckon with their traditional feminine connotations and that anyone who participates in intellectual activities at the same time assumes (problematically or unproblematically) their masculine associations. Moreover, these specific gendered expectations play out differently in different cultures and so one must be attuned to how the very notions of the ‘feminine’ mother and the ‘masculine’ intellectual have changed not only over time but also cross-culturally. Age, race, ethnicity and social class must also be taken into account since gender never operates in isolation from them. For instance, while fourteen year olds can be mothers, they are rarely seen as intellectuals. There is an assumption that a longer period of maturation is involved in the process of becoming an intellectual than the nine months of pregnancy that is still the most frequent way of becoming a mother. Moreover, while mothers are readily acknowledged to come from all races, intellectuals have historically been seen as emanating from a dominant, white, male, ruling class. The very existence of women of colour who are both mothers and intellectuals challenges several of these presuppositions at once and intensifies the constant struggle to negotiate disparate identities. Critically examining the processes of inclusion and exclusion that are produced in and through the tensions between these two identities as they come to be embodied within one and the same person enables us to see why the adoption of an inclusive identity such as mother/intellectual inevitably seems to lead to practices of exclusion even if these latter are unintentional. And, although I will conclude with some personal reflections on the challenges of living as a mother/intellectual in a both/and rather than an either/or fashion, for the majority of this discussion I will be problematizing these categories themselves. Motivated by an inclusive impulse, my initial title for this chapter was ‘Mothers/Intellectuals: Both/And, Either/Or, or Neither/Nor’. This title reflected my desire to recognize the different options for women today vis-à-vis the very question of being a mother and/or an intellectual. My goal was to acknowledge the various, equally authentic ways in which a woman can live: 1) simultaneously as a mother and an intellectual (a both/and); 2) as a mother who is not an intellectual (an

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either/or); 3) as an intellectual who is not a mother (another either/or); and 4) as a woman (or a man for that matter) who does not fit into either category (a neither/nor). With these basic categories in hand, my original project was to articulate some of the points of tension as well as the points of commonality that emerge within and across these groups. However, as I increasingly realized when I thought more about this topic, such a project, laudable as it might be, presupposed that the categories themselves are self-evident and unproblematic. As a phenomenologist, I have been trained to describe lived experience without relying on presuppositions regarding that experience. And, while I agree with phenomenology’s critics that it is impossible to eliminate, in advance, all of the presuppositions that one may bring to a given experience (indeed one is often unaware that of what these presuppositions even are!), nonetheless I have found the attempt to be aware of one’s presuppositions and to minimize their influence to be a useful goal to strive for in one’s work. To view mothers and intellectuals as clear-cut identities itself seems to me to be just such a presupposition, one that is reinforced by the Bourdieusian habitus that characterizes contemporary life in a Western capitalist society. So, before one can even begin to explore the tensions that exist between women who seem to share both, one, or neither of these identities, one must first address the problems associated with the terms themselves. As I hope to demonstrate in what follows, as soon as one starts to think carefully about these identities and the various ways in which one can be seen as belonging or failing to belong to them, the meanings of the both/and, either/or and neither/or respectively become quite complex, ultimately deconstructing of their own accord. For instance, with respect to the first category, the both/and (mothers/intellectuals), what about mothers who don’t consider themselves to be intellectuals but are considered to be such by others? Or, perhaps more commonly, what about mothers who view themselves as intellectuals but who aren’t viewed this way by anyone else? This latter situation occurs most frequently in the case of those mothers who do not have the educational background, formal credentials, or professional affiliation that publicly confers this title upon them. For those who have no direct relationship to the Academy or who do not participate in intellectual discussions in an official workplace or at professional conferences, maintaining one’s intellectual credentials may be difficult indeed. For example, the formal presentation of an earlier version of this essay at a philosophy conference, as well as the presence of the audience, serve as visible guarantors

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of our respective intellectuality, thereby legitimizing our claims to be intellectuals. But, as we all know, very few people have the interest or the opportunity to express their intellectual inclinations in such a structured way.18 Regarding the attempt to live the both/and, that is, to live an inclusive existence, Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843) suggests quite clearly that the ethical individual should not strive to ‘have one’s cake and eat it too’.19 For Kierkegaard, attempting to ‘have it all’ is a sign of a purely aesthetic existence, such as that lived by the fictitious ‘A’ depicted in his text. To live on a moral plane, Kierkegaard maintains, one must confront the Either/Or by choosing the ethical over the aesthetic, which in turn involves another series of Either/Ors including choosing the community over the individual, the public over the private, infinitude over finitude, and duty over pleasure. Kierkegaard well recognizes the sacrifices involved in these choices but argues nonetheless that the ethical life demands them and that one will be rewarded amply for any hardships one experiences along the way. And hardships there will be. For, as he frequently reminds us, one cannot choose to exist on the moral plane and expect that choice to hold firm over a lifetime. Instead, in true existentialist fashion, Kierkegaard claims that the Either/Or, and, more specifically, the absolute nature of the choice between them must be affirmed again and again throughout one’s life. As Judge William, Kierkegaard’s exemplar of the ethical states, ‘The original choice is forever present in every succeeding choice’ (Vol. II, 219). But what is the nature of this choice? One cannot read Kierkegaard for long before one begins to question the absolute nature of the Either/Or he has depicted. For, we soon learn, the path not chosen remains not only as a constant temptation, but is also somehow incorporated in the choices one makes. For instance, the ethical individual can still enjoy what had heretofore been purely aesthetic pleasures, but now, we are led to believe she does so in a different way. That is, she can enjoy a good walk, a warm meal, or a fine play, but she has learned not to view such activities as ends in themselves as the aesthetic individual might; rather she can appreciate them as meaningful, pleasurable aspects of her existence that contribute toward, but are never sufficient to procure her well-being. And, Kierkegaard implies, so long as she continues to affirm the value of the community over her private interests, especially when these conflict, such an individual need not be seen as choosing a path of renunciation in her daily life.20

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While Kierkegaard may seem to be a very unlikely point of reference for a discussion of mothers/intellectuals, I can’t think of anyone who has done a better job of revealing the complexities of the Either/Or and, more specifically, the ways in which what may look like absolute choices always seem to incorporate the very things they are excluding. Ironically, although Kierkegaard saw his own work as being in direct opposition to the dominant Hegelianism of his time, something very much like an Hegelian Aufhebung seems to be operative in the ethical (and later on the religious) individual’s relationship to the aesthetic existence that she has allegedly left behind. This is because, rather than having the choice of the ethical absolutely exclude the choice of the aesthetic, the former finds a place for the enjoyment of the aesthetic aspects of existence that it seems to renounce. Heidegger’s story of Heraclitus enjoying the domesticity of the hearth reinforces this message, one that I believe has a direct bearing on either/or understandings of the relationship between mothers and intellectuals. If we turn, now, to a consideration of the category mother, it is clear, as noted earlier, that there are many ways to be one, and many ways not to be one, not all of which are universally acknowledged. Is a woman who gives her child up for adoption and never has any other children a mother? Should a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant (as has happened all too often in Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan and all over the world on a daily basis), or should any woman who becomes pregnant against her will be considered a mother even when she does not want to be a mother and has a very conflicted relationship with the child to which she gives birth? Is a gestational or surrogate mother who carries a child to term in order to turn that child over to others a mother? Is a woman who never has any children of her own (whether naturally or through adoption) but who helps to raise other people’s children a mother? Examples of women in this latter category include those whom Patricia Hill Collins identifies as ‘othermothers’, women who may or may not be biologically related to a child and who take partial or sometimes even full responsibility for caring for that child. Citing Rosalie Troester’s work, Collins notes that ‘othermothers – women who assist bloodmothers by sharing mothering responsibilities – traditionally have been central to the institution of Black motherhood’ (119). However, this role, as well as the joys and responsibilities that go along with it, are often not recognized outside of African-American communities in the United States because the dominant white society’s ideological commitment to the primacy of the traditional nuclear family above

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all other domestic arrangements privileges first biological mothers, then adoptive mothers, and, in cases where neither is present, legal guardians (including foster mothers). As a result, an othermother who may consider herself to be a mother and who may be considered to be a mother by members of her own community, may fail to be viewed as a mother outside of that community. Collins views this conflict between communities regarding the othermother’s status as indicative of a broader conflict between two world views, what she terms the Afrocentric perspective and the Eurocentric perspective respectively. Interestingly, she refers to the former as a both/and perspective and the latter as an either/or perspective. Unlike Kierkegaard who seemed to valorize the either/or even as he complicated the relationship between the two alternatives, Collins stresses the limitations of either/or dichotomous thinking and presents the more inclusive both/and perspective as a compelling foundation for black feminist thought. And, although it is possible to criticize Collins’ own account for 1) falling prey to the limitations of either/or dichotomies by setting these perspectives in such sharp opposition to one another, and by clearly valourizing the Afrocentric perspective over the Eurocentric one (replicating the hierarchization that she claims marks the Eurocentric worldview); and 2) for problematically collapsing many different cultures and traditions in both Africa and Europe into two hegemonic perspectives, her account of the clashes produced by competing worldviews that individuals and communities must contend with on a daily basis is extremely compelling. For, it is evident that there are crucial differences between how communities see themselves and how they are seen by others. These differences may in turn lead to major social, political, and as Fanon has so poignantly shown, psychic conflicts that can leave permanent scars on both the individuals and the communities in question. On the psychical level, Fanon argues that the project of making sense of one’s existence in the face of a double standard (i.e. the negative judgement of the Other and the more positive judgement that arises out of one’s own community) can lead to neurosis. However, given the reality of the conflict between the two competing perspectives, he also believes that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to avoid these tensions altogether. In response, Fanon maintains that the individual (and the community) must strive to move beyond identificatory labels. In his words, In order to terminate this neurotic situation in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile,

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inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged round me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and, through one human being, to reach out for the universal. (197) Although Fanon’s appeal to universal humanity as the way out of the conflict between the judgement of the self or community and the judgement of the other may be attractive, it is also a very dangerous proposition. For, not only can we raise questions about the viability of ignoring the social, political and psychic conflicts that are produced through the clash between competing perspectives, but Fanon’s appeal to a universal humanity that transcends race, gender, class, ability and ethnicity appears to be both naïve and politically suspect. While Fanon claims to be addressing the universal situation of colonized black men and women who must always contend with their subordination by the white colonizer, it is clear, as several Fanon scholars have observed, that his own work focuses particularly upon the situation of the colonized black male, leaving the specific experiences of black women out of the picture almost altogether. And, since his account is proffered as a comprehensive description of the racial oppression inflicted by the French colonizer upon the Antilleans of Martinique, it is difficult to raise the question of gender difference, much less to have it addressed within the parameters of his analysis. This puts the sympathetic reader in a difficult position for, however much one may want to agree with the general points Fanon is making about the psychic tolls of racism, one also has to resist the tendency to accept uncritically his description of the black male’s embodiment as characterizing the experience of both sexes. Collins’ work, because of its explicit focus on black women, is particularly helpful in addressing the impact of gender difference in the experience of racial oppression. Her claim that black women must continually contend with a set of ‘controlling images’ that seek to define and contain them supports Fanon’s discussion of the power of the Other to set the terms according to which one is summarily judged and found deficient. However, Collins also acknowledges that there are not one, but several controlling images that are applied to black women (e.g. the mammy, the matriarch, the welfare mother, the Jezebel, and the super strong black mother) and this opens up the possibility that there may well be different controlling images applicable to the experience of black men. Like Fanon, Collins calls upon black women to resist the oppressive judgement of the Other, however her response to this judgement is

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not to seize upon one’s universal humanity, but rather, to embrace the healing power of self-definition. ‘Black women’s lives,’ she tells us: are a series of negotiations that aim to reconcile the contradictions separating our own internally defined images of self as African-American women with our objectification as the Other. The struggle of living two lives, one for ‘them and one for ourselves’ (Gwaltney 1980, 240) creates a peculiar tension to extract the definition of one’s true self from the treatment afforded the denigrated categories in which all Black women are placed. (94) Fanon’s and Collins’ respective solutions to the oppressive judgements of the other seem at first glance to be directly opposed to one another. Collins advocates that Black women ‘extract the definition of [their] true self’ from their experiences of racism, sexism, and classism, ‘rearticulating’ their lives on their own terms, while Fanon advocates that one free oneself from the particulars of one’s own experience altogether to embrace one’s universal humanity. However, what is common to both accounts is the hope that one can somehow transcend the controlling images that structure how one is viewed by the other by refusing to let them influence the meaning of one’s existence. And, while I am not as optimistic as either Fanon or Collins that we can eventually get beyond the negative judgements of the oppressor, both of their accounts are extremely helpful in elucidating the unlivability of the dilemma that individuals nonetheless live from one moment to the next in their daily lives. The conflict between competing perspectives discussed respectively by Fanon and Collins helps us to see why the very question of who, exactly, is a mother or who, exactly, is an intellectual cannot be addressed without confronting the tensions between how an individual may view herself and how she is viewed by others. What complicates this process of identification further is the fact that mothers and intellectuals have historically been seen as at odds with one another, that is, as oppositional identities. This means that those who seek to embrace the ‘both/and’ by simultaneously identifying as mothers and as intellectuals, already are subverting the established parameters for these two identities. One way of minimizing the tensions between them is what I would call the ‘compartmental approach’, namely, to view (and live) them as two self-contained identities that one can alternate between depending upon one’s situation. However, even if one is relatively successful at doing this, there will always be occasions when one’s identity as a

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mother intrudes upon one’s identity as an intellectual, forcing the individual to shift her priorities suddenly and radically. Far from a rare occurrence, it takes no more than the interruption of a sick child when one is in the midst of intellectual labour for these conflicts to emerge.

Ideological tensions In The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism, and the Problem of Mothering, DiQuinzio offers a critical account of the effects of competing ideologies regarding the practice of mothering as codified in the institution of motherhood. Specifically, DiQuinzio examines the conflicts as well as the points of resonance between what she refers to as ‘essential motherhood’, a reigning ideology that conflates women, femininity and maternity and views the latter as a woman’s natural destiny, and the ideology of individualism which has been effectively deployed by the feminist movement to argue that each woman possesses an embodied subjectivity and agency that is unique to her alone and which gives her equal standing with all other women as well as all men. Although these ideologies often seem to be in opposition to one another insofar as individualism emphasizes that each person must be viewed as an autonomous moral agent and essential motherhood emphasizes that women are first and foremost mothers (read caretakers of children), these ideologies also, as DiQuinzio carefully shows, reinforce and depend upon one another. In the case of othermothers, for instance, essential motherhood and individualism can work hand in hand to maintain that 1) each child can only have one mother and that 2) if one isn’t a natural or legal mother, one is not a mother. More generally, both ideologies work against my earlier claim that one and the same person can possess multiple identities, a point I will return to shortly. Before turning to the challenges of a both/and existence insofar as it seems to support multiple identities, I want to trouble the either/or categories of mothers who are not intellectuals and intellectuals who are not mothers further. While the case of othermothers offers us a compelling example of women who may view themselves and be viewed by their communities as mothers even while having no children of their own, there are also women who may actively refuse to be identified as mothers but nonetheless find this label thrust upon them. For instance, how are we to view older women who mentor younger women and who may be regarded by the latter as mothers even when they do not view themselves in this way? Simone de Beauvoir, the often acclaimed ‘mother of feminism’ comes to mind in this regard. For no one has

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delivered a more contested critical analysis of the mother than Beauvoir and, at the same time, so frequently had that moniker applied to her own influence as a feminist on generations of younger women.21 So, while Beauvoir might initially seem to be a paradigm exemplar of the second either/or category, namely an intellectual woman who is not a mother, strong arguments could also be made for placing her in the both/and category. And, for those who might wince at placing ‘symbolic mothers’ into this grouping, Beauvoir’s adoption of Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir as her legal daughter later on in her life weakens even the literalist’s defence of Beauvoir as an intellectual non-mother. Feminist theorists Adrienne Rich, Sara Ruddick, and Eva Feder Kitty emphasize that all of us have had the experience of being mothered (regardless of who has performed the labour of mothering). Radically different as these experiences may be, there are also certain commonalities that link them, in particular the experience of being completely dependent early on in our lives on the care of others. Many women who would be viewed by the literalist as non-mothers, may find themselves, either by choice or necessity, performing the labours of mothering if we understand the latter as involving caring for beings who depend upon you. These mothering activities can include caring for a small kitten who one may have to feed by hand, caring for an elderly parent with Alzheimer’s who may need to be fed, bathed, and diapered, or even caring for one’s garden through watering, weeding and pruning. Moreover, as Adrienne Rich observes, to recognize that we are all ‘of women born’ also makes it difficult to differentiate absolutely between those who have the experience of being mothers and those who do not. For, the very experience of being mothered (and this may run the entire gamut between love and abuse), leaves its own constitutive effects upon the psyche, and can directly influence the ways in which one identifies or disidentifies with the activity of mothering as well as the broader institution of motherhood. If, as DiQuinzio argues, it is impossible to separate the activity of mothering from its institutionalization, then we must also be attuned to the structuring role this latter plays in our judgements regarding the quality and status of mothers. Against individualist accounts of maternal practices that would define these practices as specific acts performed by specific caregivers in specific situations, DiQuinzio insists that these practices themselves never take place in a vacuum but achieve significance against the background of dominant (and frequently competing) ideologies of motherhood. As mentioned earlier, the ideology of essential motherhood tells us that the very definition of a woman is inextricably tied to her capacity

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to be a mother. The deleterious effects of this ideology are readily seen in the case of infertile women who may view or have others view their inability to get pregnant as a challenge to their femininity. Or, for those women who actively choose not to have children, their refusal to reproduce may be construed through the ideology of essential motherhood as a refusal to be a woman. DiQuinzio suggests that tempting as it may be to think that one can resist the influence of the ideologies of individualism and essential motherhood upon one’s own self-definition, it is not possible to do so. Following Gayatri Spivak, she argues that, ‘In the context of the hegemony of individualism and essential motherhood, it is impossible to refuse the terms of these ideological formations entirely, but it is possible to resist them to one extent or another’ (DiQuinzio 28). Given that one can’t transcend these ideologies and their corresponding contradictions altogether, the form such resistance can take, according to DiQuinzio, is an affirmation of a ‘paradoxical politics of mothering’. It is a politics that, in her words, accepts the impossibility of motherhood and the impossibility of individualist subjectivity and that does not require for its foundation a univocal, coherent, and exhaustive position on mothering [but which] might instead make possible multiple and overlapping positions of resistance to individualism and essential motherhood, and might show how to achieve or constitute the possibility of movement among such positions. (DiQuinzio 48) Although my own analysis of the problems associated with identifying who, exactly, is a mother or who, exactly, is an intellectual, supports a politics of resistance to these hegemonic labels, what I have been concerned with here is the necessary preliminary work of destabilizing the terms themselves. Such an endeavour, I believe, is already an act of resistance to the constraining effects of these identities not only upon those who seem to neatly fit one or both categories, but also upon those neither/nors who are excluded from them altogether. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that, historically speaking, the intellectual has more readily been granted an authoritative, powerful voice in society than the mother, and so both identities have not been equal in social, political and symbolic value.22 Sara Ruddick attempts to counter the traditional devaluation of the mother’s thought processes (which are usually seen as limited to a narrow domestic context) by asking us to recognize the active intellectual labour performed by mothers on a daily basis. Through her analysis

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of the complexities of maternal thinking, a thinking that continually must negotiate and develop practical solutions to the contradictory demands of one’s children, oneself, and one’s society without ever hoping to resolve these contradictions altogether, Ruddick offers us one way of deconstructing an either/or understanding of mothers and intellectuals. I agree with Ruddick that it is crucial that the practice of mothering more generally and individual mothers in particular, receive the respect, dignity, and value from society that they deserve. However, while she seeks to accomplish this by pointing out the ways in which mothers are themselves engaging in serious intellectual activity, it is also important to recognize that the intellectual life brings with it its own pressures and insecurities that can be incredibly constricting, and, in extreme cases, debilitating. Since the both/and category might seem, at face value, to avoid the difficulties associated with the either/or dichotomy, and since the both/and category is the one with which I am most often identified, let me turn to a more concrete examination of it. At various points in this chapter I have suggested that the inclusivity seemingly promised by life as a mother and an intellectual may turn out to be a false illusion insofar as one may find oneself living these dual identities not in a cohesive, integrated fashion but by compartmentalizing one’s existence into distinct, and surprisingly separate spheres. Moreover, as Audre Lorde and many other feminist theorists and cultural theorists have asserted, no individual ever possesses simply one or even two identities. Lorde’s description of herself as ‘a forty-nine year old Black, lesbian, feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an inter-racial couple’ points us toward the complex, multiple identities that we live from one moment to the next (281). Though Lorde herself does not describe the relationship among these various identities in depth, it is evident that even when someone is most solidly anchored in one of them, the other identities continually intrude, sometimes in negative ways but also in positive ones. Let me illustrate the constant challenge of living the both/and life of a mother/intellectual in an integrated, harmonious fashion through the following example. One Saturday in late September a few years ago, no sooner did I get two grant proposals sent off via express mail to meet 1 October deadlines than I had to rush off to the first of several soccer games (in accordance with my responsibilities as a ‘soccer mom’). As I settled into my chair beside the other parents, patting myself on the back for succeeding in fulfilling my dual responsibilities as an intellectual and a mother, my enjoyment of the game was interrupted by having

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to rush to take one of my five year old twins to a secluded spot to do a poop. Suddenly, I became consumed by the challenge of finding a way to clean him, clean myself, and dispose of the evidence without detection. As I resolved the problem more or less satisfactorily, I settled back into my seat only to be beset by anxieties about how I was going to finish a paper I had to deliver it at a conference later that week when I still had to rush back and forth between six more games over two days (including one an hour away in Baltimore), bring snacks for one of the teams, attend back to school day at Sunday school for my fourth grader and my sixth grader and help to get my three younger kids with signed cards and wrapped presents to two different birthday parties. At this point, it was hard to see the both/and existence as desirable. In fact, the kids’ multiple activities have continued unabated for years now and trying to fulfil both my maternal and my intellectual responsibilities simultaneously often seems out and out crazy. While people often tell me they don’t know how I ‘do it all’ it is also clear that most are also wondering why I or anyone would willingly pay the price that ‘doing it all’ involves. My usual answer is that one can’t stop to think about it because: 1) there is no time and 2) if one thought about it one would realize the whole enterprise is insane and one wouldn’t be able to muster the resources needed to do it. Rather than present only a negative picture, however, it is also important to provide at least one positive example of how one’s life as a mother and an intellectual can also be brought together, even if only for a relatively short period of time. In the summer of 2001, in the midst of chaperoning my oldest son’s soccer team in Spain, I found myself at an amusement park running from ride to ride with four boys and one other parent, a father who had spent his entire career planning military strategy for the US Air Force and who continues to serve as a consultant for the Pentagon. While waiting on one of the interminable lines for one of the attractions, he and I entered into a long discussion of Kierkegaard’s ethics. From a comparison between the knight of faith and the ethical individual, we moved on to Heidegger’s view of death. Then, after finishing this ride and waiting for another one, we talked seriously about the commitment to monogamy in marriage. And, if my memory serves me correctly, we concluded a few hours later with a discussion of the difficulty of negotiating the tensions between raising kids to take care of their problems on their own and knowing when to intervene on their behalf. Our conversation, though intense, was hardly uninterrupted. Keeping one eye on the boys as we talked, we continually had to exhort them to stop complaining about how long the line was, to

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stop unfavourably comparing the rides at this Spanish amusement park to bigger and better rides they had enjoyed in the US and, most of all, we had to urge them to settle down and stop horsing around. Intertwining maternal and intellectual labours can be incredibly rewarding but it is also exhausting and one rarely succeeds in genuinely integrating the two. As such times, Virginia Woolf’s appeal for a ‘room of one’s own’ to engage in sustained reflection seems incredibly appealing even if one would only plan to use the room of one’s own to take a nap! On the other hand, to the extent that one can seize upon spontaneous opportunities to make what might seem like disparate identities intersect with one another, one can help to break down the barriers that separate them and, in so doing, can enrich the meaning of one’s life. It is important to realize, however, that the more one takes on with the goal of being as inclusive as possible, the more one inevitably excludes others who do not share one’s multiple concerns. At such moments, one must remember that each of us lives our own both/ands, and though we can gain an extraordinary amount in the process, there are also things that are lost along the way. By thinking about the inclusions and exclusions that are simultaneously performed by mothers who are intellectuals, we can see that although one of these identities may be more salient than the other in a particular context, both identities can themselves be displaced in turn. In the post 9/11 climate that has dominated US politics including both domestic and foreign policy, we are being urged to overlook our differences and to embrace our common identity as patriotic Americans. Yet here, too, the attempt at inclusiveness generates its own exclusions, exclusions that are all the more dangerous precisely because they are violently performed and, at the same time, disavowed insofar as they run counter to the spirit of inclusivity.23 This shows us that the very call to be inclusive, precisely when it is manifested as a plea to overcome difference, must always be examined critically. And, if we can’t succeed in eliminating exclusion through appeals to inclusivity, then this means that we must face the limits not only of the either/or but also of the both/and categories. If the identities mother and intellectual both have their own priorities, their own horizons of significance that frequently conflict with one another, as I have suggested, it is also important to remember, as Alcoff observes, that ‘[h]orizons are open-ended, in constant motion, and aspects of our horizon are inevitably group-related or shared among members of a social identity’ (102). This means that no social identity is ever completely severed from other identities that we may also possess.

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As a result, very few of us will ever achieve the kind of unity and coherence in our identities that a Cartesian values. And, I have implied, this would not even be desirable; to the extent that such a goal requires the denial of some of our identities in order to affirm others, it can even be pathological. Moreover, I have argued that the compartmental approach that would advocate separating our identities and their concerns into different spheres of our lives is also ultimately inadequate even though it might be an effective strategy for brief periods of time. This is because the bridges between our various identities (both our own and those of others) are always already there, generated through the ongoing project of making sense of our lives as embodied human beings in the intersubjective world of our concern. We must work harder, then, to develop new interpretive horizons that will allow us to recognize and address the conflicting demands of our various identities.24 This will in turn involve acknowledging that these identities, their respective horizons, and, most importantly, the conflicts they inevitably produce are not accidental by-products of the self but fundamentally constitutive of who we are.

Notes 1. See Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation’ and Butler’s chapter ‘Arguing with the Real’ in Bodies that Matter as well as her subsequent book, Excitable Speech: a Politics of the Performative for in-depth accounts of the power of interpellation. 2. Althusser emphasizes the role of the State even more than the role of other individuals in this process. Subjectivation, he argues, is ideological through and through. In his words, ‘the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of “constituting” concrete individuals as subjects’ (116). For Althusser (following Marx), the State ideology that ‘constitutes concrete individuals as subjects’ is always the dominant ideology of the ruling class. In Bodies that Matter, Butler further develops Althusser’s insight that the disabling aspects of subjectivation produce enabling effects by granting the subject recognition as a subject, albeit a subordinated subject. In her words, ‘This “subjection,” or assujettissement, is not only a subordination but a securing and maintaining, a putting into place of a subject, a subjectivation’ (Butler, Bodies That Matter 34). Butler traces this enabling/disabling view of subjectivation back to Hegel’s famous discussion in the lordship and bondsman chapter in Phenomenology of Mind of the subordination of the master to the slave insofar as the master requires the slave’s recognition of his status as master (and therefore a confirmation

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

by the slave of the slave’s own subordinated status) in order to secure his own subjectivation as master. This goes against William James’ strong claim in the ‘Habits’ chapter of The Principles of Psychology that a person’s character is ‘fixed like plaster by the time we are thirty’ and is more in keeping with the existentialist emphasis upon the ongoing re-creation of the self espoused by both Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I am using Lewis Gordon’s expression ‘antiblack world’ to capture the allpervasive presence of antiblack racism in social life, that is, the ways in which antiblack racism operates as an ‘ontological limitation of human reality’ for blacks (as well as for non-blacks) (1). To say that men are by definition non-mothers does not mean that men are incapable of engaging in mothering practices. In Maternal Thinking Sara Ruddick points out that one doesn’t need to be a biological female to engage in ‘maternal thinking’ and I agree with her. However, even a father who engages in mothering as a primary daily practice, a ‘house-husband’ for instance, is still viewed as a man (read non-mother) who takes on a maternal role and he is often lauded or blamed for doing so precisely because it is not seen as natural for his sex and gender. Linda Alcoff provides an excellent historical survey of both political as well as philosophical approaches to identity in Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, chapters two and three. She concentrates at length upon the key role the self/other binary has played in discussions of identity and her insights have been central to my thinking on these matters. Eva Kittay offers one of the most moving accounts of just such a person in chapter six of Love’s Labor, namely her oldest child Sesha, who has had no trouble expressing her identity with caretakers, family and friends, despite severe mental and physical disabilities that render her incapable of using language or of getting about in the world independently. The same point holds for Sartre as well and it is illustrated in depth in both the ‘Bad Faith’ section of Being and Nothingness and in his play, No Exit. See my essay, ‘Death and the Other’ for a discussion of how Kierkegaard’s, Heidegger’s and Sartre’s respective understandings of the authentic individual as someone who is at least conceptually able to separate herself from others, has been integral to both the phenomenological as well as the existential traditions. It is a major reason for the ongoing critique of these traditions as being too ‘subjectivist’. Alcoff provides an excellent explanation of this critique and a response to it in chapter four of Visible Identities. Sara Heinämaa also tackles this critique head-on in chapter one of Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, with reference to both Kierkegaard and Beauvoir, arguing that it is possible to affirm the ‘Kierkegaardian notion of the separation of the self’ without this affirmation leading to ‘solipsism or subjectivism’ (10). It is striking that Caws claims that identity, as reflexive, ‘can’ be mediated rather than that it is mediated. This suggests that it might be possible for the self to relate to itself without mediation by others and/or by the world of

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11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

her concern. In fact, Caws supports this interpretation when he maintains that one can and should transcend one’s culture of origin, though he is quick to clarify that this ‘does not mean turning one’s back on it’ (385). To make one’s identity one’s own, as we have just seen, involves stepping away from identifications that have been imposed on one by one’s society. In his words, ‘the mature person is likely to leave his or her culture of origin behind as limiting to the development of personal identity’ (372). While he acknowledges the positive role that an ethnic identification can play in an individual’s life, he views it as exceedingly problematic for the individual to merely accept this identification as her identity. Instead, appealing to Sartre, Caws maintains that she needs to actively commit to this particular identity as a self-conscious choice in order to avoid the charge of bad faith. Though this may seem like a very appealing view of identity, especially to individuals who were oppressed growing up within their native cultures, it presupposes that we can, indeed, transcend the influence of our culture of origin through our rational choices. Moreover, it is exceedingly problematic to imply, as Caws does, that the ‘mature’ person leaves her native culture behind. This makes it seem as if one’s native culture resembles the immature Freudian id that must be repudiated. However, even Freud recognized that the desires of the id can never be transcended or vanquished altogether. Instead we must reckon with them on an ongoing basis, just as, I would argue, we continue to reckon with the influence of our native culture which we have a tendency to regard as immature when we are most in tension with it! See the ‘Existential Psychoanalysis’ chapter of Being and Nothingness for a good description of what it means to make an existential choice. See Part III of Volatile Bodies for an in-depth description of these types of theories. Grosz herself seems more sympathetic to ‘outside in’ perspectives despite her recognition of their shortcomings than to the ‘inside out’ perspectives she associates with the phenomenological and psychoanalytic traditions. See my discussion of Bourdieu and the habitus in ‘Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? Habitual Horizons in James, Bourdieu, and Merleau-Ponty’ for a fuller development of this point. Moreover, I would argue that this same point applies to any hybrid identity, from Gloria Anzaldua’s discussion of the specific challenges faced by the mestiza in Borderlands/La Frontera to Alcoff’s own discussion in Visible Identities of the obstacles and opportunities encountered by mixed race people in a society that constantly seeks to reduce their identity to one race or the other. This is not to suggest that the roles themselves are fixed from one culture to another or even one time period to another. While I am drawing primarily from the experience of contemporary women in the US in this chapter, I believe that most of my claims regarding the difficulty of integrating one’s life as a mother and one’s life as an intellectual hold up in other cultures and other time periods as well. This is not only because the demands of an intellectual life and the demands of motherhood are different in kind but also because both require one’s primary attention while one is attempting to fulfil them.

Gail Weiss 163 16. The intellectual life has traditionally been seen as self-justifying in at least two senses: 1) worth pursuing for its own sake alone; 2) as justifying or legitimizing the one who pursues it. 17. This passage is striking for a number of reasons one of which is that Heraclitus gives the credit for his own intellectual inspiration to the Gods, not to himself. He suggests that divine inspiration can and does occur in the midst of mundane life, and does not require a special setting to take place. I believe that this view ties in well with Sara Ruddick’s work on maternal thinking, a complex epistemological activity that occurs in an ongoing way while one is most (rather than least) encumbered with one’s parenting responsibilities. 18. And given how meagre most academics’ annual conference travel budgets are, even those with the interest and inclination may be unable to participate in this professional venue for the formal exchange of ideas! 19. Of course, for those who live the both/and it must be noted that it rarely feels like ‘having one’s cake and eating it too’. Indeed, as most mother/intellectuals soon discover, one may have made or bought the cake but the kids or one’s colleagues could wind up eating it before one even gets a bite! 20. Though it should be added that she may be called upon to make the ‘infinite movement of resignation’ by resigning one ethical duty in order to satisfy a higher one. Kierkegaard’s discussion of the tragic hero and the particular example of Agamemnon who chose to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to save his country is a case in point. 21. See ‘The Mother’ chapter of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. 22. The anti-intellectualism championed by the current US president, George W. Bush, may make the intellectual life seem less appealing than it has in the past, however, it is politicians not mothers who seem to be benefiting from Republican attacks on the intellectual. 23. I am thinking here about the numerous unprovoked physical and psychological attacks that have been experienced by Muslims, Sikhs and MiddleEastern peoples who reside in the US that are part of the ‘collateral damage’ caused by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. 24. In Alcoff’s words, ‘[s]ocial identities may be relational, then, as well as contextually variable, but they remain fundamental to one’s experience of the world and to the development of one’s capacities’ (92). I am using Alcoff’s notion of identity as an interpretive horizon articulated in chapter four of Visible Identities, to reinforce the point that identities can never be understood or assessed apart from the horizons within and through which they are constituted.

Bibliography Alcoff, Linda. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Althusser, Louis. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Towards an Investigation).’ Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Intro. Fredric Jameson. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.

164 The Other Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980. ——. Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ New York: Routledge. 1993. ——. Excitable Speech: a Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. Caws, Peter. ‘Identity: Cultural, Transcultural, and Multicultural.’ Multiculturalism: a Critical Reader. Ed. David Theo Goldberg. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 371–87. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, 2000. DiQuinzio, Patrice. The Impossibility of Motherhood. New York: Routledge, 1999. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1967. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Gordon, Lewis R. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1995. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Gwaltney, John Langston. Drylongso, A Self-Portrait of Black America. New York: Vintage 1980. Hegel, G.W.F. The Phenomenology of Mind. Intro. George Lichtheim. Trans. J.B. Baillie. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1967. Heidegger, Martin. ‘Letter on Humanism’, Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi and J. Glenn Gray. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993. ——. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. Heinämaa, Sara. Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, MerleauPonty, Beauvoir. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2003. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Volume One. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1950. Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Part II. Ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kittay, Eva. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge, 1999. Lorde, Audre. ‘Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.’ Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Eds. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. ——.The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Gail Weiss 165 Ruddick, Sara. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956. Weiss, Gail. ‘Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? Habitual Horizons in James, Bourdieu, and Merleau-Ponty.’ Cultural Matters 2 (Spring 2003). (Electronic journal) George Mason University. ——. ‘Death and the Other: Rethinking Authenticity.’ The Voice of Breast Cancer in Medicine and Bioethics. Eds. Mary C. Rawlinson and Shannon Lundeen. Philosophy and Medicine 88 (2006): 103–16. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1957.


Part 3 The Ethical Otherness of the Body


6 Embodiment and the Ethical Concept of a Person Anne Reichold

Introduction Philosophical reflections on the concept of a person are mainly rooted in ethics and in ontology. In my paper I want to focus on the role of the body in some of these theories, especially in analytic philosophy. I want to show that there is a significant gap between ontological and ethical concepts of persons concerning the role of embodiment and body. In ontology, analytic philosophers stress the importance of an embodied concept of a person because the body is central in identifying and individuating persons. In contrast to mental entities like a Cartesian Ego, persons can be localized in time and space. In ethics, though, the concept of a person is characterized by mental ascriptions only. Following Kant and Locke, persons are regarded as moral unities to whom one can ascribe responsibility and rights. Recent ethical concepts of a person can be seen in this tradition. The moral character of a person is justified by pointing to consciousness, reason, memory and autonomy. Reflections on the role of the body can hardly be found. The embodiment of persons does not seem to be important in ethical reflections on the nature of persons. I want to argue that an exclusion of embodied features of the person leads to an incomplete and misleading ethical concept of personhood.1 Vulnerability and mortality of human beings are basic features of every moral subject and have to be reflected in an ethical concept of a person. These features, as well as the relationship to others and the intersubjective frame of ethics, are conceptually rooted in the embodied nature of persons. One can find numerous implicit allusions to the embodied nature of persons in ethical discussions: ethical problems in medicine like abortion, euthanasia and cloning are all genuinely connected to 169

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the embodied nature of persons. A pure mental being would not suffer, would not act, and would not be exposed in an intersubjective world of others. Ethical problems would not arise at all. Embodiment seems to be the basis for ethical questions. Not only in ontology but also in ethics the concept of person is of theoretical relevance because it is deeply connected to embodiment. This implicit role of embodiment has to be made explicit in ethical concepts of the person. I want to suggest that phenomenological conceptions of embodiment, in contrast to physicalist conceptions of the body, may reflect especially on the ethical features of a person’s body. The phenomenological approach to embodiment avoids the dualist gap between mind and body, and thus reflects embodiment as an integrated concept of mental and physical ascriptions. In ontology, the bodily nature of persons allows individuation by localization in time and space; in ethics the embodied nature of persons opens up the conceptual frame of suffering, acting and responsibility that makes ethical questions and answers possible.

The role of the body in ontological concepts of a person The ontological concept of a person in analytic philosophy is situated in a physicalist, anti-cartesian tradition. One could say that the embodied nature of persons is the main reason why the concept of a person gains importance in these ontological reflections. The concept of a person works as an argument against a dualist ontology. In contrast to a Cartesian Ego, a person is bound to a spatio-temporal position and thus can be identified on the basis of a physicalist ontology. In the concept of a person mental predicates are related to physical ones without introducing an independent mental entity. The main argument for a physical structure of a person stems from the semantic theories of meaning. In Wittgensteinian tradition, meaning can only be established in an intersubjective context of speakers referring to intersubjectively accessible objects. There is no private language. The reason for the importance of the body in an ontological concept of a person lies in the fact that only localization in time and space allows for intersubjective individuation, whereas pure introspection never leads to the individuation of objects and the establishment of meaning. One of the most influential ontological theories of a person in analytic philosophy is provided by Peter Strawson.2 His theory of a person in Individuals is a purely ontological one; Strawson does not even mention ethical connotations and functions of the concept of a person. The general aim of Individuals is the conception of a descriptive

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metaphysics. Strawson searches for basic categories and concepts that generally underly our thinking. Those timeless structures form the ontological basis for concepts on the surface of our language. According to Strawson, one of those fundamental concepts is the concept of a person. Persons and physical objects are the two irreducible entities that allow for categorizing and thinking. The role of persons in contrast to physical objects lies in the fact that both physical and mental predicates can be ascribed to persons. In direct opposition to a Cartesian Ego the person is introduced as a primary unity of body and mind. Strawson defines a person as follows: What I mean by the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation &c. are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type (101 f). Persons are simple units that serve as referent for both mental and physical ascriptions. The concept of a person is a primitive concept because it cannot be reduced to simpler entities. Persons are not composed of body and mind, but they are fundamental unities. The dualist distinction between body and mind is a secondary abstraction. So the concept of the pure individual consciousness – the pure ego – is a concept that cannot exist; or, at least, cannot exist as a primary concept in terms of which the concept of a person can be explained or analysed. It can exist only, if at all, as a secondary, non-primitive concept (Strawson 102). A purely mental Ego does not fulfil the fundamental semantic claim of intersubjective individuation. Ontological questions are strictly bound to criteria of individuation. The Quinean claim ‘no entity without identity’ (102) forms the basis for Strawson’s type of argumentation. The main point here is a pure logical one: the idea of a predicate is correlative with that of a range of distinguishable individuals of which the predicate can be significantly, though not necessarily truly, affirmed (Strawson 99). Strawson’s main semantic argument is: ‘there is no principle of unity where there is no principle of differentiation (103).

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According to Strawson, the only framework for intersubjective individuation is the spatio-temporal framework of physical objects.3 In this frame every object stands in some well-defined relationship to every other object. The concept of reality is bound to this frame. The concept of a person differs from the concept of physical objects in that one can ascribe physical and mental predicates to persons. Without the ontological concept of a person it remains totally unclear how mental ascriptions could be used at all. Mental events like feelings, experiences, thoughts and wishes are clearly dependent on the category of a person since they can only be individualized by reference to a person. The semantic need to provide intersubjective criteria for individuation forms at the same time an argument against solipsism. Solipsism is not a sensible position because the self-conception of myself as an experiencing subject relies on the conception of others as experiencing subjects and the possibility of distinguishing myself from others. Self-ascription and ascription to others depend on one another. The concept of ‘I’ only arises in distinguishing oneself from others in an intersubjective context. One can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself only if one can ascribe them to others. One can ascribe them to others only if one can identify other subjects of experience. And one cannot identify others if one can identify them only as subjects of experience, possessors of states of consciousness (Strawson 100). The dependence of self-ascription of mental predicates and ascription to others doesn not imply that one uses the same criteria of ascription in both cases (Strawson 108).4 Strawson points out that self-ascription does not rely on behaviourist criteria whereas ascription to others does; but this difference does not destroy the unity of mental predicates. A good example is the ascription of ‘going for a walk’. When I say ‘I’m going for a walk’ I do not have to watch myself in order to have a reason for saying this. However, when I ascribe the same predicate to others I have to rely on behaviourist criteria of observation. The dualist distinction between body and mind, introspection and observation, is bridged by these mental predicates. It is clear by now why a Cartesian Ego cannot serve as an entity in the process of self-ascription. Still, the concept of person cannot be reduced to physical objects either since the unity of a physical substance can well be distinguished from the unity of an experiencing subject. One can conceive of situations where a multitude of physical bodies might

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form one unified subject of experience; for example, one body sees, the other hears and the third smells (Strawson 91). The fact that we experience all these sensory inputs as a unified experience is only arbitrarily connected to the unity of a body. To explain a subject of experience, one has to accept persons and physical objects in the ontological architecture. These persons are not pure unities of consciousness and experience, and they are not pure unities of body; but they are unities of mental and physical ascriptions. Persons are embodied unities of experience. The concept of person in Strawson’s philosophy stresses the body; but its theoretical conception is limited to ontological questions. Strawson does not draw ethical consequences from his theory. The emphasis on the embodied structure of a person results from a physicalist ontology, which does not have direct impact on ethical problems of personhood.

Exclusion of the body in ethical concepts of a person In contrast to ontology, ethical theories of personhood hardly ever explicitly mention the person’s body. It seems as if embodiment does not carry ethically relevant information. Reflections on the fact that persons are embodied beings belong to the field of ontology. The embodied nature of persons is not denied in ethics; in fact it supplies an implicit background for explicit ethical analysis. Relevant in terms of ethics are concepts like thinking, memory, self-consciousness, freedom and autonomy, because they allow the ascription of responsibility, moral identity and other ethically relevant terms. Ethical personhood is conceptually rooted in the specific differences between persons and non-persons and these differences are seen in the realm of mind, soul or reason, not in the realm of body. The person’s body, on the contrary, is the common basis of humans, animals and other physical beings and thus does not point to a distinction between persons and nonpersons. By concentrating on mental features in ethics and by excluding the body from the foundational basis of normative claims, a contrast between purely descriptive bodily features and normatively relevant mental features of personhood arises. The dualist distinction between body and soul, which is eliminated in physicalist ontology, revives in a way in ethical theories of personhood. One of the philosophical roots of an ethical concept of a person lies in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke develops an account of the ethical person that continues to influence analytic theories of ethical personhood today. One can hardly find reflections

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on persons that do not refer to Locke’s theory of a person. In particular, the discussion on personal identity goes back to John Locke. Locke is the first to explicitly distinguish the concept of person from the concept of a human being. Whereas the human being is an organic entity bound to a concept of body, a person is a unity of self-consciousness, justifying ethical reflections. Persons are not entities in an ontological sense, but unities of consciousness, tied together by psychological features like memory. In the chapter ‘Of identity and Diversity’ in the second edition of the Essay, Locke asks how to justify the ascription of responsibility, reward and punishment (II, 27).5 The answer refers to criteria of identity over time (diachronic identity). Following Locke, the unity of consciousness over time, which is realized by memory, is the only criterion for the identity of persons. Neither the identity of the body, nor the identity of a mental entity like a soul, can serve to constitute personal identity. Whereas the identity of a human being consists in the identity of the body, one and the same person could change bodies and could even be realized in two or more bodies. The identity of a human being is defined as follows: This also shews wherein the Identity of the same Man consists; viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued Life, by constantly fleeting Particles of Matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized Body (Locke 331 f.). The concept of a person in contrast is defined as: a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it (Locke 335). Locke’s theory of a person shows a significant and highly influential turn towards mental criteria of personal identity. Thinking, reason and consciousness constitute the moral identity of a person. In thinking and especially in memory, a person views herself as the agent of past actions; she constitutes a mental unity of personhood in ascribing past experiences to herself. The relevant unity of being a person consists in the unity of consciousness. Bodily features, on the contrary, constitute the identity of a human being. Locke distinguishes between the human being as a living creature and the person as a moral unity. Mental criteria seem to be highly important for the concept of person because they

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allow a justification of ethical ascriptions, whereas bodily features give rise to ontological discourse. The methodological distinction between ethics and ontology leads to an exclusion of the concept of body from ethical personhood. The distinction between a human being and a person can also be found in several contemporary theories of person.6 The characterization of a person through psychological features like memory and selfconsciousness became very influential in analytic philosophy of the twentieth century. A good example for the analysis of a neo-Lockean person in mental terms can be found in the philosophy of Derek Parfit (‘Personal Identity’ and Reasons and Persons). Parfit asks under which circumstances a person survives and what are the criterion for survival. In answering these ethically relevant questions, Parfit enlarges Locke’s memory-criterion and says: A person survives when psychological connectedness exists (Parfit, Reasons and Persons 205 ff). The concept of psychological connectedness is broader than that of memory in Locke’s theory, because psychological connectedness does not necessarily imply identity. In contrast to Locke, Parfit argues against the importance of identity-relations in the context of ethical personhood because most ethical questions are gradual relations, whereas identity is an all-or-nothing relation (Parfit, Personal Identity 4). Ethical questions concerning the concept of a person can be answered without reference to a concept of personal identity; but they cannot be answered without reference to mental features of persons. To show that mental features like memory may be independent of the relation of identity, Parfit uses the concept of quasi-memory (Parfit, Reasons and Persons 220 ff).7 A case of quasi-memory is given when: (1) I seem to remember having an experience, (2) one did have this experience, and (3) my apparent memory is causally dependent, in the right kind of way, on that past experience (Parfit, Reasons and Persons 220). Ordinary memories are a sub-class of these quasi-memories. The causal connection between quasi-memories and the original event can lie in sensual experience; but it can also consist in a medical operation where someone’s brain is transferred to somebody else. The subject of memory need not be the same as the subject of experience. Parfit’s thesis is that identity is not important for an ethical concept of a person. Whereas identity is a one–one relation, psychological connectedness

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holds even when cases of fission or fusion occur. The question, under which circumstances a person survives, is a matter of degrees and can be answered by the weaker relation of psychological connectedness. In Reasons and Persons, Parfit gives the following science-fiction example (199 f): A person is sent to Mars by a teletransporter. The teletransporter registers the exact position of the cells while destroying the person’s body. This information is sent to Mars and an exact copy of the person on earth is created. According to Parfit the person survives her physical destruction as long as the person on Mars remembers the life of the person on earth. This scenario can also be constructed as a case of fission: while scanning the position of the cells the body of the person is not destroyed, but stays alive. Nevertheless, a duplicate on Mars is created. The person on earth might even be able to talk to her replication on Mars. Does the former person survive the fission and who is she now? Parfit answers that the person survives as long as psychological connectedness to the former person exists. In this case the former person survives as two persons. Even though Parfit rejects Locke’s claim, that identity is important for ethical problems, Parfit’s theory of a person must be seen in the philosophical tradition of John Locke. The role of quasi-memory as a psychological feature, as well as the unimportance of the body in ethical personhood, show similarities to Locke’s theory of a person. With respect to the role of body, in both theories, one can see that bodily features are regarded as totally irrelevant concerning the ethical significance of a person. Physical destruction of the body is no criterion for the death of a person so long as memory and psychological connectedness are saved. An example of a different approach to the ethical concept of a person is given by Christine Korsgaard. Korsgaard argues against Parfit that an empirical approach to the ethical concept of a person gives a passive picture of a person. Mental features like memory or psychological connectedness do not provide grounds for the ethical distinction between persons and non-persons. Korsgaard conceptualizes the ethical concept of a person in a Kantian way. She stresses the importance of autonomy and action for ethical personhood. Being the deciding subject of an action, and regarding oneself as the starting-point of a change in the world, characterizes a person. The agent regards herself as free to a certain degree. Only because of the self-conception as an autonomous agent, ethical ascriptions like responsibility, rights and duties can be regarded as rational. Following Kant, she distinguishes two methodologically different perspectives on the world. If you describe the world in

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a theoretical manner you can only talk about causes and consequences, about causality and about physical laws of nature. The human being, from this perspective, is part of the physical world. Theoretically there is no reason to draw the ethical distinction between persons and nonpersons. One has to take up or assume another standpoint in order to talk about ethically relevant themes. Only from a practical perspective can the human being be described as a person following certain aims, leading her life according to chosen values, being autonomous to a certain extent. The practical standpoint allows for ethics and makes the concept of a person possible. ‘Your conception of yourself as a unified agent is not based on a metaphysical theory, nor on a unity of which you are conscious. Its grounds are practical ’ (Korsgaard 110). A person is not an entity in terms of ontology, but a unity from a practical point of view. This does not mean that our existence as agents is asserted as a further fact, or requires a separately existing entity that should be discernible from the theoretical point of view. It is rather that from the practical point of view our relationship to our actions and choices is essentially authorial: from it, we view them as our own (Korsgaard 120 f). From the practical perspective, a person is the cause or origin of her own action. We can only see ourselves as responsible agents if we take a practical view of the world. The practical perspective does not invent a new form of entity in our ontology; but it points to a different method of explaining human behaviour. There are different theoretical tools available from each perspective: the idea of natural laws and causality from the theoretical standpoint and the ideas of autonomy, agency and personhood from the practical standpoint. As a consequence of the methodological distinction between theoretical and practical standpoints, the body of a person belongs to the realm of ontology and does not play an important role in the ethical concept of a person. The important features of the person from a practical perspective are autonomy and self-consciousness. The organic body is described as an instrument of action, which could as well be exchanged by new material every year whenever technical development allows it (Korsgaard 115). Ethical issues would not be changed by an exchange of bodies. Regarding the exclusion of the body from an ethical concept of a person, Korsgaard’s theory is similar to the concepts of Locke and Parfit. Body in all these theories is a purely descriptive ontological feature of human beings which might as well be exchanged by different material.

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The grounds for an ethical concept of a person are either mental like memory (Locke) and psychological connectedness (Parfit), or practical like the autonomous origin of an action (Korsgaard).

Embodiment and the ethical concept of a person One reason for the exclusion of body from ethical theories of the person lies in a physicalist conception of body in analytic philosophy. Body is mainly characterized by its spatio-temporal position. In this the human body is not distinguished from other physical objects like animals or tables. The time–space position is the fundamental ontological property of physical objects. In ethics, however, localization in time and space does not carry important information. It does not give reason to any ethical statement or distinction between persons and non-persons. Body is analysed in scientific terms, whereas normative aspects do not play a role here. Charles Taylor describes the development of a mechanistic conception of the body and a fission between body and moral personhood in modern philosophy in his book Sources of the Self. The modern form of self-consciousness, as it is developed in Locke’s theory of a person, results from a distinction between the inner and the outer world. According to Taylor the central element of the concept of person is ‘inwardness’ (111–207). Inwardness is the first-person perspective that arises in self-reflection. The person or Self (Taylor does not draw a distinction here) comes into existence through self-reflection and a connected separation of this inner sphere from the outer world and one’s own body. A dualist distinction between a moral self and an ontologically existing world of objects arises. Nature and the human body are turned into neutralized objects of scientific research in this process. The radical methodological separation of the moral person from the outward world leads to theories of personhood that characterize the moral element of a person in strict contrast to its embodiment in the outer world. The dualist distinction between morally relevant mental predicates and purely descriptive physical predicates is highly problematic for an ethical concept of a person. As I already pointed out, the implicit role of embodiment in ethical contexts is striking: Agency, intersubjectivity, responsibility, rights and duties are deeply connected to an embodied concept of a person. Our ethical terms only make sense in a framework of embodied personhood, because only in this frame do ethical questions concerning justice, protection, euthanasia, cloning, abortion, genetic engineering and also environmental questions arise. Just as the

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spatio-temporal framework allows for ontological individuation, the framework of embodiment makes ethical terms possible. An ethical theory of personhood has to reflect on the role of the body since it implicitly always refers to the embodied nature of persons. An explicit philosophical analysis of ethically relevant bodily features is in need of a concept of body that does not only stress a value-free spatiotemporal structure, but also the value-laden structure of standing in relation to others, being exposed to the world and having desires and passions.8 As long as the concept of body is a purely descriptive scientific concept, these aspects of embodiment remain silent and disintegrated. In the following, I want to suggest that a phenomenological approach to the embodied nature of a person might help to explicitly analyse the ethically relevant features of embodiment. The phenomenological concept of a person’s body avoids the distinction between descriptive physical predicates and normative mental predicates. The analysis makes differences between a physical body and a human body in drawing a distinction between ‘Körper’ (body) and ‘Leib’ (embodiment). ‘Embodiment’, in contrast to ‘body’, expresses a unity of spatiotemporal elements and an experiencing first-person perspective and thus combines physical and mental predicates. Embodiment is not conceptualized within the dualist framework of body and mind; it includes mental and bodily features and it gives rise to both normative and descriptive terms. Phenomenology builds a conceptual frame within which one can analyse the normative, ethically relevant elements of personal embodiment. Even though the methodological differences between analytic philosophy and phenomenology are striking, a connection between these theories can be seen in questioning the features of an ethically relevant concept of personhood. The two traditions both contribute to the systematic problem of a fully conceptualized person in ethics. Edmund Husserl develops an account of embodiment (‘Leib’) in contrast to body (‘Körper’) (Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen V. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie II)9 which turned out to be very influential. Husserl develops the concept of embodiment to solve an epistemic problem: the possibility of objectivity and the need to distinguish oneself from others to generate the idea of an objective world in contrast to a personal perspective on the world (Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen V).10 He analyses the knowledge of the other as a human being by describing the following steps: one sees the body of another person and by recognizing a similarity between the

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other and oneself one ascribes a phenomenal first-person perspective to the other. The spatio-temporal body is no longer seen as a purely physical object, but as a human being with experiences and a subjective mental life. The observation of the other’s body leads to the ascription of mental properties and thus the body is no longer a physical object but a Leib, a unity of spatio-temporal and mental properties. In contrast to physical objects, the Leib cannot be fully represented by the senses, but it contains elements that go beyond sensual knowledge. One ascribes more to the other than one sees: One appresents a phenomenal perspective of experience like the one each person knows from herself by introspection. The experience of the other is an experience of alterity. The other does not fall into the sphere of one’s own immediate experience; he can only be known by analogy to oneself. In this account a person’s body is not primarily characterized by its spatio-temporal position, but by a unity of spatio-temporality and as a centre of experience. To individuate a Leib one must use the senses and introspection and draw an analogy between oneself and the other. This account of a person’s body is similar, in some way, to Strawson’s account of persons as unities of physical and mental ascriptions. In contrast to Strawson’s theory, though, Husserl’s analysis of embodiment became very influential in some ethical theories of personhood. In the following I want to discuss the ethical role of embodiment in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas.11 His conception of ethics seems to be fruitful for an integration of embodiment in an ethical concept of the person, since he points to the genuinely ethical features of the embodied nature of a human being. The concept of embodiment in Lévinas is clearly value-laden. It forms a metaphysical basis of personhood and it precedes all mental terms like reason, thinking or intentionality. In contrast to the presented ethical theories of person in analytic philosophy, Lévinas explicitly denies the fundamental role of consciousness, memory, autonomy and personal identity in conceptualizing an ethical subject. He tries to destroy the modern idea of an autonomous, rational and self-conscious subject of experience that is identical over time by pointing to a sphere that precedes consciousness and lies beyond reflection. A fundamental passiveness, vulnerability and exposure to others are some of the characteristics he cites. In contrast to the self-reflective structure of consciousness, the ethical sphere is characterized by the structure of embodiment. In naming sensibility and embodiment Lévinas hints at a significance that lies beyond representation and consciousness. According to Elisabeth Weber, in his late philosophy Lévinas tries to think embodiment, vulnerability and

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mortality philosophically (Weber 20). In contrast to Husserl, Lévinas regards embodiment as prior to a conscious first-person perspective. Whereas in Husserl’s conception, knowledge of the other rests on similarity and symmetry between the subject and the other, Lévinas conceptualizes the relationship to the other in a radically asymmetric way. Thus the alterity of the other in Lévinas’ philosophy is much stronger than in Husserl’s account. According to Lévinas, the other primarily carries ethical significance. Ethically being called and challenged by the face (visage) of the other lies beyond the constitution of the self and precedes any form of consciousness and thinking. The term visage reflects the transcendent, embodied structure of this ethical call: ‘le visage s’impose à moi sans que je puisse être sourd à son appel ni l’oublier – je veux dire sans que je puisse cesser d’être tenu pour responsable de sa misère. La conscience perd sa première place’ (Lévinas, La trace de l’autre 195). The subjectivity of an ethical person is constituted by the face of the other. The significance of the face of the other does not result from a context of language or meaning. On the contrary, the face signifies purely by the fact that it cannot be integrated into any context. Singularity and absoluteness constitute the disturbing and traumatizing features of alterity. Thinking and understanding are challenged by the face of the other because its significance cannot be categorized and understood. Significance in this sense destroys the architecture of being and understanding. The disintegration of the significance of the other points to a psychotic structure of the subject. In contrast to ethical conceptions of personal identity in self-consciousness, the face of the other destroys personal identity and implements a fission. The ethical fact of being called by the other undermines the structure of intentionality. A separation between subject and object in any intentional act is only a secondary phenomenon that results from a traumatic encounter with the face of the other. The face of the other confronts the subject with an ethical imperative that goes beyond all justification. ‘Etre Moi signifie dèslors ne pas pouvoir se dérober à la responsabilité’ (Lévinas, La trace de l’autre 196). At this point it is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for responsibility (acharaiout) contains the word (acher) which means the other or alterity (Chalier 88 and Taureck 35). Responsibility in this sense is prior to any intentional act or self-reflective constitution of a subject. It describes the subject as being exposed and passive before ever being autonomous and identical with oneself. The ethical experience cannot be categorized and by this destroys and traumatizes thinking and rationality. Lévinas talks about ‘fission’, ‘se fendre’

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(Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence 132, 136, 160, 180) and ‘psychose’ (Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence 86). According to Lévinas, this discontinuity is the basis of any subjectivity. The ethical subject is characterized by heteronomy, not by autonomy. The heteronomous character of the ethical subject lies in the structure of the ethical experience: the subject is not the starting point in the practical realm, but it is bound to a transcendent, heteronomous origin. The other is a stranger in an absolute sense. According to Lévinas, the structure of heteronomy is the structure of embodiment. Subjectivity is based on this structure of embodiment that traces back to an origin outside of intentionality: ‘La sensibilité est exposition à l’autre’ (Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence 94). Sensibility is a transcendental structure of being-exposed which makes sensibility in an empirical sense possible. Embodiment and sensibility cannot be described in categories of empirical science. Embodiment gains its significance from an injury that shows its traces in the vulnerability and mortality of the human body. An injury or trauma is seen as origin of intentionality, consciousness and language: ‘Qu’est-ce qui est donc venu blesser le sujet pour qu’il expose ses pensées ou s’expose dans son Dire?!’ (Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence 106). According to Lévinas the fact that human beings communicate shows the openness and incompleteness of humans. Speaking is seen as an act of exposition that results from a destruction of identity and unity. Were there unity, communication would be superfluous. The relevant structure of a subject is not the self-reflective circle but the linear structure of giving. In the act the subject gives something away without getting anything back. Subjectivity in this embodied sense is an antisolipsistic structure. The subject finds itself in a passive situation of answering to a pre-existing call of the other. Whereas a Kantian approach to ethics points to autonomy and ratio as transcendental preconditions for ethical personhood, and Locke and Parfit point to psychological continuity, Lévinas points to embodiment as a transcendent normative precondition of ethical subjectivity. Embodiment is a transcendent structure that precedes every empirical approach to the body. It is regarded as a precondition for subjectivity and personal identity, which becomes apparent in the ethical experience of responsibility. The ethical imperative is rooted in an embodied experience that opens up the realm of thinking. In contrast to a physicalist approach to the body, this preconscious, pre-empirical structure of embodiment is far from belonging to the field of ontology. It shows

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its significance in a normative, ethical situation (the call of the others face) and thus forms a basis for an ethical concept of a person. Lévinas’ analysis of ethical embodiment seems to me important for an ethical account of personhood because it points to the value-laden, normative structure of embodiment. Looking at the phenomenal level, the human body differs in structure from animals’ bodies and physical objects. These differences cannot be analysed in terms of spatiotemporality, but they appear in a phenomenological analysis of the body’s role in the encounter with the other and the ethical imperative that arises in this encounter. As soon as the dualist distinction between purely descriptive physical predicates and normatively relevant mental predicates is given up, the ethical importance of a person’s body can be grasped.

Conclusion Although phenomenology and analytic philosophy differ highly in their methodology they point to different aspects of one and the same systematic question: how to analyse the ethical concept of a person? Normative aspects like responsibility, autonomy and the role of the other in ethics are discussed in both traditions of philosophy. A difference between analytic accounts of ethical personhood and phenomenological accounts can be seen in the way they conceptualize embodiment. Physicalist conceptions of the body seem to hide the normative aspects of embodiment and thus exclude reflections on the body that are taken up by ethics. On the contrary, the phenomenological accounts of embodiment give a detailed analysis of the ethical features of embodiment. In his ethics, Lévinas points to some basic features of moral personhood that are deeply connected to embodiment: passivity, vulnerability and heteronomy. Lévinas points out the significance of those concepts in an ethical account of subjectivity. Embodiment has a strong normative dimension which underlies descriptive accounts of the body. Strawson pointed out that a distinction between mind and body is only a secondary abstraction in ontology. Lévinas tries to show that a purely descriptive physical analysis of the body is only a secondary abstraction from a normative analysis of embodiment in ethics. The phenomenological approaches to an ethical concept of a person show that a distinction between normative and descriptive predicates does not go along with the contrast between body and mind. There are normative accounts of embodiment as well as descriptive ones. Phenomenological accounts of embodiment open up the possibility to explicitly analyse

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the role of body in ethical personhood. Ethical terms like responsibility, freedom, self and the other are linked to embodiment. The philosophical analysis of the forgotten aspects of embodiment provides a crucial justification for the ethical significance of a person. Elements that implicitly lie beyond nearly every ethical claim are made explicit: vulnerability, mortality and intersubjectivity that form the conceptual frame for the ethical significance of personhood. By pointing to the connections between personhood and embodiment the structure of finite subjectivity is revealed.

Notes 1. The arguments of the present paper are presented in much more detail in: Reichold. 2. For other important embodied ontological concepts of a person see: Williams, Problems of the Self ; Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Wiggins. Williams and Wiggins stress the importance of the body even more than Strawson and are critical of what they see as a residual dualism in Strawson’s concept of a person. See: Williams, ‘Strawson on Individuals’ 126. 3. The importance of the body for the individuation of a person stands in an Aristotelian tradition. See: Künne 197. 4. Künne points out that self-ascription of psychological predicates in many cases does not rely on criteria at all. 5. See: Thiel 4 ff. 6. E.g. in: Singer, and in Tooley. 7. See also: Shoemaker. 8. The distinction between ethically relevant normative concepts of body and purely ontological accounts of the body is to a certain amount similar to the distinction between value-free and value-laden concepts of ‘nature’. See: Nussbaum 29 ff. 9. See: Held 31–7 and Hammer 81 ff. 10. A detailed discussion of Husserls’ theory of intersubjectivity can be found in Wiegerling 118–75. 11. Certainly one has to mention Merleau-Ponty as one of the most important phenomenological philosophers in the field of embodiment here. In this paper I chose Lévinas as an example for an ethical account to embodiment, since his conception of embodiment as a basis of ethical personhood is very radical and builds a good counterpart to purely ontological accounts to the body.

Bibliography Chalier, Cathérine. ‘Singularité juive et philosophie’. Emmanuel Lévinas. Ed. Jacque Rolland. Paris: Editions Verdier, 1984. 78–98.

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Hammer, Felix. Leib und Geschlecht. Philosophische Perspektiven von Nietzsche bis Merleau-Ponty und phänomenologisch-systematischer Aufriss. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1974. Held, Klaus (ed.). Edmund Husserl. Phänomenologie der Lebenswelt. Ausgewählte Texte II. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986. Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie II. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. ——. Cartesianische Meditationen. 2nd edn. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Korsgaard, Christine M. ‘Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: a Kantian Response to Parfit’. Philosophy & Public Affairs 18.2 (1989): 101–32. Künne, Wolfgang. ‘Peter F. Strawson: Deskriptive Metaphysik’. Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen. Philosophie der Gegenwart III. Ed. Josef Speck. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975. 167–206. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. ——. ‘La trace de l’autre’. En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Emmanuel Lévinas. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1982. 187–202. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Nussbaum, Martha. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Parfit, Derek. ‘Personal Identity’. Philosophical Review 80 (1971): 3–27. ——. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Quine, Willard van Orman. ‘On the Individuation of Attributes’. Theories and Things. Quine, W. v. O. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 1981. Reichold, Anne. Die vergessene Leiblichkeit. Zur Rolle des Körpers in ontologischen und ethischen Persontheorien. Paderborn: Mentis, 2004. Shoemaker, Sydney. ‘Persons and their Pasts’. American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970): 269–85. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 2nd edn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Strawson, Peter F. Individuals. London: Methuen, 1977. Taureck, Bernhard H.F. Emmanuel Lévinas zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 1997. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Thiel, Udo. Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität. Bonn: Bouvier, 1983. Tooley, Michael. ‘Abortion and Infanticide’. Philosophy & Public Affairs 2.1 (1972): 37–65. Weber, Elisabeth. Verfolgung und Trauma. Zu Emmanuel Lévinas’ Autrement qu’ être ou au-delà de l’essence. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 1990. Wiegerling, Klaus. Husserls Begriff der Potentialität. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1984. Wiggins, David. Sameness and Substance. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. Williams, Bernard. Problems of the Self. 2nd edn. London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. ——. ‘Strawson on Individuals’. Problems of the Self. London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. 101–26. ——. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana Press, 1993.

7 Recognition beyond Narcissism: Imaging the Body’s Ownness and Strangeness Jenny Slatman

Introduction Currently, we see a mounting theoretical interest in the notion of the body.1 This is not surprising since our society faces a certain number of technological developments and innovations that radically subvert classical categories of the body. One need only think of the global use of the Internet and the increasing possibilities of organ transplants to grasp that these technologies are deeply anchored in our daily lives, and that their impact on the experience and conception of our bodies is enormous. Thanks to the Internet, we can dwell in cyberspace – a place where we no longer need our physical bodies. It frees communication and imagination from bodily presence, and as such, it seriously calls into question the idea of the body as the site of our existence, our experience and our identity. This kind of technological innovation yields new concepts of the body, both in theory and in art. The anthropologist and sociologist David le Breton, for instance, claims that the body can no longer constitute a real ego, but rather an alter ego; the body has become ‘la prothèse d’un Moi’ (Le Breton 24). From an artistic point of view, the Australian artist Stelarc declares that the body is ‘obsolete’.2 In the same way, current possibilities for organ transplants invite us to conceptualize the body in another way, to formulate other ideas and criteria. The transplantation of organs that are in general regarded as strictly personal – such as the heart but also the hand with its exclusive individual finger prints – calls into question the difference between one’s own body and that of a stranger.3 The philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who has undergone a heart transplant, argues that the fact of receiving an organ from someone else makes visible that welcoming an ‘intruder’ (intrus) is essential to the experience of one’s own body. At the heart of 186

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oneself, one finds this menacing but also beneficent stranger (Nancy). According to him, this intrus – for which the heart transplant is an exemplary case – always remains a radical alterity, yet at the same time, it forms the condition of oneself. Organ transplantation thus blurs the contours of one’s own body, and therefore calls for a reconceptualization of the border between ownness and strangeness. Most often, contemporary reformulations of the body are limited to the consequences of technologies that affect directly the body’s matter and its biological functions: transsexualism, piercing and tattoos, bodybuilding, medicalization, cloning, or in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this essay, I discuss another aspect of the contemporary body. My aim is to rethink the idea of ‘body image’ while focusing on new imaging technologies of the (inner) body. The control of the body by means of technologies implies more than the manipulation of its matter. It also implies the appropriation of unknown and invisible parts of the body. The imagination of one’s inner body is radically changed since the medical gaze is capable of penetrating the skin. Since the invention of Xrays, by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895, the interior of a living body can be exposed without dissection. And since the 1960s, possibilities of imaging the interior body have been developed in an explosive way. Thanks to ultrasound, endoscopy, positron emission photography (PET), computer tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we live the myth of the ‘transparent body’.4 According to Foucault, the clinical surveying gaze developed as a result of the practice of ‘deciphering’ at the end of the eighteenth century (Foucault 60). Now it would seem that this way of looking is currently coming to its final completion by means of an objectification and visualization of what belongs to subjective and invisible experience. For that reason, imaging technologies have an impact on the body that is comparable to technologies that manipulate its matter. Both change in a radical way the experience of one’s own body. In what follows, I would like to focus on the current issue of new images of the body. I will argue that these images can change the experience of our own body since they appeal to a specific kind of recognition. If I look at a scan of my own brain, I will not recognize myself in the same way as if I look in the mirror. Indeed, we would likely be inclined to say that we would not recognize ourselves at all from these kinds of medical pictures. My thesis, however, is that we do recognize something here, but this recognition is not exclusively based upon the visual. To found this thesis, I will dwell upon the idea of ‘body image’ by taking seriously the double meaning of this expression. On the one

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hand, it simply refers to representations of the body or body parts, be it in a clinical or an artistic practice. On the other hand, it has the psychological meaning of a mental image that one has of one’s own body. Psychologically, ‘body image’ refers to the body’s unity, ownness and identity. Although these two meanings of ‘body image’ have to be distinguished, they do not exclude each other. It is through recognition that they are linked to each other. One’s bodily identity comes into being by means of a process of identification with (ideal) images, and this process is only possible if one can recognize something from these images. Since images of the inner body, such as provided by MRI, PET, CT, endoscopy and ultrasound, are fragmented and hardly recognizable, they cannot easily be integrated within our own mirror image of the body. To understand what kind of recognition is at stake here, we need to go beyond the theory of narcissism that reduces the body image to a ‘visual image’. I would like to make clear that the body image can also be understood in terms of an ‘affective image’. To explain what I mean by the visual body image, I will draw on some aspects of Freud and Lacan. My idea of the affective body image is based upon the work of Merleau-Ponty and Klein. As I will claim, visual recognition is a form of appropriation, which therefore constitutes the body as one’s own body. Affective recognition, by contrast, is a confrontation with (one’s own) strangeness without appropriation. Of course, contemporary imaging technologies have a meaning within their clinical usage. Patients who have gone through such a treatment in the first place experience changes of bodily identity. However, since I would like to sketch a general theory of the body image, I do not limit myself to the experience of patients. Instead, I will examine the question of bodily imaging outside its clinical setting, in the public domain of art. A work of art that is based on medical images has some advantages with respect to their proper clinical usage. Such a work frees the images from the connotation of illness; it makes them accessible for a large audience, and it can provide a (theoretical) reflection on medical procedures.5 In contemporary art practice, we find a large number of artists who are inspired by medical technologies. This can be explained from the fact that there is a renewed interest for the body in art or even a new wave of body art since the last decade of the twentieth century. In this paper, I will discuss, by way of example, a work by Mona Hatoum, entitled Corps étranger (1994). This work consists of a video-installation that shows endoscopic images of the artist’s own (inner) body. Before I explore, with the help of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, how this work of

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art calls for a reformulation of bodily identity, I will first describe briefly the way in which body art manifests itself within contemporary art.

Contemporary body art As is well known, body art is a cultural phenomenon that dates from the 1960s–1970s. It came into being in the period during which modernism was coming to a closure. Although modernism can be seen as radical and progressive with respect to conventions in art, it was still dominated by a predominantly masculine or patriarchal value system (Perry). It was only in the 1960s that emphasizing particularities has rejected the so-called neutral or universal values, meaning, in fact, masculine values. Since then, body art has provided ‘images’ of the human body as something contingent or particular. By putting her/his own body on show, the artist exposes specific particularities of a certain body (her/his own body). Whereas the body has always figured as the body in the history of art, in body art it became a certain specific body. Crucial to body art performances in the 1960s was the emphasis of a body’s singularity and its specific differences, such as differences in gender, race and age. It is not surprising then that body artists from the beginning were often women who counteracted masculine domination of modernism (Pollock). A very famous example of this kind of body art is Carolee Schneeman’s performance Interior Scroll (1975). During this performance, the naked artist removes a long paper with a written text from her vagina. By means of this act, the artist intended to integrate the inside of the female body with its outside as a readable image of femininity.6 In the 1960s, body art was essentially based on political and militant feminism. During the 1980s, however, feminist discourse shifted and this also caused a transformation in body art. Inspired by post-structuralist theories, feminists of the 1980s claimed that every representation of the (female) body was based on phallocentric fetishism, which they rejected. According to them, body performances reduce the (naked) female body to a fetish object for the masculine gaze. As an effect of this theoretical change, we see that representations and performances of the body as a singular and sexualized entity progressively disappear in art (Jones 22–9). During this period, artists preferred to represent femininity by omitting the female body.7 Without doubt, the 1980s were not the most flourishing period of body art. Since the 1990s, however, the body has regained a central position within artistic practice. This time, it is no longer concerned with the body’s emancipation. Contemporary body art reflects, above all, the

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position and the status of the body with respect to modern technologies, be they medical – such as imaging and cloning – or cultural – such as the Internet and virtual reality. These technologies seem to herald the imminent end of the body. As observed by the editors of the German art magazine Kunstforum, it seems to be one of the tasks of contemporary body artists to reflect on the future of the body.8 Instead of putting the body on show by means of performances, contemporary body art is primarily based on multimedia technologies in order to express the fragmented and ‘technologized’ body (Jones 199). Whereas body art of the 1960s reacted against technical and industrial developments, contemporary artists are not reluctant to embrace science and technology (Duncan 2000). Very often, they work as artists-in-residence in hospitals, collaborating with doctors. Comparable to practices in the long-standing tradition of anatomy, we can observe a renewed alliance between artist and scientist.9 Mona Hatoum’s work can be situated within this contemporary tradition of body art. Coming from a culture (Lebanon) in which the separation between body and soul is not so strict, she was very surprised by the exclusion of the physical dimension within English culture (Archer 141). Because of this cultural background, the body has always played an important role in her work. Another recurrent theme for her is the question of camera surveillance. In 1980, for instance, during her performance of the work Don’t Smile, You’re on Camera, she filmed her audience with a video camera and mixed these video images with other images of bodies. Images of clothed people were mixed with images of naked bodies or X-ray images. These mixed images, projected on a big screen, gave the impression that the gaze of the camera slid under clothes, under the skin, penetrating the intimacy of one’s own body. This idea of profound voyeurism found its ultimate completion in the eye of the camera that actually penetrates the inner body in Corps étranger (1994). Both fascination and fear of the invasive gaze seem to be at stake here. On the one hand, this work expresses astonishment with respect to the unknown parts of the body, but on the other, it refers to the violent appropriation of contemporary imaging technologies. Corps étranger consists of a booth that one needs to enter in order to watch (and feel) the work. On the floor of the booth, which is rather small and which, as observed by some interpreters, resembles the set-up of a peepshow (Lajer-Burcharth), is a round video screen that projects enormously enlarged endoscopic images of the artist’s body in an ongoing loop. We can follow the endoscopic camera that first strokes the skin, and subsequently penetrates the orifices, such as the anus and vagina, to

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film the body’s inside. The movement of the camera is combined with the amplified sound of respiration and heart pulse: when the camera is outside the body, we hear the artist’s respiration; the moment the camera enters the interior body we hear her heart beat. Imprisoned within the narrow booth and virtually unable to avoid walking over the screen, the beholder has the feeling of being absorbed within the artist’s body. The beholder is trapped in a ‘strange intimate circle’ between the body’s interiority and its exteriority (Philippi). The title of this work is significant. First, corps étranger means strange or foreign body, something that does not belong to one’s own body. What is put on show in this artwork is the artist’s body; yet, even for her, the body that is projected on the screen is not something really familiar to her. From these kinds of images, one could hardly recognize one’s own body. Images of the interior of the body do not correspond to images we have of its exterior. In an interview, the artist explains that for her corps étranger refers to the intrusion of something strange in her body, which is the camera.10 But only the artist herself can feel this strange and penetrating instrument. We, the beholders, experience only the strangeness that results from the video recording, the visible manifestation of the artist’s felt experience. It is precisely on the strangeness of the presented images that I would like to focus here. The beholder is confronted with images of a human body, but since they are barely recognizable, it is not self-evident that one would link them to images of his/her own body. However, although the screen of Corps étranger smashes the mirror of narcissism, there is still a sort of recognition. We do indeed experience that what is at stake in these images is an aspect of our bodily existence that, despite its profound strangeness, is not something entirely strange for us. As such, Corps étranger challenges the relation between one’s own body (corps propre) and a strange body (corps étranger). Yet, this does not mean that the latter replaces the first. I would say that this artwork is the manifestation of a shifting from a narcissistic perspective, which excludes every form of alienation, to an affective dimension in which strangeness can be sensed.

Corps propre: the narcissistic image In philosophy, the idea of the corps propre – one’s own body – is notably developed by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. According to him, one’s own body is not simply the body as an object or a mere biological organism; rather, it indicates the body’s subjectivity.

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It stands for the experience of an ‘I’ that precedes the reflective ‘I’ of the ‘I think’ (cogito). One could say that it forms the most fundamental level at which I can recognize myself, and at which I constitute myself as an ego. This identity is not something fixed, but is rather an open process. It is based on motor possibilities – the most profound form of intentionality: it is the ‘I can’ ( je peux). In thus describing a bodily subjectivity, Merleau-Ponty draws heavily on neurological and psychological studies. Effectively, his notion of corps propre is a philosophical translation of the notion of the ‘body schema’ developed by the British neurologist Henry Head in the 1920s. Head introduced this term to describe an ‘unconscious’ standard against which changes of posture are measured (Head 605). The body schema forms our experience of being a bodily unity. Since the 1930s, psychologists have assimilated the term ‘body schema’ into their theories to explain discrepancies between the ‘real body’ and its subjective experience as, for example, in the case of the phantom limb. Within this perspective, the study of Paul Schilder The Image and Appearance of the Human Body has been decisive. He subsumes all aspects of the experience of one’s own body under the heading of ‘body image’. This is rather typical since Head explicitly explained that the body schema should not considered to be an image.11 According to Schilder, however, (unconscious) knowledge of one’s bodily posture is like a ‘tri-dimensional image’ – renouncing the difference between body schema and body image.12 It is primarily after this study, that the notion of ‘image’ became predominant within psychological theories concerning the body. If we look more closely at Schilder’s analysis, we see that his description of the body in terms of body image is deeply influenced by psychoanalysis, especially Freud’s theory of narcissism. Although Freud never developed explicitly a theory of the body image, it is not difficult to understand that such a theory has been elaborated on the basis of some aspects of psychoanalysis. Indeed, it is essential to psychoanalysis that it seeks to surpass the body’s physical dimension by opening up an imaginary, phantasmal dimension (Tiemersma 168). Images, imagination and representation form the pillars of psychoanalytical theory. Psychoanalysis teaches us that our identity is not something innate. We have to acquire our ego, our body image, and this is an ongoing process. Freud explains the constitution of the ego in terms of libido cathexis (Besetzung) in oneself, which occurs, initially, during the stage of primary narcissism. This narcissism is a ‘new psychical action’ that must be understood against the background of Freud’s early distinction between two types of instincts (Triebe): ego-instincts and libido or sexual

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instincts. Whereas the first is an instinct of self-preservation motivated by hunger, the second, motivated by love, concerns the preservation of the species, and thus transcends individual life (Freud 70). Narcissism comes into being when the infant becomes more than just the site of self-preservation. This happens when it takes itself as a love-object in which its sexual libido can be cathected. The cathexis of libido is only possible if a certain representation of oneself is defended. It is at this point that the infant is no longer just a functional, biological organism but has become a psychological instance (Moyaert). Now we can speak of a genuine ‘ego’, and this ‘ego’ consists first of all of a representation of oneself in which the libido is cathected. So here we see the importance of something imaginary for the constitution of (psychological) subjectivity: the libido is not cathected in the body as a biological organism, but in its representation, its image. The psychoanalytical theory of narcissism emphasizes that one could not accomplish wholeness or unity without one’s own image. Jacques Lacan’s analysis of ego formation brings further to light this significance of imagery. He describes the ‘new psychological action’ of primary narcissism in terms of the mirror stage. The mirror stage is a phase in the development of the young child that takes place between 6 and 18 months. This stage is characterized by the fact that the infant can recognize her/himself in a mirror. The new psychological action of the mirror stage consists of the experience of unity through an identification with the specular image. Before the mirror stage, in the autoerotic phase, the infant lacks the feeling of unity and only experiences specific parts of his/her body as, for instance, the mouth in thumb sucking. Lacan describes this as an experience of a corps morcelé, a scattered, disjointed or fragmented body. The recognition of one’s own specular image heals this fragmentation and constitutes the body as a Gestalt. Lacan stresses the fact that this recognition in the mirror is not a genuine recognition. The infant recognizes his/herself in the mirror, but s/he is not capable of recognizing the difference between her/himself and her/his image. Therefore, Lacan speaks of méconnaissance (Lacan 6). The infant does not yet recognize the otherness of the image; s/he confuses her/himself with the other ( je est un autre). It thus becomes evident that, for Lacan, narcissistic identification is an imaginary identification, an identification based on an illusion, a fiction. It is only during a later phase in the child’s development that the identification process finds its completion, and in which the importance of others and otherness is acknowledged. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, this happens when the infant forms an ego ideal or a super-ego upon resolution of

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the Oedipus complex. Lacan describes this stage as the transition from the imaginary to the symbolic order. The ego ideal is a standard against which the infant measures his/her actual ego. This measurement is a way of mirroring him/herself, yet the mirror implies another type of libido cathexis. In the narcissistic phase the infant cathects libido in her/himself, since s/he is her/his own ideal. In constituting a new ‘special psychical agency’, that Freud later calls the super-ego, the infant cathects libido in an ideal that s/he projects before her/him. As such, this ideal ‘is the substitute for the lost narcissism of her/his childhood in which s/he was her/his own ideal’ (Freud 88). The super-ego is characterized by both the precept ‘you ought to be like this’ and the prohibition ‘you may not be like this’ (Freud 374). It is a psychical agency that constantly ‘watches the actual ego and measures it by that ideal’ and thus forms the basis for our conscience (Freud 89). What is interesting here is that the unity of the self is no longer based on one’s own image, on one’s own narcissistic ideal. Lacan makes a distinction that might be helpful here. In the mirror stage, we identify with an imaginary ideal, which is called the ideal ego (moi idéal ). The ego-ideal (idéal du moi), by contrast, is a symbolic ideal. It is an ideal imposed by others to which the ego is subjected. According to psychoanalysis, the first significant others, responsible for the constitution of the ideal of the ego, are usually the mother and father, hence the importance of the Oedipus complex. However, after the resolution of this complex, the existence of ideals remains vital; for, the ego is never totally accomplished. It continually mirrors itself in certain ideals as an ongoing self-constitution. As Gail Weiss observes in her book Body Images, this ideal of the ego very often manifests itself by way of ideal images of the body. She claims that the construction of an ideal image of the body is the primary material effect of the egoideal (Weiss 23). Whereas the ego-ideal could be a mere projection or phantasm, the body image ideal refers to a more material aspect of the ideal. Like the super-ego, the body image ideal provides a standard against which we measure and mirror our own body image. The notion of ‘body image ideal’ clearly expresses that the body image is not something strictly individual or personal. One could thus say that one’s body image, the way one experiences one’s own body, depends largely on ideal images that are provided by others, by society, or by culture. The never-ending process of forming one’s ego, one’s body image, is based on the reflection of given ideal images. To be more precise, it is founded on an identification with these images. Identification does not necessarily mean that one tries to match one’s own body image with the ideal

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image; it may also imply that one explicitly does not want to match such an ideal. Both negative and positive identifications, however, presuppose a recognition of the ideal image as something in relation to which one’s own body image can be compared and evaluated. In accordance with Weiss’s theory of the ‘ideal body image’, we could thus argue that the ego comes fully into being through contact with a variety of images. Culture and society provide a multiplicity of images that may function as mirrors in which we look at and measure ourselves: a slim body, a muscled body, a suntanned body, a white body, a black body, a strong body, a sick body, a tattooed body, a pierced body etcetera. All these ‘ideal’ images, which dominate different (sub)cultures, can be either affirmed or rejected, but both attitudes are based upon the same presupposition. To either reject or affirm an image, one needs to be capable of making a comparison between the image and oneself. A certain form of recognition is thereby necessitated. In that sense, we could say that images in which we cannot recognize something of ourselves, like images of our interior body, cannot be seen as images that are constructive for the constitution of an ideal body image that forms the basis for the ego (or the ‘body image’). This would mean that the images of Corps étranger remain outside the domain of the body image. However, I think that it is possible to enlarge the idea of recognition beyond its visual representation. For this we need to radicalize narcissistic psychoanalysis and bring it back to its sensory origins. Corps étranger exhibits bodily aspects that we cannot simply add on to our visual knowledge of the body; for these images make visible parts of the body that are ‘invisible’. At this visual level, there is indeed no recognition at all. As we are facing parts of the body we might rather not want to face, the strangeness of these images is even more highlighted. The inside of the body is not necessarily something one wants to be reminded of all the time. It is a dark, smelly, bloody and slimy place. Even if one knows that these are images of a human body (it requires some medical knowledge), one cannot identify oneself with these types of images since they do not bear personal or individual marks. Of course, the interior body belongs to the body, but does it really belong to one’s own body, le corps propre? Hardly recognizable, the interior is excluded from the feeling of ownness. It represents an area that is always there but never really present during ordinary bodily experience: it features the ‘absent body’ (Leder). Apparently, ‘ideal body images’ always presuppose an intact and recognizable body. This concurs with psychoanalytical theory that does not account for the interior body. Psychoanalysis is only interested in the surfaces of bodies, which is explicitly affirmed

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in Freud’s famous saying that the ego is ‘a mental projection of the surface of the body’ (Freud 364–5). Without a doubt, one can hardly imagine a psychoanalytical ego without skin (Anzieu). Psychoanalysis pays attention to the body’s surface and orifices since it is interested in the communication between inside and outside. It is primarily a theory used to explain the relation between the interior life of the instincts and the exterior reality of social and cultural norms, which makes it understandable that it has a specific interest in the body’s surface and not in what is under the skin. Also, for Lacan, the interior body remains outside imaginary and symbolic identification. Images of the interior body, and images of disjointed organs, belong to the fragmented body (corps morcelé ), which precedes the imaginary unity of the mirror stage. According to him, in adult life a regression of this fragmented body can occur, for instance, in dreams ‘when the movement of the analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive disintegration in the individual’, and in the case of hysteria. In these dreams, the fragmented body manifests itself ‘in the form of disjointed limbs, or of those organs represented in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecution’, comparable to paintings by Hiernoymus Bosch (Lacan 4). We may ask here how this exoscopy of disjointed limbs and organs can be related to the endoscopic images in Corps étranger. At first sight, it seems that the strangeness of Corps étranger, represented by the inner body’s images, cannot be integrated in the body image. The work alludes to a transgression of the experience of one’s own bodily limits. And yet, I believe that it might add something to the experience of ourselves. By capturing us, the beholders, in the strange world of the interior body, this video-installation makes us familiar with something unfamiliar, something étrange. Whereas the images of disjointed organs that appear in our dreams might refer to the hysteric status of disintegration and the falling apart of the body image, as suggested by Lacan, the images provided in this work of art might function as a certain ‘body image ideal’. Of course, we do not identify ourselves with images of someone’s interior organs, but still, this work of art offers us the possibility of some kind of recognition. Aesthetic pictures of the interior body might encourage us to integrate the disjointed inside in the body image. While penetrating the skin, the invasive gaze of the endoscopic camera turns the interior into a surface. Both the body’s skin and its physical outline seem to have lost their privileged status with respect to the ego as a projection of the body. The projection screen of the ego now includes newly visible body parts. My hypothesis is that

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although they are hardly recognizable, we do recognize something in these images. Beyond the narcissistic image we may encounter our own strangeness.

Corps étranger: the affective image Images of the fragmented body can be reintegrated within the ‘body image’ if we restore the distinction between body image and body schema. We have seen that in psychology this distinction was blurred, first of all in the work of Paul Schilder, and that the emphasis was put on the body’s unity in the sense of image. Also psychoanalytic discourse focuses on the imaginary of the ego’s unity, which is considered to be a represented unity. Still, we might ask whether a bodily unity manifests itself always as a (visual) represented unity. Freud and Lacan have never posed such a question since they were primarily interested in the psychic apparatus and not in the body. To answer this question it seems to be helpful to turn here from psychoanalysis to phenomenology. According to Merleau-Ponty, one’s own body (corps propre) is not merely the body image, but rather the body schema, which is neither simply the result of our bodily experience, nor a general awareness of our posture. The term body schema refers to the fact that ‘my body appears to me as an attitude directed towards a certain existing or possible task’ (Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception 100). It stands for the body’s unity related to the body’s ‘spatiality of situation’ instead of its ‘spatiality of position’. As such, this unity is not necessarily a represented unity, but is rather a lived-through unity. The body schema is that which is felt and lived-through prior to any represented knowledge of the body. Shaun Gallagher, inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s analysis, criticizes psychological discourse that, since Paul Schilder, has neglected the difference between body image and body schema. According to him, it is crucial to make this distinction since both terms indicate a different aspect of the body. Body image refers to the body as an intentional object, that is, as an object that one can consciously perceive; whereas, body schema is the body’s intentionality, which is foremost, its motor capacity and is usually realized at a prereflective level (Gallagher). This conceptual difference may help us to further analyse Mona Hatoum’s work, and to find a deeper level of visuality beneath the narcissistic imagery. It would be too easy to conclude that the images of the interior body in Corps étranger, which apparently cannot be assimilated to an image as representation of the body, are the manifestation of a body schema; for, the body schema is already a bodily unity whereas these images still

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represent the fragmented body. Yet, it is true that these images, instead of providing a recognizable representation, appeal to sensory experiences of pleasantness and unpleasantness, not just to vision. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, I argue that the imaginary in this work leads us to a stage that precedes the imaginary of narcissism. In psychoanalysis, this stage is notably described by Melanie Klein. Already Merleau-Ponty has observed this when he claims that the work of Klein gives a bodily meaning to Freud’s psychoanalysis: ‘she has demonstrated that Freudian instances and operations are phenomena which are anchored in the body’s structure’ (Merleau-Ponty, La Nature 347). As we have seen, libido cathexis in an image or representation of oneself is crucial for the formation of the ego, and thus for the establishment of a dividing line between the psychic and the biological. Klein does not contradict the importance of imagery, but she does claim that there are other psychic mechanisms which precede the mirror stage and which are based on bodily sensibility without being just biological. According to her, during the infant’s first year we have to make a distinction between two stages: 1. the paranoidschizoid position (0–4 months); and 2. the infantile depressive position (from 4 months onwards) (Klein ‘Some Theoretical Conclusions’). The first stage is characterized by aggressive impulses and an intense anxiety with respect to one’s own destruction. Behaviour during these stages can be explained on the basis of object relations, and more particularly according to the relation with the mother’s breast, which is the most important object for the young child. However, during the first stage, this object is not yet experienced as a total object, but rather as a partial object, split into two parts: the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ breast. In the later stage, during the depressive position, the child succeeds in conceiving of the mother(’s breast) as a total object. Henceforth, the child’s anxiety concerns the loss of the loved object instead of his/her own destruction. Like the mirror stage, the depressive stage marks the beginning of visual representation on the basis of which the child can form a unity of objects as well as a unity of her/himself. Let us now look more closely at the first stage in Klein’s theory, which precedes imagination and visualization. Before visualization, the relation with the object is constituted by sensory experiences, either pleasurable or frustrating. This explains the cleavage during the schizoid position between the good and the bad breast. These experiences already have a meaning which surpasses the level of the biological body. The good breast is introjected by the child and as such becomes the ‘prototype of all helpful and gratifying objects’. The bad breast, on the other hand, becomes ‘the prototype of all external

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and internal persecutory objects’ (Klein, ‘Some Theoretical Conclusions’ 63). Conversely, the child projects her/his love impulses to the gratifying breast and her/his destructive impulses to the frustrating breast. These processes of introjection and projection are based upon bodily experiences in which the body already transcends itself by giving meaning to its world. Merleau-Ponty claims that this dialectics between projection and introjection, as a ‘general and universal power (pouvoir) of incorporation’, constitutes primordial bodily intentionality (MerleauPonty, La Nature 380). This ‘intentional’ relation is not yet characterized by a representation of the object. In fact, this type of intentionality is not based on a clear-cut distinction between subject and object, or between ‘body’ and ‘meaning’. At this primordial level of Sinngebung, they coincide. In line with the analysis of Susan Isaac, Melanie’s Klein disciple, this incarnated meaning may be understood in terms of ‘phantasy’. Although it is a psychic phenomenon, in its primordial form – in the first position – phantasy is built upon oral impulses that are ‘bound up with taste, smell, touch (of the lips and the mouth), kinaesthetic, visceral, and other somatic sensations’. The earliest phantasies are based upon bodily sensations that constitute ‘a concrete bodily quality, a “me-ness”, experienced in the body’ (Isaacs 104–5). An example of a phantasy, based on anal impulses, is when excreta are transformed into dangerous weapons (Klein ‘The Importance of Symbol-Formation’ 219). Needless to say, in this case, the child does not possess a conceptual representation of the perniciousness of the excreta. More likely, he or she has disagreeable, frustrating bodily sensations and these cannot be separated from unpleasantness as such. In this stage, we cannot make a distinction between image or idea, on the on hand, and actual sensations and external perceptions, on the other.13 This is the reason why Julia Kristeva explains phantasy in Klein’s psychoanalysis in terms of an ‘incarnated metaphor’ or a ‘représentant before representation’ (Kristeva 225–36). In the process of signification, phantasy as metaphor signifies what is bodily experienced. As is well-known, the term ‘phantasy’ stems from the Greek phantasia, which refers initially to the domain of imagination and visualization. Klein and Isaac, however, dissociate the term from its etymological origins and reinterpret it as the sensation of primary impulses (Kristeva 232). I am inclined to say that we can understand kleinian phantasy as a ‘body image’ that does not represent the body. It is an image that is not seen, but an image that is felt. If we now compare Klein’s theory to Lacan’s, we see that both agree that the body is fragmented in the initial stage. However, according to

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Klein this fragmented body already possesses a certain ‘me-ness’. This is not the ego who recognizes her/himself in the mirror image, but rather the ego who is affected and who feels her/himself without being able to make a distinction between what is inside and what is outside her/his body. This fragmented ego is, above all, characterized by the fact that there is no distance or difference between feeling and being felt, between the body’s presentation and its representation. We thus see that the difference between the visual body image and the affective body image implies a difference between distance and proximity. Only by means of a distance-based image are we able to master and appropriate (parts of) our own body. It is therefore, I claim, that it is the visual and narcissistic body image that constitutes our own body – le corps propre, i.e. the body that we own. The affective body image may constitute a feeling of ‘meness’, but because of its proximity, we are not able to really grasp it. This kind of image, therefore, offers us something that we may recognize as being part of me, but also something that cannot be owned and thus remains strange. The relation between visuality and sensibility, distance and proximity, and between ownness and strangeness can now be further explored in Mona Hatoum’s work. It seems to me that Corps étranger demonstrates a tension between the narcissistic image’s distance and the affective image’s proximity. It is especially in a work of art that such a tension comes to the fore. There is indeed an important difference between the imaging of the body within a clinical situation and imaging applied in a work of art; for, medical imaging puts at a distance what is invariably close to us. This process drastically metamorphoses our idea of the body since it implies a (visual) appropriation of the inner body’s strangeness. By making visible the body’s strangeness, it seizes it. The inner body’s strangeness is neutralized or, as is often said, it is colonized. As I see it, Corps étranger resists stubbornly this appropriation or colonization, since we, the beholders, are taken by its images, not being able to distance ourselves from them. To translate distance and proximity to the domain of images, it might be useful to adhere to Laura Marks’ vocabulary, in which a distinction is made between ‘optic images’ and ‘haptic images’. Optic visuality is based on the distance between subject and object which as such creates an illusory depth, whereas the haptic gaze skims the object’s surface. Effectively, this distinction is based upon two forms of looking: gazing and grazing (Marks 162). Marks argues that another work by Mona Hatoum, Measures of Distance (1988), is a good example of haptic visuality. This work consists of a video where the camera strokes the naked and middle-aged body of the artist’s mother

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while she is taking a shower. The camera skims the body of a beloved person, recording the intimacy between mother and daughter however far they are separated from one another.14 According to Marks, instead of being a haptic image, Corps étranger constitutes an optic image, since the penetrating gaze of the endoscopic camera transforms the body into an object (Marks 190). On this point I do not agree with her since she does not make a distinction between body imaging in clinical and artistic practice. We should not forget that the images in Corps étranger are manipulated medical images. The endoscopic images are enormously enlarged; we cannot really observe or examine them since there is not enough distance between us and them. This work restores the immediacy of sensing which was damaged by the penetrating medical gaze; and as such it is a haptic rather than an optic image. Contemporary imaging technologies of the interior body have profoundly changed the body image. At first sight they seem to have enlarged this image by inserting the inner body’s strangeness within it. But we have seen that even when the inner body’s invisibility is made visible this does not mean that these hardly recognizable images can constitute a mirror image or an ideal body image. Instead they appeal to the dimension of affection; they bring us back to sensory ‘phantasies’ in kleinian sense. We could thus say that these images, in a rather paradoxical way, confront us with a ‘me-ness’ that nonetheless is not owned. They give a visual meaning to a sensed phantasy. The scientific gaze circumvents this paradox by completely ignoring the bodily, sensory dimension which forms the primordial underpinning of every body image. Corps étranger, by contrast, shows that the idea of a ‘transparent’ body always remains a myth. It is not possible to completely neutralize the body’s strangeness: alterity always subsists. Instead of deactivating it, this work invites us to sense our own body’s strangeness. In conclusion, then, contemporary technologies reveal the phenomenon – and this can be emphasized by an art work – that the body’s ownness is conditioned by a strangeness or alterity that cannot be captured by reflection. While mirroring the interior body, we thus face reflection’s very limits.

Notes 1. An earlier (French) version of this paper has been published in the online journal Methodos (2004). I would like to thank Helen Fielding and Dorothea Olkowski for their effective comments and suggestions.

202 The Other 2. According to this artist, the human body needs to be improved by means of all kinds of technologies and prostheses since it is biologically no longer an adequate organism. For some examples of his works and ideas, see his authorized website: www.stelarc.va.com.au. 3. In January 2000, an international surgery team succeeded in transplanting two (dead) donor hands to the body of a man who had lost both his hands during an accident. This was a world première (Gandin). Although this kind of surgery is still rare, more and more patients benefit from it. 4. For an overview and history of imaging technologies, see Wolbarst. The expression ‘transparent body’ is borrowed from Van Dijck. 5. Popular medical television programmes also disseminate medical technologies amongst a large audience. However, these programmes hardly ever reflect on medical practice. They rather uncritically sound medical science’s praises. 6. For other examples of body art since the 1960s, see Jones and Warr as well as Ardenne. 7. An example of this kind of art is Mary Kelly’s work Extase (1984). 8. ‘Die Zukunft des Körpers I’, and ‘Die Zukunft des Körpers II’. 9. That several artists express an increasing interest for anatomy is evident judging by the amount of important recent art shows: The Quick and the Dead (1997–1998); New Anatomists (1999); Spectacular Bodies (2000–2001) and Unter der Haut / Under the Skin (2001). See for the catalogues Petherbridge and Jordanova; Kemp and Wallace, and Heller. Inversely, we also see that anatomists are more and more inspired by aesthetic categories. An example of this is the controversial exposition by the work of the anatomist Gunther von Hagens Körperwelten (Hagens and Whalley). 10. ‘I felt that introducing the camera, which is a “foreign body”, inside the body would be the ultimate violation of human being, not leaving a single corner unprobed’ (Archer 138). 11. As he claims: ‘We have been able to show that the standard against which a change in posture is estimated is not an image either visual or motor; it lies outside consciousness. Every recognisable change in posture enters consciousness already charged with its relation to something which has gone before, and the final product is directly perceived as a measured postural change. For this combined standard, against which all subsequent changes in posture are estimated, before they enter consciousness, we have proposed the word “schema” ’ (Head 669). 12. ‘The image of the human body means the picture of our own body which we form in our mind, that is to say the way in which the body appears to ourselves Beyond that there is the immediate experience that there is a unity of the body. This unity is perceived, yet is more than a perception. We call it a schema of our body or bodily schema, or, following Head, who emphasizes the importance of the knowledge of the position of the body, postural model of the body. The body schema is the tri-dimensional image everybody has about himself. We may call it “body-image” ’ (Schilder 11). 13. ‘[Sensations] give the phantasy a concrete bodily quality, a “me-ness”, experienced in the body. On this level, images are scarcely if at all distinguishable from actual sensations and external perceptions. The skin is not yet felt to be a boundary between inner and outer reality’ (Isaacs 105).

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14. Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon, but has lived since the 1970s in London, far from her family, in ‘exile’.

Bibliography Anzieu, D. Le Moi-Peau. Paris: Dunod, 1995. Archer, M. et al. Mona Hatoum. London: Phaidon, 1997. Ardenne, P. L’image du corps. Figures de l’humain dans l’art du XXe siècle. Paris: Éditions du regard, 2001. ‘Die Zukunft des Körpers I’. Kunstforum international 132 (Nov.–Jan. 1996). ‘Die Zukunft des Körpers II’. Kunstforum international 133 (Feb.–April 1996). Dijck, van J. The Transparent Body. A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging. Seattle, London: University of Washington Press, 2005. Duncan, A. ‘Inside-Outside-Permutation: Science and the Body in Contemporary Art.’ Strange and Charmed. Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts. Ed. S. Ede. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2000. 144–63. Foucault, M. Naissance de la clinique. Paris: P.U.F., 1963. Freud, S. On Metapsychology. The Theory of Psychoanalysis (Vol. 11, The Penguin Freud Library). London: Penguin Books, 1991. Gallagher, S. ‘Body Schema and Intentionality.’ The Body and the Self. Eds. A.M. José Luis Bermúdez and Naomi Eilan. Cambridge MA, London: MIT Press, 1998. 225–44. Gandin, P. ‘Comment supporter l’autre en soi?’ Elle 22 May 2000. 187–91. Hagens, G. v. and A. Whalley. Körperwelten. Heidelberg: Institut für Plastination, 2001. Head, H. Studies in Neurology. Vol. II. London: Oxford University Press, 1920. Heller, R.H. Unter der Haut. Transformationen des biologischen in der zeitgenössischen Kunst. Ostfilden-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2001. Isaacs, S. ‘The Nature and Function of Phantasy’. Developments in Psychoanalysis. Ed. J. Riviere. London: The Hogarth Press, 1948. 67–121. Jones, A. Body Art. Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Jones A. and Warr, T. The Artist’s Body. London: Phaidon, 2000. Kemp, M. and Wallace, M. Spectacular Bodies. The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Klein, M. ‘The Importance of Symbol-Formation in the Development of the Ego.’ Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–1945. London: Vintage, 1930. 219–32. ——. ‘Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant.’ Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963. London: Vintage, 1952. 61–93. Kristeva, J. Le génie féminin II. Melanie Klein. Paris: Fayard, 2000. Lacan, J. ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I.’ Écrits. A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York, London: Norton & Company, 1977. 1–7. Lajer-Burcharth, E. ‘Real Bodies: Video in the 1990s.’ Art History 20.2 (1997): 185–213. Le Breton, D. L’adieu au corps. Paris: Édition Métaillié, 1999. Leder, D. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Marks, L.U. The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2000.

204 The Other Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. London, New York: Routledge, 1962. ——. La Nature. Paris: Seuil, 1995. Moyaert, P. ‘Over het ik bij Freud en Lacan.’ Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 45 (1983): 388–420. Nancy, J.-L. L’intrus. Paris: Galilée, 2000. Perry, G. (ed.). Gender and Art. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1999. Petherbridge, D. and Jordanova, L. The Quick and the Dead. Artists and Anatomy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Philippi, D. ‘Some Body.’ Mona Hatoum. Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1994. 24–35. Pollock, G. Vision and Difference. Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. London, New York: Routledge, 1988. Schilder, P. The Image and Appearance of the Human Body. London, New York: International University Press, 1935. Tiemersma, D. Body Schema and Body Image: an Interdisciplinary and Philosophical Study. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1989. Weiss, G. Body Images. New York: Routledge, 1999. Wolbarst, A.B. Looking Within. How X-Ray, CT, MRI, Ultrasound, and Other Medical Images are Created and How They Help Physicians Save Lives. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.

8 Becoming Animated Cathryn Vasseleu

To become animated is to exhibit a capacity for spontaneous movement that is associated with living beings. This association is open to question in technically generated animation. Modern incarnations of animated states had an unsettling autonomy – an uncanny liveliness associated with the artificially vivified automaton. Factory workers were seen as such by audiences in films like Modern Times; assembly-lines of mechanically-possessed, somnambulant bodies whose actions and gestures were dictated by their machines. Understood as the substitution of robotic machinery for the animus of a governing consciousness, spectacles of mechanical animation called humanist notions of selfdetermination into question. Feminist film theorists have argued that the way audiences viewed these figures was partly prefigured in the form of the doll – woman-automaton.1 Feminist cultural and literary critics have dwelt at length on gendered forms of mechanical animation. The following study begins by comparing the way Rey Chow and Hélène Cixous analyse Freud’s interpretation of the woman-automaton in Hoffman’s tale, ‘The Sand-Man’. Both Chow and Cixous regard this fictional female android in ethical terms, as a spectacle of foreign animation that disrupts figurations of the autonomous subject. However, they understand the disruptive effects of animation in different ways. Chow regards animation as an entrenched feminized state that imposes its own gendered forms, while Cixous understands animation in terms of spectral invasions that precipitate unpredictable movement. Cixous speculates about animating the mechanical doll Olympia in her analysis, a move that Chow criticizes as a ventriloquizing gesture. Setting aside the figure of the womanautomaton, the rest of the study will dwell on an equally problematic figure that Chow and Cixous raise together in their divergent readings of 205

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Freud’s essay: the woman-animator. Inquiring whether we might apply this figure to think spontaneous self-transformation and foreign animation in conjunction with each other, I turn to Caroline Leaf, an animator who developed a technique for animating with sand. The way Leaf generates spontaneous movement stirs up modern formulations of the relation between animator/animated image, as does another animator, Lee Whitmore, in her technical refiguration of Leaf’s method. Technically generated animation held a special fascination for modern artists; particularly those who were seeking to liberate creativity from its conditions in the past. Art historians have observed that modern artists of all persuasions were influenced by Surrealism’s incorporation of animation principles in its artistic experimentation with automatism. For example, when Rosalind Krauss pictures Picasso making hundreds of drawings of a single work (Déjeuner sur l’herbe d’apres Manet) in his sketchbook, she presents these as a series of images produced in the manner of a simple animation flip book (The Optical Unconscious 226). The trace of each pencilled outline, inscribed on the page beneath, served as the contour for the next drawing. It also served as the new basis for the artist to make slight changes to each drawing in the series. Krauss argues that while making this series of drawings, Picasso became seduced into working with automatic processes. Here, ‘the surrender of the artist’s imagination, the place in which it is caught by being given over to pleasure, is the function of a mechanical device – an apparatus of the spectacle – the production of a voluptuous passivity: the mechanism of the serial animation of the flip book’s beat’ (229). In this picture the artist is not simply working in a deliberate way, nor simply taking his inspiration from an existing artwork. We see Picasso also describing a figure of ‘drawing becoming animated’ by an autonomous, pulsating mechanism, as he admits the spontaneous flow of pure recurrence into his creative process. In the scene above, the flip book serves as a simple metaphor for the drawing power that modern artists looked out for in the machinery of alterity. Animation also became the ally of revolutionary causes; only here it was seen as a reminder of life’s mutability and capacity for self-transformation. Cartoon characters were elevated into cult figures in European intellectual and avant-garde art circles.2 Sergei Eisenstein famously embraced Mickey Mouse as a creature whom Disney had fantastically freed from the idea of an inevitable nature by creating him with a fluid form.3 What Eisenstein saw in the drawn cartoon’s line was a dynamic force that had become lost in an era driven by the imperatives of the machine.4

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Rey Chow pushes scenarios of artistically liberating automatism aside in her feminist analysis of automatization as a discriminative cultural condition. Rather than a mechanism of pure recurrence that participates in dismantling all forms of artistic and cultural authority, Chow recasts animation as a by-word for the enduring remnants of Eurocentric, patriarchal modernism. Incarnated as the ‘working body automatized’, animation is literally ‘the eruption of the machine in what is presumed to be spontaneous’ (60). Chow asserts that this animated condition takes on new life as an insidiously imposed automatization. Internalized as a reflex epistemological mechanism, automatization works to affirm technologized notions of culture and industry. Recurring and multiplying incarnations of the modern automaton keep social injustice and cultural subordination alive by systematically reproducing spectacles of the condition in post-modern times. It is in this context that Chow is alert to the following animation scenario: a feminist literary critic wielding her pen like an animator. This is how Chow interprets Hélène Cixous’s words when, in reading Freud’s reading of Hoffman’s ‘The Sand-Man’, Cixous speculates: ‘what if the doll became a woman? What if she were alive? What if, in looking at her, we animated her’ (66).5 Within Chow’s reading of the scenario, we see Cixous’s action as a defiant gesture. A woman turns the tables on Freud by becoming an animator – rectifying his detour around the mechanical doll in the story with a look that gives her character an agency that Freud ignores in his version of the tale. Chow asks of Cixous’s look: ‘Does her power of animation take us back to the language of God, a superior being who bestows life upon an inferior? Or is it the power of a woman who bears the history of her own dehumanization on her as she speaks for other women?’ (66). For Chow, it is unclear what motivates Cixous’s gesture. She questions whether Cixous is aware that the belief that ‘automatization can turn into autonomy and independence’ (66) is based on a sense of personal mobility that not all women have the cultural support to share. As Chow sees it, the action of the woman animator simply reasserts a self-authorizing notion of agency that soothes rather than foregrounds Freud’s castration anxieties. In short, Cixous’s animating gaze merely adds to the spectacle of the feminized automaton – personified in the figure of the automatized doll. Cixous’s essay on the uncanny speculates about the life of fiction. It comments on both Freud’s and Derrida’s treatment of spectres of writing, and is thus concerned with the consequences of animating a fictional doll – doubling as a familiar literary device: ‘Neither real nor fictitious, “fiction” is a secretion of death, an anticipation of

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nonrepresentation, a doll, a hybrid body, composed of language and silence that, in the movement which turns it and which it turns, invents doubles, and death’ (548).6 As Carola Hilfrich argues, Cixous’s writing seeks to account for a position: ‘where any attempt at securing authority becomes an instant occasion for spectral invasions. Through such invasions, the authorial “I” is pushed to the edge, the underside of the scene of writing where disidentification, peopling, and haunting occur’ (227). Chow displaces these concerns with her own urgent cultural agenda when reading Cixous’ essay. What Chow recognizes in Cixous’s look is the spectre of the ethnographic other, open to ventriloquizing gestures and speculative plunder. Cixous’s literary speculation thus acts as both example and foil for Chow’s account of the self-reflexive critical contortions ‘third-world’ women have no option but to work through, being simultaneously subjects and objects of automation – or living spectacles of external animation. Cixous’s strategy of giving a mechanical doll an animate form does not work for Chow because: ‘the task that faces “third world” feminists is thus not simply that of “animating” the oppressed women of their cultures but of making the automatized and animated conditions of their own voices the conscious point of departure in their interventions’ (66). Chow’s analysis highlights the problem of seeing, or becoming aware of, one’s own body being given foreign animation. Mobilized as an existential condition caught within the dynamics of animation, sexual difference becomes for Chow ‘a way of engaging not only with women, but with other types of subjugation’ (72). Sianne Ngai proves this point in her extension of the spectacle of the automaton’s ‘animated’ condition to the racialized body. The term that Ngai puts forward here – ‘animatedness’ – denotes an affective state that synthesizes two seemingly antithetical notions of physical agency: hyperrationalized Fordist-style automated routines, and the spontaneous psychic automatism that was given creative licence by surrealists and other avantgarde modern artists.7 With reference to the excess autonomy that both states imply, Ngai analyses how the apparent neutrality of animation – understood as an affective state of ‘being moved’ – is applied to construct an image of the inherent disposition of the racialized subject. This image is one of passive receptivity to external control. Toshiya Ueno provides another instance of the cultural imposition of the image of the animated doll, this time to determine national, as well as sexual, difference. Ueno interrogates the affirmative cultural mechanisms whereby Japanese animation has acquired a global prominence, alongside radical, technologically wrought mutations in living and working conditions.

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As a spectacle of the ‘automated other’ the ‘Japanoid automaton’ conflates a nation-people with overadaptation to the machinations of information capital: ‘Japanimation, which organizes the image of automatization and animation (giving it a life form), constructs and presents a “Japan” as an “automaton culture” and as the “Japanoid” in “Postmodern Times.” ’ The animation scenarios discussed above present us with three different images of automation. Krauss’s portrayal of Picasso’s attraction to the productivity of the flip book’s autonomous mechanism shows the artist inadvertently drawing upon the figure of the mechanical automaton. Cixous’s animation of the mechanical doll Olympia enacts the figure of the super-animated automaton. Chow’s critique substantiates the figure of the struggling automaton.8 I will return again to the mechanism of the flip book, but before proceeding I want to retain a couple of points from the discussion of Chow’s and Cixous’s different responses to animation. The first is that, for Chow, the ‘autonomous life’ of automatism forecloses the possibility of pursuing autonomy and independence in forms other than those that technologized culture reproduces systemically. The naturalization of Fordist-style animation prevents those who embody its machinations from escaping the life of becoming-an-automaton. The second point is that Cixous undertands animation in terms of the spectral invasions that enter into any claim to self-authorization. Erupting into the scene of writing, animation becomes a mechanism for precipitating unpredictable movement.9 The ghostly life of fiction keeps alive the question of a different form of life for a woman, rather than the unbecoming state in which Freud leaves Olympia, the doll-woman. If Chow’s critique gives the metaphysical impulses of animators a bad wrap, Cixous’s act of giving a literary doll an excessive vitality has an unsettling familiarity for critics of ethnography. Chow’s cultural analysis indicates that animation, entrenched as a ‘feminized’ ontological state, imposes its own gendered forms in conjunction with other circumstances that many human beings are forced to negotiate. Cixous’s literary analysis illustrates that the impulse to animate, expressed in the form of a woman’s look, is a minefield worth negotiating for the feminist critic. My task in this essay is to take up the challenge, thrown out by Chow, which hinges on Cixous’s perilous enactment of the scenario ‘woman-animator’. It is here, in different ways, that both Chow and Cixous articulate a singular intent. Neither subscribes to the idea of woman as an unconditionally free agent, or self-authorizing subject. Together, their critical operations focus on the problem of creating an unscripted trajectory away from naturalized forms of animation that

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lend themselves to the automatic determination of agency. I propose to consider how, in the figure ‘woman-animator’, we might think spontaneous self-transformation and foreign animation together, as simultaneously lived, inextricable ontological states. These are becoming (being in continuous movement), and animated (being altered by an other).

Caroline Leaf’s sand-animation technique Cixous turns the doll Olympia into a literary animation device in her reading of ‘The Sand-Man’. The question Chow raises in relation to this measure is not whether women should become animators or not; but whether the stance of an animator is appropriate for a feminist critic to adopt. Needless to say, there is no recognizable generic stance within the visual practice of the art. Chow singles out one form of animation – Fordist-style automatization – as the object of her analysis. This mechanical model of animation, incorporated and affirmed in cinematic forms, has been superseded by images that showcase the ‘liveness’ of manipulatable information. Such spectacles affirm a model of animation based on cybernetic feedback systems. Here automatism is expressed as an adaptive attitude to technologized culture, where fitness is dictated by the ability to become-as-one with mass human– robotic couplings.10 Cybernetic automatism is a mode of animation that operates in interactive games and the liveness of instantaneous transmission. The patterns and behaviours of these new technologies’ operating systems can be seen in everyday human actions: outmoded spectacles of animated conditions are simply supplanted by more recent forms. In order to disassociate a woman animator’s intentions from any reflex association with notions of god-like omnipotence, it is necessary to recognize the limited views these prescriptive spectacles offer for mounting any resistance to their organized form of life. ‘The Sand-Man’ is the topos of Chow’s and Cixous’s disputed methods of reading the attention Freud pays to an automated doll. What happens if we shift our attention to Freud’s treatment of the sand? In Hoffmann’s story this seemingly inert matter turns into a magic animation device in the hands of the Sand-Man: ‘He’s a wicked man who comes when children won’t go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes so that they jump out of their heads’ (Freud, quoting Hoffmann, 228, [my italics] ). The eye-animating effect of sand doubles as a castration spectacle in Freud’s analysis: ‘the feeling of something uncanny is directly attached to the figure of the Sand-Man, that is, to the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes’ (230). Brute sand functions as a mechanism

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of ‘feminizing’ disfiguration in Freud’s story-analysis, not as animating matter, not as we see it analysed, for example, in the hands of the animator Caroline Leaf. Leaf is an auteur who first made her name with the technique of sandanimation.11 Her work is truly technically remarkable, but the thing that is most remarkable about it is that she created her own animation medium in the process. Stumbling upon ordinary beach sand while studying visual arts at Radcliffe College in Boston, Leaf developed a technique for animating the grains on the opaque glass of a light-box. She used this method to produce her first animated film, Sand Or Peter and the Wolf (1969). As she meticulously created movements out of shifting masses of sand, she photographed them frame by frame, from a still camera mounted over the light-box. Using the same set-up, Leaf went on to make animated-painting films by working with wet paint and ink directly on glass. She has also made live-action and documentary films – but she distinguishes these from her sand- and paint-animation, which she calls ‘under-the-camera’ techniques.12 What sets these techniques apart is the degree of risk the animator takes in creating the next move in the sequence. As Leaf explains in an interview: ‘working under-thecamera, one films as one draws, and one image is destroyed to create the next image. When a sequence has been filmed, there is nothing left except the film. There is no artwork to go back to if something doesn’t work’ (‘Interview with Nag Vladermersky’). There is a complex form of ‘liveness’ to this method of ‘working under-the-camera’. The making of each sequence of movement is an act that includes not only the technical arrangement of camera, but also the artist working under it. Leaf says of the method: ‘I call this kind of animation a one-off performance. It takes nerve to do’ (‘Interview with Nag Vladermersky’). In Picasso’s flip book, the trace of each pencilled outline, inscribed on the page beneath, served as the contour for the next drawing. Walt Disney taught the cartoon-animators in his studio to use the flip book as a way to test that the drawn movement would flow the way it was intended, prior to full-scale production. The process of sand animation is different; there is no means of return to a previous outline, no way to retrace your footprints. There is no physical trace or point of recovery – unlike the impressions left in the pages underneath of the flip book. The transience of sand animation is not related to any kind of book or form with a rewind button as part of the codex. There is no reference point that you can find again in order to fix a mistake in the sequence, or use as a guide, or revise. The process is not like traditional drawn animation. You can’t go back to a previous image

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(a drawing, or digital image-file), or mark on celluloid (drawn/scratch directly on film techniques). Each act of manipulation is an alteration that requires the deliberate destruction of the image’s figuration after it has been photographically recorded. The previous material beginning is lost in the process. The technique requires an ontological wager on the part of the artist that she or he can move on without it. Sand animation is a process in which the ‘clearing’ of the scene of matter cannot be taken for granted, nor assigned its own mysterious grounds. The material does not function as a physical support; as a supplement to the scene; as the ‘living feminine’, matrix of all life, but devoid of its own being. Derrida alerts us to the logic of such a mothermatter function: ‘The mother is the faceless figure of a figurant, an extra. She gives rise to all the figures by losing herself in the background of the scene like an anonymous persona. Everything comes back to her, beginning with life; everything addresses and destines itself to her. She survives on the condition of remaining at bottom’ (38). ‘Working under the camera’ does not imply that sand is a formless, structuring medium with the same self-erasing nature. Leaf doesn’t allow the mystery of any material ‘beginning-again’ actually happening to have any such implication. Nor does she describe the process in terms of the rhythms of a machine. In moving sand, the artist portrays a connection with her own flesh as an animation medium. She ascribes her motivation to her intense, responsive absorption with the character of the matter at hand: the traces of sand in her memory must pass through her hands and eyes for her to feel a movement working ‘in the moment’.13 Regarded as a moving substance through this direct physical connection, matter becomes a means of expression for Leaf: ‘Often the material used to create the images, such as sand or paint, is visible, and an awareness of its inert qualities turned into motion in whatever shape my mind and eye decide forms an interesting part of the film appreciation’ (‘Interview with Nag Vladermersky’). Leaf’s method depicts the innate fluidity of sand-matter as a form of animation, as a dynamic principle in action. She demonstrates this in creating a textual practice for making a moving image of matter-moving-itself. Aristotle asked the question: how does movement happen?14 Here is an answer: to the spectator attuned to the principle of sand-like fluidity, matter has the capacity to become animating matter, to metamorphose, to shift through time in passing aggregations. In this respect Leaf’s work substantiates the vitality of Bergson’s living matters (31–2), in that it does not reduce sand to atoms of static matter. Sand comes alive as an unpredictable, shifting organization.

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Leaf’s ‘under-the-camera’ technique could be read as a return of sorts to animist world-systems of thought. What first drew Leaf to animation was: ‘that it gave me total control over what I was doing’ (Wells 104).15 Leaf appears to personify the idea of the omnipotent animator, exercising full creative control over every grain of sand in the magic worlds of her own design. She executes all the movement in these, including the camera moves. For example, camera-zooms are depicted by hand (by changing the size of the sand-image), not moving the camera up and down.16 The camera-eye is displaced from the scene of movement. Its role is delineated by the one thing that it can be guaranteed to do automatically.17 It merely reproduces the universe being hand-fashioned by the animator, following her ‘own vision’. Leaf is regarded as a ‘true’ auteur for her distinctive painting style as much as the technique she pioneered. Some commentators have recognized her singular vision as the mark of genius.18 However, one suspects that Leaf values the ‘omnipotent’ powers of an animator because she can use them to tell her own stories in her own way. In doing so, Leaf contrasts the freedom of the animator to pursue her vision with the lives of the animated creatures who inhabit her worlds. One commentator has observed that many of these are depicted as enduring an evident lack of mobility. The metamorphozing birds and beasts and people in Leaf’s animations are bound together by circumstances over which they often have no control. Another commentator sees these interactions between Leaf’s characters in fluid terms, as choreographed relations.19 Either way, with consummate virtuosity, the shimmering motion of shifting sand is organized into moving scenes of pathos and wry humour. Unfolding in intimate stories, the inner states of Leaf’s creatures comment on their intertwining, foreign animation. Leaf’s use of grains of sand to develop a silicon-based image process risks being read as a technologically regressive step, away from the industrialization of animation. This was first done by cel-animation, and subsequently by simulation and silicon-chip computer graphic images. As a technological innovation, sand-animation is more like a ‘flash-back’. Leaf’s ‘straight-ahead’ animation technique pays homage to early animation methods.20 It also has much in common with artisanal forms (such as painting and drawing) that retain auratic traces of the tactile immediacy of the artist’s hand-made movement. Leaf’s ‘working under the camera’ technique retains marks of the working body and expressive gestures of the artist. Here her hand movements take a specific form. A flip book employs the dexterity of index finger and opposing thumb. The hand is used as a tool of judgement; to measure and manipulate the

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duration of the story-event, guided by the thickness of the book. The ‘thickness’ of sand animation implies a different kind of dexterity. It implies a physical grappling with the thickness of the world embodied in the artist’s perception. Leaf literally grapples with such a task for the purposes of telling the story of The Metamorphosis of Mr Samsa (1977): ‘I refined and complicated the sand imagery by pressing the opaque sand into different densities and creating shadings. This suited my needs at a time when I was interested in adapting a Kafka story to animation. I could create atmosphere with the sand’ (Interview with Nag Vladermsersky). By tactile means, with fingers, pipe cleaners and combs, Leaf seeks out movement in complex aggregations of texture. These traces of her dexterity, as much as her artistic vision, breathe aura into the moving-film images. The most powerful impression that Leaf’s work ‘under the camera’ makes is on the medium of animation itself. In this regard, sandanimation is an artist’s ‘live’ dissection and study of the enactment of alteration, as it relates to the depiction of how movement arises. Sandand paint- animation alters the figure of painting, by disrupting its static form. In becoming animated the image becomes painting losing its pose and moving in snap-shots the way film moves.21 Leaf’s work also alters the tradition of cel-paint animation. Cel animation was invented in the spirit of Taylorist economic management practices. John Bray’s patented cel-technique enabled the full-scale, Fordist-style industrialization of animation. Leaf cut herself free from the artistic tradition and ideology of cel animation22 by eliminating its basic technical support – the cel. Far from being a regressive step, this has proven to be a prescient move: cel animation faded into obsolescence once animation studios turned to computers. The technique of sand-painting abandons the cel, and with it the rationality that dictated the divisions of supervised labour: from the scripting to the assembly and fixture of animated sequences. With no such support, the depiction of movement ‘under the camera’ is down to the artist’s improvisation. The stationary camera provides the only fixture – in which the fluid patterns of mobile aggregations of sand become automatically embedded into the fixed film-grain pattern of snap-shots. The perverse conclusion the artist draws is that painting moves as film stills. In this, Leaf presents us with an animation medium for throwing sand into the machine of modern industrial animation.

Becoming animated Leaf is an acknowledged ‘master’ of animation, in its capacity to set entrenched aesthetic and philosophical categories adrift. However, in

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her statements about her creative process, Leaf does not follow earlier modern artists who sought to unleash themselves from existing cultural fixtures.23 Stanley Cavell’s analysis of the spirit in which modern artists broke with tradition is useful here, because of the way he elucidates their break. He does this while reflecting on the naturalness of the world view of film. Cavell links the movie’s creation of an automatic visual stance to modern artists’ interrogation of the ontological condition of the artistic medium, rather than the individual artwork: ‘One might say that the task [of the modern artist] is no longer to produce another instance of an art, but a new medium in it. One might think of this as the task of establishing a new automatism’ (104). Cavell goes on to enumerate the points of connection that make the term ‘automatism’ and ‘medium’ interchangeable in modern art (107–8). First, the medium calls for new instances, as well as making new instances possible. Second, the artwork ‘happens’ of itself; having abandoned tradition, the modern artist can only look for what works after the fact. Finally, the point of creating an automatism/new medium is not only to free the artist from the confines of unconscious automatisms, but also ‘to free the object from me, to give new ground for its autonomy’ (107–8). From this last point we can see that for the modern artist, the condition of establishing a new artistic medium was not simply coded by surrealist automatism; it was conditioned by radical exteriority (alterity). In the face of the medium’s heterogeneity, the modern artist worked by improvisation, looking out and listening for fragments of movement the medium produced. The medium had a life outside of the artist’s own; it called forth new instances independently of the artist’s conscious or unconscious grasp or intentionality. Surrealists and other modern artists sought liberation in (and from) spontaneous psychic automatism. Leaf eschews the rhythmic beat of the flip book, and its automatic return of the object. Instead, she works attentively with the inert qualities of particles of sand to create a medium with its own particularity. She incorporates various automatic mechanisms (including the camera-eye and the film projector) but she rejects out of hand the condition of mechanized automatism. Flicking away reductivist tenets of modern art, as well as industrial animation conventions, the artist enacts by hand the condition of a medium that cannot be stilled. Her physical interactions transform still-art-matter into a motile medium, moving as it animates the painter. In becoming a medium, sand-animation has a constitutive heterogeneity; it is a complex of self-differing aggregations. Leaf’s ‘under-the-camera’ work is both art and film, both painting and animation, both regressive and prescient,

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and it riddles the art of mechanical reproduction with its own style of live-action performance. Automatic processes and physical interaction both play a productive role in Leaf’s animation technique. However, she ascribes the spontaneity of her medium to something else. Its vivacity is born of abandonment: the thrill, the peril, the sheer ‘nerve’ of being-between one form and the next. The need to destroy one image to create the next image generates an uncertainty that propels Leaf’s ‘under the camera’ performance. This acceptance of risk with no deliberate end in mind, this deliberately open-ended passage through anamorphosis,24 is the interval in which spontaneous movement comes into the picture for Leaf: ‘The reward is a fresh, lively, unique and personal piece of animation’ (‘Interview with Nag Vladermersky’). In the passing-on-by of form – gone in the next frame, the passage of movement precipitates into an instance of new movement. As in moving sand, one particular form is lost in becoming another form. With each transient figuration, the medium shifts again – and again – becoming-movement, coming/going-to-be. Sand-animation has the spontaneity of a beginning that cannot remain or return, that cannot be-still. It is a self-differing aggregation in the sense that Cixous articulates her own particularity: ‘All these fragments, but whole ones, which “I” am and do not manage to be.’25 Rather than creating a spectacle that perpetuates unconscious modern automatisms, Leaf has devised a medium for analysing how spontaneity arises within a series of ephemeral moments. In this respect, Leaf’s work can be read alongside modern philosophical reformulations of originary movement in terms of alterity. Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray are a few philosophers worthy of mention here – along with a brief comment to identify the form that animation takes in the work of each. For Deleuze, the condition of animation can be found in cinema, understood as a figure of continuous movement. Cinematic movement only happens in art (as well) when: ‘the drawing no longer constitutes a pose or a completed figure, but the description of a figure which is always in the process of being formed or dissolving through the movement of lines and points taken at any-instant-whatevers of their course’ (5).26 Leaf’s ‘straight-ahead’ animation method (in which making one move after the next produces a series of movement) creates such a cinematic impression of movement when reproduced as a series of snap-shots. However, the animation is not initially composed as snap-shots. The camera records a figure of movement the artist has produced in creating the minute differences between one frame and the next. Animating (by drawing) all the camera moves gives the artist greater freedom

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of movement than the movie camera does. Leaf’s animation has the mobility of film-choreography, rather than cinematography. For Merleau-Ponty, animation is a perceptual condition. In its reversibility, vision reveals more than it is – as when my right hand touches my left, I am aware of it as a physical thing, while also aware of my left hand perceiving my right. In-between each: ‘The physical thing becomes animate an exploratory power comes to rest upon and dwell in it I touch myself touching; my body accomplishes “a sort of reflection” ’ (‘The Philosopher and His Shadow’ 166). What flows from this ‘reflection’ is another; things become animate as co-perceiving beings, possessed of the same motility (as opposed to possessing an objectively determinable nature). Leaf works with sand as a painter, as well as an animator. Her painting has an immediacy that is associated with precinematic conditions. Merleau-Ponty regards painting as an art which does not present the world as it ought to look, but draws upon and tries to conjure forth the ‘unknown parties’ or sensible beings that jointly possess a single, primordial presence with each other and the world (‘Eye and Mind’ 161). For Merleau-Ponty, the intertwined aspects of the visible world and the world of my motor projects give the visible its spontaneous, self-formed material arrangement – that is, its interiority (‘Eye and Mind’ 162). Leaf describes her process as one of seeking out and expressing sand’s inert qualities as motion. As a figure described within the hand – eye movements of the painter, animating sand ‘under the camera’ becomes a contestation of a cel-animation regimen of ‘alreadyworked-out’ phenomena. In Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference, the condition of animation is innate to tactility, understood as the recurrence of being inbetween the alterations of touch.27 Life recommences in its dissolution of any possible fixture; inbetween two lips touching, or given over to the movement of flesh in the fecundity of the caress. Here Irigaray invokes a materiality that resists static identification, as opposed to the idea of consciousness enthralled with an unsignifiable materiality. In their nakedness: ‘lovers give themselves to each other and give up what has already been made. Of themselves and reason. Opening to an innocence that runs the risk of folding back on itself in defense of the past. In this gesture each one runs the risk of annihilation, killing, or resuscitating’ (193). Turning to Leaf’s animation; in the risky impasse left by sand swept aside we return to the animator/animation in a fluid, indeterminate state. The liveliness of Leaf’s art depends on the freedom to begin again; each new instance comes and goes in the giving of fluidity. This is enacted ‘blindly’, in gestures informed by the artist’s

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memory, and through sand in contact with her hands and eyesight. The medium does not have its own, indefinable existence; it is what artist and sand renew together, over and over. The medium creates movement as it begins again. In animation, there is no movement without there being two. Leaf’s sand- and paint-animation exhibits spontaneity in each of these ways, simultaneously. It doesn’t settle on any single law or form of animation. It invigorates the incalculable vitality of cinema, painting and tactility. The medium accumulates its own material character in the process of becoming a figure of life. This character does not in itself give Leaf’s technique an integrity that makes it immune to makeover; to becoming a spectacle of post-industrial capitalism and new automation technologies.28 In this respect Leaf’s innovation is just as vulnerable to co-option as the work of other avant-garde artists. McDonald’s have capitalized on the ‘look’ of sand-animation to advertise its Happy Meals, and Leaf has made an animated commercial herself.29 Artists have also successfully translated Leaf’s method of working into a form of ‘live’ animation using computer-software. For example, Lee Whitmore’s film The Safe House (2006) marries the spontaneity of painting ‘under-the-camera’ with the spontaneity of digital technology. The Safe House is an autobiographical recreation of an historical event, ‘the Petrov affair’ of 1954, in which a Russian couple defected to Australia. The pair took refuge in the house next door to the house that Whitmore lived in as a child.30 In this animation, Whitmore continues to work as she has in the past (animating with paint on glass), moving elements in a shot by rubbing out and painting again in a new position. The difference is that the substitution of digital camera for film camera in the rostrum-camera set-up allows her to immediately review and manipulate what she’s already done, on a computer screen linked to the set-up. While this preserves the thrill of being between one form and the next, it sacrifices the element of transience. The abstracted moment of the film snap-shot is replaced with the video immediacy of the instantreplay. Whitmore manipulates the power of the replay – it allows her ‘to do much more complex and detailed animation than would have been possible using film technology’ (Gallasch 21). The capacity to constantly review, delete, adjust exposure and generally tweak images as the series is made, changes the look of the animation. It is more illustrative that Whitmore’s previous work. Even though Whitmore replaces the ephemeral event of Leaf’s performance with a temporality conditioned by the second life of instant

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replay, she retains the artist’s ‘live’ dissection and study of the enactment of alteration. This illustrates the difference the new technology makes in the process, unlike McDonald’s consumption of the medium.31 Initially the animator experienced the replay as a disruptive element that interrupted her attention to feeling the flow of movement: ‘from working with film, I knew how to do it blind computers take that away from you’.32 In the new set-up, Whitmore found herself relying too much on the computer at first, instead of trusting herself to make the sequence by ‘feeling it through’. The reward of her perseverance with integrating instantaneous revision into her performance is a breathtaking, fresh style of animation, depicted with consummate skill. The straight-ahead animation artist’s capacity to ‘be-in-the moment’ is carried over in Whitmore’s translation of the particularity of ‘live’ painting from Leaf’s ‘under-the camera’ technique. The ‘safe house’ of the story represents Whitmore’s safe childhood in a safe street, and 1950s Australia as a safe backwater, into which the outside world suddenly erupts. This all comes home in a confused form to the children spying through a hole in the fence, on the ‘spies’ in the next-door neighbour’s house. One of the voyeurs is the animator herself, characterized as a passive, hyper-observant seven-year-old girl called Lee.33 Whitmore is animating herself – not in a god-like way, but from memory, in depicting a story about a group of children unable to make sense of the intrusions of the outside world, including prejudice and media hype. She, as well as everything in the story, becomes animated as a result. Comparing the new film to her previous work, Whitmore says that ‘it represents a step for me into wanting to tell stories looking outward rather than back into childhood’.34 The Safe House is thus a past era the artist can review, enabled by the re-animation technology of instant replay. It is also a condition in which her gaze is turned outward in turning back; a form of spectatorship in which she can make an acute observation of how spontaneity arises within the temporal immediacy of digital-video technologies. Chow alerts us to the naturalization of automatized subjectivity in her formulation of animation as ‘the eruption of the machine in what is presumed to be spontaneous’. Some animators are more attentive than others to their art’s association with automation. Rather than conforming to any discrete organization of the animated image, Leaf and Whitmore actively participate in both analysing and reinventing the coming into being of the medium itself. Both animators describe their task in terms of being faced with rendering an other, propelled by the need to prolong each quiver of life that recommences between them.

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Neither regards the autonomous functioning of robotic machinery as a substitute for this responsibility. In the process, they demonstrate how the mastery of animation differs from the technical determination of spontaneity. In portraying a connection between their own flesh as an animation medium, and animated figures with a life of their own, these artists invite spectators to picture other beings animating us.

Notes 1. For example, Annette Michelson presents the android Hadaly which features in Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s story L’Eve future (1889) as the prototype of a cultural surrender to cinema: ‘a world, assenting on the eve of its future, to that synthesis of the parameters of mechanical reproduction figured as simulacrum of the female body’ (20). 2. Animation was taken seriously in aesthetic and political debates formulated by Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Sergei Eisenstein among other luminaries of modernist experience and mass culture. 3. Eisenstein coined the term ‘plasmatic’ to describe the powerfully primal metamorphic animated line in early animated Disney animation. He saw in Mickey Mouse ‘the rejection of once-and-forever allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically assume any form’ (21). Esther Leslie portrays the Russian formalist filmmaker’s admiration for Disney in the chapter ‘Eisenstein shakes Mickey’s hand in Hollywood’ (219–50). 4. Disney, on the other hand, became more preoccupied with the development of animation as an industry, and with rationalizing productivity by the invention and incorporation of new technologies. 5. The paragraph in Cixous’s essay from which this quote comes is: ‘Again, the beautiful Olympia is effaced by what she represents, for Freud has no eyes for her. This woman appears obscene because she emerges there where “one” did not expect her to appear, and she thus causes Freud to take a detour. And what if the doll became a woman? What if she were alive? What if, in looking at her, we animated her? Superanimated, isolated from the scene, the doll comes out between two acts’ (538). 6. Cixous’s essay is regarded as a definitive work on the uncanny. See for example, Nicholas Royle’s essay, ‘Portmanteau.’ 7. Ngai explains the synthesis as follows: ‘Just as animatedness integrates the two contrasting meanings of automatism, the affect manages to fuse signs of the body’s subjection to power with signs of its ostensible freedom’ (100). 8. The ‘struggling automaton’ is a figure I borrow from Norman Klein (Seven Minutes: the Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon 75–80). He uses the term to refer to allegorical human – machine relations depicted in early Fleischer chase cartoons, and series such as The Inkwell, Superman, Popeye and Betty Boop. 9. Both Derrida and Deleuze read Cixous’s writing in terms of its capacity to generate unpredictable movement. Derrida analyses this movement in

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11.

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13. 14. 15. 16.

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terms of ‘portmanteau’ in his analysis of Cixous’s stylistic ‘autoethnography’ (see Royle, ‘Portmanteau’). Deleuze argues that Cixous’s work Neutre ‘invites a “stroboscopic” reading (see Bryden, ‘Stroboscopic Vision: Deleuze and Cixous’). In this respect Deleuze injects Cixous’s style with a form of spontaneity that is more in keeping with his own fascinations with the transformatory potentialities of speed and intensity. Elsewhere I argue that a perceivable difference between automata modelled on industrial machinery and cybernetic automata is that instead of struggling to free themselves of their machines, ‘cybernetic automata’ are inconceivable apart from networked machine systems (‘A is for Animatics (automata, androids and animats)’ 86). I use the term ‘cybernetic automata’ to include all kinds and combinations of physical and virtual environments and ‘agents’ that feature cybernetic feedback, procedural and information systems. Leaf was not the first animator to work with sand. In the early 1960s Gisèle and Ernest Ansorge perfected a sand-animation technique, which they used to make Les corbeaux [The Ravens] (first shown in 1968). Their set-up included multiple planes of glass, and techniques for preserving the sand-images with spray glue. Maureen Furniss discusses a range of different sand-animation techniques developed in the 1960s (50–2). Animating in a ‘straight-ahead’ fashion (making one move after another, in a serial manner), under a camera mounted on a rostrum over the artwork, is not an arrangement unique to Leaf. Countless animators have used the rostrum-camera set-up to do this. However, the way Leaf views the process and its camera arrangement, as ‘live performance’, is her unique perspective. Leaf is quoted as saying that her memory has to pass through her eyes and hands for her to feel a movement (National Film Board of Canada). This follows from Aristotle’s observation that ‘matter will surely not move itself – ’ Metaphysics 1071b30 (1693). Interview with Paul Wells, June 1997. Leaf’s technique of creating movement by using a stationary camera and gradually changing the size of her drawing in sand or paint is a defining characteristic of her work. Kit Laybourne observes, in discussing this aspect of Leaf’s method, that it adds the dimension of choreographed mobility: ‘the movement within the frame is free in a way that could never be accomplished through real camera moves’ (147). Stanley Cavell observes ‘Reproducing the world is the only thing film does automatically’ (103), meaning that film has a specific kind of guaranteed automatism. Wells describes how Leaf’s work conforms to the notion of ‘genius’ attached to the avant-garde art figure. He suggests that Leaf self-consciously embraces this figure of genius. Wells also discusses commentators who describe Leaf’s work in such terms. He includes himself among them (101–3). Marc Glassman writes: ‘It’s a world of rigid contrasts, of bugs and people, of owls and geese, of children and dying matriarchs, of women in darkness meeting men in the light’ (‘The Unbearable Sadness of Being’). By way of contrast, Kit Laybourne notes that, in The Street (1976, an ink paintanimation): ‘characters establish dynamic and spatial relationships between themselves and with their settings’ (147).

222 The Other 20. Paul Wells suggests that Leaf’s work recalls early animators such as J.S. Blackton and Emile Cohl, who pioneered the arrangement (102). 21. Deleuze makes a distinction between the immobility of pictorial images (poses, exposures) and the mobility of cinema (snap-shots, equidistant instants) (5). 22. Kristin Thompson analyses this in detail in: ‘The implications of the cel animation technique.’ 23. Leaf’s work is aligned with Norman McLaren and other film animation ‘purists’, who chose to adhere to ‘full’ animation (in which every frame is animated), rather than incorporating ‘limited’ animation techniques such as repeating cycles and other labour- and cost-saving economies. 24. Norman Klein discusses how character-animators give their drawing an independent life through animated metamorphosis (which he abbreviates to ‘animorphing’). The animorph typically occurs when a creature changes into a different species in the course of a walk cycle. For a few frames inbetween the morph, the shift is not stable. It is neither one thing nor another (‘Animation and Animorphs: a Brief Disappearing Act’ 23). Leaf’s image changes into the next in a different way: ‘the trick is to draw each new position of the character before I erase the old one. I sprinkle sand down and carefully trace the outline of the character’s position in the next frame. Then I clean away the sand outside the outline, and shove the sand into place’ (Interview with Jo Jürgens, quoted by Furniss (51) ). The instability of Leaf’s figures is not quite the same as the indetermination that enters into drawn character animation figures. In sand animation the instability happens in the division of the figure into two: inbetween one frame and the next. 25. ‘Tous ces morceaux, mais entiers, que Je suis et n’arrive pas à être’ (‘Une Passion: l’un peu moins que rien,’ in Samuel Beckett, edited by Tom Bishop and Raymond Federman. Paris: L’Herne, 1976: 396–413). Quoted and translated from the French by Bryden (320). 26. Deleuze is actually referring to cartoon animation in this description of the way cinema reproduces movement (5). In the same paragraph, he contrasts cinema with art in general. 27. For Irigaray, there is no question of a return within touch to a predetermined other being. More about Irigaray on tactility and animation in: Vasseleu, Textures of Light 109–19. 28. Rosalind Krauss characterized the dissolution of the state of aesthetic autonomy (and with it the notion of an individual work of art) as the ‘postmedium’ condition. In doing so, she refers to Fredric Jameson’s characterization of postmodernity as the total saturation of cultural space by the image (‘A Voyage on the North Sea’: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition 56). 29. ‘Absolut Leaf’, produced by Swell Productions. Directed, animated and designed by Caroline Leaf, forVin&Sprit Aktiebolag AbsolutVodka in 1988. 30. The film comments on the limited view of the situation, and the world in general, the artist had when she experienced the mass media event through the eyes of a child. 31. The makers of the McDonald’s advertisement paid for the rights to copy the look of sand-animation, as used in Animal Planet (a television show on the

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Discovery Channel) – not Caroline Leaf’s work. The ‘look’ of sand-animation has proliferated by repeated translations such as these. In the interests of speed and efficiency, the animator of the artwork for the ‘Happy Meals’ advertisement rationalized the process by using live-action digital filming of the sand-painting. Selected frames were then extracted by a process known as ‘time remapping’, (a computerized form of step-frame printing) in a compositing program. (The animator described the production to a fellow artist-colleague, Beck Main, whom I thank for telling me about it in one of our many conversations on art, the universe and everything.) The graphic artist needed just as much dexterity and artistic ability, and created just as lively an animation using this process, but the work involved was not valourized in the same way as an auteur’s. It was conditioned by the anonymity of a commercial production-line, rather like the work performed in industrialized animation studios the world over. 32. Lee Whitmore and I had several conversations about her new animation in the last week of August 2006. Apart from quotes taken from published sources, the comments I attribute to her came from these discussions. 33. All Whitmore’s animations are autobiographical in this way. When I asked if she could comment about her inclusion of animations of herself, Whitmore said that in some ways it is an extension of her childhood experience. Her father was also an artist, and the young Lee often modelled for his artwork. One might therefore conclude that being depicted in drawn forms is very familiar to Whitmore. It is how the artist ‘saw herself’ appearing in the world as a child. 34. Q&A, Film Australia press kit (8).

Bibliography Aristotle. Metaphysics. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Vol. 2, Ed. Jonathan Barnes. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Translated by N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Bryden, Mary. ‘Stroboscopic Vision: Deleuze and Cixous.’ Women: a Cultural Review 15.3 (2004): 320–9. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979. Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Cixous, Hélène. ‘Fiction and its Phantoms: a Reading of Freud’s Das Unheimliche (The “Uncanny”).’ New Literary History 7.3 (Spring 1976): 525–48. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Derrida, Jacques. The Ear of the Other. Ed. Christie McDonald. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Lincoln: University of Nabraska Press, 1988. Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein on Disney. Ed. Jay Leyda. Translated by Alan Upchurch. London: Methuen, 1988. Freud, Sigmund. ‘The “Uncanny”.’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVII 1917–19. Translated by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1955. 219–52.

224 The Other Furniss, Maureen. Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. London: John Libby, 1988. Gallasch, Keith. ‘Re-animating Australian history: Lee Whitmore’s The Safe House.’ RealTime 74 (Aug/Sept 2006): 21. Glassman, Marc. ‘The Unbearable Sadness of Being.’ http://www.nfb.ca/ animation/objanim/en/filmmakers/Caroline-Leaf/overview.php (accessed 2, August 2006). Hilfrich, Carola. ‘ “The Self is a People”: Autoethnographic Poetics in Hélène Cixous’s Fictions.’ New Literary History 37 (2006): 217–35. Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Translated by Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993. Klein, Norman M. Seven Minutes: the Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. London: Verso, 1993. ——. ‘Animation and Animorphs: a Brief Disappearing Act.’ Metamorphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Edited by Vivian Sobchack. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 21–39. Krauss, E. Rosalind. The Optical Unconscious. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1993. ——. ‘A Voyage on the North Sea’: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. London: Thames & Hudson, 1999. Laybourne, Kit. The Animation Book. Revised edition. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998. Leaf, Caroline. Interview with Nag Vladermersky. Senses of Cinema 25 (Mar–Apr 2003). www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/25/caroline_leaf.html (accessed 2, August 2006). Leslie, Esther. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde. London: Verso, 2002. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. ‘The Philosopher and His Shadow.’ Signs. Translated by Richard McCleary. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964. 159–81. ——. ‘Eye and Mind.’ The Primacy of Perception. Chicago: Nothwestern University Press, 1964. 159–90. Michelson, Annette. ‘On the Eve of the Future: the Reasonable Facsimile and the Philosophical Toy.’ October 29 (Summer 1984): 3–20. National Film Board of Canada: Portrait of Caroline Leaf: http://www.nfb.ca/ portraits/fiche.php?id=284&v=h&lg=en (accessed 6, August 2006). Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005. Royle, Nicholas. ‘Portmanteau.’ New Literary History 37 (2006): 237–47. Thompson, Kristin. ‘Implications of the Cel Animation Technique.’ The Cinematic Apparatus. Eds Teresa De Lauretis and Stephen Heath. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. 106–20. Ueno, Toshiya. ‘Japanimation and Techno-Orientalism.’ http://www.t0.or.at /ueno/japan.htm (accessed 28, July 2006). Vasseleu, Cathryn. Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty. London: Routledge, 1998. ——. ‘A is for Animatics (automata, androids and animats).’ Living With Cyberspace: Technology & Society in the 21st Century. Eds John Armitage and Joanne Roberts. London: Athlone. 2002. 83–91. Wells, Paul. Animation: Genre and Authorship. London: Wallflower Press, 2002. Whitmore, Lee. Q&A, press kit for The Safe House. Sydney: Film Australia, 2006.

Part 4 Otherness and Ethical Perspective


9 The Contemplative Conditions of a Moral Action Christina Schües

In the history of philosophy, praxis or action have, for the most part, been applied within an ethical context. Aristotle differentiates poiësis (constructing, making) from praxis, and particularly opposes the latter to theoria. He distinguishes action motivated by appetite, emotion and wish, and actions motivated by rationality (Aristotle, 1111b–1113b). This distinction among motives follows Immanuel Kant in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, since actions can be carried out for all sorts of reasons such as feelings, inclinations or their consequences. The Aristotelian explanation is that the person who acts morally is habituated in accordance with moral rules that she/he has internalized. By contrast, on the Kantian view, a person decides how to act out of duty, and in accordance with the question of ‘what shall I do?’; yet, this question cannot be answered if one is inclined to act morally in accordance with feelings or interests only. Moral actions should be performed, in Kant’s analysis, only according to a generalized and universal moral law, that is, the categorical imperative. Hence, Kant’s transcendental method is not interested in how human beings really act, but only in the principal foundations of a moral action. His foundationalist theory is in accordance with a principal of freedom1 that entails the intention of the person who wants to act morally, and therefore asks the question ‘what shall I do?’ The Kantian question ‘what shall I do?’ can be reformulated in the following way: ‘How shall I think if I want to answer the question of ‘what shall I do’?’ Posing the question in terms of the mode of thinking means that we first have to reconsider different modes of thinking and their relations to each other. Thus, I would like to argue that Kantian foundationalism must be complemented by discourse ethics which could provide the bridge between theoria and praxis, between thinking and acting. 227

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This chapter addresses the seemingly simple question: ‘How to think morally?’ With this question I open a discussion about some aspects of discourse ethics which emphasize the problem of legitimizing norms and moral decisions by way of rational arguments. I argue that discourse ethics need to be enlarged with the function of insight and complemented with a weak notion of responsibility. The Kantian person poses the question of ‘what shall I do?’ in the light of his/her ‘good will’ to act according to moral law, and the question is answered by way of practical reason. For instance, Max Weber may consider this question in reference to a general responsible approach towards other people and the world. In any case, the question of ‘what shall I do?’ indicates the entrance into the realm of responsibility. I draw on the notion of insight in reference to Edmund Husserl for whom it means the grasping of a being in regard to its (seemingly) necessary and essential structure. However, I will show the relevance of the notion of insight within a moral context. Most generally put: moral insight means that an action is not merely performed because a moral rule is taken as an external constraint, but rather it is taken as a sort of internal constraint. Therefore, the term ‘moral’ refers to the system of norms and values which are commonly and historically considered to be obligatory to guide actions. This guideline is directed by the principle of morality that is supposed to guarantee the freedom and well being of everyone within the society. In this discussion I would like to follow up the Kantian guiding thread, because it is directed towards the intent of the person who decides how to act in accordance with the question of ‘what shall I do?’; however, rather than focusing only on another outline of the Kantian categorical imperative and its connection between the universal and the concrete, I would instead like to consider a sort of thinking and its ground which could lead to the decision to take a moral action. Thus, I would like to focus in particular on the aspects of moral thinking that seemingly necessitate a person to act morally. The sorts of moral acts I have in mind are actions between human beings – actions which hence involve responsibility, and which may thus strengthen the relations between them – actions such as helping or caring.2 The following themes need to be discussed in this framework: First I inquire into different modes of thinking which can be considered in the realm of ethics and morality. In discussing this question I look at different interpretations of thinking and judging. Not every kind of thinking is adequate for responding to the question of how to think morally. Considerations about discursive thinking, and thinking

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understood as insight, will give rise to the second part of the essay. Here, I discuss the notion of insight and distinguish different functions of insight such as the hermeneutic, situational, generative and normative functions. And finally, I bring together thinking and acting by way of a concept of responsibility.

1. Modes of thinking The Kantian question of ‘what shall I do?’ is one for the faculty of judgement. The faculty of judgement is an ability that is based, as Hannah Arendt interprets, on thinking (Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 71. Arendt, ‘Thinking and Moral Consideration: a Lecture’ 417–46, esp. 445). It examines and judges different opinions with regard to norms and values, practical possibilities, right and wrong; it tries to understand stories of the self and others, and refers thereby to and enters into dialogue with other people. In other words, it is concerned with what one ought to do. Since the question of the ‘ought’ is one that the faculty of judgement must determine, it can be rephrased in the following way: How should I think, if I want to answer the question of ‘what shall I do?’ Posing the question in terms of the mode of thinking means that it actually does require thinking in order to go about answering the question ‘what shall I do?’ This question presupposes, therefore, that there are different kinds of thinking and that only certain kinds of thinking will lead to an acceptable solution. Why should I want to pose this question? One answer is, I want to guarantee that this question can actually be posed henceforth and in the future. This question could not be posed, for instance, if one could not decide how to act, if freedom were taken away, if the plurality of viewpoints among people were reduced to one guiding opinion, or if morality simply meant calculating cost and effects. Moral questioning does not make sense if plurality is not respected and supported. Kant posed this question of duty in order to show how to proceed from a concrete situation to a necessary, obligatory, morally justified action. Kantian persons ask the question concerning their duty because of their good will; other people – perhaps you and I – can ask this question out of a general attitude of responsibility towards other human beings and the world. If I ask ‘what shall I do?’ then I have already entered into the realm of responsibility even though responsibility does not itself constitute norms and values. Responsibility is needed for a moral action, yet it does not itself constitute values because the moral value of this solution is not derived from

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the concept of responsibility itself.3 It means rather that I initiate a human relation, and that I feel responsible for a morally acceptable solution. In other words, the notion of responsibility refers to an attitude, to a subject who acts, and to the consequent action. One values responsibility either retrospectively with regard to an action which took place in the past, or prospectively with regard to a possible action or duty in the future.4 As already mentioned, the question of ‘What shall I do?’ is one for the faculty of judgement, but the question arises, how and in accordance with what does this faculty make its judgement? Hannah Arendt, in unfolding a notion of thinking, turns Kant’s concept of reflective judgement, which he limited to the aesthetic region, into moral philosophy. She distinguishes three maxims of judgement in reference to Kant that are each related to different modes of thinking: First, to think for oneself means to take on one’s own self, to use one’s own rationality, and not to reproduce or obey the thinking of others. To think for oneself is a demand that is especially formulated in the Age of Enlightenment. Second, enlarged thinking means to think or to be able to think in the place of somebody else and hence requires reflection and empathy for other human beings. Third, consequential thinking requires thinking harmoniously and unanimously (einstimmig) with oneself, which means avoiding contradictions and inconsistencies of moral judgements. Arendt refers in this context to conscience (Gewissen). Arendt tends to reinterpret the Kantian universal-legalistic standpoint as a dialogue with oneself whereby the self is taken to be the conscience. If moral thinking is understood as a dialogue with oneself, then the person who thinks in this way tries to attain non-contradiction, even harmony, with his/her conscience (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 167ff.).5 However, as much as this emphasis might be convincing for the general role of thinking, it does not convey moral philosophical reasoning for a moral action because it overlooks any reference to and from others. Other than its logical input of non-contradiction, thinking’s only reference is its own conscience that arises after the actor has done something for better or worse. The conscience, that is, the moral affect of guilt and shame after the disregarding of accepted moral norms (also understood as bodily memory6 ) reacts only retrospectively to an action; furthermore, it is a socialized conscience which is trained merely as bad conscience and as reactive. However, if I ask the question, ‘what shall I do?’, then I need a prospective view on acting. Relying on conscience and unanimous thinking with oneself does not provide a good ground in this case.7

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With the critical rejection of the one-sided reduction of the dialogue with oneself (the monologue), as well as of conscience, we should not ignore the importance of thinking about that accompanies reflection on others and our relations with them. The three Kantian principles include a universal moral obligation on which account ‘I owe everybody the moral respect to consider her or his standpoint’ (Benhabib, ‘Urteilskraft und die moralischen Grundlagen der Politik im Werk Hannah Arendts’ 541). In this act of thinking abstraction allows for the generalizing of a moral principle, and this generalization is supported by the idea that a moral action is only moral according to principles that hold universally. Here, I would like to argue that even though a generalized thinking might not, or perhaps even should not, exist in its pure form, one should minimally maintain the claim for it in order to avoid relativism. Seyla Benhabib criticizes the notion of enlarged thinking because the idea of thinking in the place of somebody else means that one is to be guided by a general, autonomous rational subject who is devoid of all specifics, since all specific properties refer already to a body, and hence to gender, and to a particular cultural, religious or social context and mode of life. If one were to include all these properties in the concept of generality then one would have incongruent properties and could no longer generalize without ruling out at least some of them. Thus, differences between human beings must be levelled out in favour of a universal subject which means a bodiless, genderless, cultureless construct. Benhabib, in drawing on discourse ethics, instead suggests bringing the lonely Kantian thought experiment out of the abstract realm into the world in order to include the concrete other rather than an abstract other in discourse (Benhabib, ‘The Generalized and the Concrete Other’ 148–77). The inclusion of the concrete other who discusses her/his standpoint in reference to a situation and a context means, for Benhabib, that there is a manifold of voices within a discourse about morality which accounts for plurality, and requires that one understand both another person and the situation in question. In this manner, a moral discourse that includes the other is not based on empathy, but rather on moral judgement and thinking in a factual dialogue, which certainly does not mean to rule out rationality. I cite Benhabib: If human action has to be understood as language and acting or as linguistically transmitted interaction, then the perspective of plurality can only be guaranteed by a dialogical model of

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rationality. To put oneself in the place of somebody else would then mean to enter into a jointly practical discourse with the goal (Benhabib, ‘Urteilskraft und die moralischen Grundlagen’ 542) to put forward ‘good reasons’ which can convince everybody. (Benhabib, Kulturelle Vielfalt und demokratische Gleichheit 62)8 As a defender of a communicative political ethics, and in contrast to Apel or Habermas,9 Benhabib does not subsume the concrete under general rules; she rather claims, through a ‘transforming dialogue’, to generalize the concrete. However, the resulting general statement is still supposed to be open to the concrete, and receptive to context and further differences. It is very important to her that human beings remain receptive and sensible to other people and to the context of a situation.10 Discourse ethics is based on the metanorm of moral autonomy, which itself presupposes norms of universal moral respect and egalitarian reciprocity. Universal respect means that the standpoint of every human being should be accorded equal attention; egalitarian reciprocity means that we should treat and support each other as beings who have the abilities to articulate their own standpoints. (The question as to whether or not I agree with the concept of reciprocity is not the focus here.) The two basic norms – moral autonomy and egalitarian reciprocity – in Benhabib’s discourse ethics do not relate to one another deductively; rather, they are based on a general understanding of justice, equality, self-determination (Selbstbestimmung), and rationality. This means that the norms are presupposed by discourse ethics but at the same time they are to be grounded and filled with a content by it – and this is a contradiction. So far we have discussed two different directions of thinking: one, pluralism and the other, universalism. The former focuses on concrete human beings and their judgements, and the latter is used as a grounding norm that is at the same time the goal of a discourse. These two directions, pluralism and freedom, as well as a certain level of universalism, are fundamental to discourse ethics because each discourse presupposes that human beings state different opinions. If there were only one single opinion, or if human beings were regarded as a unity, then discourse would no longer be possible. Thus, the only universal obligation of this approach is to secure the anthropological and social conditions of plurality, and to prevent all actions that would not respect them. The consequence of this approach is that actions that reduce human plurality and disallow critical questions should be prohibited. The idea of the preservation of plurality implies respect for each human

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being in his/her difference because only a human being who is respected and who respects other human beings is able to participate in such discourse ethics. The preservation of plurality, however, does not lead to a cultural relativism which would support, for instance, disrespect or even violence against women for the sake of the so called ‘cultural plurality’. Clearly such a position would actually exclude certain persons for the sake of a kind of unity and would hence disregard plurality and the freedom of each individual. I want to elaborate a further aspect of discourse ethics: often moral actions actually go beyond the framework of a communicative ethics which searches for reasons. For example, actions and attitudes like compassion, care, solidarity, responsibility or moral sensitivity are all dimensions which embrace human relations, and they are aspects of each moral action. Moreover, they require insight rather than communicative discourse. All such attitudes might be just the result of a sharing of certain norms that a person supports and transmits by means of an act in solidarity or in being responsible to others. In other words, the norm of ‘helping someone’ is generally accepted to be a valuable norm. However, the concrete question concerning whom, when and how I should help is a very specific matter and is not decided in a general way. When I assume responsibility for someone, this means I will also help – but I will not take this sort of responsibility for everyone or just anyone. Thus, the ability to regard other points of views, finding ‘good reasons’ by way of discourse, and the assessment of a situation, all need personal insight which cannot be sufficiently produced by mere communication in the realm of discourse ethics.

2. The concept of insight In the history of philosophy the notion of insight has never been fixed. Mostly it is used as the grasping of essential necessities or the grasping of the basic structures of a certain context (Zusammenhang), a meaning context or a purpose. Insight is a kind of thinking that is opposed to mere beliefs and to discursive explanations; to be insightful is to be ‘open’ to such an approach (Aristotle 1140b).11 Therefore, it is based on phenomenological thinking which claims to go ‘back to the things themselves’ in order not to be guided by mere prejudice, opinions or habituation. This notion and method of insight is used by Edmund Husserl with regard to the idea of apodictic evidence, that is, as an original given idea (Anschauung) of not only a factual being there or being as such,

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but also as an eidetic necessity, as the idea that the given must be as such. ‘Evidential Vision (Evidenz) and Insight, are taken as meaning the same thing, namely, apodeictic in-seeing. The word insight [has] the special task of designating this apodeictic character’ (Husserl, Ideas § 137). Phenomenological reflection tries to reach even beyond adequateness and into steady insights in order to reach certainties which are unquestionable, that is, apodeictic. Husserl’s use of insight refers back to the Cartesian conception of the intuitus which was shaped in Scholastic philosophy. In this context of thought, intuition or insight is understood as pure intellectual idea (Anschauung) which grasps eidetic contents and simple necessary truth in a totality, and in unshakable assurance.12 However, I want to distinguish insight and intuition because they seem to emphasize different dimensions of cognition. Intuition is the more specific term that is mostly understood as the immediate grasping of an essence in one look. Husserl interprets the term ‘intuition’ differently from the tradition from which it is drawn when he proclaims that there exists ‘a pure essence’ on the basis of the reduction. For Husserl, an individual’s eidetic and universal essential generalities, and the mode of its giveness in experience, can be intuited in evidence. Max Scheler persists, in a certain respect, with the Husserlian approach; describing the possibility of an intuition into the essence of a moral value, he writes: ‘The ethical insight is based on intuitive evidence and not on pictures and symbols’ (Scheler, Formalismus 66, 69). In this quote both terms are distinguished: Insight as an act of thinking can be based on intuition or description; it means the grasping of a phenomenon, a situation, a relation or the need of an other. Thus, by relying on the phenomenological approaches of Husserl and Scheler, one can conclude that the notion of insight includes four different functions: an a) hermeneutic, a b) situational, c) generative and d) normative function.

a) The hermeneutic function of insight The hermeneutic function is the function of interpretation; it refers to understanding the other’s standpoint and perspective and focuses on understanding that which appears as strange. Essential to this function is an understanding of the reasons for a claim, as well as the way in which it is legitimized and translated in their own context. By focusing on understanding that which appears as strange, and on the reasons for the claims of the other(s), it looks at their way of legitimizing their

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claims or actions, judgements or wishes, and it tries to translate them in its own context. Thus, to take the standpoint of the other means neither to think like her nor to subsume her standpoint into my own thinking and believing; it is, rather, the challenge of the hermeneutic function to find a way to reach a communicative level in which there is neither coercion to adapt nor to eliminate or assimilate the other’s standpoint. In this way, it is possible to justify a claim without sharing the interests or wishes of the person in question. Understanding the reasons for acting in one way or another has also to do with reflecting about oneself and one’s own reasoning in reference to the presented reasons by the others. The point here is that the approach of interpretation offers the possibility of interacting with the other and of building a relation between him/her and myself. The goal then is to build a good relation with other human beings by trying to understand the reasons for their positions. This means that taking up good human relations is essential to moral acting. b) The situative function of insight The situative function refers to understanding a concrete situation, the particular context and the question of whether or not there is a need to act, and whether the act would have moral relevance in this situation. Thus, this function is particularly important for the coordination of the action. By way of this function one thinks not only about the ways one can act, practically and morally, but it also serves to close the gap between the general, mostly internally held obligations, norms and values, and the concrete situation in which one has to act according to the situation and its context. c) The generative function of insight Generativity or the adjective ‘generative’ means on the one hand, a process of meaning production, that is, the genesis of meaning, and on the other hand, an historical and social development over generations in the sense of a mental and cultural generativity that is intertwined with bodily generativity. As Bernhard Waldenfels explains: ‘Generativity means thus, that I do not simply come together with other people in the world, and am with them in the world, but that I also come from other people and continue to live in other people’ (Waldenfels, Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs 346, my translation).13 Thus, the reference to generativity emphasizes the idea that human beings are the poles between which we establish morality, and that as such they are

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not isolated and purely independent; rather, they are always born into generative relationships (regardless of whether these were or are good or bad relations) and they continue to establish (good or bad) relations. Waldenfels refers to the genesis of meaning that imports and includes the norms and values that might be transmitted or changed from one generation to the next. The genesis of meaning works because of the generative relatedness through which norms and values are transmitted. Birth is always the turning-point from one generation to the next. By way of birth new beings are brought into the world; they begin to learn and live in a world that has been ‘produced’ by the generations before them. Additionally, the generative function of insight is bound up with a specific attitude towards the past which assumes that the reflective following of norms and values must also be understood from the past in order to avoid blind obedience or mere activity. This thought is grounded in the roman tradition of thinking, according to which those who want to advocate new and other ways must initiate them from an understanding of the past. The grounding of understanding is based on the so-called ‘dimension of depth in human existence’ that embraces the space of the past which should not be changed into a space of forgetting (Arendt, Between Past and Future 33). As Hannah Arendt writes in the essay ‘What is Authority?’: ‘memory and depth are the same, or rather, depth cannot be reached by man except through remembrance’ (ibid.). In this context it is important to understand the roots of our being, to get insights into how possibly hidden principles of feelings and thoughts might influence contemporary attitudes and how they might hinder certain demands. Knowledge of the past and care for the future presuppose acceptance of the generative connection and the plurality in which all human beings live. The structure of generativity relates the universal and the concrete, the individual with the other, and the past with the future. Therefore, everybody carries his/her past from and with somebody – consciously or unconsciously – in specific situations and concrete relations. If the task of morality is to provide rules for relations among human beings, then we have to look at the notion of the human being as well. Morality is supposed to take place through the actions of concrete humans. Thus, it takes place among human beings who are born into a generative relatedness and who live with other people (whether it be on good or bad terms). To be born into a generative connection means that one is coming from somewhere (Arendt) and actually, more precisely, as Adriana Cavarero has argued, from somebody, namely the mother, who generates the relation at the beginning of the life in the world

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(Cavarero 210). Thus, from the beginning there is a relation, regardless of how life continues and whether it is a happy or unhappy relation. Hence, each human being in question lives in a generative context and she/he is gendered. She/he is a bodily and cultural individual who is born into the universal structure of generativity and worldliness, and who lives it in a concrete manner. Thus, the observation of the generative connection combines a universal structure with a concrete determination. Disclosing the notion of the generative insight includes the distinction between one’s own generativity and one’s recognition of the generativity of other people. Reflections about one’s own generativity turn around questions such as from where, from whom and under what sort of circumstances one is born and raised. In considering generativity in a moral context, I must raise questions about its moral relevancy. If it is true that the beginning means being in a relation, then we must show that this is not only an anthropological observation, but that it also has some bearing on the morality of the subject. Thus, I would argue that pregnancy entails an asymmetrical relation between a mother and a child, and only in this relation can we meaningfully talk about the teleological process which is involved. The embryo is a singular, unborn human-being for somebody else – namely the mother to be. ‘It’ is for somebody in a generative sense because it is not substantiated, isolated and abstracted as an ‘unborn life’. Rather it lives in a relation of care and being carried, and to carry and to care for somebody is a very elementary human relation. Without care and carrying, the unborn child would be only ‘flesh and bones’, a ‘piece of reality without specific meaning or significance’ (Thoné 121. See also Gürtler 366 ff., Schües 33–54). Thus, pregnancy is the bodily beginning of an original and very personal responsibility for an other (Gürtler 369). Birth is the end of this prenatal relation and the beginning of the relation in the world and towards the world. It is the beginning of being bodily in the world with others and being from somebody. Therefore, it is perhaps the case that the relation that comes before our worldly existence as individual agents could be characterized as a non-reciprocal-giving. A relationship of giving and care is an important basis for being an ethical subject (Vetlesen 379). Thus, primary to ethical subjectivity would be a relation characterized by unconditional giving; and with this background, human beings are able to develop the capacities to initiate relations, and to support them, but also to end them. If we take our own generativity in the sense of the primacy of being always already in a human relation, then we might first ask how it could come about that

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a moral agent is often seen as an isolated individual and, moreover, we can understand the primacy of human relations as a grounding basis for a moral agent; that is, she/he does not need to initiate responsibility. She/he is always already in the situation of responding to human relations. Generative phenomenology means a thinking from birth. However, as we know, our own birth is apodictically given by way of our existence, but it is also withdrawn insofar as we cannot remember it. Thus, thinking from birth means that behind us, and in the depth of our being, we inherit a relation and anonymity. This anonymity is presented to us as the otherness in our own sphere and we can only bring light to this anonymous otherness by way of other human beings and their narration. Thus, in this respect, others are always primary to my consciousness, and hence always already subjects with whom I have at least potentially a relation. It is now apparent that the other is not only a subject, but that she/he lives for the most part in this generative connection. To live, or to exist, does not mean to stand out as an anonymous isolated individual; it actually means to be born, to come from somebody and somewhere from within a concrete cultural and gendered nexus. ‘It belongs to the human as such to be born and to die’ (Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität 138). To acknowledge the fact of the birth of every human being means to transpose him or her out of a fictive isolation and into a concrete bodily, gendered, cultural subjectivity – which is a subjectivity that resembles mine in respect to its general generative structure. Thus, if an agent regards the other merely as an object who must be helped, then the other is no longer regarded as being within a subject – subject relation in which both agents live within a generative connection. To assume that someone is no longer involved in a subject – subject relation amounts to the supposition that she/he in fact no longer exists. And to say (or act accordingly), ‘you should not exist’, is translatable as: ‘you should not have been born. Your mother should not have given birth to you’. Or, to turn the importance of the generative function of insight into a moral context: if I do not help, for example, rescue a person from drowning, someone else will lose a daughter or son, a sister or brother, a friend. Thus, the generative function of insight is based on the knowledge that each person lives in a generative context and it draws on the knowledge that, depending on my (moral) actions, I will influence the relations of other human beings. Furthermore, the generative function of insight has consequences for the normative function of insight.

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d) The normative function of insight Generally, the normative function of insight refers to the idea that each person has a general claim to the acknowledgement of his or her rights and that we might have a certain duty to maintain these norms and values of respect for other people. One could believe that a moral philosophy has failed if it cannot convince a rational egoist that one should not be one and that one should rather fulfil one’s duties in order not to be an unhappy self. But the rational egoist might not be the problem if we look at the world around us. The problem is rather the ‘good American’ who fights for peace, against evil, or the skin-head who beats up ‘only’ blacks, or the respectable gentleman who rapes ‘only’ little girls, or the Nazis who meant to ‘cleanse’ the world of those who are ‘sub-human’. The list can be extended into the past and expanded in the present. Central to all these dehumanizing strategies is the fact that specific differences are singled out and used to distinguish a human being as not-human – as only a black, only a Muslim, only a Jew, only a woman. With this strategy, violence is done not to human beings, but to ‘pseudo-human beings’. The perversion of three distinctions functions basically as the strategy of dehumanization by pretending to maintain general norms and values: The distinctions of human/animal, adult/child, and human/woman. All three distinctions include the feeling that a pure human being should be protected against the dark, dirty and evil. The category ‘human’ is supposed to be exclusive. Those who work with the distinction human versus non-human might consider that the biological belonging to the human category is not sufficient for being a member of the moral community of human beings, and they might hold that certainly all human beings should belong to our moral community except those who are non-human.14 This strategy of thinking must clearly be opposed. With respect to these descriptions we turn now to the normative function of insight which could allow us to rephrase the Kantian ‘what shall I do?’ which I posed at the beginning of my considerations. This question could be understood in two ways: firstly, it might mean the question ‘why should I act morally?’ Secondly, it could mean, ‘assuming that I want to act morally, then What shall I do?’ The first question might be answered by either the egoist or ‘purest’ (who divides human beings into human and non-human) with the question: ‘Why should I be responsible for, or even help, somebody who is dirty, wild and evil?’ Rationally argued, we could say that culture, gender, skin colour, religion etcetera should be irrelevant to the duty of helping someone. But this thesis

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presupposes that everyone belongs to the human community. And for those who make human/non-human distinctions, helping someone who does not belong to the human community is taken as a moral imposition because they would not agree that belonging biologically to the human kind subsequently means also belonging ethically to the realm of human beings. A better answer might be not only to appeal to moral duty or obligation, but to remember, in light of the generative function of insight, the normative side of the sad stories: The stories of the lost children. The others are born human beings. They have a family, a mother. Can I disregard somebody’s misery or trouble if I know she/he has a mother just as I have, or children like mine? Of course, I know that human beings are capable of all sorts of brutal things, and the appeal to these sentiments produce only laughter. However, and nevertheless, concrete feelings must/could be included as the normative function of insight in the realm of thinking and acting. The second kind of question is the following: ‘Assuming that I want to act morally, then what shall I do?’ This means that my attitude is already one of including the other in the ethical community of human beings and of assuming responsibility. The acting person can be assured, by reference to the generative connection, of her/his basic difference and her/his basic relation with other human beings. In this way we can overcome the missing link between the concrete other and general moral claims. However, there might still be a gap between the hermeneutic side of insight and the normative dimension. This gap is filled by the recognition (Anerkennung) of the generative context, and the personal insight that one self and all other human beings are members of a generative connection (which reaches even further as the presence of living people) of finite, sensitive, thoughtful and vulnerable beings who can plan their actions, and who have a right to their generative space and connection. Thus, the initiative to a moral action is based on this personal insight of belonging that grounds the ability to take on responsibility.

3. Responsibility and moral acting or the bringing together of thinking and acting The right to legitimizing had been fundamental for discourse ethics; however, in order to make daily situations of moral acting describable we have to complement the notion of personal insight with a weak notion of responsibility. The difference between a strong and a weak notion of responsibility accords with the concept of a moral

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person. Kant has described responsibility by following Locke’s notion of a person. A person is that subject who can be held accountable for his actions.15 The classic concept of responsibility includes essentially three elements: causality, the attribution of the consequences of an act to a person, and subjective intentions, knowledge, norms and values which concern not only the agent but also the community. This concept of a tight relation between subject and responsibility is based on an exclusion of the particular situation and its demands; it is based on a dichotomy between subject and object and, accordingly, on the strong and active potential of one subject, and on the passivity of an object that is acted upon but is itself excluded from acting. A weak notion of responsibility is not weak because of its content (it may certainly include, for instance, medical actions which are often irreversible), but because of its structure. This notion of responsibility can be used beyond the thesis of egalitarian reciprocity of discourse ethics. It is a concept which particularly fits non-reciprocal, asymmetrical relations. Hans Jonas thought that these asymmetrical relations would be paradigmatic for moral relations, such as, for example, the care relation between mother and child which were, to his mind, the ‘timeless original picture of all responsibility’ that is naturally given and traditionally taken by women (Jonas 234). Instead of honouring Jonas’ picture of naturally given gender roles, I would like to draw attention to the idea that we certainly should promote equal participation in the ethical and political realm of society, but we cannot presuppose reciprocal and symmetrical relations in society. Arendt remarks cryptically: ‘In speaking and acting we turn towards the world of humans and thus turning towards is like a second birth, in which we affirm the fact of the being born, actually taking on the responsibility for us’ (Arendt, The Human Condition 194). In this quote, the notion of responsibility refers firstly to my own self for whom I take on responsibility insofar as I uphold it to thinking and acting. This is important because only by acting with others can my self openly appear. If it were not possible to act and speak together, and if people did not take on responsibilities, then society would consist of isolated human beings who would unreflectively follow anyone’s command. Thus, Arendt appeals here to actively taking on responsibility for oneself, because without it, someone else will make decisions for one. Secondly, responsibility refers here to the fact of being born of someone else for whom I may take on responsibility. However, I shall not take on responsibility for him or her, or for his or her acting, but for the fact of being born, that is, for the

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support and steady revitalization of human relations and the plurality among human beings which are grounded in human natality. Thus, thirdly, responsibility is directed towards the world. For Arendt, this is the political world. However, in light of this discussion, the concept of responsibility must be broadened in order to hold good for the moral world as well, that is, from the world between human beings which is a world of our human relations for which we need to care. Amor mundi – ‘the love of the world’ is a genitive construction and it contains a twofold meaning: On the one hand, we can understand amor mundi in the sense of the accusative as love for the world, as care and responsibility for the world; and on the other hand, we can understand it as love from the world, that is, as love from the world-in-between, from the relations in which I was born, in which I grew up, and in which I make the experience of responsibility, love and care for me. The Arendtian appeal shows that responsibility does not depend upon one individual; rather it focuses on the establishment and re-establishment of the worlds inbetween. In order to initiate human relations, and in order to open these moral worlds with others, responsibility must rely on personal insight, that is, to think about (‘sich Gedanken machen’) in regard to the needs and rights of other human beings and their and our relations. To think about, to have insight, inseeing, can be the first step toward taking the initiative to stop the course of events and to becoming active in order, for instance, to help. ‘To think about’, that is, personal insight, is not based simply on reflective judgement that is directed towards considerations of right and wrong, and which can come to the conclusion ‘something must be done’, or ‘one must do something’. To put myself in a moral action, for example, in the case of a violation of human rights or in the case of the need for help, I do so not only on the basis of a rational consideration about an injustice, or only on the basis of sympathy for a stranger. Rather, the sentiment of ‘I must do something’, and actually doing something is taking on responsibility which is grounded in moral discourses as well as personal insight in its manifold function, which turns the moral consideration into an initiative. Thus, responsibility for and in the world in connection with personal insight is needed to hold up against possible feelings of powerlessness or the present trend of subsuming human relations, values and norms under an economic and strategic thinking, so-called normality. When I have the personal insight that ‘I must do something’, I turn my thinking into moral action and initiative.

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Notes 1. Freedom means for Kant to be free from natural or social determinations such as inclinations or interests. 2. Not all actions between human beings may involve responsibility. Human beings also act towards animals or the environment. I use the notion of action in a narrow sense, that is, I consider those actions that may concern responsibility insofar as they form the quality of human relations. However, I do concede that many actions can be regarded in a practical or moral sense. Since I consider the conditions for moral actions within the Kantian framework, I presuppose the moral intention behind the question ‘how to act morally?’ (See Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, S. 71. Also Arendt, ‘Thinking and Moral Consideration’, 417–46, esp. 445). 3. Responsibility is also a functional term, for example, in a company, in the sense of having the power. 4. About the history of the notion of responsibility see the introduction by Kurt Bayertz, Verantwortung. Prinzip oder Problem? 3ff. Bayertz does not give responsibility any moral value. I think that the will to a morally acceptable solution already includes a moral value. However, I do agree that the notion of responsibility does not lead necessarily to a legitimized moral action. 5. Arendt refers to Plato’s dialogue Hippias maior in which Socrates tells Hippias about his fellow who awaits him at home and with whom he has to come to some sort of agreement because they live under the same roof (Arendt, Life of the Mind, 188). This passage is interesting because it emphasizes the dialogical character of moral thinking at least in principle. 6. Conscience, particularly a bad conscience, is based mostly on moral rules which are embedded in a bodily memory. This phenomenon is made apparent when the body reacts, for example, by sweating or when colour rushes to the face, in accordance with feelings of guilt. 7. Heidegger is of no help here because he only calls upon one’s own guilt (zum je eigensten Schuldigsein). 8. In 1987 Benhabib (see the already cited Benhabib, ‘Urteilskraft und die moralischen Grundlagen ’) had assumed the finding of consent when entering into a discourse; however, she realizes now (1999) that often ‘moral and political dialogues do not evoke consent but rather they aim at legitimization’. 9. With this thesis, Benhabib’s ethical discourse approach distinguishes itself from Apel’s formal metaethical project as well as from Habermas’ metaethical approach in connection with the normative-ethical conception in the form of a procedural ethic. 10. For a description of the notion of ‘context’ see the informative article by Brenner (375–91). 11. Phronesis means here ethical insight; it is a way towards, and an ability to have, the ‘good life’. I do not mean in this context the psychotherapeutic ‘insightful behaviour’. 12. ‘ the proposition intuited must be clear and distinct it must be grasped in its totality at the same time and not successively’ (Descartes, 33). I prefer the notion of insight because it seems to me broader than the notion of intuition, which emphasizes the intellectual act.

244 The Other 13. ‘Generativität besagt dann, dass ich nicht nur mit Anderen in die Welt komme und in der Welt bin, sondern auch von Anderen herkomme und in Anderen weiterlebe.’ 14. Rorty makes this sort of thinking very clear (Rorty 144–70); he explicitly refers to the work of Annette Baier who focuses on a Humean ethics. 15. However, Kant avoids the notion of responsibility in his ‘Gesinnungsethik’.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ——. Between Past and Future. Middlesex (England): Penguin, 1968. ——. The Life of the Mind. San Diego/New York/London: A Harvest Book, Harcourt Inc. 1971. ——. ‘Thinking and Moral Consideration: a Lecture’. Social Research 38.3 (autumn 1971): 417–46 ——. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Ed. R. Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Edited and translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1985. Bayertz, Kurt: Verantwortung. Prinzip oder Problem? Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995. Benhabib, Seyla. ‘Urteilskraft und die moralischen Grundlagen der Politik im Werk Hannah Arendts’. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung. 41. Ed. H.M. Baumgartner and O. Höffe. Meisenheim 1987. 521–47. ——. ‘The Generalized and the Concrete Other’. Situating the Self, Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 148–77. ——. Kulturelle Vielfalt und demokratische Gleichheit. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1999. Brenner, Andreas. ‘ “Kontext” als ethische Kategorie’. Ethica 9 (2001): 375–91. Cavarero, Adriana. ‘Schauplätze der Einzigartigkeit.’ Phänomenologie und Geschlechterdifferenz. Ed. Silvia Stoller and Helmuth Vetter. Vienna: Universitätsverlag, 1997. 207–26. Descartes, René. ‘Rules for the Direction of the Mind.’ The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Translated and edited by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. Vol. I. 16th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Gürtler, Sabine. Elementare Ethik. Alterität, Generativität und Geschlechterverhältnis bei Emmanuel Lévinas. Munich: Fink, 2001. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by Boye Gibson. London: George Allen & Uniwin Ltd, 1931. ——. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Husserliana Bd. XV. Ed. Iso Kern. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1973. Jonas, Hans. Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1984. Rorty, Richard. ‘Menschenrechte, Rationalität und Gefühl’. Die Idee der Menschenrechte. Ed. S. Shute and S. Hurley. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1996. 144–70. Scheler, Max. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Bern: Francke, 1980.

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Schües, Christina. ‘Moralphilosophische Fragen zum “Embryo”: Am Anfang ist die Beziehung’. Der Traum vom, besseren’ Menschen. Zum Verhältnis von praktischer Philosophie und Biotechnologie, Ed. R. Rehn, C. Schües and F. Weinreich. Frankfurt, Bern, New York: Lang 2003, S. 33–54. Thoné, Astrid. ‘A Radical Gift. Ethics and Motherhood in Emmanuel Levinas’ Otherwise than Being’. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 29.2 (1998): 116–31. Waldenfels, Bernhard. Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an Edmund Husserl. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1971. Vetlesen, Arne Johan. ‘Relations with Others in Sartre and Levinas: Assessing Some Implications for an Ethics of Proximity’. Constellations 1.3 (1995): 358–82.

10 Plural Perspectives and Independence: Political and Moral Judgement in Hannah Arendt Veronica Vasterling

Judgement is a very important but difficult topic in Hannah Arendt’s conception of human existence in general, and of plurality in particular. Her well-known notion of plurality – it is not human kind but human beings, in the plural, who inhabit the earth – is fleshed out in phenomenological analyses of action and judgement, two activities that, in Arendt’s view, constitute the humanness of human life. Her phenomenological attitude is far removed from the phenomenological methods of the founder, Edmund Husserl. Instead of theoretical constructions and reflections, and systematic conceptual analysis, Arendt is dedicated to the explication and interpretation – in a narrative style and everyday, non-technical language – of real-life, historical experiences that animate political concepts like ‘freedom’, ‘revolution’, ‘terror’, but also more general philosophical concepts such as ‘contingency’, ‘causality’, and ‘free will’. In contrast to most philosophers, including the philosopher who has inspired her account of judgement, Immanuel Kant, Arendt doesn’t prefer the neat consistency of a philosophical theory at the expense of facing human reality in all its haphazard, messy and sometimes bewildering factuality. It is this commitment to face the world and to understand the often traumatic events that shake the world, as well as her very keen eye for the contingencies of human existence, that make Arendt’s work so refreshing and, compared to established philosophy, quite unique.1 Judgement would have been the topic of the third volume of the trilogy The Life of the Mind, but Arendt died before finishing her book on the mental activities of thinking (Volume I), willing (Volume II) and judging. There are, however, a lot of references and discussions pertaining to the topic of judgement throughout her work. Moreover, in the 1960s and 1970s she taught a course on judging several times, 246

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each time departing from Kant’s Critique of Judgment. These lectures have been edited and published by Ronald Beiner under the title Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. It is not so much the lack of material as its inconclusiveness that constitutes the main problem for assessing Arendt’s notion of judgement. In particular, there is an apparent contradiction between the two aspects of judgement emphasized by her that calls for an explanatory interpretation.2 On the one hand, judgement should take into account as many perspectives as possible and, hence, be as representative as possible. On the other hand, judgement should be independent and not parrot – as was paradigmatically the case with Nazi official Adolf Eichmann – the views of the majority and/or the authorities. In this essay I will elaborate the interpretive hypothesis that there is a shift in Arendt’s work that makes for distinct and, at first sight, incompatible features of judgement. Whereas political judgement with its requirement of representativeness takes centre stage in the earlier work, moral judgement with its requirement of independence appears to become a central concern in the later work. Though Arendt herself does not refer to it in these terms, the distinction between political and moral judgement is implicit in her work. The reason for foregrounding this distinction is that it helps to clarify the tension between the apparently disparate features Arendt attributes to judgement. An important common source for both types of judgement, however, is Kant’s Critique of Judgment or, rather, Arendt’s specific appropriation of it. I will therefore discuss the distinction between moral and political judgement against the background of Arendt’s interpretation of Kant. But I will first introduce the meaning and function of pluralist speech – of which judgement is one, albeit important, specimen – in Arendt’s conception of politics.

Politics and pluralist speech An important early source for the topic of judgement is the 1953 essay ‘Understanding and Politics’ (Essays in Understanding 1930–1954). In this essay Arendt discusses the difficulty of understanding and judging the phenomenon of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is an historical event and the understanding of history has to deal with specific challenges. According to Arendt: Newness is the realm of the historian, who – unlike the natural scientist, who is concerned with ever-recurring happenings – deals

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with events which always occur only once. This newness can be manipulated if the historian insists on causality and pretends to be able to explain events by a chain of causes which eventually led up to them. Causality, however, is an altogether alien and falsifying category in the historical sciences. Not only does the actual meaning of every event always transcend any number of past ‘causes’ which we may assign to it but this past itself comes into being only with the event itself. Only when something irrevocable has happened can we even try to trace its history backward. The event illuminates its own past; it can never be deduced from it. (318–19) The point Arendt makes here does not concern a purported duality of nature and history, but the specific nature of historical phenomena as distinguished from natural phenomena.3 Causal explanations are incapable of getting at the core of historical events, which is their newness, as they can only capture the new by retracing it to something already existing. This is its cause; thus causal explanations cannot but reduce the newness of historical events to the old and familiar. Historical events are new and singular because they are the effect of human action. In contrast to labour and production, action, according to Arendt, always leads to singular and new events and states of affairs in the world. The quintessence of the political in Arendt’s sense, action has three features which together make action into the beginning of something new (The Human Condition 175–81). An example will help to explicate the relation and meaning of the three features, so, for example, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The people who took to the streets in great numbers in November 1989, and shouted to the reigning leaders of the German People’s Republic (that East Germany pretended to be) ‘we are the people’, showed, firstly, that action is always action in concert and always involves speech. To act on your own without at least one spectator does not have any factuality, for (the meaning of ) the act will disappear without leaving a trace. Secondly, they showed that to act means to take the initiative to do something one is not obliged nor compelled to do. The happy bewilderment that befell both the actors and the spectators who watched the unfolding of the events on television demonstrates, thirdly, that nobody had foreseen the effect of this action. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the unexpected event resulting from the action of ordinary East German citizens. Whatever the intentions and goals of individual actors who took to the streets, the swift and peaceful fall of the Wall took everybody by surprise.

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Thus, in contrast to most philosophers, Arendt does not reduce action to the carrying out of a preconceived plan or intention. In her view, instrumental and teleological types of behaviour do not qualify as action for they lack the essential feature of newness which results from acting in concert. Transcending individual intentions and goals, the dynamics of acting together initiates a sequence of action and reaction that leads to unforeseen events and new states of affairs. Because of their very newness and singularity, understanding and judging historical events requires a lot more than induction and deduction, the search for causal regularities and the application of general laws or concepts. Logical argument, knowledge and experience are, together or separately, insufficient to grasp the meaning of historical events, though knowledge and acknowledgement of relevant facts is a necessary condition of good judgement and understanding. As I will argue shortly, what good judgement and understanding requires is imagination, the Einbildungskraft which plays such an important role in Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Understanding and judging the phenomenon of totalitarianism is difficult for another reason as well. Arendt’s inquiry into the origins of totalitarianism4 leads to the insight that ‘what is frightening in the rise of totalitarianism is not that it is something new, but that it has brought to light the ruin of our categories of thought and standards of judgment’ (Essays in Understanding 1930–1954 318). Thus, on top of the difficulty of understanding and judging new and singular events, we, people of the twentieth and twenty-first century, are empty-handed because the traditional ‘tools of understanding’, i.e. ‘the categories of political understanding’ and ‘the standards of moral judgment’, are destroyed (ibid. 310) This theme of the loss of standards and categories will be broadened to a critique of Western modernity in The Human Condition, and the breaking of ‘the thread of tradition’ in Between Past and Future (14). The rise of world alienation since the eighteenth century, and the loss of common sense with its tried and tested categories and standards, have eroded the pillars of Western tradition to such an extent that they snap when the first symptoms of totalitarianism became manifest at the dawn of the twentieth century.5 Because of the emergence and increasing dominance of capitalist consumer society and the conquest, supported by science and technology, of earthly nature and the universe, strategic and instrumental exploits have all but replaced political action, and as a consequence, the experience of freedom and plurality has withered and been forgotten.6 Action, in the sense described by Arendt, is the heart of the political, for action is the only way to realize plurality and freedom, that is, to turn both into concrete, existential and worldly phenomena.

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Plurality refers to the fact that people, as actors, are both distinct and equal. Differences between people appear in word and deed, insofar as no one acts and speaks alike, not even identical twins.7 Action is also the realization or practice of freedom, for, of all human endeavours, only action is free initiative, enabling the establishment of an unexpected new and common worldly reality. Instrumental and strategic action and speech, by contrast, constrain agents to the role of bureaucratic drafters and executors of policies, and of architects and engineers of preconceived blueprints. Changes brought about by these types of action and speech do not result in unexpected new states of affairs, nor, for the most part, in a common public sphere. Worldly changes brought about by bureaucratic policies and technological innovation, will only succeed in establishing a common public world, if, and only if, people appropriate the changes as actors in Arendt’s sense – which is not impossible as the phenomenon of the Internet demonstrates, but more of an exception than the rule. In Arendt’s conception of the political, the notion of world plays a crucial role. Evidently, world, as opposed to nature, is not a given. A world must be built and maintained which is partly the work of homo faber, human beings who produce relatively permanent artefacts – from houses and cars to sewage systems, and from art and house decoration to books and movies – and who design and maintain the material (infra)-structure of the world. More important, however, in view of the (survival of the) political, is the immaterial or ‘intangible’ dimension of world, described by Arendt as the ephemeral and fragile ‘web of human relationships’, and the events, facts and states of affairs resulting from human action (The Human Condition 183). This intangible web of human relations is ephemeral in the sense that acts, facts and events have no impact and meaning, and may even be forgotten altogether, unless they are captured and memorized in stories of all kinds, ranging from official historiography to novels, and from opinions and judgements of individuals to public debates and collective decision-taking processes. The web of human relations is fragile because its dependence on stories makes it vulnerable to ideological and other kinds of manipulation. The intangible, symbolical world – the word ‘symbolical’ refers to the dependence, of this dimension of the world, on language and stories – is brought about and maintained by the pluralist speech and action of human beings. Without a plurality of stories, opinions, judgements pertaining to the actions of plural human beings, the symbolical world would ultimately evaporate. Comparable to the illumination of an object from all sides, the manifold of plural perspectives on the same

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state of affairs imparts a certain measure of solidity and objectivity to the ephemeral web of human relations, facts and events of the symbolical world. Thus, stories in all their plural variety have the enormously important function of rendering the transient and fragile symbolical dimension of the world more solid and real, and of sustaining it as a common public space. If people would not act there would not be a symbolical world, but without pluralist speech the symbolical world would not survive as a common, public space. Obviously, the attrition of the political in Arendt’s sense will have enormous consequences. When the experience and realization of plurality and freedom disappears the result will be that the symbolical world will first lose its character of communality, then its meaningfulness, and finally its reality. World alienation is accompanied by the loss of common sense, that is, the sense of reality which cannot be expected to function without the guidance supplied by a common symbolical world and hence, a common frame of reference. Arendt’s critique of modernity foregrounds, for good reasons I think, the dangers of instrumentalizing pluralist speech. Speech and action which are merely instruments to achieve a preconceived aim or to maximize efficiency or utility are not political in Arendt’s view. They become politically relevant only insofar as the dimension of instrumentality is transcended or supplemented with the constitution of new meaning and/or a new state of affairs. Politically relevant speech interprets acts, facts and events, and inserts them in a framework that, quite literally, makes sense. In a world of increasing economic imperialism where public institutions like education, health care and media are subjected to the forces of market competition and commercialization, pluralist speech is not only in the process of being replaced by strategic speech, but it also struggles with a loss of status and credibility. Compared to the normative dominance and social status of strategic speech – that is, instrumental speech aiming at maximizing productivity, efficiency, utility, or, in general: success – pluralist speech starts to look naïve or hypocritical. Thus, the perception of politics as a useless, hypocritical business and of politicians as profiteers and manipulators, widespread for already several decennia in the USA, and becoming popular in contemporary Europe, should not come as a surprise, nor the pervasive indifference for anything political. Judgement is a particular instance of pluralist speech, and like the latter, it requires the opposite of indifference. Only citizens who take an interest in what happens in the world will take the effort to form an opinion or judgement about contingent facts. But good judgement

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not only requires an interest in the world, it also requires distance for the simple reason that distance affords a better overview of events and their effects and consequences.8 We do not have that kind of distance while we are acting, for acting means being wrapped up in an unfolding sequence of events. Only if we step aside, and take our distance, becoming spectators instead of actors, are we able to reflect on and judge the events. We can be both actor and judge with respect to the same set of events, but not simultaneously. Though the ‘backward glance of the historian’ (The Human Condition 192) is probably the best position to judge, the survival of the symbolical world requires the manifold judgements of contemporaneous spectators of worldly events and states of affairs. Though lacking an overview, especially with respect to consequences and effects, the position of the contemporaneous spectator still affords enough distance for judgement. Moreover, without the judgement and stories of contemporaneous spectators future historians would lack the resources for their historical accounts. In short, judgements and stories of contemporaneous spectators integrate acts, facts and events in the symbolical space of the world, thereby preserving them for coming generations, while the work of historians guarantees the memory and, hence, the continuity of the symbolical world in the long run. That is not to say that any judgement will do. As I will discuss in the next two sections, one of the most important standards of good judgement is the taking into account of multiple perspectives.

The Kant lectures: reflective judgement In Arendt, the relevant phenomena to be judged are acts, facts, events and states of affairs resulting from human action. The feature Arendt insists upon most is the singularity and newness of these phenomena. Judgement in the ordinary sense of subsuming particular instances under general rules or concepts is unsuitable for it cannot do justice to the features of singularity and newness. This is why she becomes interested in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The aesthetic judgement discussed in this book is another type of judgement than the determinate judgement described above. Kant distinguishes between determinate judgements in the area of cognition and morality, and reflective judgements in the area of aesthetics. In the case of determinate judgements the general is given, that is, the categories and rules of intellect (Verstand ) and the categorical imperative of practical reason ( praktische Vernunft), under which the particular is to be subsumed,

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whereas in the case of reflective judgement the general is not given but must be found through the particular or the singular. In Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982) Arendt distinguishes three decisive moments in the process of reflective judgement.9 The first moment is the instant of the direct ‘taste’ of what we see, hear, read, experience. Taste appeals and discriminates, in the literal sense of making distinctions, in a direct and unmediated way: it evokes pleasure or displeasure, liking or dislike, enthusiasm or aversion in the spectator. Though this first moment of being affected is indispensable – when we are indifferent or not touched by something, we normally will not proceed to judge it – it is often not more than an inarticulate feeling and, as such, unfit for judgement. To prepare it for judgement, one has to subject one’s feeling to the mental operations of imagination (Einbildungskraft) and reflection. The mental operation of imagination brings the phenomena we have experienced, and which have affected us in one way or another, before our ‘mental eye’. Re-running things in our head several times, we form a representation of what we experienced. It is important to note that Arendt makes a strict distinction between imagination and fantasy: whereas the former is always directed at worldly reality, the latter tries to escape this reality, and while imagination plays an important role in understanding and judging worldly reality, fantasy and fancy are only capable of fiction and projection of a solipsist interiority.10 Imagination prepares the object for reflection and judgement: now the imagination has prepared it [the object of judgement, V.V.] so that I can reflect on it. This is ‘the operation of reflection.’ Only what touches, affects, one in representation, when one can no longer be affected by immediate presence can be judged to be right or wrong, important or irrelevant, beautiful or ugly, or something in between. One then speaks of judgment and no longer of taste because, though it still affects one like a matter of taste, one now has, by means of representation, established the proper distance, the remoteness or uninvolvedness or disinterestedness, that is requisite for approbation and disapprobation, for evaluating something at its proper worth. (Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 67) To judge the new and singular without reducing it to the familiar and general requires a paradoxical operation. For the new has to be made recognizable in some way while preserving its newness and the singular has to be generalized in some way while preserving its singularity. The

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only way to do that is to aim at exemplary validity. In order to achieve exemplary validity the object of judgement must be judged as an exemplary instance of something more general – as in my description, above, of the fall of the Berlin Wall as an exemplary instance of Arendt’s conception of the political. By describing an event as an exemplary instance, the unexpected, singular character of the event is retained while the appeal to a general concept, in this case Arendt’s conception of the political, enables judgement. Judgement achieves exemplary validity when the exemplary instance in its singularity indeed succeeds at illuminating the general concept or rule.11 Understanding and judgement are a quest for meaning, rather than truth. Though factual truth and knowledge are, obviously, important conditions for understanding and judgement, the endeavour to make sense of contingent worldly happenings aims at the persuasiveness of exemplary validity instead of the compelling unequivocalness of truth. Arendt makes a strict distinction between truth and meaning. Whereas truth is definite, unchangeable, and compelling, meaning and sense are plural, changeable and convincing (or, of course, unconvincing).12 The reason and import of the distinction is mainly political for in politics ‘it is not knowledge or truth which is at stake, but rather judgment and decision, the judicious exchange of opinion about the sphere of public life and the common world, and the decision what manner of action is to be taken in it ’ (Arendt, Between Past and Future 223) The unchangeable and compelling definiteness of truth does not suit the public sphere, while the changeable plurality and (un-)persuasiveness of meaning and sense, on the contrary, do. Plurality and freedom wither when ‘truth loving’ philosopher-kings and visionaries take it upon themselves to enlighten the deluded masses, as a long tradition from Plato to Heidegger has it; nor will they thrive under the guidance of experts and technocrats who know what is best for us. They will only flourish when individuals themselves engage, discuss and evaluate with others the meanings and values they attribute to worldly acts, facts and events. In order to achieve exemplary validity judgements should, of course, be more than the expression of the subjective perspective of the individual. The reflectivity of reflective judgement not only consists in illuminating the general in the singular, but also in transforming and widening one’s perspective with the help of ‘enlarged thought’ (Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 43). Meaning and value attribution which remains merely subjective will result in judgements that are either empty or incomprehensible. Judgements will become more convincing

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when subjective meaning and value attribution is transformed and widened by taking the viewpoints of others into account.

Political judgement Arendt’s interpretation of Kant provides a clear account of the role of taste, imagination and reflection in the process of judgement, but as to the aim or standard of judgement, it mainly focuses on representativeness. Representative judgements are judgements that are impartial in a specific way: The greater the reach – the larger the realm in which the enlightened individual is able to move from standpoint to standpoint – the more ‘general’ will be his thinking. This generality, however, is closely connected with particulars, with the particular conditions of the standpoints one has to go through in order to arrive at one’s own ‘general standpoint’. This general standpoint we spoke of earlier as impartiality (Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 43–4). Representative judgements are impartial judgements if impartiality is understood as representing particular viewpoints, or, in short, plurality. I prefer the term ‘representativeness’ to ‘impartiality’ because the latter is more likely to be taken to reflect a majority view taking precedence over the subjective viewpoint, or a consensual view, arrived at by reducing the distinctive diversity of viewpoints, including one’s own. The majority view and the consensual view reduce plurality, whereas representative judgement is pluralist and, in that sense, impartial. Representative judgement does, therefore, not require the subjection or adaptation of the subjective viewpoint to the viewpoints of others nor the relinquishment of the subjective viewpoint to the majority view, but, on the contrary, the achievement of ‘one’s own “general standpoint” ’. Arendt’s focus on representativeness in the Kant lectures should not be a surprise because the horizon of her interpretation is political as indicated by the title, ‘Lectures on Kant’s political philosophy’ (emphasis mine) and within the sphere of politics representativeness is arguably the most decisive standard of judgement. As plurality is, according to Arendt, the crux of the political, judgement within the sphere of politics is the more convincing the more representative it is, that is, the more diverse viewpoints it has taken into account. Moreover, representativeness fits the political import of judgement as a specimen of pluralist speech. It is not the generality of a majority

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or consensual view, but the plurality of perspectives as expressed in representative judgement and other pluralist speech, which allows the fragile and ephemeral web of human relations, acts and facts, to gain the solidity of a common world. The solidity and commonality of the common world does not consist in, and is not sustained by, the generality of a majority or consensual view because, despite their generality, the majority and consensual view represent just one perspective and are therefore incapable to illuminate the web of human relations from all sides. Though far more general than the subjective view, like the latter, the majority or consensual view cannot by itself consolidate the web of human relations into a common world. In Arendt commonality, like impartiality, is linked to plurality rather than generality. Before moving on to discuss other questions in relation to (political) judgement, I want to first introduce and discuss moral judgement in Arendt.

Moral judgement In 1962 Arendt attended the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, an experience which resulted in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. The confrontation with Eichmann was one of Arendt’s reasons to occupy herself with ‘the life of the mind’ and, more specifically, with moral judgement. What struck her in Eichmann was his banality. Though responsible for the execution of the Endlösung – the ‘final solution’, meaning the extermination of the Jewish population in Europe – Arendt saw and heard an utterly ordinary official who spoke in clichés, was devoid of anti-Semitic or other demonic motives, and manifested a conspicuous thoughtlessness: a total lack of thought and imagination (Eichmann in Jerusalem 287–8). The observation of Eichmann’s comportment raised the following question: Might the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from wrong, be connected with our faculty of thought? Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually ‘condition’ them against it? (The Life of the Mind 5) In this quotation Arendt formulates a hypothesis that she will examine in The Life of the Mind and other work of the 1970s. Underlying this hypothesis concerning the relation between thinking and moral judgement

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are the two new – with respect to previous discussions of political judgement in Arendt’s work – aspects of judgement the Eichmann case brought to light. Whereas political judgement pertains to human affairs, acts, facts and events that have happened or are unfolding, moral judgement makes more sense if the judgement takes place in advance of intended courses of action. The principle of responsibility and accountability in both the administration of law and daily life presumes that people are capable of judging beforehand whether the course of action they intend to take is good or evil, right or wrong. Without the capacity to judge future actions, moral judgement would be rather pointless and criminal law would lose its most important legitimacy. The second aspect highlighted by the Eichmann case concerns the common assumption that people are capable of independent judgement. Despite the fact that states may legalize or condone genocide, apartheid or terrorism, individuals are presumed to be able to form their own judgements, independent of what the prevailing legal and political systems allow or condone. Here as well, we see a remarkable contrast with political judgement. Whereas the persuasiveness of political judgement derives from its representativeness, from taking the viewpoints of others into account, the independence of moral judgement consists in bracketing the viewpoints of others in favour of one’s own conscience. Both issues have made Arendt aware of the importance of thinking for moral judgement and action. Her privileged example in the investigation of the hypothesized relation between thinking and moral judgement and action is the example of Socrates.13 Socrates’ thinking is exemplary, in particular, for two features of thought: its destructiveness and its conscience-raising power. Emblematic for the Socratic dialogues is their aporetic character. They do not result in knowledge, truth or a doctrine; each dialogue, on the contrary, starts the questioning anew. The Socratic dialogues thereby show that thinking is not the search for and contemplation of (eternal) truth, but pure activity which finds its aim in itself, rather than in cognitive results. In contrast to logical and cognitive thought processes which have an exterior aim, namely the consistency that can be formalized and expressed in rules and laws, and a corpus of knowledge that can be transmitted and recorded, authentic thinking is pure actuality. It is not devoted to the revelation of truth, but to achieving understanding: a ‘quest for meaning’ rather than truth (Arendt, The Life of the Mind 62). Knowledge, logical rules and (factual) truths we mostly learn from others, the meaning and value of worldly phenomena, however, we have to find out ourselves, through

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thinking.14 Because of the plurality and contingency of human existence and the human world meaning is plural and changing. Meaning cannot be possessed like truth, it only exists in the actualizing of thinking. That is why thinking is a quest for meaning: it has to start anew each time. As pure activity thinking is destructive, rather than constructive. By starting anew, again and again, thinking not only destroys its own results but also one’s dependence on the received opinions, frames of reference, norms, values of the world one inhabits. The critical independence of thought, emphasized by Arendt, is enabled by the purifying destructiveness of the activity of thought. Socrates is exemplary because in his aporetic dialogues with Athenian citizens he undermines their certainties and makes them question their established rules and standards. This purifying, emptying force of thought is the best possible preparation for independent judgement because, in the words of Arendt, ‘we are now prepared to meet the phenomena, so to speak, head on, without any preconceived system’.15 Apart from pure actuality and purifying destructiveness, thought has a third feature that is relevant in this context. Arendt conceives thought also as a dialogue with oneself. The reflexivity of thinking refers to an inner plurality, the so-called ‘two-in-one’ (The Life of the Mind 179) that is actualized in the dialogue with oneself. The Socratic standard for the dialogue with oneself is harmony with oneself. The inner dialogue that meets this standard may protect against doing evil for ‘it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer’ (The Life of the Mind 188). In the dialogue with ourselves we review our words and deeds, what we have done and omitted to do. To commit murder would, in that case, mean that we have to spend the rest of our lives in the company of a murderer. Nurturing what is traditionally called conscience, the dialogue with oneself may ‘make men abstain from evil-doing or even actually “condition” them against it’.

Conclusion: independence and representativity Despite the distinction I have made between political and moral judgement, I think it would be a mistake to conclude that political judgement is representative and moral judgement independent; and that the latter judges beforehand and the former retrospectively or contemporaneously. What I want to argue, as conclusion, is that political and moral judgements have a different function, but the same standards,

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representativity and independence, though the standards don’t always have the same weight and import. It is a matter of circumstance and function which standard is key. The reason why Arendt foregrounds independence as standard of judgement – albeit implicitly, because she does not speak of the matter in these terms – becomes more clear if we take a closer look at the context of the exemplary case of Eichmann. In totalitarian regimes, and in times of terror and systematic ideological manipulation, the standard of representativeness loses its validity. For, under those circumstances, representative judgements are judgements which are supportive of, and complicit with the regimes and the prevalent ideology and value system. Because of the lack of real freedom and plurality, judgements, in these circumstances, cannot be anything else but representative in this complicit way. If they were not, they would be, at best, dissident, at worst, outlawed and reason to be shipped off to concentration camps, gulags, torture chambers. In these circumstances, independence is the first and most important requirement of good judgement – and that concerns both moral and political judgement. Arendt’s critique of modernity provides an additional reason. If Arendt is right, and the condition of Western modernity is one of world alienation and loss of political categories and moral standards, what the present situation requires is not ‘a return to a shattered tradition, nor a simple call to action, but a radical questioning of all the old “yardsticks” for action and judgment. What is called for in such situations is not activism, but independent judgment’ (Villa, Politics, Philosophy Terror 100). Whether one concurs with Arendt’s rather pessimistic view or not, the fact, alas, is that many regions in the world continue to suffer from dictatorial and (proto-)totalitarian conditions. And even in the free and democratic West there are more and more occasions that make one wonder about the independent judgement of news media. For instance, in the case of the Iraq war with its ‘embedded’ journalists, and in the coverage of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I would have liked to be able to follow the news programmes of Al Jazeera, to counterbalance the one-sidedness of CNN and other Western news media, not because I think Al Jazeera is less one-sided, but to have at least some measure of representativeness. What this shows is that under conditions of democratic freedom, the lack of independent judgement appears to come down to a lack of representative judgement for various reasons such as the commercial interests of the media, depoliticized ‘consumers’ of the media, and ideological manipulation.

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However that may be, independence is never the only standard of good judgement, not even in the extreme cases where displaying independence of judgement is enough to risk one’s life. An independent judgement that does not abstract ‘from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment’ remains merely subjective. Good judgement not only requires the independence of critical thought but also the representativity of the erweiterte Denkungsart. Eichmann not only lacked independent judgement and the habit of critical thought that underlies it, he also lacked imagination, that is, the capacity to imagine how things look from the perspective of others, especially those who were killed in the concentrations camps and their families and friends. When we lack the imagination to engage with the viewpoints of others in the process of forming a judgement, our judgement may be critical and independent with respect to the prevailing powers, but it will not be convincing – not even to ourselves – because of its subjectivity. One of the most important phenomenological insights of Arendt’s philosophy is that our sense of reality is dependent on a plurality of perspectives, illuminating a state of affairs from all sides, whereas subjectivity, or the condition of being trapped in just one general perspective, robs us of our sense of reality. A judgement that merely expresses the subjective perspective, or just one general perspective, and fails to look at the issue from as many sides as possible, is not representative in the literal sense of not revealing or saying much. It is this disclosing or revelatory character that renders representative – moral and political – judgement convincing, both to others and ourselves. By illuminating (part of ) the web of human affairs from many sides, representative judgement provides a good grasp of, and a clear orientation in the symbolical world. The distinction between political and moral judgement is not dependent on the temporal condition of judging beforehand or retrospectively, either. Arendt’s insistence on the post factum character of political judgement does not entail that political judgements, unlike moral judgements, do not play any role in decisions about future courses of action. In decisions about what to do or not to do all kinds of factors play a role, among which political judgement. What should be noted however, is that judgements, in Arendt’s view, are political not because they underlie and motivate political action, but because they lend meaning to political action and its consequences, and because they, thereby, consolidate and maintain the common world of human affairs. In other words, it is their focus on, and commitment to the common world of human affairs that makes judgements political. The topic of political judgements is public appearances, that is, what is, in principle,

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visible for many people. By lending meaning to human affairs they preserve the world of appearances as a common public space. Moral judgements, by contrast, appear to have, first and foremost, an individual import in Arendt’s work. Whether they take place beforehand or retrospectively, moral judgements appear to relate mainly to the self and interpersonal relations, and to function as a guide to own actions of those of nearby others. Thus, I would argue that the distinction between political and moral judgement lies in the worldly focus and function of the former and the private focus and function of the latter. Though my argument is mostly based on ‘circumstantial evidence’, it is in line with the sharp distinction Arendt makes, in The Human Condition and On Revolution, between the political on the one hand, and the moral, conceived as the good, on the other. Whereas only those words and deeds which (can) appear in public are politically relevant, the good, on the contrary, should not become public because ‘goodness that comes out of hiding and assumes a public role is no longer good, but corrupt in its own terms and will carry its own corruption wherever it goes’ (The Human Condition 77). When moral sentiments and convictions of the good, and emotions and passions in general, transgress the borders of the private and occupy the public sphere, plurality and freedom are at risk. People distinguish themselves as unique persons through their words and deeds in the public realm, not through the interior life of their souls from which (moral) sentiments and passions hail. The expression of emotions such as love, hatred, compassion, grief, anguish, and indignation, may not be the same everywhere and for everybody, but they are in most cases recognizable. And unlike principles and ideas, emotions and passions are compelling, rather than inspiring and motivating forces with respect to action. However impeccable the moral sentiments and convictions, beyond the bounds and specific conditions of private interpersonal relations which render them meaningful, they become empty and boundless and ‘curiously insensitive to reality in general and the reality of persons in particular’ (On Revolution 90). That is why actors who want to realize their conceptions of the good in the world so often end up using the a-political instrument of violence – to which not only history testifies but also the present day world with its various moral and religious fundamentalisms. Even though the good shouldn’t ‘go public’, according to Arendt, that doesn’t mean that moral judgements cannot or should not become the topic of public debate. As feminists know well, and have argued successfully: the personal can be political. Though, with Arendt, I would add

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that the articulation of the personal, the private, in the language game of pluralist speech requires a significant transformation. The inwardlooking focus of attention needs to turn around, as it were, to face the world, and search for different and new ways of understanding instead of recognition and confirmation of what one already knows and is convinced of. Like other contributions to the public debate, moral judgements can only be meaningful and persuasive in public debate when they succeed in disclosing or illuminating specific states of affairs in the world. As long as they continue to derive their meaningfulness and persuasiveness from an appeal to the ‘hidden depths’ of the soul, however, moral judgements will undermine and weaken the pluralist reality of the public domain. Public debate, in that case, easily deteriorates into generalizing and ideological moralizing, repeating the same slogans and formulas over and over again – for instance that Islam is a ‘backward’ religion and Western culture is ‘decadent’ – and bringing passions of the soul to light which would have better remained hidden.

Notes 1. With respect to the three important characteristics of Arendt’s work mentioned here, i.e. her narrative style and the theme of story-telling, her amor mundi or love of, and commitment to, the world, and the will to understand the major events of the Western world (beginning with the event that shaped her own life: the rise of totalitarianism in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe), see, respectively, Lisa Disch, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Ursula Ludz, ‘Einleitung’ in Hannah Arendt. Ich will verstehen. Selbstauskünfte zu Leben und Werk, Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: a Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. 2. Because his essay is well known and influential, I should explain right away that my hypothesis may resemble the one of Beiner’s ‘Interpretive Essay’, but my elaboration is very different. Beiner starts from the assumption that there are ‘two theories of judgment’ (91) in Arendt’s work, one relating to the vita activa, the other to the vita contemplativa. According to Beiner ‘judgment is thus caught in the tension between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa’ (140). Despite some insights, Beiner’s interpretation is marred by mistakes, of which one of the most serious is the assumption that Arendt sticks to the traditional notion of contemplation, as expressed in the formula vita contemplativa. Already the Introduction to The Life of the Mind Volume I makes clear, at least to the attentive reader, that Arendt intends to deconstruct the vita contemplativa, in particular the conception of (thought as) contemplation, just as she did with the vita activa and the

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4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

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traditional notion of politics in The Human Condition. To mention just two crucial aspects: whereas the conception of contemplation takes thinking as the tranquil contemplation of truth, Arendt insists that thinking is pure activity and ‘a quest for meaning’ (Life of the Mind, Volume I 15). The best analysis and explication, up to now, of Arendt’s deconstruction of the vita contemplativa, and metaphysics in general, is provided by Jacques Taminiaux in his The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. As a phenomenologist who takes being in the sense of appearing (The Life of the Mind, Volume I 19), Arendt rejects Cartesian ontological dualism because she takes material entities and natural occurrences as well as mental and immaterial entities and historical events as instances of the same ontological type, i.e. phenomena or appearances. She seems, however, to defend a methodological dualism for the natural and historical sciences, for instance when she denies that causality is a relevant category in history. In my opinion, the latter is questionable and the former unwarranted. It suffices to say that it would be extremely reductive to allow only for causal explanation in the case of history. For then one can admit that causality may be a relevant category, especially in socio-economic history, without depreciating the important point Arendt makes about the newness of historical events. Arendt distinguishes between ‘origins’ and ‘causes’ (cf. 1994, 325 note 12). In The Origins of Totalitarianism she, in fact, has practiced what she describes in the quotation above. She tries to trace the historical background illuminated by the event of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, world alienation is often accompanied by a loss of common sense. Sharing a common world implies sharing overlapping frames of reference which enable the identification of phenomena (events, actions etcetera) of public interest. For an excellent and detailed discussion of Arendt’s critique of modernity, see Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political. Actors are equal as members of the same species: humans. But at the same time they distinguish themselves from each other through word and deed. Action individuates in the sense of becoming a unique individual, with a specific biography. Conversely, Arendt defines action as the manifestation of ‘who’ we are as opposed to ‘what’ we are (i.e. woman, philosopher, European, and other properties we have in common with lots of other people). Cf. The Human Condition, 175–81. Cf. The Human Condition 92–8, and Lectures of Kant’s Political Philosophy 54–5 and 63. Most pertinent for the present discussion are the Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Session of the Lectures, page 65–77. Throughout her work Arendt is very sceptical about all aspects of pure interiority, ranging from introspection and solipsist interiority (esp. in Rahel Varnhagen: the Life of a Jewess) to the purely mental operations of logic, and the falseness of fictionalizing (esp. in The Origins of Totalitarianism). Arendt’s own arguments, analyses and interpretations rely more on the persuasiveness of exemplary validity than on the consistency of conceptual analyses. Her conception of the political, for instance, derives its meaning and convincing force mainly from her interpretation and judgement of

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12. 13. 14.

15.

historical examples like the Greek polis, the American revolution, and the German Räterepubliken of 1918–1919. See Life of the Mind, Volume I, chapter 8: ‘Science and common sense; Kant’s distinction between intellect and reason; truth and meaning’ (53–65). For the following, see The Life of the Mind, Volume I 69–92, 166–93, and Arendt, ‘Thinking and Moral Considerations’. I do not, of course, mean to suggest that the attribution of meaning and value is a creatio ex nihilo. The quest for meaning undoubtedly has many sources such as lived experience, the stories of others, as well as knowledge. The point is that we have to actualize, and thereby appropriate and transform, in our own thought processes the meaning inherent in those sources. A comment by Arendt at a 1973 conference sponsored by the American Society for Christian Ethics, cited in Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World 452. See also Dana Villa, ‘Thinking and Judging’ in Politics, Philosophy, Terror. Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt, to which this discussion of the independence of thought and judgement is indebted.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ——. Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess. London: East and West Library, 1958. ——. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. Revised and enlarged edition. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1965. ——. Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Second enlarged edition. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968. ——. ‘Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture’. Social Research 38.3 (1971): 417–46. ——. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. ——. The Life of the Mind. One volume edition. San Diego, New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978. ——. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Edited with an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ——. On Revolution. London: Penguin, 1990. ——. Essays in Understanding 1930–1954. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994. Beiner, Ronald. ‘Interpretive Essay’. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. By Hannah Arendt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Canovan, Margaret. Hannah Arendt: a Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Disch, Lisa J. Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Ludz, Ursula. ‘Einleitung’. Hannah Arendt. Ich will verstehen. Selbstauskünfte zu Leben und Werk. Ed. U. Ludz. Munich: Piper, 1996. Taminiaux, Jacques. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Trans. Michael Gendre. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. Originally published as La fille de Thrace et le penseur professionnel: Arendt et Heidegger. Paris: Éditions Payot, 1992.

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Villa, Dana R. Arendt and Heidegger: the Fate of the Political. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. ——. ‘Thinking and Judging’. Politics, Philosophy, Terror. Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Index abstraction, 65 abstract systems, of thinking, 63 action Arendt on, 48, 249 motivation for, 227 and politics, 249 actions, and responsibility, 228 admiration, passion of, 51 affective body image, 188 affective relation, 4–5 aggression, 89, 90, 92 Alcoff, L., 138, 142–3, 159 alterity, 216 Althusser, L., 138 amateur, the, 73, 74, 77–8, 99n1 anger, 5 animation, 16–17 becoming animated, 205, 214–19 cel animation, 214 effects of, 205–7 flip books, 206, 213 gendered forms of mechanical animation, 205 and Japan, 209 Leaf’s sand-animation technique, 210–14 Merleau-Ponty on, 217 spontaneity in, 218 anonymity, 238 Antigone, 125–7, 128 Apel, K.O., 232 appearing co-appearing, 116, 118, 121 event of, 107, 116 appropriation, 188 Arendt, H., 6, 43–8, 64–5, 229–30, 236, 241, 253 on action, 48, 249 body–soul–mind–relation, 49–50 on plurality, 246 notion of the Who, 43–7 Aristotle, 227, 233 concept of the soul, 49

art, and anatomy, 202n9 automation images of, 209 struggling automaton, 209 ‘auxiliary constructions’, 79–80, 83, 92 Bassett, L., 74, 74–5, 76 Battersby, C., 105–7, 124, 125, 127 Beauvoir, Simone de, 72–3, 75, 78–9, 90, 154 Being and Nothingness, 73, 141 Being and Time, 6, 142 Benhabib, S., 231, 232 Benjamin, J., 25–6, 28, 30 Berlin Wall, 248, 254 Between Past and Future, 236, 249, 254 birth, 107, 109–10, 116–24, 241–2 thinking from, 238 Black Americans, 47, 58–9, 67n4 Black motherhood, 150, 151, 152–3 Blanchot, M., 114, 116 bodily identity, 188 body and consciousness, 49–50, 60, 64, 68n13 contemporary reformulation, 187 exclusion in ethical concepts of a person, 173–8 fragments, 199–200 imaging technologies, 187, 188, 202n4 and intercorporeity, 56, 62 interrelational concept of, 53–7, 60 and mind, 49, 51–3 notion of, 186 organ transplants, 186–7 otherness of the, 13–14 physical and human, 179 as ‘primordial institution’, 61 reflections on, 169 relation to the Who, 46–8 266

Index role in ontological concepts of a person, 170–3 and self, 33–4 and soul, 46, 49–51, 56–7 and thinking, 5 body art, 189–91 and feminism, 189 body image, 187–8 affective, 188 and body schema, 197 ‘ideal body image’ theory, 195 and psychoanalysis, 192–3 Body Images, 194 body imaging, and art, 188 ‘body schema’, 192 and body image, 197–8 body–soul–consciousness relation, 50, 63–4 reversibility, 57, 60 body–soul–consciousness–mind problem, 48–50 Boltzmann, L., 86 The Bonds of Love, 25, 26, 30 Bourdieu, P., 143 breast, in psychoanalysis, 198–9 camera surveillance, 190 Carnot, N.L.S., 85 Cartesian concept of thinking, 3, 6 Cartesian Ego, 170, 172 Cartesian Meditations, 34 causality, 248 Cavarero, A., 105–8, 110–13, 115–16, 120–3, 236–7 Cavell, S., 215 Caws, P., 142 character, 31 chiasm, 43, 49, 55, 68n13 choice, 149–50 Chow, R., 205, 207, 209, 219 citizenship, 23 Civilization and Its Discontents, 80–90, 92 civilization, 75 and women, 79–84 Cixous, H., 205, 207, 209 class consciousness, 143 closed systems, in psychoanalysis, 84–90

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Collins, P.H., 150–3 communication, 182 concrete other, 231 conscience, 230, 243n6 consciousness, and body, 49–50, 64 corporeal, self-reflection, 54 Corps étranger (video-installation), 188, 190–1, 195–201 Corps propre, 191–7, 200 The Course of Recognition, 35, 38 Critique of Judgement, 247, 249, 252 cultural identity, 24, 38n5 cyberspace, 186 daimon, 44 Dastur, F., 107, 118–21 Daunhauer, B.O., 33 De Anima, 49 dehumanization, 239 De Laurentis, T., 138 Deleuze, G., 216 Demeter, 108–9 depressive stage, 198 Descartes, R., 2, 3–5, 50–1, 70 on body and soul, 50–1 destruction, 26, 39n11 diachronic identity, 174 difference, differentiation, 3, 6, 10, 19, 48, 59–61, 68n11 sexual, gender, 12, 68n9 differential, 47 DiQuinzio, P., 146, 154–6 discourse ethics, 232, 233 doll–woman-automaton, 205, 208 Don’t Smile, You’re on Camera (performance), 190 dual identity, 138, 140, 145–6, 157 Duncan, A., 190 écart, 56, 60 ego, 80, 81, 192–3, 195 concept of, 171 separation of, 81–2 ego formation, and imagery, 193–4 The Ego and the Id, 80, 81 ego ideal, 194 Eichmann in Jerusalem, 256 Eisenstein, S., 206 Either/Or, 125–6, 128, 149

268 Index embodiment, 169–70, 173 ethical, 183 and the ethical concept of a person, 178–84 Husserl’s concept of, 179–80 in the philosophy of Levinas, 180 emotion, 4, 46–7, 50, 56, 65, 69n18 emotional, 55, 64 Empfindung, empfinden, 54–6, 69nn17, 18, 19, 21 entropy, 86 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 173–4 Essays in Understanding, 247, 249 ethical concepts of a person, 173–8 ethical embodiment, 183 ethics, 1–3, 6–8, 11–12, 14–20 differential ethics, 8 discourse ethics, 17–18 ethics of thinking, 5, 8, 19 utilitarian ethics, 1–2 of value, 1 exclusion, and inclusion, 147 experience and knowledge, 46 of the look, 141 and reflection, 64–6 and subjectivity, 7 and theory, 7 and thinking, 6–7, 65 Eye and Mind, 140 face, of the other, 52, 181 Fanon, F., 151–3 feeling, 10, 46, 52, 54–6, 61, 69nn17, 18, 19, 21 feminism, and body art, 189 fiction, 207 flesh Merleau-Pontys’s concept of, 48, 60–4, 68n11 transcendence of, 55 Foucault, M., 187 The Freud Journal, 96 Freud, S., 80–92, 194–5, 210 friendship, 33, 37, 40n16 Gallagher, S., 197 Gatens, M., 106

gender difference, and racial oppression, 152 gendered expectations, 147 General Psychological Theory, 88 generative function, of insight, 235 generative phenomenology, 238 generative temporality, 122–3 German idealism, 3 god, and otherness, 4 Grosz, E., 143 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 227 Gürtler, S., 237 Gussow, M., 71, 72 Gwaltney, J.L., 153 Habermas, J., 232 habitus, 143 happiness, 1–2 Hatoum, M., 188, 190, 200 Head, H., 192 headscarves, and Muslim women, 23, 38n4 Hegel, G.W.F., on self, 25–6, 28–9 Heidegger, M., 6, 145 ‘Héloïse complex’, 72–4 hermeneutic function, of insight, 234–5 hermeneutics, 8, 19 heteronomy, 182 Hilfrich, C., 208 Hoffman, 210 Honneth, A., 36 on the self, 28–9 human being comparison with person, 174, 175 definition of identity, 174 The Human Condition, 43, 48, 241, 248–50, 252, 261 Husserl, E., 6, 34, 179, 228, 233–4 Hypparchia’s Choice, 72–3, 90–1, 98 I concept of the, 2–3 and the other, 6, 56, 58 id, 80 ‘ideal body image’ theory, 195 idealism, 51 transcendental, 51–2

Index idealist thinking, 51 ideas, 62 idem and ipse, 31–2 identities, multiple, 157, 157–9 identity, 31–2, 138–9, 142–3 bodily, 188 choice of, 143 cultural and group, 23–4 definition of, 174 diachronic, 174 from a female subject position, 124 of a human being, definition, 174 of intellectuals, 140 interrelational, 47 and language, 27 and mental features, 175 and multiculturalism, 23 narrative, 111–12 notions of, 42–3 and otherness, 7, 8–9, 63 and others, 43, 47–8, 63–4, 67, 143 personal, 23 personal and group, 24 qualitative, 43, 67n3 relational, 9–10, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67n1 social, 144 The Image and Appearance of the Human Body, 192 imagery and ego formation, 193 and theory, 75, 77 imaging technologies, 187–8, 202n4 The Impossibility of Motherhood, 154 inclusion, and exclusion, 147 independence, 79 and judgement, 259–60 and representivity, 258–61 independent judgement, 257 indifferentiation, 11, 98 individual, 138–40, 142–5, 149–51, 153–4, 157–8, 160–2 Individuals, theory of the person in (Peter Strawson), 170–1 individuation, 172 by differentiation, 48 infertility, 156 infinity, 127–8, 135n44

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insight concept of, 233–4 distinguished from intuition, 234 generative function of, 235–8 hermeneutic function of, 234–5 normative function of, 239–40 situative function of, 235 In Spite of Plato, 105–8, 122–3 instinct, 82, 87–6, 192–3 death, 89 institution, 61 co-institution, 69nn18, 19 intellectuals home life of, 145–6 identity of, 140 mothers as, 12–13, 138, 144–6, 153–4 interaction, 43, 46, 50–2, 55–7, 59, 62, 64, 69n19 intercorporeity, 50, 54 and intersubjectivity, reversibility, 60–3 and the Who, 56–7 Interior Scroll (performance), 189 internalization, 28 interpersonality, interpersonal, 43, 47, 56 intersubjective individuation, 172 intersubjectivity, 26, 55, 57–60, 170 and intercorporeity, reversibility, 47, 49–50, 55, 57, 60–3 and recognition, 27–31 intrapsychic dimension, recognition, 28, 39–40n12 intuition, distinguished from insight, 234 invisible, 45–6, 49, 54–5, 61–3, 64 inwardness, and the concept of person, 178 Irigaray, L., 94, 95, 115, 141, 217 Isaacs, S., 199 Japan, and animation, 209 Jonas, H., 241 Jones, A., 190 judgement, 17–18, 229, 246–7 of historical events, 248–9 and independence, 257, 259–60 moral, 256–8

270 Index judgement – continued as pluralist speech, 251 political, 255–6 of totalitarianism, 249 Kant, I., 1, 227, 246–7, 249, 252 on responsibility, 241 Kierkegaard, S., 125–6, 128, 149 Klein, M., 198, 200 Kofman, S., 91, 92 Korsgaard, C., 176–7 Krauss, R., 206 Kristeva, J., 199 Lacan, J., 193–4, 196 Lajer-Burcharth, E., 190 language, 63 and identity, 27 Leaf, Caroline, 206 sand-animation technique, 210–14 Le Breton, D., 186 Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, 229, 253, 255 Leder, D., 195 Le Doeuff, M.,72–3, 75, 90–1, 98 Levinas, E., 6, 34, 180–1 concept of otherness, 51–2 libido, 87, 93, 98 ‘Lieb’, concept of, 179 The Life of the Mind, 46–7, 49, 65, 230, 246, 256–8 life-world, 3 Like Subjects, Love Objects, 28 L’institution. La passivité, 63 Lispector, C., 123 Locke, John, 173, 174 logic of un-relation, 112–16 look, experience of the, 141 Lorde, A., 157 love, 29–31, 88, 95 ‘being-in-love’, 92 and recognition, 35 sexual, 86 Lund, Kátia, 71–2, 77, 79, 92, 95, 98 Lyotard, J-F., 117 McDonalds, 219, 222–3n31 Margulis, L., 86, 93, 94, 97–8 Marks, L., 200

Martin Alcoff, 138 Marxism, 143 master–slave analysis, 25 mathematics, 63 meaning, and truth, 254 Measures of Distance, 200 Meditations of First Philosophy, 4, 50 Meirelles, Fernando, 71, 92 memory, 175 mental faculties, 80 mental features, and identity, 175 Merleau-Ponty, M., 43, 47, 49, 51, 63, 140, 191, 197, 199 on animation, 217 concept of otherness, 51–2 concept of relational identity as reversibility, 53–63 on flesh, 48, 55–6, 60–1, 63–4, 68n11, 69nn18, 20 openness, 52, 54, 57–9, 69n18 ontology, 48–9 on sense, 52, 56–7, 61–3 The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa, 214 mind, 49 and body, 52–3 minority groups, 23, 38n3 mirror stage, 18, 193, 194 Modern Times (film), 205 moral acting, and responsibility, 240–2 moral actions, 227–8, 229–30, 231, 240 moral insight, 228 morality, 236 moral judgement, 256–8 and political judgement, 258–9 and thinking, 257 moral questioning, 229 motherhood, 7, 11–12, 30, 72, 139–40, 237, 241 experience of being mothered, 155 mothers as intellectuals, 12–13, 138, 144–6, 153–4: ideological tensions, 154–9 ‘other mothers’, 150, 151, 154 politics of mothering, 156 thought processes of mothers, 156–7 Moyaert, P., 193 multiculturalism, and identity, 23

Index multiple identities, 157–8 Muslim women, and headscarves, 23, 38n4 Nancy, J-L., 186 narcissism, 11, 87, 88–9, 92, 95, 192 philosophical, 98 and women, 77–9, 90–3, 96 narrative identity, 32, 111–12 natality, 105, 107, 110, 124 La Nature, 198–9 New Introductory Lectures, 80 Ngai, S., 208, 220, 224 Nietzsche, F., 130n9 normative function, of insight, 239–40 Norton, A., 47 object-relations theory, 29–30 Oedipus, 110, 125–6 Oneself as Another, 31, 33, 37 On Narcissism, 90, 91, 92 On Revolution, 21 ontology, 19, 48–9,58, 63 ‘open systems’, 76, 91 women as, 94 The Optical Unconscious, 206 organ transplants, 186–7 Orpheus and Eurydice, 110, 112–16 other, 1–20 affected by the, 4–5 as the I’s antithesis, 3 concept of the, 1, 2–4, 8, 19 concrete, 231 contact with the, 4, 53, 55–6, 64 exclusion of the, 3, 5–6 face of the, 181 and the I, 6, 56–60 interaction with the, 7, 43, 55, 64 Lévinas’ concept of the Other, 51–2 negative concept of, 2 open(ness) for the the, 6–7, 47, 52–4, 59, 69n18 recognition of the, 1, 5, 7–9, 15 relation with the, 2, 4, 6–7, 20, 50, 52–3, 56, 59, 66, 60n18 respect for the, 3, 5, 7, 14, 18 self and, 6–10 subordination of the, 5

271

woman as the other, 5 woman as the irrational other, 3 and the Who, 45, 55–6, 68n6 otherness, 2–8, 10–11, 13–14, 19–20, 51–2, 57–8, 60, 63–4, 66 of the body, 7, 13–14 concept of, 6, 11, 19 exclusion of, 3, 5 and god, 4 heterogeneous, 3 and identity, 7, 8–9, 63 and intersubjectivity, 58 Levinas’ concept of, 51–2 Merleau-Ponty’s concept of, 51–2 non-hierarchical concept of, 52 positive, 3, 5 of the self, of the I, 6, 9, 48, 57–8, 64 others, and identity, 43, 47–8, 63–4, 67, 143 ‘outside in’ model, 143 Parekh, B., 24 Parfit, D., 175 passion, of admiration, 51 The Passion According to G.H., 123 The Passions of the Soul, 4, 5, 50 Penelope, 105, 122 Perry, G., 189 person comparison with human being, 174, 175 concept of, 169–70: and inwardness, 178 definition of concept, 174 ethical concept and embodiment, 178–83 exclusion of body in ethical concepts of, 173–8 in individuals, 170–1 intersubjective concept of the, 57–60 Locke’s concept of, 174 role of body in ontological concepts, 170–3 Strawson’s definition, 171 personal identity, 23 and recognition, 24 Personal Identity, 175 personhood, 169

272 Index perspectives, of others and ourselves, 140–1, 142 ‘phantasy’, 199 The Phenomenal Woman, 107, 124–8 phenomenology, 6–7, 14, 64 of recognition relations, 25–7 Phenomenology of Perception, 69n18, 141, 191, 197 Phenomenology of Spirit, 28 Philippi, D., 191 The Philosophical Imaginary, 72, 75 Philosophical Investigations, 45 philosophical narcissism, 98 philosophy, and women, 11, 73–7, 90 Picasso, 206 Plato, 44 pleasure, 86, 93–4 pleasure principle, 82, 83, 90 pluralism, 232 pluralist speech, 262 judgement as, 251 plurality, 19, 111–12, 115, 231, 233, 249, 250–1, 255 Arendt on, 246 political judgement, 255–6 and moral judgement, 258–62 politics, 247–52, 254 and action, 249 Politics, Philosophy, Terror, 259 Pollock, G., 189 praxis, 227 projection, 53–4 promising, 32 La prose du monde, 61 psychoanalysis, 25, 29, 192 and body image, 192–3 closed systems in, 84–90 mirror stage, 18, 193, 194 psychological connectedness, 175 public debate, 250, 261, 262 public domain, 188, 262 public realm, 129, 261 public space, 23, 251, 261 public sphere, 250, 254, 261 public world, 250 qualitative identity, 43, 67n3 quasi-memories, 175, 176 questioning, moral, 229

racial oppression, and gender difference, 152 rational morality, 1 Reagan, C.E., 33 ‘reality principle’, 82 Reasons and Persons, 175, 176 reciprocal appearances, 110, 111, 115 reciprocity, 36–7 recognition,1, 5, 7–9, 15, 19, 25 as gift, 35–8 and intersubjectivity, 27–31 intrapsychic dimension, 28, 39–40n12 and love, 35 of the other outside, 26–7 and personal identity, 24, 39n6 recognition relations, phenomenology of, 25–7 reflection, and experience, 64–6 reflective judgement, 252–5 reflective philosophy, 51 Relating Narratives, 106, 110–17, 120–1 relational ethics, 11–12 relational identity, 9–10, 42–3, 47, 49, 50, 53, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67n1 as intersubjectivity and intercorporeality, 49–50 as reversibility, 53–63 representitiveness, 255, 255–6 res cogitans, 2, 4, 50–1, 60, 68n14 res extensa, 2, 4, 50–1, 60, 68n14 respect, 5, 7, 18–20, 36, 48, 65, 67n1, 232 responsibility, 3, 17, 229–30, 238, 243n4 causality, 241 Kant on, 241 and moral acting, 240–2 and personal insight, 242 and the political world, 242 and subject, 241 reversibility, relational identity as, 53–63 Rich, A., 155 Ricoeur, P., 31, 35, 38 on the self, 31–4 Rilke, R.M., 113

Index Rorty, R.M., 244n14 Ruddick, S., 156–7 The Safe House (film), 218 Sagan, D., 86, 93, 94, 97, 98 Salomé, L., 91, 95, 96, 97, 98 sameness (idem), 31 ‘The Sand man’, 207, 210 Sand or Peter and the Wolf, 211 Sartre, J-P., 73, 76, 141 Scheler, M., 234 Schilder, P., 192, 197 Schneeman, C., 189 Schües, C., 237 The Second Sex, 75 self and body, 7, 33–4, 54 Cavarero’s conception of, 111 Hegel on the, 25, 26 Honneth on the, 28–9 Merleau-Ponty on the, 48 and other(s), otherness, 6–11, 24, 39n8, 48, 53–4, 56, 58–9, 64 personal, 52 in psychoanalysis, 25, 39n10 and reversibility, 55 Ricoeur on the, 31–4 Taylor on the, 27–8 self-ascription process, 172 self-consciousness, 178 self-constitution, 50, 60, 68n14 self-control, 5 self-esteem, 32–3, 36 selfhood (ipse), 31 self-reflection, 178 corporeal, 54 self-respect, 32, 33, 36 self-touching, 55 sensibility, 182 sexism, 75–6 The Sex of Knowing, 73 sexual difference, 106, 107, 122, 217 sexuality, 59 sexual love, 86 sexual violence, 5 Shadows of the Other, 28 shared gaze, 108–9 situative function, of insight, 235 social esteem, 36

273

social identity, 144, 159–60, 163n24 Socrates, 257, 258 solicitude, 33 solipsism, 3, 5, 51, 67n1, 172 solipsist thinking, 3 soul Aristotle’s concept, 49 and body, 50–1, 56–7, 60, 63–4 and consciousness, 49–50, 57, 60 Sources of the Self, 27, 178 space, 5, 44, 47, 48, 53–4, 57–9, 61, 64–7, 107, 109, 114–15, 117, 122–5, 207, 212, 222–3, 236, 240, 252 cultural space, 222 cyberspace, 186 public space, 23, 251, 261 spatio-temporal, 170, 172, 178–80, 183 symbolical space, 252 The Space of Literature, 114 Spivak, G., 156 strangeness, 186–8, 191, 195–7, 200–1 Strawson, P., 170, 172, 173 The Struggle for Recognition, 24, 28 subject, 2–3 absolute, 2–3 autonomous, 14 conception of the, 1 ethical (moral), 3, 7, 14 embodied, 7 general, 1 rational, 1, 14 separation of subject and object, 2 from the subject to intersubjectivity, 57 transcendental, 62 women as, 5 subjectivation, 138, 160n2 subjectivity, and experience, 7 subjectivity-turn, 2 Symposium, 44 Taylor, C., 178 on the self, 27–8 theory, and imagery, 75, 77 thermodynamics, 85–6, 87

274 Index thinking, 50 abstract systems of, 63 and body, 5 destructiveness of, 258 ethics of, 5, 8, 19 and experience, 65 from birth, 238 modes of, 229–33 moral, 228 and moral judgement, 257 Thoné, A., 237 temporal, 12, 16, 55, 68, 107, 113, 116–25, 127, 129, 134, 135, 170, 172, 180, 183, 218, 219, 266 time, 12, 14, 31, 68, 85, 87, 105, 107–8, 112–13, 115–28, 134, 139, 143–4, 158, 160–2, 169–71, 174, 178, 180 Battersby’s model, 127 totalitarianism, 247 judgement of, 249 transcendental approach, 52 transcendental intersubjectivity, 6 transcendental solipsism, 5 ‘transparent body’ myth, 187 Troester, R., 150 truth, 254 and meaning, 254 Ueno, T., 208 universal humanity, 151–2 universalism, 232 understanding, 48, 52, 57, 69n23 un-relation, logic of, 112–16 utilitarian ethics, 1, 2

value ethics, 1 van Gogh, Theo, murder of, 39n7 Vetlesen, A.J., 237 Villa, D.R., 259 violence, 47–8 visage, 181 visage, philosophy of, 52 The Visible and the Invisible, 49, 53–4, 58, 68n11, 69nn18, 20 Volatile Bodies, 143 Waldenfels, B., 235 Walker, K., 43, 48, 53, 54, 59, 62, 66, 66n1, 67n4 Weber, E., 180 Weber, Max, 228 Weiss, G., 194 Wells, P., 213 Whitmore, L., 206, 218 Who Arendt’s concept of the, 43–8, 63 and intercorporeity, 56–7 relation to the body, 46–8 relation to the other, 45, 55–6, 68n6 and the what, 131n11 Winnicott, D.W., 26 Wittgenstein, L., 45 woman-animator, 206, 209–10 women and civilization, 79–84 exclusion of, 3,5 as mentors, 154–5 and narcissism, 77–9, 90, 91, 96 as ‘open systems’, 94 in philosophy, 5–6, 90 and philosophy, 73–7 world, Arendt on, 250

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