英文摘要 |
This article proposes to read Levinas' notion of proximity through the lens of embodiment and ”flesh out” more concretely the material effects of proximity manifesting in the figure of skin and breath/breathlessness. ”Otherwise than Being” is replete with terms of corporal movements, terms like breath, breathless, skin, inspiration, respiration, and pneuma (to breathe, to blow); they illustrate where and how the ethical registers. The ethical is imprinted on the embodied subject through the work of ”ipseity,” ”contraction,” and ”tight in one's skin” to specify an anguished, affected subject (sensibility). Withdrawal and constriction create an interval called ”proximity” where the subject is neither in accord with oneself, nor completely merged with the other. Levinas enacts an inflection of ethics through corporeality and refigures the notion of proximity into breath, skin, and sensibility, a reconfiguration that brings ethical afflictions to the fore and assigns its incompatibility and non-coincidence with consciousness and representation. The reconfiguration through embodiment reshapes proximity as a new mode of relating that is not only anarchically past but also intrinsically future-oriented and transformative. |