Re-reading the feminine in Levinas

Dara E Hill, Purdue University

Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas's use of the feminine as an example of alterity or otherness has often troubled contemporary readers. The confusion between the idea of the feminine as part of an ontological structure of subjectivity or as referring, in some manner, to women, either abstractly or concretely, raises a number of questions, especially for feminist readers. Although Levinas clarifies his conception of the feminine in both his philosophical and his Jewish writings, a number of scholars still question his seemingly patriarchal position that both reinscribes a masculine privilege socially and also relegates the feminine to a supporting role within his structure of Being and transcendence. I suggest the reader follow Levinas‘s own lead, from a 1981 interview with Philippe Nemo reprinted in Ethics and Infinity, in which he states that the "ontological differences between the masculine and the feminine would appear less archaic if, instead of dividing humanity into two species (or into two genders), they would signify that the participation in the masculine and in the feminine were the attribute of every human being. Could this be the meaning of the enigmatic verse of Genesis 1.27: .male and female created He them's" (68). In order to read the feminine in Levinas I contend that the account of the creation of human beings in the first two chapters of Genesis affords readers a model to consider the feminine in Levinas's thought in which the human is comprised of both the masculine and the feminine prior to sexualized difference, without equating woman to the feminine. By tracing the evolution of the feminine within Levinas's thought and then addressing the most common critiques of the feminine I demonstrate that the main concern is how to understand the embodiment of the feminine as woman, and that the biblical text supports neither an unequivocal masculine privilege nor a conception of the feminine as belonging solely to the female sex. Sexual difference, for Levinas, is an indication of the fundamental alterity that preserves uniqueness among human beings and prevents a totalization under a concept of the Same.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Goodhart, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Philosophy|Judaic studies

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