Levinas and the Trauma of Responsibility: The Ethical Significance of Time

Description

Levinas's account of responsibility challenges dominant notions of time, autonomy, and subjectivity according to Cynthia D. Coe. Employing the concept of trauma in Levinas's late writings, Coe draws together his understanding of time and his claim that responsibility is an obligation to the other that cannot be anticipated or warded off. Tracing the broad significance of these ideas, Coe shows how Levinas revises our notions of moral agency, knowledge, and embodiment. Her focus on time brings a new interpretive lens to Levinas's work and reflects on a wider discussion of the fragmentation of human experience as an ethical subject. Coe's understanding of trauma and time offers a new appreciation of how Levinas can inform debates about gender, race, mortality, and animality. Cover......Page 1 LEVINAS AND THE TRAUMA OF RESPONSIBILITY......Page 2 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Abbreviations......Page 22 1 Deformalizing Time......Page 30 2 The Traumatic Impact of Deformalized Time......Page 48 3 The Method of An-Archeology......Page 68 4 Between Theodicy and Despair......Page 102 5 The Sobering Up of Oedipus......Page 130 6 Anxieties of Incarnation......Page 158 7 Rethinking Death on the Basis of Time......Page 188 8 Animals and Creatures......Page 216 Conclusion: Inheriting the Thought of Diachrony......Page 248 Bibliography......Page 262 Index......Page 274