Intimacy: A Dialectical Study

Description

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows, intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others FC Half title Also Available from Bloomsbury Title Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction Intimacy and feeling Dialectics Limitations of dialectics Note on terminology 1 The Gift Initiation Appeal and delay Absenting A measured gift: Lysias’s speech 2 Touching Touching as shared experience Proportion The myth of the inmost touch The wound 3 The Heartbeat Systole and diastole Indifference and longing 4 The Between God and the space between The rupture Accessibility 5 The Fetish The interest The fetishized body The promise 6 Embedding The secret The third The neutralized third: Gossip The generalized third: Irony Fraudulence 7 Conflict The dismissal The dispute Violence Withdrawal Debate 8 The Mêlée Consumption, destruction and waste Laughter Frenzy Millenarianism 9 The Future The test The commitment Planning Identification Anticipatory mourning 10 Mourning Gathering and retraction Haunting Singularity Afterword Notes Bibliography Index