Responsibility for the Other
Posted on | June 22, 2005 |
Next I snuck into another room to hear Ros Diprose, one of the conference organisers and a very influential philosopher within the Sydney gender studies circles I’m familiar with. Her paper, ‘Nietzsche & Levinas: Self-Responsibility and Responsibility for the Other’ discussed the problem of anonymous government: what happens when there is a crisis in morality in a social democracy and a government can act without impunity or responsibility. This paper was really hard for me to grasp after getting up so early in the morning! Ros looked at various ways the idea of responsibility has been theorised, and suggested that responsibility understood as a ’somatic self-reflexivity’ or ‘corporeal reflexivity’ would be a way to incorporate the affective dimension to our relations with others. This would also grant us an ability to respond to that which enrages us, and ‘in excess of existing law and custom’. The argument seemed to be that overcoming alienation involves acting on the spontaneity of affect, which obviously I think is a good idea given my own work, but I found the paper a bit pessimistic. For instance, it gave rise to a number of off-hand comments which re-emerged throughout the conference saying that the anti-war protests were ineffectual and proof that governments are no longer accountable. I’m not quite sure I’m prepared to concede either of these points. A walk in Hyde Park on a solitary Sunday afternoon does not an anti-war effort make. But by this time I was already starting to wonder who the ‘we’ in these papers were, if ‘we’ are the ones concerned about Others…
In the subsequent paper I zoned out for a while because my somatic self-reflexivity decided the guy’s presentation style was too arrogant to listen to.
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June 22nd, 2005 @ 4:54 pm
holy shit! i should’ve gone to her paper! oh noes!!!!!!!!111
did anyone ask if she was publishing this paper?
i need to read it!!!!!!!1 i think i might send her an email.
it seems like it would fit so well into my post-romance thing I am working on as a side project, particularly the section on ‘care of the other/self’ (that emerged from a blog post of the same name!!).
did she speak about what is shared within an event? as I would argue that self-reflexivity is only the first (but concurrent) step, for it is the immanent ‘common’ (ala N&H) between stake holders that needs (a militant) care.
damn it, I knew this would happen!!!!!!! but, ultimately, I am glad I saw tim rayner speak tho. he gave me some wicked ideas for my thesis (more important than side projects)…
June 22nd, 2005 @ 11:00 pm
Heh! somatic self-reflexivity! I gotta use that (see: theory as party starter!!).
June 24th, 2005 @ 7:58 pm
somatic self-reflexivity - lol