Face to face with the dead man: Ethical responsibility, state-sanctioned killing, and empathetic impossibility

Alternatives

Volumn 22, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 467-492

  Molloy, Patricia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 21944439144     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437549702200402     Document Type: Article

References (139)

1. Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 111.
2. Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," in Sean Hand, ed., The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 83.
3. Karen Slawner, "Violence, Law, and Justice," Alternatives 20, no. 4 (1995), pp. 459-460.
4. Alternatives Ibid., p. 472.
5. David Campbell and Michael Dillon, "The Political and the Ethical," in Campbell and Dillon, eds., The Political Subject of Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 162.
6. Slawner, note 3: 459.
7. Ibid., pp. 459-460.
8. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 152-153.
9. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory Ibid., p. 23.
10. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory Ibid., p. 66.
11. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory Ibid., p. 183.
12. Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 163.
13. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era Ibid., p. 165.
14. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era p. 165. Ibid.
15. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era Ibid., p. 96.
16. Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Post-modern Era p. 96. Ibid.
17. See Kathy E. Ferguson, The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), esp. chap. 6.
18. Sylvester, note 12, p. 96.
19. Ibid., p. 98.
20. Ibid., p. 99.
21. Drucill Cornella, The Philosophy of the Limit (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 68.
22. Diana Tietjens Meyers, Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 26.
23. Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy Ibid., p. 18.
24. Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy Ibid., p. 26.
25. Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy p. 26. Ibid.
26. Sylvester, note 12, p. 166.
27. See Christine Sylvester, "Empathetic Cooperation: A Feminist Method for IR," Millennium 23, no. 2: 327.
28. Meyers, note 22, p. 32.
29. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
30. Ibid., pp. 33-34.
31. Ibid., pp. 34-35.
32. Ibid., pp. 35-37.
33. See Sylvester, note 12, p. 99.
34. Emmanuel Levinas, "The Trace of the Other," in Mark C. Taylor, ed., Deconstruction in Context: Literature and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 352.
35. Megan Boler, "The Risks of Empathy: Interrogating Multiculturalism's Gaze," in Michael Katz, ed., Philosophy of Education 1994 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), p. 211.
36. Meyers, note 22, p. 34.
37. Boler, note 35, p. 211.
38. Ibid., p. 212.
39. Ibid., pp. 210-211.
40. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume I (New York: Vintage, 1990), p. 138.
41. See Elisabeth Bronfen and Sarah Webster Goodwin, eds., Introduction to Death and Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
42. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Alphonso Lingis, trans. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1981), p. 11.
43. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Alphonso Lingis, trans. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff: 1979), p. 198.
44. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., pp. 45-46.
45. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., p. 221.
46. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., p. 47.
47. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., 21.
48. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., p. 223.
49. Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority, Ibid., p. 225.
50. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Richard A. Cohen, trans. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), p. 86.
51. See Prejean, note 1, p. 217.
52. Levinas, note 34, p. 351.
53. Levinas, note 43, p. 50.
54. Levinas, note 34, p. 352.
55. Ibid., p. 353.
56. Levinas, note 42, p. 14.
57. Ibid., p. 13.
58. Levinas, note 50, p. 101.
59. Levinas, "Time and the Other," in Hand, note 2, p. 48.
60. Levinas, note 50, p. 98.
61. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 48.
62. Levinas, note 42, p. 117.
63. Ibid., pp. 115-117.
64. Bernhard Waldenfels, "Response and Responsibility in Levinas," Adriaan T. Peperzak, ed., Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 44.
65. Alphonso Lingis, introduction to Levinas, note 42, pp. xxii-xxiii.
66. Levinas, note 42, p. 117.
67. Levinas, note 50, p. 100.
68. Levinas, note 2, p. 83.
69. Ibid.
70. Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, "Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas," in Richard A. Cohen, ed., Face to Face with Levinas (Albany: State University of New York Press), 1986, p. 24.
71. Emmanuel Levinas Richard Kearney, Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas Face to Face with Levinas 1986, p. 24. Ibid.
72. Levinas, "Time and the Other," in Hand, note 2, p. 44.
73. Time and the Other Ibid., p. 40.
74. Time and the Other Ibid., p. 41.
75. Time and the Other p. 41. Ibid.
76. Time and the Other Ibid., pp. 40-41.
77. Time and the Other Ibid., p. 42.
78. Time and the Other Ibid., p. 43.
79. Ruben Berezdivin, "3 2 1 Contact: Textuality, the Other, Death," in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley, eds., Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 197-198.
80. Levinas, note 42, p. 117.
81. Ibid., p. 87.
82. Levinas, "Ideology and Idealism," in Hand, note 2, p. 247,
83. quoted in David Campbell, "The Deterritorialization of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics After the End of Philosophy," Alternatives 19, no. 4 (1994): 463.
84. Campbell, note 82: 462.
85. Ibid.: 463.
86. Prejean, note 1, p. 130.
87. Susan A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 209.
88. Levinas, note 43, pp. 50-51.
89. Ibid., pp. 198-199.
90. For interviews with Robbins and Prejean from the PBS show Frontline, see the website "Angel on Death Row" (http://www2.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/angel/).
91. The film is a composite of events and characters from Prejean's experiences with two death-row inmates, Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie, executed in the electric chair in 1984. Though the details of the crime in the film are mostly those committed by Sonnier, the character of Matthew Poncelet is based mostly upon Willie.
92. As Alphonso Lingis writes, "Exceeded on all sides by responsibilities beyond its control and its capacity even to fulfill, the responsible subject is depicted by Levinas in distress." See his introduction to Levinas, note 42, pp. xviii-xix.
93. Levinas, note 42, p. 117.
94. Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 232.
95. This refutes Baudrillard's claim that the "rational humanism" of death-penalty abolitionists is an abdication of responsibility. Baudrillard's argument is that left-liberal thinking merely follows the tendency of the penal system. Whereas the Right calls for a death for a death, the Left asks that the criminal be spared "for he is not really responsible." Not only does Sister Helen contradict this assertion, but Baudrillard's general claim that responsibility has been dead for a long time anyway would probably not rest well with most Levinasians. See Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, Iain Hamilton Grant, trans. (London: Sage, 1993, pp. 169-171.
96. Owen Gleiberman, "A View to Kill," Entertainment Weekly, no. 310, (1996): 36.
97. Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority'," in Drucilla Cornell et al., eds., Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 12.
98. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 8.
99. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 12.
100. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 14.
101. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice p. 14. Ibid.
102. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 15.
103. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 22.
104. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice Ibid., p. 25.
105. Levinas, note 42, p. 159.
106. Derrida, note 96, p. 28.
107. Ibid., p. 6.
108. Cornell, note 21, p. 155.
109. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the transition from book to film is the erasure of race from Prejean's analysis of capital punishment in the United States. While the two men that she counseled were white, the majority of death-row inmates are black. Prejean also argues convincingly that had their victims been black, Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie would have been less likely to receive the death penalty. See Prejean, note 1, pp. 48-50.
110. Goodwin and Bronfen, note 41, p. 16.
111. Ibid., pp. 15-16. See also David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).
112. Goodwin and Bronfen, note 41, p. 16.
113. Levinas, note 43, p. 198.
114. Campbell and Dillon, note 5, p. 161.
115. Ibid., p. 162.
116. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), p. 115, quoted in Campbell and Dillon, note 5, p. 162.
117. Baudrillard, note 94, p. 177.
118. Ibid., p. 179.
119. See Prejean, note 1, pp. 116-117, 128-129.
120. Ibid., p. 116.
121. Derrida, note 96, p. 19.
122. Ibid., p. 28.
123. Ibid., p. 27.
124. Slawner, note 3: 473.
125. Ibid.: 469.
126. Levinas, note 43, p. 79.
127. Campbell, note 82, pp. 464.
128. See also Critchley, note 93, p. 221.
129. Levinas, note 43, p. 21.
130. Critchley, note 93, p. 222.
131. Levinas, note 50, p. 80.
132. Critchley, note 93, p. 223.
133. Ibid., p. 220.
134. Levinas, note 42, p. 157.
135. Campbell, note 82, p. 464.
136. Ibid., p. 466.
137. Levinas, "Ethics and Politics," in Hand, note 2, p. 294, quoted by Campbell, note 82, p. 466.
138. Ethics and Politics Ibid., pp. 466-467.
139. Ethics and Politics pp. 466-467. Ibid.