Otherwise than being John Malkovich: Incarnating the name of God

Literature and Theology

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 95-108

  Young, William ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950553781     PISSN: 02691205     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/litthe/18.1.95     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. See D. Dragunoiu, 'Psychoanalysis, Film Theory, and the Case of Being John Malkovich', Film Criticism 26:2 (Winter 2001-02); accessed via Wilson Web.
2. Of course, Malkovich 'himself' is precisely what the film problematises; as Scott Repass describes, the film and screenplay are about the public persona of John Malkovich, rather than the person. During filming, Jonze would tell Malkovich 'I don't think John Malkovich would act like that'highlighting the focus on the publicly recognisable character. See S. Repass, 'Being John Malkovich: Review', Film Quarterly 26 (2002) 30.
3. E. Levinas, 'Bad Conscience and the Inexorable' in R. Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas (SUNY, 1986), p. 36.
4. E. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), p. 59.
5. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1980), pp. 92-9. While transcendental cogitation also includes a consciousness of the 'world', Husserl makes the argument that such a world is dependent upon awareness of one's own 'animate organism' (psyché).
6. In a late essay, 'Peace and Proximity', Levinas suggests that such an alternative signification may even be found within Husserl's phenomenology: 'Peace as an incessant watch over this alterity and this unicity. Proximity as the impossible assumption of difference, impossible definition, impossible integration . . . But proximity! Husserl's famous "appresentation" not as an impoverished representation but as the mysterious surplus of the beloved.' 'Peace and Proximity' in A. Peperzak, S. Critchley and R. Bernasconi (eds), Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996), p. 166.
7. Otherwise Than Being, p. 68.
8. While the relation between responsibility and sensibility becomes ambiguous when Levinas turns to language, it is clear from Otherwise than Being that embodiment and sensibility are integral moments in responsibility and subjectivity, challenging the ethical/sensible dualism of Kant and the mind/body dualism of Descartes. This becomes especially important given the tendency of some critics of Levinas to ignore his reflection on sensibility and its place in his account of ethics. By contrast with the view set forth here, see John Milbank's recent description of Levinas' philosophy as 'manicheanism' in 'The Soul of Reciprocity, Part One: Reciprocity Refused', Modern Theology 17 (2001) 335-91, esp. pp. 341-2;
9. also P. Blond, 'Emmanuel Levinas: God and Phenomenology' in P. Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 208-28.
10. For more on incarnation and wounding in Levinas, see S.A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991), esp. pp. 250-62.
11. On representation and language in phenomenology, see J. Patočka, 'I and the Other: Appresentation and Being-With' in Body, Community, Language, World, trans. Kohák (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), pp. 63-5.
12. See 'The Name of God According to a Few Talmudic Texts' in G. Mole (ed.), Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997), pp. 116-28; here, p. 121.
13. See also 'Enigma and Phenomenon' in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 65-79.
14. J. Derrida, 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials' in W. Iser and K. Frieden (eds), Languages of the Unsayable (New York: Columbia UP, 1989), pp. 3-70.
15. L. Irigaray, To Be Two, trans. Rhodes and Chocito-Monoc (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 109. Next quote, p. 108.
16. also, see R. Gibbs, Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibilities (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), pp. 86-113.
17. See Totality and Infinity, p. 263. Certainly, the context is that of erotic nudity, an exhibitionist approach to eros that would seek to reveal all and destroy the alterity of the other. Yet, why he equates such 'inverted' eros with a 'young animal', who is without responsibility, remains a question.
18. See J. Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1988).
19. and 'Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand', trans. Leavey in J. Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1987), pp. 161-96.
20. Levinas' clearest and most emphatic differentiation of his position from that of Heidegger comes in a series of lectures published as Dieu, la Mort, et le Temps(Grasset, 1993), translated as God, Death, and Time (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000).
21. J. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999), p. 114. See 1 Kings 19:12-15.
22. E. Levinas, 'The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights' in Difficult Freedom, trans. S. Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), pp. 151-3. This text links up with Otherwise Than Being, in that Levinas also talks about Odysseus' dog: 'Perhaps the dog that recognised Ulysses beneath his disguise on his return from the Odyssey was a forbear of our own. But no, no! There, they were in Ithaca and the Fatherland. Here, we were nowhere' (Difficult Freedom, p. 153).
23. See also Otherwise Than Being, pp. 79-80: 'The incarnate ego, the ego of flesh and blood, can lose its signification, be affirmed as an animal in its conatus and its joy. It is a dog that recognises as its own Ulysses coming to take possession of his goods. But this ambiguity is the condition of vulnerability itself, that is, of sensibility as signification.' Animality, like language, can take on either an ontological or ethical signification. For more on this issue.
24. see also J. Llwellyn, 'Am I Obsessed by Bobby? (Humanism of the Other Animal)' in S. Critchley and R. Bernasconi (eds), Re-reading Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991).
25. See F. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. W.W. Hallo (Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 1985). For example, p. 183: 'The creation which becomes visible in the revelation is creation of the revelation.'
26. Irigaray, To Be Two, p. 106.
27. See Dragunoiu, 'Psychoanalysis, Film Theory, and the Case of Being John Malkovich', p. 15: 'The poem suggests an alternative to the dynamic that has governed so far the characters' interpersonal relationships.' Dragunoiu then argues that this dynamic is undercut by the daughter's portal, but I am not sure that this undercuts the relationship.