The Martyr’s Desire: Levinas, Girard, and Infinite Responsibility

<p>Perhaps the whole of human history could be summed up with one word: economy. The law of the home and the home of all law. Without fail, this situation results in a structured devotion that must decide what to do with desire. And the economic decision often follows a violent trajectory, most commonly described as sacrifice. Today, states will make efforts to conceal this underlying logic, but the insidious configurations of ‘real politik’ usually surface with a frightening intensity.</p> <p>My project considers these problematic vestiges through Emmanuel Levinas’s reconfiguration of subjectivity. To address these bio-historical realities, my work highlights the role of the martyr in Levinas’s philosophy. As with other philosophical and religious concepts, I argue that Levinas inverts the dynamic of martyrdom by deposing the fundamentally agential subject. From this redefinition of the martyr as primary subjectivity emerges a politics of recurrence—in stark contrast to the politics of sovereignty dominant in the framework of a liberal nation-state. I place Levinas’s conception of the subject alongside Girard’s analysis of mimetic desire, out of which develops a different desire, which I here name “expropriative desire.” In the move from appropriation to expropriation, a space is opened for the aforementioned politics of recurrence, with an infinite demand serving as the catalyst for emancipatory struggle.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Lawrence, Joshua Alan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sarah Pessin
• Carl Raschke
• Cathie Kelsey

• Desire
• Exposure
• Martyr
• Phenomenology
• Recurrence
• Subject
• Other Philosophy
• Philosophy
• Religion
• Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1946

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-2941