Ética del enigma

Pasado y alteridad en la escritura butleriana

Abstract

How does the questioning of the Other appears in Judith Butler's ethical thought? What does it imply to think of as an enigma of the subject, both external and internal? Starting from these questions, the paper establishes a reading of the way in which responsibility has been thematized in Giving Account of Oneself, drawing on the contributions of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Laplanche. Although from dissimilar and sometimes dissonant perspectives, both literatures contribute to set up a conceptualization of the Other as previous, persecutory and enigmatic.

Within this framework, the article locates an internal tension in Butlerian alterity that appears in its ethical effects. If, on the one hand, the encounter with the Other implies an interruption in the subject's own narration that demands translation, on the other hand, this interruption is assigned specific consequences: relation and interdependence.