Christopher Lauer

Intimacy (eBook, PDF)

A Dialectical Study

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy.

After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Februar 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781474226271
• Artikelnr.: 44363925

Autorenporträt

Christopher Lauer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Hawai`i at Hilo, USA.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction Intimacy and Feeling Dialectics Limitations of dialectics Note
on Terminology Chapter 1: The Gift Initiation Appeal and Delay Absenting A
Measured Gift: Lysias's Speech Chapter 2: Touching Touching as shared
experience Proportion The myth of the inmost touch The wound Chapter 3: The
Heartbeat Systole and diastole Indifference and longing Chapter 4: The
Between God and the space between The rupture Accessibility Chapter 5: The
Fetish The interest The fetishized body The promise Chapter 6: Embedding
The secret The third The neutralized third: gossip The generalized third:
irony Fraudulence Chapter 7: Conflict The dismissal The dispute Violence
Debate Chapter 8: The Mêlée Consumption, destruction, and waste Laughter
Frenzy Millenarianism Chapter 9: The Future The test The commitment
Planning Identification Anticipatory mourning Chapter 10: Mourning
Gathering and retraction Haunting Singularity Afterward Bibliography Notes