Impassible peace
Enmity and the frozen figures of intractability
This essay investigates the construction of enemy-Others through a post-Freudian notion of dreamwork, as developed in Jean-François Lyotard’s philosophy of the figure. Of critical interest is Lacan’s contention that the unconscious is structured like a language. A fragment of a dream is presented and analyzed as a way to reveal how figuration functions in dreams as images and forms related to enemy-Others and how engagement of the figure-matrix can loosen intractability and engage dialogue, albeit in agony. The essay takes up enmity’s destablizing consequences for innocent others, which in turn leads to a critical discussion of Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the abyss of otherness out of which the ethical injunction arises, and concludes by considering implications for dialogic ethics.
Article outline
- 1.
Introduction
- 2.Dreaming the enemy
- 2.1Dreamwork that does not speak
- 2.2A figural analysis
- 3.Implications for dialogical ethics
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Notes
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References