The ethics of visuality : Levinas and the contemporary gaze / Hagi Kenaan ; translated by Batya Stein
By: Kenaan, Hagi [author.]
.
Contributor(s): Stein, Batya [translator.].
Material type: 
BookSeries: International library of contemporary philosophy: Publisher: London ; New York, NY : I.B. Tauris, 2013Description: xxi, 154 pages ; 23 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9781780765167 (paperback); 1780765169 (paperback) ; 9781780765150 (hardback); 1780765150 (hardback).Subject(s): Levinas, Emmanuel | Gaze -- Moral and ethical aspects | Other (Philosophy)DDC classification: 194 Summary: Outlining an original philosophical argument on the place of visuality in Levinas\' ethics, Kenaan looks at the concepts of his work and articulates his vision of \'otherness\' together with the visual tropes of the human face as symbolic of alterity and transcendence
| Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 194 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00230317 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Our world is saturated with images. Overwhelmed by this proliferation of visual stimuli, our gaze becomes increasingly bored and distracted. Do we ever really read and engage with images? Can they ever provide the sense of meaningfulness we crave? French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas confronted and subverted these questions. A superficial reading of his works might indicate an ambivalence if not a wholesale critique of the visual, whose mode of signification remains, for him, objectified, finite and flat. Yet an enigmatic statement - 'Ethics is an optics' - recurred throughout his work. Hagi Kenaan takes this mysterious idea as the starting point for a strikingly original philosophical argument on the place of visuality in Levinas' ethics. The Ethics of Visuality analyses Levinas' philosophy of the human face in order to show how his vision of 'Otherness'(alterity and transcendence) can open up for us a new and surprising kind of optics that is so needed for an ethical living in the contemporary world.Where other critical approaches have largely undermined Levinas' ambivalence towards the visual, The Ethics of Visuality uncovers the relevance of Levinas' bias against the visual to developing a radical philosophy/theory of visual meaning in which the aesthetic is always already intertwined with the ethical.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-147) and index
Outlining an original philosophical argument on the place of visuality in Levinas\' ethics, Kenaan looks at the concepts of his work and articulates his vision of \'otherness\' together with the visual tropes of the human face as symbolic of alterity and transcendence
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Acknowledgements (p. viii)
- Preface: The Rule of the Frontal (p. ix)
- Ethics is an Optics: Preliminary Remarks (p. 1)
- Face
- Face 1 The Gleam of Infinity (p. 23)
- Face 2 How a Face Looks (p. 29)
- Face 3 Face and Object (p. 43)
- Face 4 Why a Face, All of a Sudden? (p. 49)
- Face 5 Vision, Gaze, Other (p. 53)
- Face 6 Face and Resistance (p. 69)
- Face 7 Outside (p. 81)
- Talk
- Talk 1 The Face of Language (p. 85)
- Talk 2 Expression (p. 91)
- Talk 3 The First Word (p. 95)
- Talk 4 Saying and Betraying (p. 99)
- Talk 5 Word, Window, Screen (p. 115)
- Talk 6 Listening to a Big Bird (p. 125)
- Talk 7 The Open (p. 131)
- Notes (p. 137)
- Index (p. 148)