Intimacy : A Dialectical Study

La quatrième de couverture indique : "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." FC 1 Half title 2 Also Available from Bloomsbury 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Introduction 10 Intimacy and feeling 12 Dialectics 13 Limitations of dialectics 20 Note on terminology 23 1 The Gift 26 Initiation 26 Appeal and delay 30 Absenting 34 A measured gift: Lysias’s speech 37 2 Touching 42 Touching as shared experience 43 Proportion 45 The myth of the inmost touch 47 The wound 50 3 The Heartbeat 54 Systole and diastole 56 Indifference and longing 63 4 The Between 66 God and the space between 68 The rupture 76 Accessibility 78 5 The Fetish 80 The interest 81 The fetishized body 84 The promise 89 6 Embedding 92 The secret 93 The third 94 The neutralized third: Gossip 98 The generalized third: Irony 98 Fraudulence 104 7 Conflict 108 The dismissal 111 The dispute 114 Violence 118 Withdrawal 119 Debate 120 8 The Mêlée 124 Consumption, destruction and waste 125 Laughter 127 Frenzy 130 Millenarianism 132 9 The Future 134 The test 135 The commitment 136 Planning 138 Identification 141 Anticipatory mourning 144 10 Mourning 148 Gathering and retraction 151 Haunting 154 Singularity 158 Afterword 164 Notes 170 Bibliography 208 Index 216 La quatrième de couverture indique : "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." "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"-- Provided by publisher