The Grey Zone of Subjectivity. Phenomenology of the feminine body in Emmanuel Lévinas's thought

Abstract

The concept of a "woman figure" by Emmanuel Lévinas, is an example, inwhich the notions of "masculinity" and "femininity" serve to determine the character of a certain proposition of a Subject. Lévinas introduced sexualcharacteristics into the neutral subject, yet he is incon-sistent in his treatment of the idea of a Woman and, moreover, he assigned subjectivity to a single gender: the masculine. Nonetheless, the criticism of Lévinas’s model of femi-ninity from a feminist viewpoint is neither simple nor clear. Lévinas continu- ally evades such criticism. He re-established the body and sensuality as key aspects of meeting with the Other. And also, he criticizes the Western ontolog- ical tradition as a theoretical source of violence against the Other, since – as he claims – on a high level of abstraction it appears that thematisation itself is a violence. At the same time, Lévinas proposes ontology of a "woman". In rela-tion to this, one needs to ask the question: why does Lévinas, whilst stating theneed to be freed from ontology, at the same time create an ontological wom- an? And additionally, what are the philo-sophical and ethical consequences of the phenomenology of femininity that are presented by Lévinas?