Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

in the space of an unfinished conversation; entries into a web of many reimagined
directions and meanings that come together through rediscovering
words, actions, thoughts in their interrelations, linkage and ambiguities.
As according to Lévinas’s thought that responsibility for the Other
occurs before being, it means that all the questions concerning the Other’s
death appear at the same time as an “ethical awakening” 25 . What does the
ethical relation of being responsible for the Other mean in this situation? How
should we fulfil responsibility to the Other knowing that it is a kind of “impossible
responsibility of consciousness in its own originating relation to others”
(Lacan, according to Caruth 1996) when we face loss? How should one carry
oneself with these layers of responsibility? Am I competent for that? Am I ready
for that? I ask myself again and again.
Despite the various inner blockades accompanied with contradictory
and changing feelings through facing unimaginable, unacceptable loss, I know
that the heart of this matter touches the continuous dialogue within, from
which none of us is excluded. Joys, arguing, feminist subversions, sparkling
thoughts, I remember all these moments of being together and I might imagine
new ones.
Meetings and imaginary places
How did it happen, Nirman, that we never discussed her [Žarana’s] feminist
political engagement or her inner preoccupation with French theoretical
affairs? How was it possible, Žarana, that we never mentioned her [Nirman]?
There is no explanation or excuse that would ‘pass’ my elegant acceptance. This
un certainty embodies my vocation and my voicing you. I do not even know
whether you met each other, although I may guess that you did.
Enwrapped in a large cashmere garment in warm shades of cinnamon,
Žarana crosses the threshold.
And you, Nirman, once more with rhetoric dignity, say a quote that
addresses the last question from the conversation of Medea with Arin: “Where
will I go? Is it possible to imagine one world, one time, to which I would fit/
belong. No one close by to ask. That is the answer.” 26 Žarana turns attentively
to you.
25
Emmanuel Lévinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 26.
26
Moranjak-Bamburać, Ibid., 2003: 267.
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