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Movement, Embrace: Adriana Cavarero with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger (and the Death Drive)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Angie Voela  and
Cigdem Esin
Angie Voela*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, University of East London, University Way, Royal Docks, London E16 2RD and Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, University of East London, Royal Docks, London E16 2RD
Cigdem Esin*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, University of East London, University Way, Royal Docks, London E16 2RD and Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, University of East London, Royal Docks, London E16 2RD
*
Corresponding authors. Email: a.voela@uel.ac.uk and c.esin@uel.ac.uk
Corresponding authors. Email: a.voela@uel.ac.uk and c.esin@uel.ac.uk
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Abstract

An experience of helplessness during the production of a collective autobiographical narrative offers an opportunity to explore points of convergence between Adriana Cavarero's postural philosophy and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger's matrixial borderlinking. The narrative is treated as a live scene that enfolds the movement of the drive conceptualized in such a way as to avoid the prioritization of death over life. Five successive moves, inspired by Ettinger's rotation of the phallic prism, illuminate affinities between the two thinkers. The first rotation explores the matrixial and relational qualities that compose the scene. The second rotation approaches death from a notional beginning, prioritizing the presence of the mother and her assymmetrical relationship to the infant. The third rotation emphasizes the transformational character of Ettinger's matrixial movement and border-crossing, especially when examined in conjunction with Cavarero's maternal inclination. In the fourth rotation we show how inclination (clinamen) in Lacanian psychoanalysis is linked to the disappearance of the mother from the scene. The (re)introduction of the mother disrupts the Lacanian logic with the possibility of a beginning just as immanent as desire and lack. Movement, qua embrace and unity-disunity (fifth rotation), becomes an indispensable component of feminist ontology that captures the immanence of sharing in the matrixial-maternal plane.

Type
Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Winter 2021 , pp. 101 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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