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Volume 18, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1601-829X
  • E-ISSN: 2040-0586

Abstract

Abstract

The Dardenne brothers' (1996) and Fatih Akin's (2007) depict non-western migrants in western Europe as the social 'abject' in the background of multicultural conflicts between global (Christian) Europe and its (Islamic) periphery. Also, both share a motif based on the Abraham–Isaac story. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac epitomizes one's singular relationship with God beyond community (Kierkegaard, Marion, Derrida), but the Abraham figures in the films give themselves to the abject Isaac figures through self-abjection. This becoming-abject as an existential gift breaks the father–son identity in the global regime, forming solidarity among the abject as strangers. Such an abject is, I claim, a 'faceless' third. For Levinas, the 'face of the other' leads one to divine infinity beyond totality, but this self-other unit is destabilized with the other's place taken (repeatedly) by the faceless third. Neither friend nor enemy, this new other should be called 'neighbour' in the context of ethical philosophy. The sovereign-subject-abject hierarchy is dismantled into the equality of the neighbours who share abjectness beyond cultural mediation or identity and walk side by side rather than face to face. I reframe Levinansian infinity in this network of neighbouring on the edge of the global system.

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2020-01-01
2024-04-20
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From 'face-to-face' to 'side-by-side': The abject neighbour in European cinema
Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook 18, 53 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1386/nl_00013_1
/content/journals/10.1386/nl_00013_1
/content/journals/10.1386/nl_00013_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): abject; Abraham and Isaac; Dardenne brothers; ethics; Fatih Akin; Kierkegaard; Levinas; neighbour

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