Alterity

When Charlotte Mary Matheson began writing The Feather in 1929, numerous movements regarding women's rights were emerging. However, despite various references to contemporary issues, Matheson’s book initially did not receive much attention from critics; it was only after a few decades that The Feather became one of the best-selling novels, especially in Iran. In this article, a feminist reading of the novel was conducted on the basis of the alterity of the Other and the ethics of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. The common ground between the theories of feminism and Levinasian philosophy is the relationship between the Self and the Other, which according to both theories, needs to change. Traditionally, men were accepted as the dominant power or the Self and women as the second sex or the Other. On the other hand, ethics, according to Levinas, emphasizes a proper relationship between the Self and the Other. Hence, the kind of relationship between the Self and the Other and the alterity of the Other become important; thus, this relationship requires a new definition. This reading of the novel shows how the relationship between the Self and the Other in the story, which begins with carnal desires, eventually ends in a moral one. In addition, the female character rediscovers her independence and identity, which was initially dominated by men.

This article is structured in two parts. In the first part there is a focus on Deleuze’s philosophy and in particular the question of desert(ed) islands. Running throughout this section is a consistent concern with empathy and sociality, with the changing structure of alterity in the identified movement from neurosis, psychosis to perversion. In this section I make the argument that several forms of contemporary philosophy are carrying out acts of philosophical autism with regards to species extinction and the question of the absence of the other. I try to counter this trend in the second part of the paper where there is a concern with thinking the structure “Us-without-world,” which is my original contribution. In the time of the coronavirus pandemic, in the time of our forced solitude, in the time of our intoxication with technology, there is a real problem of the life-world, of thinking we-experience in common life, in this new hermetic reality. This is encapsulated in the thought-experiment of the structure “Us-without-world”.