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Re-viewing the Sexual Relation: Levinas and Film

2007; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3366/film.2007.0010

1466-4615

Lisa Downing,

Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

When considering possible theoretical perspectives for an ethical conceptualisation of erotic or sexually explicit display in cinema, such as recent controversial work by French female directors Catherine Breillat and Claire Denis, the thought of Emmanuel Levinas is perhaps not the most likely or obvious candidate. Levinas has little to say directly about sexuality or pornography, even though the concepts of desire and Eros are central to much of his philosophy. 1 Equally, he is notoriously suspicious of figurality and the realm of the visual, a suspicion he voices especially forcefully in his essay on the work of art ‘Reality and its Shadow’ (‘La Realite et son ombre’, 1948) (Levinas 1987a). It is, paradoxically, and perhaps perversely, for this very reason that this article will consider him as potentially the theorist par excellence for viewing sexual images in cinema. Michel Foucault, meta-theorist of theories of sexuality, drew attention in his key study of 1976 The Will to Knowledge (La Volonte de savoir), to the problems of speaking authoritatively or authentically about the truth of sexuality, in a system in which sexuality is constructed, within networks of power and knowledge, as that which is to be spoken, confessed, named and known. In this model, which contradicts the so-called repressive hypothesis, any talking about sex risks shoring up rather than transgressing, the workings of dominant power relations. By not speaking directly or straightforwardly about sex, then, Levinas offers sideways-on strategies for thinking the problems inherent in conceptualising and representing it. Moreover, perhaps, precisely by being suspicious of the image, Levinas may encourage us to look at film particularly acutely, in the