Othering Beings and Being’s Other: A Comparative Study of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis in Terms of Levinasian Ethical Self

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, School of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, School of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

The renaissance and the postmodern era provide two interesting periods for discussion. The renaissance can be viewed as the early modern period prefiguring the contemporary world. Thus, the two aforesaid periods can be connected to one another. This comparative study discusses two works: one from the early modern period and the other from the postmodern world. Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (2000) provide the material for a discussion on the treatment of the Other as conceived by the philosophy of Levinas in his Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1978). In the spirit of brevity, the central events of the plays and the most suggestive dialogue are discussed. One of the most pertinent concepts in Levinas’ ideology is responsibility which is required for the transcendence leading to subjectivity. It is concluded that while in Shakespeare the unethical mostly die, thus ending their torment, the fate that awaits Kane’s characters is much more dire; they are left battered and bruised, corporeal shells of Beings, paralyzed in time and unable to transcend Being towards the Other. As such, it is seen that the postmodern treats unethical Beings much harsher compared to the early modern.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Barker, Victoria. “Languages of the Other: Contemporary Feminist and Theological Discourses of Otherness.” Sydney Studies in Religion, 1995, pp. 97-106.
Brotton, Jerry. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Caro, Jason. “Levinas and the Palestinians.” Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 35, No. 6, 2009, pp. 671-684.
Chinnery, Ann, and Heesoon Bai. “Justice in the Name of the Other: Levinas on Rights and Responsibility.” Levinas and Education, edited by Denise Egéa-Kuehne, Routledge, 2008, pp. 240-253.

Cohen, Richard A. Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Crewe, Don. “Blame, Responsibility, and Peacemaking.” Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2019, pp. 1-17.

Edelglass, William. “Levinas on Suffering and Compassion.” Sophia, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2006, pp. 43-59.
Hendley, Steven. “Speech and Sensibility: Levinas and Habermas on the Constitution of the Moral Point of View.” Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2004, pp. 153-173.

Kane, Sarah. 4.48 Psychosis. London, Methuen, 2000. 
Knapp, James A. “Visual and Ethical Truth in The Winter’s Tale.” Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3, 2004, pp. 253-278.

Kearney, Richard. Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London, Routledge, 2005.
Lawrence, Sean. “The Difficulty of Dying in King Lear.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2005, pp. 35-52.
Leahy, D. G. “The Originality of Levinas: Pre-Originally Categorizing the Ego.” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Vol. 6, 1998, pp. 173-181.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1978. 

Lingis, Alphonso. Introduction. Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, by Emanuel Levinas, 1978, 2nd ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991, pp. xi-xxxix.
Manderson, Desmond. “Proximity: The Law of Ethics and the Ethics of Law.” University of New South Wales Law Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2005, pp. 696-719, https://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/28-3-21.pdf. Accessed 26 Jan. 2022.

Meihuizen, Nicholas. “Hamlet, Levinas, Relationship, and Otherness”. English Studies in Africa, Vol. 62, No. 2, 2019, pp. 124-133.
Rhodes, Carl. “Ethics, Alterity and the Rationality of Leadership Justice.” Human Relations, Vol. 65, No. 10, 2012, pp. 1311-1331.

Rostami, Masoud, and Sahar Mortazavi. “‘For Others, in Spite of Myself, from Myself’: A Levinasian-Feminist Reading of Charlotte Mary Matheson’s The Feather.” Critical Literary Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2022, pp. 133-145.
Saunders, Graham. “‘Out Vile Jelly’: Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted’ & Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’.” New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2004, pp. 69-77.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, edited by Philip Edwards, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Soncini, Sara. “‘A Horror So Deep Only Ritual Can Contain it’: The Art of Dying in the Theatre of Sarah Kane”. Altre Modernità, No. 4, 2010, pp. 117-131.

Thomas, Elisabeth Louise. Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics, Justice, and the Human Beyond Being. London, Routledge, 2004.
Todd, Sharon. “On Not Knowing the Other, or Learning from Levinas.” Philosophy of Education Yearbook, 2002, pp. 67-74.

Urban, Ken. “An Ethics of Catastrophe: The Theatre of Sarah Kane”. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2001, pp. 36-46.

Wehrs, Donald R. “Ethical Ambiguity of the Maternal in Shakespeare’s First Romances”. Of Levinas and Shakespeare: “To See Another Thus”, edited by Moshe Gold, Sandor Goodhart and Kent Lehnhof, Purdue University Press, 2018, pp. 203-236.
Wolcher, Louis E. “Ethics, Justice, and Suffering in the Thought of Levinas: The Problem of the Passage.” Law and Critique, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003, pp. 93-116.

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 18 February 2022
  • Revise Date: 17 December 2022
  • Accept Date: 01 February 2024

Share

How to cite

Statistics