The Suffering Body and the Absolute Other: The ethics of encounter in Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson ندبروجنرویرگید:قلطمقالخاههجاومردهتشونهدشربیورندبتنجنوسرتنیو
Journal of Philosophical Investigations, cilt.20, sa.55, ss.285-302, 2026 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 20 Sayı: 55
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.22034/jpiut.2026.72190.4491
- Dergi Adı: Journal of Philosophical Investigations
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Arab World Research Source, Directory of Open Access Journals, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.285-302
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Absolute Other, Asymmetrical Responsibility, Face, Incompleteness of Relationship, Language as Response, Suffering Body
- Marmara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This article offers a Levinasian reading of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, arguing that the novel can be read not merely as a romantic or body-centric narrative, but as an ethical text about encountering the Other. Drawing on Levinas's concepts—including the Face, the Absolute Other, asymmetrical responsibility, suffering, relational incompleteness, and language as response—it contends that the beloved's body is not an object of cognition or possession, but the scene of ethical demand. The narrator's unnamed and genderless status, narrative ruptures, and focus on Louise's suffering body transform the love relationship into an ethical encounter that never culminates in appropriating or fully comprehending the Other. The act of writing the body constitutes a failed yet inescapable response to the Other's summons—perpetually incomplete, yet precisely from this incompleteness Levinasian ethics emerges. By suspending the narrator's name and gender, the novel prevents identity consolidation and subject-domination, enabling the emergence of Levinas's "Absolute Other." Louise's suffering body appears not as an object of desire or knowledge, but as the Face's manifestation and the source of ethical demand, summoning the narrator to infinite, asymmetrical responsibility. The narrator's endeavor to write Louise's body results not in knowing or possessing the Other, but in incompleteness, distance, and ongoing responsiveness. Thus, Winterson represents love not as appropriation, but as ethical responsibility toward the Other—a responsibility that finds meaning precisely in the inability to fully understand or represent the Other.