The aim of my talks is to explore the experience of the world as adversity and resistance, by focusing on the phenomenon of fatigue in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. I will tackle the question of affectivity within the dynamic between activity and passivity in experiencing the world.
I will show first why fatigue is not reduced by Levinas to a physiological or psychological phenomenon, but is reconducted to its ontological dimensions in relation to the world as such. I analyse the presuppositions of the fact that the fatigue is understood as a “position taken in regards to existence”, as “fatigue of being”. I further examine the phenomenon of fatigue in relation to other worldly affective situations, such as weariness and indolence, which are equally characterised by a refusal of being, by a non-acceptance of actual existence, by a powerlessness and passivity towards the world. I also focus on how Levinas redefines the Heideggerian notion of world, by uncovering the anonymous and impersonal dimension of il y a, revealed as indeterminate menace in the experience of insomnia, as an ontological horror, in relation to which the fundamental movement of the subject is that of evasion.
In the second part of my talk, I focus on the properly phenomenological attitude assumed by Levinas in his approach of fatigue, based on the observation that this subjective experience should be determined as a phenomenon “prior to reflection”. Considering this pre-reflective view, I will explore the embodied dimensions of the fatigue in connection with the analysis of the effort, and also with the phenomenon of labor.