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“Like a Maternal Body”: Emmanuel Levinas and the Motherhood of Moses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Lisa Guenther
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Abstract

Emmanuel Levinas compares ethical responsibility to a maternal body who bears the Other in the same without assimilation. In explicating this trope, he refers to a biblical passage in which Moses is like a “wet nurse” bearing Others whom he has “neither conceived nor given birth to” (Num. 11:12). A close reading of this passage raises questions about ethics, maternity, and sexual difference, for both the concept of ethical substitution and the material practice of mothering.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Maternal Bodies , Winter 2006 , pp. 119 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

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