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Elementals and Affects, or on Making Contact with Others

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Abstract

This paper begins with the experience of the difficulty of making contact with others, and examines it from the point of view of the “elemental” in which human subjects are immersed, and which they share. The impersonal nature of language is invoked to mobilize a discussion about the characteristics of this elemental, drawing in thinking on shared humanity and its limits. This allows an exploration of the “inhuman” aspect of human aliveness that makes contact with others, and change, feasible.

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Notes

  1. “Murmuring” deep is an unusual translation of the Hebrew “tehom”, used by Rosenbaum and Silbermann (undated) in their version of Genesis. In a personal communication, Avivah Zornberg, supporting this rendering, writes that it “can be justified since the ‘harmonics’ of tehom include humming, restlessness, panic, cooing, groaning, stirring, tumult, music, as well as murmuring” (email of 7 August 2007).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of London, UK

    Stephen Frosh

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  1. Stephen Frosh
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Correspondence to Stephen Frosh.

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Frosh, S. Elementals and Affects, or on Making Contact with Others. Subjectivity 24, 314–324 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2008.18

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