Strangers in Paradise: Reenacting Proximity in Time of Pandemic

In 2019, Kathryn Frost looks for conjunction where mimetic theory and attachment theory can agree on the issue of human proximity. Her search starts from an apparent conflict between René Girard's cautionary stand against proximity and attachment theory that favors proximity-seeking as a formative experience in one's personal development. She comes with a plan for "a hybrid of mimetic theory that privileges attachment … and caregiving,"¹ and designs a program "to break through the mimetic vortex of conflict cycles."²

Both mimesis as the "parsimonious principle" that undergirds Girard's theory and proximity-seeking in attachment theory are working at a prerepresentational level.³ This explains why her conflict intervention program (viz. "Circle of Security") offers practical strategies to cope with proximity issues from one's early childhood by "making the unconscious conscious," tracing one's painful past experiences, reflecting on one's inner child, and changing one's "state of mind."⁴ Although this program operates based on the conception of proximity as a manageable distance,⁵ she demonstrates that psychology (in this case, attachment theory) does not assume desire without imitation, as Girard once charged.⁶ However, Frost admits that she only gives "some initial sketches" and calls for "further exploration."⁷ Therefore, I propose to continue her study on proximity and address the other half of Girard's allegation—that philosophers hold the possibility for imitation without desire. For this purpose, I traverse Emmanuel Lévinas's notion of proximity as an inalienable restlessness that surpasses our schematic programming as a conscious, rational subject.

PROBING FOR COMPLEMENTARITY

Although Girard recognizes the magnitude of Lévinas's thought and influence,⁸ Lévinas is not a predominant thinker for him.⁹ The elaboration of Lévinas's philosophy into Girard's theory of violence just began to grow after the publication of Achever Clausewitz (2007).¹⁰ Back then, Joachim Duyndam and Sandor Goodhart nominated Lévinas's idea of responsibility as a common ground on which to build the dialogue.¹¹ They concurred that responsibility was bestowed by the other and thereby determined one's uniqueness as a relational idea. Since the other's face is an opening to the infinite, any resolution to interpersonal conflict assumes the appeal of infinite responsibility against the perilous allure of violence.¹²

Although their search for complementarity merits proper appreciation, these discourses contain some discrepancies. Goodhart holds that Girard's theory of violence is "an interpretative system" instead of ethics.¹³ Thus, he expects Lévinas's descriptive (not prescriptive) ethics to support Girard's theory. However, this suggestion overlooks Girard's remarks that ethical concerns have driven his theory and that his theory facilitates "ethical prescriptions."¹⁴ On the other hand, unlike Goodhart, Duyndam denies that Lévinas provides any ethics. It seems that ethics is not even required here because "responsibility is not granted from … a theory of ethics."¹⁵ While this view might hinder Duyndam's proposal from incompatibility issues between ethical systems, it does not do justice to Lévinas, who has written a substantial amount about ethics as a positive structure and as first philosophy.¹⁶

By saying this, I do not mean to say that these projects failed to obtain their goal. Their discrepancies do not thwart the plain fact that ethics occupies a crucial role for both Lévinas and Girard. Even if Lévinas may not provide enough explanation concerning the epistemic status of morality and infinite responsibility, this does not cancel "responsibility" as a common denominator that he shares with Girard. What their projects lack are responses to Girard's criticisms that Lévinas "says little about reciprocity" and needs to be "less idealistic,"¹⁷ and that philosophers assume that pure imitation without desire exists.¹⁸ Moreover, none of these studies has extensively taken Lévinas's idea of proximity into account.¹⁹

Goodhart later acknowledges the centrality of substitution to both Lévinas and Girard, but he does not contemplate how its asymmetry necessarily leads to proximity.²⁰ Harding's essay might be the only one akin to mine insofar...