Gliding through: poetics of cohabitation

Abstract

This article has its origin in the feeling of being interpellated, touched by an artistic narrative called Saved Images, about women’s prison in Ezeiza. This material was produced given the prohibition of taking photographs in the prison. The purpose of this work is to criticize the hegemonic representations of prisoners, and to question which new recognition horizons the critique might enable. In a dialogue with Butler and Levinas, we ask for the ways in which singular narratives of vulnerability spread out. The aims of this work are, first, to analyze Saved Images as a material that enables to interrogate a series of assumptions of hegemonic representations of prisoners, even in some feminist trends. Second, based on a butlerian analysis, we seek to discuss the concepts of precarity and frame of recognition, when interpellating our affective responsiveness before other’s vulnerability. Third, with Levinas, our purpose is to analyze the concept of the face, which evidences our existential and inexorable bond with one another. And, finally, we intend to suggest other ethical horizons we might be able to imagine throughout this critique. The methodology is to work with the narratives in Saved Images, as a cultural material and production, and not directly with prison as an object, as we recognize the mediations. We believe that this research might contribute to a critique of our affective responsiveness and, in this sense, we reflect: who do we feel responsible for? How is our responsiveness performed? We hope our work is an outline about feminist ways of enabling ethics of cohabitation, that challenge the predictable.