Intimate alterity/ies definitely unattainable? Asymptotic approaches to Thomas Csordas’ Asymptote of the ineffable

PUGLISI RODOLFO

DEBATES DO NER

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Lugar: Porto Alegre; Año: 2016 vol. 17 p. 119 - 134

1519-843X

To us anthropologists, sensitive to cultural diversity and skeptical of any statement with universal pretensions, the work of Thomas Csordas on embodied alterity as the phenomenological kernel of religion is certainly provocative. The epistemological surveillance of anthropology in relation to these matters should never expire. However, this does not exclude the possibility of positively considering the work of Csordas, which presents itself as a stimulus to the opening towards new reflective horizons within the discipline, as well as in the promotion of interdisciplinary dialogue.This way, there are two issues from the text “Asymptote of the ineffable. Embodiment, alterity, and the theory of religion” which I shall address here. First, to deepen the understanding of our constitutive alterity, I find it relevant to discuss its collective dimension and for what I shall recover the author´s previous and subsequent works as well as other authors who, when referencing Csordas, also contribute to that purpose. Secondly, I intend to conduct further investigation into some possible connections with concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis, which Csordas himself mentions, as a way of developing, in a specific direction, the intimate alterity that inhabits us.When tackling these two issues consecutively, our intention was not to reproduce classic dualisms (individual/collective, outer/inside, etc.); it was the most didactic way to address the various dimensions of our constitutive alterity. However, this does not prevent the text from acquiring a heterogeneous quality between one section and the next. Nevertheless, the illusion of homogeneity is precisely one of the fictions debunked by Csordas when he demonstrates how, in the kernel of sameness, alterity is produced.