ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 builds on the reframing of disgust as a struggle for recognition laid out in the previous chapter towards a reimagining of disgust’s ethical question and implications. The question at the heart of this chapter is, how ought I to treat an other when they disgust me? Through a series of invitations, this chapter offers the reader opportunities to examine their own disgust—both repulsion and fascination—to play with different ways of thinking through their disgust and the disgust of others. These direct invitations—to play, to sustain paradox, to locate monstrosity—are rooted in the chapter’s central argument that to meet disgust’s ethical demands requires a relational process; such a process cannot be attained in isolation, but in being with. The aim of this chapter is to create space both conceptually and tangibly for what Jessica Benjamin calls “thirdness” in order to begin imagining and enacting our ethical responsibilities in the face of disgust. Along these lines, the chapter argues that our theorizing of disgust must act as a witness so that the effects, impacts, and potential harms of disgust—on selfhood, intersubjective relations, and world-making—can be acknowledged.
