ABSTRACT
Indebted to the matrixial psychoanalysis of Bracha L. Ettinger, this chapter aims at demonstrating that the (female) body is capable of becoming a site of a transhistorical encounter during which one might reach the Others that otherwise remain remote and anonymous. The chapter begins with a reading of Ettinger’s relation with Emmanuel Lévinas, whose humanism has laid a cornerstone of her proto-ethics rooted in the intrauterine encounter. This prepares the ground for an analysis of the ethical dimension of corporeality in her artworks with the so-called Eurydicean motif, keeping in mind that within the frame of the matrixial theory art potentially offers a humanizing pathway to the fragmented memory of the intrauterine transsubjective state. Paintings from the Eurydice series (and related works) are based on the 1942 photograph of naked women and children taken in the Mizocz ghetto right before their execution. As will be shown, Ettinger, and the way in which her theory and art interweave, provide us not only with a testimony to the women’s trauma, but first and foremost with an artistic project aiming at its affective embodiment.
