ABSTRACT
In their recently published book The Crisis of Connection (New York: New York UP, 2018), editors Niobe Way et al. make a claim for“the need for a paradigm shift”which recognises that “humans are inherently responsive and relational beings” and “not simply the rugged, aggressive, and competitive individuals that we are often made out to be” (3). What is implicit in their diagnosis of a“crisis of connection” is thus the underlying recognition of the fundamental importance of our relational existence – a relational existence, moreover, that they claim to be in “crisis.” To be sure, the “paradigm shift” that Way et al. call for has been underway – at least in scholarly discussions – for quite some time. Whether it is the feminist “ethics of care” tradition of the 1970s, the relational transformation of psychoanalysis during the 1980s, or, indeed, Andrew Benjamin’s recent suggestion that, within the context of Western philosophy, “relationality has always been there […] as philosophy’s other possibility” (Towards a Relational Ontology (Albany: State U of New York P, 2015) 2), a “relational turn” has swept through numerous disciplines over the last few decades. More recently, and in ways that are fundamentally informed by the growing impact that the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas has had on humanities discourse over the last few 2decades, this understanding of ourselves as relational beings has further become associated with our ethical capacity – most overtly, perhaps, in Judith Butler’s immensely influential work. Inasmuch as ethics and relationality are understood to be directly implicated in each other in this recent scholarship, any threat to our relationality must necessarily present as a threat to our capacity for ethical existence.
