ABSTRACT
This paper turns to Jean Luc Nancy’s (1991) discussion of “exposition” and “exposed being” as alternative concepts in making sense of communication. I discuss broken heartedness as part of recognizing otherness and in learning to welcome the other who “comes and cuts across me” (Nancy 1991, p. 98). In Shattered Love, Nancy (1991) questions and resists the understanding of love as a “law of fulfillment” (93) or law of completion. In contrast, Nancy (1991) writes about love as exposure and a break where the other “comes and cuts across me” (Nancy 1991, p. 98). The subject is broken into, opened up by the love break, not returning back to the same/self. Nancy (1991) states that the “crossing of love” (p. 98) is constitutive of being-with, Dasein, and sharing the world with others. Being-with only takes place in being’s shattering through the love break. This paper explores Nancy’s (1991) metaphors of “exposed being” (p. 89) and the “heart of being” (p. 105) in learning to receive the other and in being-with-in-the-world. I further explore Nancy’s heart metaphor in relation to Levinas (1969) discussion of the face and the “epiphany of the face” (p. 51) in the ethical relation with the Other, and offer communicative implications.
