ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, based on Alonso Cueto’s La Hora Azul (The Blue Hour) (2014) and Julien Kilanga’s Jardin Secret (Secret Garden) (2010), consists of an examination of a radical deconstruction of alterity through narrations of violence. From the intimate confrontation of self-other in contexts of somatic violence as well as historical injustice, this chapter examines the question of “recognition” as a foundation for an ethic of inclusion based on Levinas’ conception of the ethical responsibility and Fanon’s notion of “gift.” The encounters between subjects borne of violent histories do not only offer a prototypical condition of abjection but equally re-figure the grey space between perpetrator/victim as a locus of enunciation from where the quest for the ideal can be initiated. Such encounters also foreground the possibility/urgency of convivial human relations in the aftermath of collective and individual vulnerability represented by war and violence.
