World Ruptures: Captivity and Torture Analysis from the Perspective of Lévinas

Abstract

The following investigation analyzes the testimonies of captivity and torture, which present several questions to the traditional existential phenomenological theory. For this reason, it is proposed a continuation and deepening of the “broken world” theory of Lévinas, with the purpose to offer an explanation and some sense to what is said in those testimonies. Relying on the “paradigmatic examples”, four “world breaks” are proposed with the aim to understand the different responses and relations that a subject has with it body in the context of torture and captivity.