Corporeal Otherness: a dialogue between Oyèrónké Oyewùmí and Emmanuel Levinás: a dialogue between Oyèrónké Oyewùmí and Emmanuel Levinás

Abstract

The study of the theoretical foundations of Human Rights involves an epistemological effort that challenges the Western hegemony of scientific knowledge in modernity. With a counter-hegemonic tendency, there is recognition of a conceptual framework that serves as the backdrop for emerging ideas and theoretical images in which the blending of knowledge and dialogue takes center stage. Plural dialogue should be built upon the meeting of different knowledge systems. The possibilities of these encounters do not always happen in a material form, where two or more bodies recognize and relate to each other. Researchers and scholars must exercise their imagination. And this is the starting point of this text, where we seek to establish a possible dialogue between the contributions of Oyèrónké Oyewùmí and Emmanuel Levinás regarding the meanings of the body and alterity. This exercise itself allows access to new developments in the conceptual practice of the world, where the meeting of knowledge and understanding is realized through new relationships of sharing. By combining the perspectives of Oyewùmí and Levinás, we are challenged to rethink and expand our conceptions of identities, bodies, and social relationships.