From Face to Facebook

Levinas's Radical Ethics and "Shakespeare Friends"

Authors

Lisa S. Starks-Estes University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Abstract

Cluster: Responsible Networks

In this essay, I employ Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy to examine intersubjectivity in social media and to reflect on the Facebook group "Shakespeare Friends," which I created and administer. Levinas's "face-to-face" theory provides a radical way of thinking about ethics in social media and mediated communication, one that points to their transformative effects while avoiding the now commonplace notions that social media and other computer technologies are either entirely liberating our identities and relationships or completely eroding them. Levinas's theory of communication (the "saying" over the "said") relies on his concept of "substitution" and "proximity" between people, which may be — and has been — applied to analyses of online as well as offline relationships. This theory, I contend, is especially relevant to social media like Facebook, as evidenced in the exchanges on "Shakespeare Friends." I employ Levinas's radical ethics to analyze the group "Shakespeare Friends" as a kind of "walled garden," a community with its own boundaries and dynamics — a "networked public." Levinas's theory seems especially relevant to this group, as many, including Levinas himself, have seen his ethics as deeply implicated in Shakespeare's texts and appropriations of them. Using current social media theory to study the functions and affordances of social media sites in general, Facebook in particular, I focus on "spreadability" and "coaxed affordances," which allow for this active interaction. I observe that "Shakespeare Friends" upsets traditional hierarchies and barriers and crosses geographical boundaries, making it possible for members to exchange ideas with fellow Shakespeare scholars, educators, and practitioners all over the world. In effect, the group is a virtual microcosm of the global nature of contemporary Shakespeare studies, a supportive means of exchange between Shakespearean scholars, educators, or practitioners in theatre or other arts.

Author Biography

Lisa S. Starks-Estes, University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Lisa S. Starks-Estes (formerly Lisa S. Starks) is Associate Professor of English at University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where she chairs the Department of Verbal and Visual Arts and directs the MLA in Liberal Studies Program. She has published articles, edited special issues of journals, and co-edited book collections on sexuality and violence in Renaissance drama, Shakespeare on screen, and other topics, including chapters in Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater (Ashgate 2013) and Violent Masculinities: Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture (Palgrave 2013). Most recently, she has published a scholarly monograph, entitled Violence, Trauma, and Virtus in Shakespeare's Roman Poems and Plays: Transforming Ovid (Palgrave 2014). She is currently working on a new project on the ways in which Shakespeare and other early modern writers appropriated Ovid to conceptualize theatrical practices and experiences.