Finding Time for a Fecund Feminine in Levinas's Thought

Emmanuel Levinas has been largely criticized for describing his notion of fecundity by focusing mainly on the father-son relation. The close connection Levinas forms between fecundity and time may lead to the conclusion that the female is excluded from the time of sociality. Moreover, such an approach also raises a difficulty concerning Levinas’s view of time as constituted via the subject’s face-to-face relation with the Other. The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Levinas’s concept of fecundity that not only allows a fecund feminine, but also enables us to consider time beyond the limiting perspective of paternity.