“Philosophy of the disembodied”: towards an affective theory of dialogue through Ta-Nehisi Coates's between the world and me

The point of departure for this thesis is a critique of conventional approaches to dialogue. The thesis weaves together Jean-Francois Lyotards differend with affect theory to heighten and intensify our attention to the body in our politics; it will articulate a conceptualization of dialogue that emphasizes, rather than resolves, differences and holds them in embodied suspense. The theoretical framework places the body, its entanglements, and its transformations as central to envisioning new modes of responsibility for our reading practices and our social struggles. The theoretical framework preludes a literary case study of a reconfiguration of the racialized body in Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, a 2015 epistolary memoir about race in America. This thesis ultimately argues that Coatess idiom philosophy of the disembodied pushes us towards new and aporetic hermeneutic practices and modes of responsibility and a different starting place for dialogue.