Jennifer Scuro (The College of New Rochelle, NY)

Receptive Affections
I am developing new ideas for a post-globization ethics – an eco/alter ethics. Using ideas rooted in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I am developing theory for “receptive affection” in which the world creates possibility to make time and space for what is ‘other’ than the desires satisfied by the social and political economy of market liberalism. The pace of economic productivity and development moves at a speed that has little time or space for the rhythms of the natural body and the time it needs to regenerate. The ‘time out’ to care, heal and repair, when it does not exclude, exploit or marginalize, can then take on a diversity of socio-political expression. Patience is the resistance that can pause and wait (a ‘making of time’) despite the imperatives for speed and efficiency. Generosity is the extension of self to alter-positions – others – in which one ‘makes room’ for what remains in marginalized and excluded spaces, in which receptive affections manifest as the ‘welcome’ and the ‘gift.’ A language that seeks world habitability and respect for what is already ‘rooted’ is what I hope emerges out of these efforts, thinking of this also as a post-Holocaust ethics.

I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The College of New Rochelle and Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies. I have my Ph.D from The New School for Social Research. My work is in Continental Philosophy, particularly in Phenomenology and Ethics. I have written on Levinas, Heidegger, and Arendt. My teaching expertise is in feminist theory, environmental ethics and I use critical pedagogy in my Philosophy of Education curriculum. I am beginning to develop and research in disability theory.