#subject-object relations

This reversal of subject-object relations means that what is ostensibly an object for a human – a book, or a car – reveals another side that is no longer dependent on the human gaze. In each case, matter is alive, as the priest says: ‘He lives in the atom. He lives in all things…’ Not in an animistic rapport with humanity, but in an anonymous and brute way. This is the horror of the Levinasian il y a -- the horror of the it which refuses to reveal itself as an I, except as a symptom or a dream. In this vision of horror, matter exceeds the confines of the flesh, and thus subjectivity itself. Doing so, the structure of reality loses definition