The Subject May have Disappeared but its Sufferings Remain

Today there is no sophisticated theory, which continues to rely on subjectivist premises. It is important, however, that anti-humanism theory's disinterestedness in the (imaginary) subject of voluntarism does not lead to an indifference towards being's constitutive non-essence and passivity in the manner of the worst kind of humanism. Emmanuel Levinas' places ‘absurd’ suffering in the place of essence as the knot of subjectivity; his view of the quiddity of suffering as mode of being passively rather than as psychological content and of the modality of disinterested compassion are used in order to formulate the question `who comes after the subject' in ways which allow us to continue thinking of what it means to be affected in an individuated manner without returning us to the subject of self-presence and autonomy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.