Radclyffe Hall : de l’engagement à une ouverture éthique dans The Sixth Beatitude

Abstract

Based first on the implicit relationship with autonomy called for by the term commitment; secondly on the view expressed by Adorno that the two notions of commitment and autonomy do not prove dialectical but frame a spectrum, this article accounts for the way Radclyffe Hall positions The Sixth Beatitude, rather than The Well of Loneliness, within such a spectrum. The treatment of poverty in her novel through the motif of filth requires a double negotiation with reality and with the reader. She sets up a to and fro technique alternating a move towards and then away from reality which is quickly invalidated by the characters’ precariousness. Indeed, this technique questions the very possibility they have of making choices hence of being committed since commitment implies a grasp on reality. Although the characters hardly have the power to choose, they will reach other forms of commitment stemming from an unintended transgression. In her defense of people deprived of choice and of voice, Hall seems to reveal new relationships between commitment and autonomy that open up on an ethics of alterity in which multiplicity and collaboration prevail over binary oppositions.

Keywords

• Radclyffe Hall
• The Sixth Beatitude
• autonomy
• commitment
• ethics
• filth