Before Being: Uncovering the Process of Presencing Through the Mother's Sublimation

Abstract

In my paper, I discuss the importance of difference regarding the process of presencing, and how being’s problematization of difference – as exhibited through ambivalence and anxiety – yields to the sublimation of the source of what gives being to itself. Through the relationships between mother and infant and human and nature, I show how meaning is acquired for being through a process of equalization, wherein the individual takes ownership over what it is in relation to, over what awards being. I identify the process of presencing, of acquiring a meaningful identity, as a process of equalization wherein the source of meaning – the mother, and nature – are effaced and forgotten in how they first awarded being to itself.