Intuition and Excess: Mona Hatoum's Measures of Distance and the Saturated Phenomenon

Abstract

This article argues that Mona Hatoum's video Measures of Distance presents us with an example of Jean-Luc Marion's saturated phenomenon. Partial and deeply textured images of Hatoum's mother have prompted scholars to explore questions of absence, exile, intimacy and loss. In contrast, I focus on the presence of the mother and her manner of appearing. I suggest that Hatoum's mother appears through an excess of intuition, the video itself coming into our consciousness as a particular configuration of Marion's notion of givenness. In this phenomenological understanding, Hatoum's mother escapes objectification not merely because of the aesthetics of layering but because the scale of the givenness of her appearing exceeds any objective conception of it.