«Comunicazioni sociali», 2018, n. 2, 235-245 © 2018 Vita e Pensiero / Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore CARLA BINO* “I FEEL YOU” Using the Mother’s Gaze to See beyond Otherness Abstract This article is focused on a new narrative form of the Planctus Mariae: the prayer to the glorious Mary in order to obtain the tale of the pain she felt during the death of her Son. Through the anal- ysis of some textual examples – in particular of the Planctus written by the Cistercian monk Ogle- rio from Lucedio at the end of the 12 th century – this paper aims to underline a different dramatic device of the representation of the Passion of Christ which is characterized by a very specifc ‘affective gaze’, capable to see and to feel the likeness to God at the same time. As a consequence, the concept of ‘otherness’ is defned according to an affective knowledge and must be intended as ‘unlikeness’ to God. From Bernard to Dante, seeing through the eyes of Mary makes it possible both to acknowledge the ‘other’ as a neighbour, and to recognise in God “la nostra effge”. Keywords Christian drama; Planctus Mariae; visual culture of the Middle Ages; performative vision; Cis- tercian affectus. It has been clarifed that affectus took on great importance in Western culture during the period from the Anselmian revolution to the 13 th century. In particular, the ongoing debate over a ‘historical anthropology of emotions’ has shown that the affectus is not simply a keyword to understand the rebirth of the period: rather, it is a ‘form of the representation’ which indicates both one kind of relationship and the identity of those involved in it 1 . * Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – carla.bino@unicatt.it. 1 Different branches of medieval studies (theology, history, philosophy, literature, fne arts) stressed how emotions played a cognitive role and were deeply implied both in the defnition of personal identity and in gnosiological proceedings (see above all C. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995; Ead., “Material Continuity, Personal Survival, and the Resurrection of the Body. A Scholastic Discussion in Its Medieval and Modern Contexts”, History of Religions, 30 (1990): 51-85 and “Death and Resurrection in the Middle Ages: Some Modern Implications”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 142, 4 (1998): 589-596). Karl Morrison’s research (from his book “I Am You”. The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology and Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988 to the recent volume edited with R.M. Bell, Studies in Medieval Empathies, Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) and, in the last few years, the work of Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy about the EMMA (Les émotions au Moyen Âge) project, have been shown that to the new interpretation of Christian affectus corresponded a real revolution of the conceptual framework and of the hermeneutical model with which it was possible to understand both the affective semantic of the individual (the body-soul’s bond and the personal relationship with God) and the collective semantic (the relationships between individuals). About the importance of emotions in the Middle Ages see B.H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1998; S. Knuuttila, Emotions in