By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication

Contents

Contents Abbreviations .................................................................. vii Acknowledgments .......................................................... ix INTRODUCTION: The Other Side of Communication .................... 1 ONE • The Biases of Communication ........................ 27 Communication as Influence ........................ 29 Communication as a System of Control ...... 37 Communication as Culture .......................... 46 Communication as Critical Discourse .......... 54 Toward a Critique of the Field .................... 62 TWO • Communication as Ethics ................................ 67 The Common Foundation ............................ 68 Approaching Alterity .................................... 70 Language and the Other ................................ 79 Dislocating Communication ........................ 90 THREE • Traces of Babel .............................................. 103 Undoing Babel .............................................. 105 Deconstructing Babel .................................. 123 Translation as a Paradigm of Communication ........................................ 130 Interregnum .................................................. 143 v FOUR • Incommunicable Boundary ................................ 151 Autusm: A Brief History of a Communicational Boundary ...................................................... 153 Bartleby’s Contra-diction ................................ 171 The Question of Liminality .............................. 179 FIVE • Silent Demand .................................................... 189 Beyond Truth .................................................... 191 Outside the Self ................................................ 205 For the Future of Democracy .......................... 225 CONCLUSION: The Messenger Is the Message ............................ 239 NOTES ............................................................................ 257 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................ 271 INDEX ............................................................................ 289 vi Contents ...