By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Writing this book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of others to whom I am grateful. I would like to thank Sheryl Hamilton for believing in this project right from its inception; her patience and dedication have played a vital role in the formation and execution of this work. Special thanks to Chloë Taylor for her help and support throughout. Thanks also to Bilyana Martinovski for providing helpful comments at the right moments. To John Hunting I owe many hours of thought-provoking conversation. Shlomo Giora Shoham has been a source of constant encouragement and generosity. I have benefited at different stages of writing from discussions with Robert Gibbs and Geraldine Finn. I wish to express my appreciation to my teachers at the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University, especially to Will Straw for always being helpful and supportive, to George Szanto for teaching how to listen, and to Charles Levin for the intellectual stimulation . I am also grateful for two Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Fellowships from McGill University and the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, which allowed me to dedicate my time to research and writing. Sincere thanks are extended to Pearl and Simon Beitner for their warm hospitality; to Yuval Eldar for his friendship and kindness; to my great aunts Frimit and Elka for the packages; to the Fortgang family for their generous help; and to my grandmothers, Chiza and Rivka for their everlasting support. To friends and classmates who made Montreal my home away from home: Andrea Smith, Ira Wagman, Jessica Wurster, Aleksandra Tomic and Dipti Gupta. I am indebted to Dov Shinar and the Hubert Burda Center for Innovative Communication at Ben Gurion University of the Negev for a ix postdoctoral fellowship. To friends and colleagues who have contributed in different ways to the completion of this project: Tamar Ashuri, Daniel Dor, Lia Nirgad, Tamar Liebes, Tirzta Elnathan, Paul Frosh and Raya Morag. At Duquesne University Press, I would like to thank Susan Wadsworth-Booth and Kathy Meyer for their dedicated work and many efforts. To my friends with whom I shared this journey: Odi and Maria Ashkenazi, Shmulik Tossman, Nir Wein, Vered Shavit and Tali Graf. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, Nava and Chezi. Sections from chapters 2 and 3 appeared as “The Ethics of Interruption: Toward a Levinasian Philosophy of Communication,” Social Semiotics 15, no. 2 (August 2005): 211–34.Ashort version of chapter 4 appeared as “Displacing Incommunicability: Autism as an Epistemological Boundary ,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 2 (June 2005): 163–84. x Acknowledgments ...