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6. ‘‘The Writing of the Outside,’’ Blanchot with Levinas, or the ‘‘Potentiality’’ of Poetic Language in Otherwise than Being
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s i x ‘‘The Writing of the Outside,’’ Blanchot with Levinas, or the ‘‘Potentiality’’ of Poetic Language in Otherwise than Being Language would exceed the limits of what is thought, by suggesting, letting be understood without ever making understandable (en laissant sous-entendre, sans jamais faire entendre) an implication of meaning distinct from that which comes to signs from the simultaneity of systems or the logical definition of concepts. This possibility (vertu) is laid bare in the poetic said. . . . It is shown in the prophetic said. —Levinas, Otherwise than Being Tell us ‘‘just exactly’’ what happened? A story (histoire)?. . . . No. No stories, never again. —Blanchot, The Madness of the Day Wittgenstein’s ‘‘mysticism,’’ aside from his faith in unity, must come from his believing that one can show when one cannot speak. But without language, nothing can be shown. And to be silent is still to speak. Silence is impossible. That is why we desire it. Writing or Saying (Dire), that precedes every phenomenon, every manifestation or disclosure: all appearing. —Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (translation modified) One can imagine a voice that ‘‘comes from the other shore’’ and by saying ‘‘at this very moment here I am,’’ ‘‘interrupts the saying of the already said.’’ It is a voice that refuses to tell stories, much like the one in Maurice Blanchot’s La Folie du jour (The Madness of the Day), a mad voice, ‘‘obsessed , persecuted,’’ whose echoes disrupt the transparency of daylight, manifestation, and discourse. Yet even while refusing to tell stories this voice bears witness to an intrigue with the other in a ‘‘quasi-hagiographic style that wishes to be neither a sermon nor the confession of a ‘beautiful soul’’’ (AE 81/OB 47). This is the voice of someone ‘‘out of breath’’ who underwent a fission exceeding any figure of support (subjectum) and inwardness and, therefore, exposes himself to ‘‘the outside where nothing covers anything’’ (AE 275/OB 179). If in ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow’’ and in Totality and Infinity the aesthetic category of rhythm was characterized by its alienating force, in Otherwise than Being’s ‘‘emphatic mutation’’ it becomes ethical. The voice that welcomes the other can only be a matter of writing that, not unlike Blan135 136 Intrigues: From Being to the Other chot’s, precedes all phenomenon and form of manifestation. However, the mutation of rhythm is not an isolated phenomenon. It is as if the language of Otherwise than Being showed a different understanding of its own operations than that found in Totality and Infinity and were making peace with certain potentialities of poetic language. I began this chapter by quoting a passage from Blanchot’s The Madness of the Day and equated the ‘‘voice’’ of his récits to that of Levinas’s Otherwise than Being. Even though the latter energetically refuses any form of mysticism and remains committed to a rational philosophy, there is something outrageous in this book. The ‘‘clandestine intrigue’’ of Otherwise than Being is ‘‘unnarratable and indescribable,’’ two features that would certainly compel a philosopher like Wittgenstein to remain silent. It is the sort of preinvolvement that, strictly speaking, does not fully abide by the rules of discursive exposition and can perhaps be more easily tolerated in fictional writing. Nevertheless, Levinas’s daring attempt to write what by his own account exceeds the order of discourse may justify my referring to it as the ‘‘writing of the outside.’’1 I know that by employing this expression I may be going against Levinas’s explicit intention, since for him writing can neither ‘‘effect the [ethical] reduction’’ by itself (AE 75/OB 44) nor allow access to the ‘‘otherwise than being.’’ Although Levinas does not develop a positive concept of writing, one can read his reduction of phenomenological discourse as a displacement and reinscription of a classical understanding of writing. It will therefore be necessary to explore how Levinas deploys the ‘‘question of writing’’ (Blanchot) and how he understands the ‘‘outside,’’ as well as the apparently sudden rapprochement between Levinas and Blanchot. The justification for this connection is that The Madness of the Day is lurking somewhere in a corner of Otherwise than Being, much like the silhouette of the ‘‘different law’’ that appears behind the backs of the masters of discourse, in Blanchot ’s récit.2 It is a question then of interrogating this textual witness according to the double logic that Levinas derives from it. First, in terms of the order...