Intrigues: From Being to the Other

Postface

Postface Not unlike Levinas, Blanchot employs the term intrigue to refer to the ‘‘relation of the third type’’ and to the ‘‘exigency of speech’’ when faced with the strangeness of language. Intrigue is not only a descriptive term, but also what unfolds in and as ‘‘le moment voulu.’’ Intrigue names the temporalizing of the other’s approach, as well as the temporality of writing as ‘‘responsive speech.’’ Au Moment voulu allowed me to read intrigue as a ‘‘passion of time,’’ as the exploration of a passivity older than interiority and intention which opens language up ‘‘from within.’’ However, this ‘‘passion of time’’ that the narrative mode of the intrigue brings into play can only unfold once the grip of both being and the negative are loosened . Blanchot’s rewriting of Nietzsche’s eternal return beyond or on the hither side of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology clears the ground for Levinas’s confrontation with Heidegger’s thinking. But it also provides us with a syntax from which to read language’s responsive, ethical, dimension. Throughout Levinas’s work it is possible to distinguish two different conceptions of language that have decisive implications for his thinking 189 190 Postface on the other. They are speech as the plenitude of discourse and language as ‘‘amphibology’’ or ambiguity. The first conception is implicit in Existence and Existents, ‘‘Reality and Its Shadow,’’ and The Time of the Other. However, it is not until Totality and Infinity, where ethical language becomes pure immediacy, that this conception reaches its justification and grounding. The face (visage) of the other faces me, concerns me (me regarde) without mediation. It exceeds the grasp of representation and overflows form but gives form to my answer: the face is discourse. Levinas conceives the sincerity or straightforwardness of discourse in opposition to rhetoric and other forms of representation, including those of artistic works. The speaking of the face is, for Levinas, the ‘‘primordial essence of language.’’ The presence of the other in language arrests the terrifying procession of simulacra, given that speech ‘‘surmounts the dissimulation inevitable in every apparition’’ (TI 97–98). While aiming to shield the other from the violence of ontology, Levinas employs all of its resources, and thus some presuppositions regarding writing go unquestioned. The absence of such an explicit reflection goes hand in hand with the form of exposition —the ontological plot—that fails to secure a ‘‘welcoming of the other.’’ A set of binary oppositions (infinity/totality, straightforwardness of prose/fascinating hold of rhythm) articulates the plot that holds together the story of a joyous ego that, after a harmonious fusion with the feminine other (a familiar alterity), confronts a more demanding alterity. In Otherwise than Being Levinas deploys the concept of trace as a way of thinking an ethical language that is no longer primarily determined by the plenitude of speech nor falls prey to ontological categories. The distinction between the said (le dit) (writing, synchrony, essence, history) and saying (le dire) (face, diachrony, passivity, testimony) permits Levinas to elucidate the ethical saying as an original presemiotic dimension inhabiting each historical language. In this second conception of language an immemorial trace haunts language and bears witness to ‘‘the glory of the infinite,’’ or the proximity of the other to the same. In order to manifest itself, this preoriginal saying is destined to fix itself in a said or predicative proposition. It thus becomes a theme or the object of a narrative and is subordinated to a linguistic system woven by ontological categories. However, for Levinas the said’s enunciative peripetia or plot is derivative Postface 191 and secondary and presupposes the gravity of a responsibility incommensurate to being and to the language in which it is uttered. Within the context of Levinas’s first conception of language, art, literature , and writing are neither philosophy’s other nor the types of others able to interrupt the working of totality. At times, they are ‘‘fake’’ others easily assimilated by totality; at other times they lay bare language’s possibility to exceed the order of discourse. This oscillation permeates Levinas ’s thinking and his conception of literary writing, which is visible at the level of judgment (critique), as well as at the most basic determination of the ethical relation. The proximity of ethics and aesthetics presents Levinas with a series of challenges that will go unresolved until he finds a place for...