From: Ariosto Raggo <df803-AT-freenet.carleton.ca> Subject: Levinas Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 12:38:59 -0500 (EST) hi stacey, here is that forgotten Levinas quote that i meant to post last night from the Levinas reader. I have also _Totality and Infinty_ which I have read three or four times. I want to go on and look closely at _Otherwise than Being_. It wouldn't be fun reading it without you . I am pondering this notion of obligation, keeping in mind what you were saying about this and Nietzsche, the question of a debt, the gift and all that. Also a switch, a substitution. He says that proximity is anarchically a relationship with a singularity without mediation. Then the shattered screen as proximity is a contact and obsession and already it passes us, has flowed backwards to make up a memory that would not be present or could be. He says that it couldn't be domesticated or tamed and that is what he calls a trace. For me, this does not mean that representation is completely out of the question especially when it comes to autorefrential writing that can bring into play metaphors, images, representations even, and can let them dissolve, break up, divide, shatter. The dust, liquid, air that results is a conductor imaging traces and that is the end, climax of narrative, an epiphany. A party in this sense is an anarchical situation which no principle and rules can thematize or draw up a boundary by which to contain the uncanny release of forces outside our control. We are left living amongst ruins from which we take pieces, parts, fragments, letters, and make something from that expenditure without return by ruining its prestige above all which means that the resulting fabric or memory seeks recognition for its goodbye, departure elsewhere that says clearly that you and me are really something else, very especial and singular. I wanted know what texts you were reading on reader response theory? You know what i think would be interesting is to look into the history of letter writing and novels that put emphasis on the writing of letters. You are young and i feel young too as far as philosophers are concerned. I am starting to feel confident with what you are writing and now i am looking for your ambition, lust. "The relationship of proximity cannot be reduced to any modality of distance or geometrical contiguity, nor the simple 'representation' of a neighbour; it is already an assignation, an extremely urgent assignation--an obligation, anachronously prior to any commitment. This anteriority is 'older' than the apriori. This formula [why does he choose the word "formula"?] expresses [why the word "expresses" rather than say impresses, imprints like a tatoo does or an emblematic signature or an eclipse of the sun as icon of crossing passages?] a way of being affected which can in no way be invested by spontaneity [I think he means freedom of the will here as it operates in the comprehensive grasp of the understanding or propositional discourse, a busy mind with no time for others, most of your peers probably, it's a shame.]: the subject is affected without the source of the affection becoming a theme of representation. We have called this relationship irreducible to consciousness obsession. The relationship with exteriority is 'prior' to the act that would effect it." Ariosto --
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