File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9903, message 5


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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