Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:26:47 -0400
Subject: MB: passivity/re-sponsibility


Currently trying to pursue a reading of _Disaster_ in connection with Derrida's 
_Gift of Death_.  Lines that intrigue me:  a, what, re-structuring/
reconceptualization of responsibility (as in some sense infinite, im-possible, 
beyond mechanics, prescriptions,knee-jerks and jerks), but such as a refusal of 
the figure of 'the One' (a God who sees every secret, and also sees in secret 
and can't ever be seen) but a refusal that still retains something of the 
metaphysical promise or yearning instead through the other, or the death of the 
other, (the irreducibly other as God?), the stranger, the one who comes 
unexpectedly, uninvited, the friend who is also an enemy?...Can the meaning of 
responsibility Derrida and (perhaps less so?) Blanchot seem to insist upon be 
said to move beyond shame?  (Agamben says "the subject is, at bottom, shame.")  
Or if responsibility after Aushwitz cannot but be (impossibly) rooted in a 
shame that remains infinite, why does Derrida's reading of Patocka seem to me 
to be insisting on a need to distinguish, in some sense, responsibility from 
guilt (the subtle and pervading doctrine of original sin?).  

Anyway, ridiculously broad and (for this forum) probably naive questions, but 
I'd be grateful if anyone on this seemingly sleeping list had any responses--
responses to Blanchot on "responsibility," or on shame...in these our 
excessively auto-affective times.  

Or mabye someone wants to talk about "rhythm," maybe via Lacoue Labarthe?  The 
Eastern or  Buddhist aspects of "passivity"?  

kindly,

Matt