From: Ariosto Raggo <df803-AT-freenet.carleton.ca>
Subject: The scandal of obligation
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 13:58:39 -0500 (EST)


some thoughts with regards to the chapter on obligation and Levinas.

	Interiority is accomplished in a move that founds the I in the
position of _you_, of being addressed which is an "event of feeling"( _The
Differend_ pg. 111). Such an event is a sort of movement of existence; an
arousal of non-thematizing, non-discursive, non-explanatory thinking that
is beyond language,-- and yet constitutes a 'conversation'. Lyotard, it
seems contrary to Levinas writes that the finding of one's self in the
addressee instance involves a "violence". Sometimes, he writes a
"break-in," or a "fracturing of the I" which is an operative peformance
where the other "befalls the ego." Such performative turns in a
multiplying dispersion od phrases are prescriptives, imperatives and so
_necessary_ and ineluctable, impossible to (a)-void and beyond our
control. I say "contrary" because two pages from 148 where lyotard refers
us to with regards to "the scandal of obligation" in _Totality and
Infinity_; Levinas writes in terms of "gentleness", "a delighthful "lapse"
in the ontological order"(_TI_ pg. 150) rather than violence. On pg. 111
of _The Differend_ Lyotard writes that  "the I's displacement onto the you
instance marks: You ought to" Marks that the "I is immediately obligated
to the other." What does immediacy imply if not a production of
interiorization that is constantly being held on to, however passively, that
operates without interest and just so makes room for chance, or the
befalling of the other? This is how Bataille relates
sacrifice(interiorization) and chance. In a sense sacrifice is an
'expression' of generosity, a squandaring of our luxurious and overflowing
richness or idea of infinity. In a sense as well, the 'notion' of
sovereingty is just that necessary, extreme, and radical atheism that
Levinas teaches us precedes and constitutes a conversation, or response to
otherness and Lyotard explores as a "disjunctive logic" in order to think
near Deleuze's experimental concept of "disjunctive asymmetrical synthesis" 
that does justice to the irreversible relation between an I and an other(s)
thereby overturning "Hegel's persecuting dialectic".

AFR(...)

p.s. one of the things I am being attentive to is the relation between
necessity and ought. Also, how is a passivity, or patience that makes room
also an expression, a production of conversation absorbed in an ontology
of phrases? there is an intertwining of impression and expression that
interest me in Lyotard -- I mean think of his discussions of Cezanne.


--