Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 19:57:55 -0800
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: The scandal of obligation


Ariosto Raggo wrote:
> 
> 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.
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Nothing I can prove, but reading "Le Differend", I think of necessity,
in his usage, as constraints imposed by language, the way we use it,
the way it must be used (necessary) for transfer of messages/meaning to
occur.

Lyotard speaks of genres of discourse as if they a sovereign over the
humans who use them, which seems ridiculous, yet, language has preceded
today's living humans by maybe a million or so years (guess). 

And although I didn't find it in the book, it's easy to think of 
language "using" each generation (as do genes) to get done what is 
to be done in the "life" of language.

Voices in an individual's "present", which lay on "obligations", are
something else.

Hugh
> --
> 
>