Subject: RE: ethics - Levinas
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:14:46 -0500


Hi, Eric. I enjoyed your posts and your productive misreading of my post.
You write:

>As such, perhaps, what remains problematic are not so much the
>assumptions, but the condition itself which remains unresolved and in
>the midst of which even Derrida himself can offer no better diet.  (The
>differAnce between pang and tang.)

Yes, I'm with you a hundred and ten percent here. These issues are part of a
con-dition and tra-dition in which we are all inscribed. And it would be
extremely silly to try to pin the problem on one guy, especially when this
is one amazingly brilliant guy who has gone so far that no one can claim
even to quite be able to READ him yet. Derrida's work on ethics relies on
levinas's thought in a million ways; just as derrida's work on friendship
owes a ton to Blanchot, even if derrida does expose the androcentric
(fraternal) presumptions in Blanchot's notion of friendship.

But, following another fold in your thoughts up there, I would also suggest
that diet is not the only way to go to challenge this "condition." Though
Derrida doesn't offer a better diet (and as far as I know, he has not taken
up a vegetarian or vegan diet), he does force the human/animal question upon
thought in a rigorous and unrelenting way, challenging the "condition." And
he does indeed promote a kind of ethics of eating by describing the need to
work through an ethico-politics of "eating well."

You also write:

>In the midst of which, Lyotard claims that "being prepared to receive
>what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of
>thinking." And "anamnesis would be this notification, this warning, or
>obligation to stand up towards the clear mirror, through the breaking."

>Words to die by, perhaps.

Yep, perhaps. ;)

best, ddd
______________________

     D. Diane Davis
     Rhetoric Department
     University of Iowa
     Iowa City, IA 52242
     319.335.0184

     d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu
     http://www.uiowa.edu/~ddrhet/


-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Mary
Murphy&Salstrand
Sent:	Wednesday, July 11, 2001 9:44 PM
To:	lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject:	Re: ethics - Levinas

D. Diane Davis wrote:

L doesn't, imho, manage to get past certain androcentric and
anthropocentric assumptions

DDD/All,

It's good to hear from you again.  I hope you can stay ahead of your
classes long enough to write to us some more.

I want to gratuitously misread your comment and suggest that while
androcentric normally refers to the masculine, it also, by means of its
root andro, links with the concept of android.  Your comment would then
situate Lyotard between the human and the transhuman: the precarious
position of both the inhuman and the infant.  The ins- and ana's- as
opposed to the pre-, the trans- and the post-.

As such, perhaps, what remains problematic are not so much the
assumptions, but the condition itself which remains unresolved and in
the midst of which even Derrida himself can offer no better diet.  (The
differAnce between pang and tang.)

Between the act of mourning, melancholia and nostalgia and the frantic
attempt to download our brains onto a computer and attach that file to a
space ship headed for the Pleiades, the system accelerates and
complexifies.

In the midst of which, Lyotard claims that "being prepared to receive
what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of
thinking." And "anamnesis would be this notification, this warning, or
obligation to stand up towards the clear mirror, through the breaking."

Words to die by, perhaps.