Subject: RE: ethics - Levinas
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:49:20 -0500


Hi, steve. I guess I didn't really have a particular nancy work in mind;
just in general his work is one very explicit starting point for me when I
read levinas. And vice versa, actually. So when nancy talks about the "that"
someone speaks being more significant than the "what" that someone speaks
(more significant for community, as opposed to society), I hear it as
another way of stating one aspect of Levinas's distinction between the
saying and the said. Nancy seems to me to work a lot out of Levinas (but
that makes sense since nancy was derrida's student), even if he does resist
Levinas's tendency to reduce relationality to "responsibility" or
"obligation."

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
steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com
Sent:	Sunday, July 15, 2001 7:59 AM
To:	lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject:	Re: ethics - Levinas

Diane, Glen

Intertextuality....

Which Nancy were you referring to below?

regards

sdv

"D. Diane Davis" wrote:

> This is actually a better explanation than I could have given, Steve. But
> let me muddy up the mis-reading maybe a little more. In my posts on
levinas,
> i've been working mainly out of derrida's many readings of him and out of
> levinas directly--but (big but) reading someone "directly" always means
> reading him/her across a host of others whom you've already read and who
> give you a hook to hang his/her words on. For me, that means reading
> Levinas's words across the many works I've already consumed and
> embraced--mainly by Ronell, Nancy, Blanchot, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
> Lacoue-Labarthe, Cixous, even Irigaray, and certainly Derrida. All of
whom,
> of course, I approached in much the same way, across other texts and at
> another time. And of course, I also read each of these texts from where I
> am, from my own "lifeworld" context. So...so much for reading directly. ;)
>
> best, ddd
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:   owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of
> steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com
> Sent:   Sunday, July 15, 2001 7:00 AM
> To:     lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject:        Re: ethics - Levinas
>
> Glen
>
> The Thomas Carl Wall book is 'Radical Passivity' ISBN 0-7914-4048-6 SUNY
> new
> york 1999.
>
> The (mis)-reading was a 'joke' encouraging Eric to rite something on
> Lyotard's
> ethics - though actually Lyotard is not really a philosopher who writes on
> Ethics, directly unlike Levinas or Singer. In my use of the term I'm
> actually
> refering back to textual and cinematic theory/criticism where there has
been
> a
> movement towards the relativisation of the relations of writer, reader and
> observer (critic). Traditionally, and in the common sense reading of texts
> and
> objects which still obviously enough dominates, the concept of a 'work' is
> considered as being almost in a way related to the Newtonian conception of
> the
> universe a 'real' singular object. By referring to a (mis)-reading I am
> assuming
> something more relativistic and intertextual, referring to something more
> open
> and appropriable. For example Eric has been reading Levinas through
Lyotard,
> Diane through Wall, perhaps Critchley and of course directly, I've been
> reading
> though my distrust of the use of theology and the critique of Levinas in
> Irigaray as well as Critchley. Each reading is inevitably a (mis)-reading
> and
> appropriation of the body of work which could be referred to as the
Levinas
> Text.
>
> Is that clearer?
>
> Diane could give a clearer and more concise definition - it's a long time
> since
> I worked at SEFT...
>
> regards
>
> sdv
>
> Glen Fuller wrote:
>
> > G'day Steve and All,
> >
> > >(I also like the Wall book but haven't read the Levinas section -
>bought
> > >it because of the Agamben section. I very much like Agamben's >work.)
> >
> > Which book are you referring to?
> >
> > And one other question... What do you guys mean by a "(mis)reading"
(like
> of
> > a particular text, I know it does not necessarily mean an aberrant
> reading,
> > or is that exactly what you mean)?
> >
> > I thought I had better get hip with the lingo...
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Glen.
> >
> > PS You are all very interesting and I enjoy reading the the different
> > streams as they progress.
> >
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