Introduction : but is it ethics? -- Alterity : the problem of transcendence -- Singularity : the unrepresentable face -- Responsibility : the infinity of the demand -- Ethics : normativity and norms -- Scarce resources? : Levinas, animals, and the environment -- Failures of recognition and the recognition of failure : Levinas and identity politics.

Two competing intuitions have dominated the debate over facial tissue transplantation. On one side are those who argue that relieving the suffering of those with severe facial disfigurement justifies the medical risks and possible loss of life associated with this experimental procedure. On the other are those who say that there is little evidence to show that such transplants would have longterm psychological benefits that couldn’t be achieved by other means and that without clear benefits, the risk is simply too (...) great. Ethicists on both sides have called for more analysis of the link between the face and personal identity in order to get a better grasp on potential gains and losses. This paper responds to that call by looking at contemporary philosophical analyses of the relation between organ transplants and personal identity and between the human face, human dignity, and human vulnerability. It is argued that the face matters not because it is the unique marker of our identity, but because of its role in the intersubjective constitution of moral identity and human dignity. (shrink)

This essay shows that Jean-Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of corporeality in such texts as L'Intrus and Corpus can be an important ally to feminist theories of body. I introduce Nancy's ontology and argue that his rejection of the unified, integrated body of humanist discourses in favor of dis-integrated bodies constituted by multiple alterities and his consequent reinterpretation of body as a "being-exscribed" begin the task of thinking bodies beyond traditional dualisms and their ahistorical and rationalist frameworks. I then address three potential (...) criticisms of Nancy's work and suggest that though there may be reasons to move cautiously in adopting the framework he provides, his work harbors resources directly beneficial to critiques of prevailing forms of gender normativity. (shrink)

Essays by 14 Levinas scholars provide a fresh acount of the argument and purpose of Emmanuel Levinas's major work, Totality and Infinity, drawing parallels between Levinas and other thinkers; considering Levinas's relationship to other disciplines such as nursing, psychotherapy, and law; and bringing this seminal text to bear on specific, concrete issues of present-day concern"--Provided by publisher.

This essay shows that Jean-Luc Nancy's reconceptualization of corporeality in such texts as L'Intrus and Corpus can be an important ally to feminist theories of body. I introduce Nancy's ontology and argue that his rejection of the unified, integrated body of humanist discourses in favor of dis-integrated bodies constituted by multiple alterities and his consequent reinterpretation of body as a "being-exscribed" begin the task of thinking bodies beyond traditional dualisms and their ahistorical and rationalist frameworks. I then address three potential (...) criticisms of Nancy's work and suggest that though there may be reasons to move cautiously in adopting the framework he provides, his work harbors resources directly beneficial to critiques of prevailing forms of gender normativity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Figurative Language and the “Face” in Levinas’s PhilosophyDiane PerpichThe value of images for philosophy lies in their position between two times and their ambiguity.—Levinas, "Reality and Its Shadow"Imagery... occupies the place of theory's impossible.—Le Doeuff, The Philosophical ImaginaryFor many readers, and perhaps above all for Levinas himself, there is something deeply dissatisfying about the account of the "face of the other" in Totality and Infinity and yet the importance (...) of this figure for the major ethical claims of the book can hardly be overstated. The fundamental thesis broached through the notion of the face is the difference between the way in which things are given to consciousness (the order of ontology) and the way in which human beings are encountered (the order of ethics). Whereas things are given to consciousness in sensible experience through the mediation of forms or concepts, the face is present, according to Levinas, in its "refusal to be contained" in a form (Levinas 1969, 194). A passage early in Totality and Infinity defines the face as follows: "The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face. This mode does not consist in figuring as a theme under my gaze, in spreading itself forth as a set of qualities forming an image. The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me" (50–51, italics in original). A face is thus a very peculiar sort of "phenomenon." In effect, it is non-phenomenal; it does not appear as such and remains exterior to concepts.1 Rhetorically, the face is an image that represents the inadequacy of every image for representing alterity. That is, it represents the impossibility of its own representation and so the problems begin. [End Page 103]In "Violence and Metaphysics," Derrida suggests that Levinas's claim that the absolute alterity of the other refuses conceptualization is undermined from the outset since in order to have meaning as an other, to be recognized and respected as an other, the other must first of all appear: "it is impossible to encounter the alter ego..., impossible to respect it in experience and in language, if this other, in its alterity, does not appear for an ego (in general). One could neither speak, nor have any sense of the totally other, if there was not a phenomenon of the totally other, or evidence of the totally other as such" (Derrida 1978, 123). In what sense can we think or represent absolute alterity if, strictly speaking, it is unthinkable and unrepresentable? And, further, what are we to make of the performative contradiction insofar as Levinas's discourse doesprecisely what it says it is impossible to do? As Derrida notes, even if one cannot thematize the other, "this impossibility and this imperative themselves can be thematized" (123). The difficulty here is that if there "is" an alterity of the type that interests Levinas, then there is no way to represent or speak about it literally—in which case the question arises, in what sense is it? And if one can speak about it, then it is not unrepresentable and thus is not absolute in the sense Levinas says it is.A further contradiction in the notion of the absolute alterity of the face arises owing to the fact that insofar as Levinas's notion of an absolute other forbids us from assigning to the other any determinate predicate, it seems as if all unique, singular faces are the same. As Jean-Luc Marion formulates this problem: "how can one assign an identity to the origin of the appeal such that one can specify which face is involved each time, but without thereby reducing it to a visible phenomenon in the mode of a spectacle?" (Marion 2000, 226). Marion makes a virtue of this feature of Levinas's account, suggesting that "it belongs to the very sense of the appeal that it remain essentially anonymous, and not by default but by excess—the excess of alterity over what it alters" (240). Anonymity, on this view, belongs to the formal structure of interpellation and Marion therein... (shrink)

"Portions of this work were originally published as La racaille de la Republique by Fadela Amara and Mohammed Abdi, Editions du Seuil, 2006"--T.p. verso.

Beauvoir's influence on contemporary conceptions of French feminism is undeniable, but it is unclear how to assess the influence and relevance of her thought for feminist social movements today in France's least advantaged neighborhoods. Beginning with the question of the legacy of The Second Sex to feminist activism in general, I identify key points of resonance between Beauvoir's work and contemporary women's struggles in the banlieues, then turn to Beauvoir's own intervention on behalf of Arab and North African women in (...) the case of Djamila Boupacha in order to raise the question of how far Beauvoir can really be extended into the activist worlds of the banlieues. The chapter ends with a modest proposal for a way of using Beauvoir to help draw out a methodology and an ethical imperative in recent works by women whose heritage links them to France's colonial past and present. (shrink)

On standard accounts of responsibility, one is thought to be responsible for one's own actions or affairs. Levinas' philosophy speaks of a responsibility that goes beyond my actions and their consequences to an infinite, irrecusable, asymmetrical responsibility for the other human. In the dissertation, I present a defense of Levinasian responsibility and argue that distinctive of Levinas' thought as an ethics is the manner in which it maintains the absolute and unexceptionable character of responsibility, while simultaneously putting into question every (...) possible ground or justification for this claim. The central chapters of the dissertation consider the connection between the formal structure of transcendence and the deformalization of this notion as responsibility. After discussing the notions of transcendence employed in the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, I examine Levinas' criticism that transcendence in their sense remains an immanence insofar it continues to tie the conditions of intelligibility to modes of understanding and comprehension. Levinas' reconception of transcendence as a relation to exteriority and absolute alterity is then examined as it is developed first in his early writings , and then in Totality and Infinity through the tropes of the idea of infinity, metaphysical desire, and the face. The aim of these chapters is not only to elucidate in detail the conception of transcendence, but to examine why Levinas thinks that transcendence is already an ethical event. While commentators have sometimes claimed that ethics in Levinas' sense is neither normative nor descriptive, I show that the question of normativity--of how ethical claims are binding on us--is central to the problematic of responsibility, though in a way which ultimately forces us to revise our understanding of both normativity and ethics. Levinas contests the possibility of decisive evidence that would prove the truth of our ethical obligations. What I show is how the call for proof or justification always already distorts and passes over the meaning of responsibility. (shrink)

of the tension between universality and singularity in the constitution of political community. Politics for Derrida refers to demands for universal justice, while friendship stands in for demands to recognize the incomparable uniqueness of each person. Derrida develops the incompatibility between these demands to its furthest extreme while arguing that democracy paradoxically requires meeting the demands of both claims. The result is a democracy that is never achieved but always present only in the form of a desire for democracy. This (...) article evaluates Derrida’s position that political community is simultaneously impossible and necessary in light of similar proposals by Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray. It also asks whether the political community Derrida imagines is one in which women’s desires are represented. Key Words: Derrida • friendship • Irigaray • politics • sexual difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What’s God Got to Do with It? A Response to Claire KatzDiane PerpichThe original context for the remarks that follow was a book session at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in October 2009.1 Somewhat surprisingly, both sets of comments at the session focused on what it might mean that the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas—variously identified by key terms like revelation and creation, by (...) God, or by reference to Levinas’s confessional writings and the texts of the Jewish tradition—appeared to be absent from my book, The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Now admittedly, these texts and terms and their relation to Levinas’s main philosophical works is not explicitly discussed in the book, but the fact that both respondents focused almost exclusively on this absence raises the question of whether one needs to invoke religious terms in a discussion of Levinas’s reflections on ethics and ethical life. In effect, can a reading of Levinas’s ethical thought succeed without referring to God or the texts of the Jewish tradition? While in one sense, this question is quite beside the point of what I was trying to do in the book, in another, it touches quite closely on a central concern of that work; namely, what if anything justifies or provides a warrant for the exorbitant sort of responsibility that Levinas talks about throughout his writings, philosophical and confessional alike?I will return to this point momentarily in the context of a more detailed discussion of Claire Katz’s remarks, but allow me to begin by expanding briefly on the point of departure for the analysis of Levinas offered in my book. When I first read Levinas, the two features of his thought that struck me as [End Page 118] completely fascinating and utterly perplexing were the account of an alterity so absolute that it defied conceptuality and the notion of a responsibility so infinite that it rendered “me,” the ego, a hostage to the other. What could these two phrases—“absolute alterity” and “infinite responsibility”—mean? Clearly, neither phrase could be meant literally. There simply is nothing that is wholly immune to concepts; and as Levinas himself learned from the study of Henri Bergson, even “nothingness” is, and thus ontology and conceptuality, hand in hand, seem to be fundamental. Similarly, if responsibility is infinite, where infinity is reasonably thought to designate the scope of one’s obligation, the notion becomes incoherent. If I literally cannot do something, then in what sense ought I to do it? A responsibility for everything and everyone is seemingly just the same as having no responsibility at all. And what is most perplexing in all of this is that this inconceivable alterity is said to bring about, in some manner, this impossible responsibility. Let me add that it seemed to me on that first reading (and it still does) to be completely unhelpful to identify “God” either with absolute alterity or with the force of the command that renders us infinitely responsible to the other. To substitute God for alterity, or to claim that God commands our responsibility, explains nothing; it may well be one way of admitting or signaling that explanation has come to an end, but it does not necessarily add anything to that admission. Given the perplexities that beset my first reading of Levinas, it seemed to me that the first task for anyone writing about Levinas and ethics would be to work out the relation between alterity (or transcendence, or the other) and responsibility (as infinite, irrecusable, and asymmetrical). That, effectively, is what the book sets out to do.A second set of motivations for the book intersects with this first set of problems, though in this case, it is less a problem internal to Levinas’s thought and more a problem that arises in connection with certain habits of reading that have become entrenched in the secondary literature. There is a line of interpretation about Levinas’s thought that for many years went largely unchallenged. This “standard” reading begins with the idea that, for Levinas, ethics is not one branch of philosophy among others, rather it is... (shrink)

This paper argues that the metaphors of breath and voice as employed in the recent works of Luce Irigaray and Adriana Cavarero yield a reconceptualization of subjectivity as unique, embodied and relational. When interpreted in light of Cavarero's reorientation of the question of subjectivity from a what to a who, this newly configured notion of subjectivity can serve as the basis for a non-essentialist politics of sexual difference.