Abstract

Levinasian ethics fundamentally distinguishes itself from other postmodern philosophies for its explanation of what can be termed "transphenomenal sensibility." Although both Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas explain the nonontological domain in which difference is generated Levinas, unlike Derrida, explains it in terms of proximity between the Self and the Other, the alterity of a particular person. For Levinas, the proximity is the ethical dimension in which the Other approaches the Self as a non-phenomenal but sensible face commanding the Self to take its ethical responsibility for the Other itself. It is important particularly for literary criticism that each of the face of the Other, and the "saying," the fundamental attitude of the Self towards the Other, are transphenomenal--that is pure , pre-original--language, and that each desensibilizes, or deconstructs itself for the other. ;The first three philosophical chapters cross-examine this realm of transphenomenal sensibility, while attempting to construct what might be called a Levinasian literary hermeneutics. The first chapter includes a discussion of what is the import and the role of "deconstruction" from a Levinasian ethical standpoint. Deconstruction should be understood and practiced in light of the most primary human relation, that is, on the ethical plane. It is explicated that literary criticism is to take a text as the example of a person. Chapter two deals with Levinas's notion of the infinity of the Other which is in essential relation to his religious discretion. For Levinas, "the other" is the Other of humanity, which is none other than God. Then the third section explores how the relation between the nonontological saying and the ontological said works in the literary text. The last chapter is devoted to a Levinasian reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which the monstrosity of the Creature appears as an allegory of the face of the Other of humanity. Kohutian self-psychology is employed for the Levinasian study of the character of Victor Frankenstein.