So, since the last post I've moved from reading Levinas ('Totality and Infinity' and 'Time and Other', as well as some of the shorter texts) on to reading Derrida's long essay on Levinas in 'Writing and Difference' and Irigaray's critique of Levinas in 'An Ethics of Sexual Difference'. I've also read various secondary texts on Levinas. That's been mixed together, alongside some digression into psychoanalytic geographies, and I've drafted a (roughly) 14,500 word chapter. As always it's much longer than I'd intended, but it also feels fairly concise - there's just a fair bit to work through.
As with the other chapters in the book, it unfolds in conversation with a specific encounter (or rather, set of encounters) from 'the real world'. In this case, it's more the 'reel world' - the movie 'Shame'. That might seem like an odd combination, but hopefully I'm showing in the chapter that 'Shame' presents a useful backdrop to think through Levinas. There is, most obviously, a host of faces and encounters with faces in the movie (both between characters and between character and viewer). There's also an interesting sort of sociality in those relations - mostly objectifying and so, in Levinas's sense, not ethical, but also moments where the other might be something that troubles a little more. The sex addiction theme of the movie led to the psychoanalytic geographies jaunt, but I basically argue that while 'Shame' has been read by many in psychoanalytic ways, the cinematography and story telling of the movie actually work away from that. Rather than it being about past trauma, talking about that trauma, etc., it's more about the immediacy and surface of encounters.
That does, though, lead to a couple of critical comments I'm still working on in relation to Levinas's account, specifically of the face-to-face relation...
1) I'm not convinced by his account of communication and the emphasis on language and discourse in that. One of the interesting things, to me at least, about 'Shame' is the lack of talking, the lingering (often awkward) shots of faces in various states and between faces. While little is often said here, there is another sort of communication going on...
2) I'm not convinced by Levinas's a-social account of the face-to-face. The other here seems to come out of nowhere in the way that it interrupts. While I can see that, I also wonder about the sorts of dispositions bodies arrive at such encounters with and how that might influence the interruption (or lack of interruption) that the other brings about. I guess, in the context of 'Shame' again, I'm thinking about how someone can be numbed to the face of the other through repetition and so resist (with out actively doing so) the face of another and responding to it in the sort of way Levinas suggests. This is very much to go against Levinas's line of thinking, but it seems significant. I'm not looking to re-insert a social constructivist position here about intersubjective relations. But I think the latter chapter in the book (partly through Nancy, more through Esposito) might lead somewhere on this...
I'm also hoping to present some material from this chapter latter in the year at a couple of things - it'll be interesting to see what comes back from that. One of the things I'm finding about working on this (and the NRT book) is that it is quite odd to be working this long and writing this much without the dialogue of peer review. It feels like I'm not really making proper, audit-able progress on anything as it's just still 'in progress'. There's also the linger fear of going down a dead-end or starting to second guess what readers / reviews won't like. So, feedback I think it's going to be a very useful thing here...
There are some things I've not got to on the chapter and will leave for the moment. I'm thinking of venturing back into Deleuze, for example, and his (and Guattari's) account of faciality in 'A Thousand Plateaus' and his discussion of the close-up in the 'Cinema' books. But I'm not sure there's either space or the narrative opportunity to do that. It's something that can wait a while though as it's more something I can do in coming back to the text with other critical thoughts... There is also the question of the extent to which I also look to 'Otherwise than Being' and whether I respond to some of the critiques above through that or not... I remember reading that during my PhD and it proving 'interesting' to get through. I'm not sure from glancing through my notes what that will offer. But I guess I'll see where it goes...