LevinasDerrida

5 February

Introductory remarks on Totality and Infinity, with particular focus of prophesy, eschatology, and the possibility of infinity understood outside of totality. What is meant by a ‘breach of totality,’ and how does that breach of totality glimpse the meaning of transcendence, peace, the Other?

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7 February

Elaboration of the table of oppositional terms, with attention to prophesy and history, as well as a discussion of the meaning of ‘experience’ in a Levinasian context. Relations between home and disturbance, enacted in the presence of the Stranger, seen as a relation divested of intention, need, and representation.

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12 February

Discussion of the location of Levinas’ descriptions, namely, the defense of subjectivity as Moi, as the direct object (the ‘me’) of the Other’s face. Metaphysical desire distinguished from need and enjoyment. Brief excursion into the relation of ethics to politics. Cursory, but suggestive.

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19 February

Lecture and discussion of Levinas’ conception of a reversed intentionality, origins of language as address from and to the Other, and investigation of the enigmatic relation between ethics and politics. Politics as peace, non-violence, community, solidarity, and the relation of the ‘third party’ to the face.

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20 February

Supplemental podcasty things

:: On Heidegger and Being (5.5mb) :: On Descartes and Infinity (9.6mb) ::

26 February

Lecture and discussion, introducing Derrida’s essay “Violence and Metaphysics.” Topics covered include nature of deconstruction, the Hebraic and the Hellenic, the death of philosophy, parricide of Parmenides as Greek origin, and the possibility of a recurrence of the Hellenic in Levinas’ turn to the Hebraic.

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28 February

Lecture and discussion concerning Section III of Derrida’s essay “Violence and Metaphysics.” Beginning with a clarification of Derrida’s notion of critique, examination of two conceptual sites of critique of Levinas - spatiality/exteriority and temporality/identification - both of which mix Sameness with Otherness.

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5 March

Lecture and discussion concluding Derrida’s essay “Violence and Metaphysics.” Initially we revisited the question(s) of language, asserting again the potency of the question(s) for undermining Levinas’ project of a pure heterology. Discussion of philosophy, non-philosophy, and enigma of empiricism (Jewgreek/Greekjew lost).

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7 March

Lecture and discussion introducing Levinas’ Otherwise than being as a critical response to ‘Violence and Metaphysics.’ Epigraph and dedication, motifs for a response to Derrida, and the relation between Being and interest. Extended conversation about the meaning of the Saying (dire) and Said (dit) relation.

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12 March

Lecture and discussion continuing on the Saying and Said relation, introduction of the problem of diachronic time as a language for conceiving relations of Me-Other, Saying-Said, and other Levinasian themes of separation and relation. In particular, diachronic time as an alternative to spatiality (in response to Derrida).

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14 March

Lecture and discussion of diachronic time, transitioning into questions of sensibility. Sensibility as locating cognition in passivity, affectivity, the alterity of our sensual contact with the world, and a first sense of the body as exposed and vulnerable. Concluding with the crucial figure of ‘denucleation’ or ‘coring out.’

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26 March

Transition into Chapter IV on substitution. Recast of diachrony and sensibility, with emphasis on denucleation. Account of denucleated subject in terms of exposure and obsession, establishing the initially paradoxical notion of a dis-interested yet non-indifferent subject.

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28 March

Sustained lecture and discussion of the notion of substitution in Otherwise than being, in particular how it answers to the commandment to respond to the Other without usurping the place of the Other. Interrelation of substitution, recurrence, exposure, vulnerablity, and other concepts from Chapter Four.

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2 April

General discussion of difference between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than being, with particular attention to how that difference responds to objections in Derrida’s “Violence and Metaphysics.”

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9 April

Negotiating the relation between ethics and politics figured centrally in this discussion, in particular how one is to imagine the mapping of an ethics of hospitality onto a politics of the same. Questions of borders and boundaries as conditions for the possibility of goodness and welcome.

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4 April

Introductory remarks on Derrida’s Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Discussion of welcoming as a pre-original opening of subjectivity, hospitality as ethics and ethics as hospitality.

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11 April

Discussion of borders, states and the possibility of a politics of hospitality. In particular, discussion of the conservatism (legitimate or not) of Derrida’s vision of a politics of hospitality.

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16 April

Introductory remarks on the tension between ethics and politics, Derrida’s notion of “another” border politics, humanitarianism, and law, followed by extended discussion of the necessity (and legitimacy) of the threshold. Extended consideration of borders and borderlessness, with short remarks on the feminine.

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18 April

Extended discussion, emphasizing Adieu, of the function of the feminine in Derrida’s reading of Levinas, in particular in the three sites of the feminine - as Other (Time and the Other), as invaginated space of home (Totality and Infinity), and as the ethical relation itself in materinity (Otherwise than being). Discussion of feminine as a figure or body.

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23 April

Transition to Levinas, Derrida, and Celan. Initial discussion of Celan’s “The Meridian” as a theory of encounter, utopia, and the poetic word. Discussion of Levinas’ reading of “The Meridian,” in particular, meridian as name for relationality, preparatory moment before passivity. Briefly on politics as a poetry of the state, revisiting questions from Adieu.

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25 April

Shortened class. Summary and transition from Levinas’ reading of Celan to Derrida’s “Shibboleth.” Distinction between poems and “the poem,” function of the date in language and performance of singularity, shadow and ghost as transported singularity. Emphasis on “Shibboleth” as commentary on Saying-Said distinction, namely, the singularity and repeatability of the date.

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30 April

Continued discussion of the problem of singularity in Derrida’s “Shibboleth.” Problem of original wound, haunting, circumcision, the cut. In particular, rejoining the question of trace and presence as an ashen (non) site to which the poetic word takes us. Reflection on the melancholic character of both Celan’s poetry and Derrida’s quasi-poetics.

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