Levinas and the Possibility of Dialogue with “Strangers”

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the readers of this essay for their thought-provoking critical engagement with this text, an earlier version of which has been accepted for publication in a Palgrave volume, edited by Elvis Imafidon, titled. Ethics of Subjectivity. As such, this essay forms part of a larger study – still very much in progress – on the possibility of engaging with Levinas from “other” non-Western ethical frameworks.

ORCID

Benda Hofmeyr http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7601-6127

Notes

1 Levinas “Meaning and sense”, pp. 33–64; Ma “All the Rest Must Be Translated: Levinas's Notion of Sense”.

2 Cf. Levinas Les imprevus de l'histoire.

3 Levinas Les imprevus de l'histoire, p. 171, cited in Caygill Levinas and the Political, p. 184.

4 Ibid.

5 Levinas, Les imprevus de l'histoire, p. 172.

6 Caygill, Levinas and the Political, p. 184.

7 Levinas “Jewish Thought Today”.

8 Ibid., p. 160.

9 Cf. Ma, “All the Rest Must Be Translated”, p. 605.

10 Mortley French Philosophers in Conversation, p. 18.

11 Critchley “Five Problems in Levinas's View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them”, p. 44.

12 Levinas In the Time of the Nations, pp. 119–21.

13 Cf. Bernasconi “One-Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonization and its Ethics”; “Who Is My Neighbour? Who Is the Other? Questioning the ‘Generosity of Western Thought’”.

14 Caygill Levinas and the Political, p. 185.

15 Levinas Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. In French, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l'essence.

16 Levinas Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo. In French, Éthique et infini. Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo, pp. 90–91.

17 Reference to Malcolm X's distinction in Mamdani, “Beyond Settler and Native”, p. 657.

18 Levinas Nouvelles lectures talmudiques, pp. 22–23.

19 For a more detailed account of this movement, see Burggraeve “Affected by the Face of the Other. The Levinasian Movement from the Exteriority to the Interiority of the Infinite”. Available online: http://mondodomani.org/dialegesthai/ ISSN 1128–5478 Accessed 30 November 2015; Hofmeyr “Radical Passivity: Ethical Problem or Solution?”, pp. 25–49; Hofmeyr “From Activity to Radical Passivity: Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas”,.

20 Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, p. 141/179.

21 In this regard, see Burggraeve “Violence and the Vulnerable Face of the Other: The Vision of Emmanuel Levinas on Moral Evil and Our Responsibility”.

22 Levinas “La vocation de l'autre”, p. 92.

23 Levinas, Meaning and Sense, p. 53.

24 Serequeberhan The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy, p. 128.

25 Mphahlele “Remarks on Negritude”, p. 248.

26 Hutchens Levinas. A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 54.

27 Drabinski Levinas and the Postcolonial. Race, Nation, Other.

28 Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, pp. 119–21.

29 Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, pp. 120–21.

30 Morgan The Cambridge Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 186.

31 First published in Cosmopolitiques 4 (February 1986).

32 Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, p. 119.

33 Levinas, In the Time of the Nations, p. 121.

34 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, p. xi.

35 Robbins Is it Righteous To Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, p. 163.

36 Levinas, Is it Righteous to Be?, p. 164.

37 Ibid.

38 Drabinsky, Levinas and the Postcolonial, p. 167.

39 Hand The Levinas Reader, p. 294.

40 Sikka “How Not to Read the Other? ‘All the Rest Can Be Translated’”.

41 Levinas, “Jewish Thought Today”, p. 160.

42 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, pp. 281–85/257–61.

43 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 285/261.

44 Levinas Time and the Other. In French, Le temps et l’ autre.

45 In this regard, see Caygill Levinas and the Political, pp. 97–98.

46 Drabinsky, Levinas and the Postcolonial, p. 168.

47 Critchley “Five Problems in Levinas's View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them”.

48 Critchley, “Five Problems”, pp. 48–49.

49 Critchley, “Five Problems”, p. 49.

50 Eaglestone “Postcolonial Thought and Levinas's Double Vision”.

51 Ibid., p. 64.