Levinas, Europe and others: the postcolonial challenge to alterity

ABSTRACT

The article assesses a postcolonial critique of Emmanuel Levinas’ thought. Levinas’ work has recently been accused of Eurocentrism, racism and xenophobia; those accusations are supported by recorded interviews, which at times voice bigoted and xenophobic remarks. What postcolonial critics suggest is that these remarks are made possible by Levinas’ philosophical commitments to phenomenology and Europe as an intellectual process. The article gives an assessment of the postcolonial critique and argues that the critique is necessitous but incomplete and extends a uniformity thesis that carries with it a set of questionable assumptions regarding the connection of philosophy and historical narratives.

Notes

1 Husserl, ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man’.

2 Ibid., 152–5.

3 Ibid., 155–6; cf. Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, 120–1.

4 Husserl, ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man’, 156.

5 Ibid., 158.

6 Cf. Hegel, The Philosophy of History.

7 Cf. Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, 18–29; Critchley, ‘Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics’; Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas.

8 Cf. Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, x–xvii, 1–16; Eisenstadt, ‘Eurocentrism and Colorblindness’; Maldonado-Torres, ‘Levinas’s Hegemonic Identity Politics,’; Eaglestone, ‘Postcolonial Thought and Levinas’s Double Vision’.

9 Cf. Caygill, Levinas and the Political, 182–94.

10 Drichel, ‘Face to Face with the Other Other’, 22.

11 Ibid., 24.

12 Cf. Maldonado-Torres, ‘Frantz Fanon and C.L.R. James on Intellectualism and Enlightened Rationality’, 151–2: “As Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze has put it, in modernity reason has color … White or light skinned subjects tend to be considered as the proper mediums for truth and rationality. This phenomenon indicates that modern rationality is not only ascetic, as Nietzsche proclaimed, but also racist – and that the latter cannot be subsumed by the former. It also means that racism is not only an attitude that affects capitalism, the state, and gender dynamics, but knowledge as well. In short, racism is not only institutional, social, and cultural, but also epistemic”.

13 Kant, ‘On The Question: “What is Enlightenment?”’; cf. Dussel, ‘Eurocentrism and Modernity’, 69.

14 Dussel, ‘Eurocentrism and Modernity’, 67–8.

15 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 2-3.

16 Levinas, ‘The Bible and the Greeks’, 133.

17 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, 4.

18 “L’Occident n’est pas à l’ouest. Ce n’est pas un lieu, c’est un projet”. Glissant, Le Discours antillais, 12; cf. Drabinski, ‘Shorelines: In Memory of Édouard Glissant’.

19 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 58.

20 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, 4–8; Eisenstadt, ‘Eurocentrism and Colorblindness’.

21 Drabinski, ‘Levinas, Race, Racism’, x. Drabinski notes the dedication of Otherwise than Being that associates Nazi anti-Semitism with all violence and hatred towards others.

22 I borrow the term “uniformity thesis” from Dan Zahavi’s and Glenda Satne’s work on collective intentionality. Cf. Zahavi and Satne, ‘Varieties of Shared Intentionality’.

23 Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, 145.

24 Cf. Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’.

25 Eisenstadt, ‘Eurocentrism and Colorblindness’, 48–9.

26 Cf. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 42–8, 194–219; Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, 9–11, 99–129, 135–40.

27 Eisenstadt, ‘Eurocentrism and Colorblindness’, 49.

28 Ibid., 54.

29 Ibid., 55.

30 Ibid., 54.

31 Ibid., 50–2; Bernasconi, ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’.

32 Bernasconi, ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’, 17. Bernasconi also finds some of Levinas’ texts problematic.

33 Ibid., 8.

34 Ibid., 17.

35 Ibid., 18.

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

37 Bernasconi, ‘Who is my neighbour?’, 24.

38 Ibid., 20.

39 Ibid., 19, 24.

40 Ibid., 25.

41 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 194ff.

42 Ibid., 33–52.

43 Ibid, 80, 187, 194–7; Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 61–81, 100.

44 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 77–9.

45 Dews, Logics of Disintegration, 8; Derrida, Positions, 104–5.

46 Dews, Logics of Disintegration, 10.

47 Ibid., 20.

48 Ibid., 22–3.

49 Cf. Derrida, The Other Heading; Derrida, Learning to Live Finally. In these later works, Derrida contemplates the responsibilities of being a European intellectual and negotiating where Europe is heading.

50 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 294–98; Otherwise than Being, 5–7, 45ff.

51 Cf. Llewelyn, ‘Levinas and Language’.

52 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 122. Levinas is referring to Descartes’ use of language.

53 Cf. Drabinski, Sensibility and Singularity. 129–66.

54 Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 148.

55 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 187–93; Otherwise than Being, 61–81.

56 Husserl, Cartesian Mediations, 29–31.

57 Ibid., 78.

58 Ibid., 78.

59 Derrida exploits this ambiguity: cf. Derrida, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, 146–7.

60 Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 109–6.

61 Levinas, “Signification and Sense”, 36.

62 Cf. Kwasi Wiredu, ‘The Need for Conceptual Decolonisation in African Philosophy’; Hountondji, African Philosophy; Odera Oruka, ‘Four Trends in Current African Philosophy’; Odera Oruka, Sage Philosophy.

63 Levinas, “Signification and Sense”, 37.

64 Ibid., 38–9.

65 Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 196.

66 Ibid., 61ff.

67 Levinas, “Forward”, Humanism of the Other, 6.

68 Cf. Caygill, Levinas and the Political, 184.

69 Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, 393.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 5–9.

73 Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, 395.

74 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21–30. The Preface to Totality and Infinity serves as a manifesto outlining the dangers and weaknesses of western politics and ontology.

75 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, 3. (Italics in the original.).

76 Ibid., 4.

77 Ibid., 7.

78 Ibid., 8.

79 Ibid., 10.

80 Ibid., xii.

81 Ibid., 7.

82 Ibid., 199.

83 Glendinning, ‘Europe, For Example’, 5.

84 Ibid., 6–11.

85 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, 7.

86 Ibid., 125.

87 Drabinski, Levinas and the Postcolonial, 126.