The face in dialogue: Emmanuel Levinas and rhetorics of disruption and supplication

Abstract

In his resuscitation of ethics after the experience of the Holocaust, Levinas seeks a form of communication that maintains the integrity of the ethical “first word” or “face” of the Other. As a supplement, this essay seeks communicative remedies to the frequent “overwriting” or “masking” of the Other's face. Specifically, this essay considers how rhetoric can serve ethics by combating the cultural assumptions and stereotypes that can deface or efface the Other. This consideration will yield the formulation of two rhetorics: a rhetoric of disruption that seeks to disrupt such assumptions and stereotypes and a rhetoric of supplication that fosters a communicative environment conducive to such rhetorical disruption.