Notes on: Ziarek, E. (2001) The Ethical Passions of Emmanuel Levinas. In T Chanter (Ed) Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas. USA; The Pennsylvanian State University Press,Pp. 78--95 Dave Harris [Barad cites Ziarek as important in materialising Levinas] Levinas's ethics turns on 'embodiment passion or even delirium'(78), something to ground subjectivity in sensibility. Sensibility is further defined as 'proximity to the Other'. The subject itself becomes not just something that reflects, but a form of sensibility. However there is another strand in his work which seems to refer to '"an eclipse of Eros and femininity"' (79), and treatment of Eros as only producing fecundity, maternity. The later work stresses that ethical responsibility is located not in consciousness but 'specifically in incarnation' [oddly defined as a way of being exposed]. Reflection and consciousness and its associated freedom and so on negates 'both alterity and the body' in favour of some self possession of consciousness. Responsibility for that consciousness becomes a matter of freedom. Levinas instead suggests that there is a responsibility 'prior to the will and intentionality of consciousness', before any notion of the subject or the ego. We see this for example in the way that obsession works to traverse consciousness, or the way in which delirium appears alien, outside of principle or will, something 'coming from an unknown exteriority'. In this sense responsibility is foreign to the subject, some obligation '"anachronistically prior to every engagement"' (80), something that displaces the I as enunciator. Consciousness for and of itself is not the only meaning of the subject. Something else persists — 'the embodied ego, or what Levinas calls ipseity'. The body itself shows how displacement from consciousness works — embodiment is a very condition of relations to objects and also 'the prototype of an ethical experience'. Instead of transcending the body in self reflection, the self remains embodied, 'prelogical, pre-synthetic entwinement of thought and extension', '"being in one's skin"'. It is tempting to see this is just an interruption of the consciousness, but the relation between body and language still needs to be explained. Levinas goes beyond the usual concerns in discourse theory with the contrast between the saying and what is said. The latter shows the systematic quality of propositional discourse which synchronises and establishes relations, and, produces knowledge. In linguistic terms, the said indicates the symbolic order and the linguistic code. Saying, by contrast 'reveals a unique ethical dimension of signification'. That is a precondition of communication. To fully grasp this, we need to not just look at linguistic acts, but connect the apparent spontaneity of enunciation to 'the originary receptivity to the speaking subject'. There is an exposure to others, a possibility of being addressed by the other. When saying, the original position of the subject takes an accusative 'me' form as well as a nominative 'I'. It is mediated by language, but transcends it. This helps us trace ethical relations to alterity, the exposure to the other, and this has radical implications. [I could see implications for D&G on the social relations inherent in communication. This stuff about that possibility of reception coming before speech reminds me of the clairvoyant manta rays in Kirby] Language is already incarnation. Carnal forms structure language, but sensibility underpins it, something beyond vision and sight, something even '"pre-– ontological"' (81). It is also the case that the system of signs constitutes perception as well as expressing it. We find in the 'order of the said' a way to manage the ambiguities of sense perception, perception, and consciousness, because it combines 'verbalisation and nominalization' [sounds a bit like Kirby on how the alphabet seems to favour speaking]. In saying, we also have a capacity for being affected by the other, exposed to otherness. What saying does is to signify sensibility, and this as an ethical sense, implying both 'exposure and vulnerability', the experience of corporeality, with its accompanying fatigue, ageing and passivity [which seem to be the prime forms of sensibility]. It is pre-reflective. It operates through touch rather than vision [although language is also seen as something that touches, it seems]. This goes together with lots of celebrations of touch which clearly indicate not mastering but 'contiguity, contact, and exposure to the outside' (82), usually explored mostly in 'the context of erotic love'. [This gives her an opportunity to say that Levinas was potentially interested in eroticism after all]. The earlier work groped towards seeing something beyond perception, which 'reduces the other to the order of knowledge', and enjoyment, which reduces things to 'the consumption and possession of the subject'. Ethical relations with the other has to transcend these two, via a notion of 'total alterity' [I think the argument is that this sort of relation with the Other can only involve an idea of transcendence, something rising above ordinary experience]. In later work, this was seen as too formalist, and was directed instead to arguing that the order of the sensible is not transcended, despite the persisting 'non-coincidence' between the epistemological and the ethical [I think that the argument is that the epistemological dimensions of sense perception do not sufficiently grasp the ethical significance of incarnation and exteriority]. This helps recapture Levinas for feminism. He already contests disembodied subjects, and formalist notions of language [there is a parallel between him and Irigaray, who also insists on an embodied subject rather than an abstract one]. For both, embodiment does not mean a reduction of the body to something passive which inscribes an abstract language: instead, there is 'ambiguity inherent in the constitution of the body' (83). Levinas argues that this arises from the [his?] phenomenological reduction of the body, which leads to consciousness finding itself dependent on incarnation, arising out of bodily forms of power, not just something which initially constitutes the body. There is an '"original incarnation of thought"' (83). Embodiment shows an intimate exteriority on which language depends. The outside is not transcended, but the relation is ambiguous — in actually operating, consciousness depends on '"threads coming also from the constituted"', before any prior actual intention. So embodiment does not mean just reducing to the biological body or to passive matter: '"ipseity...is not a biological concept"'. Embodiment is not  simply explained by natural or historical forces. It is not soemthing that existed before culture: '"the cultural is essentially embodied thought"', the manifestation of the life of flesh which is at the origin of meaning and intelligibility. We cannot restore classical oppositions like body and language, nature and history, nor privilege one side. Instead there is a 'chiasmic [Magic]  inversion of the body and language' (84), where language constitutes the bodily self and vice versa. The singularity of the embodied self emerges 'through catachresis' [lierally originally meaning a semantic misuse or error—e.g., using "militate" for "mitigate", "chronic" for "severe",says Wiki,  here involving some emergence of singularity by adopting a role?]. We see connections with feminist notions of embodiment and the ethical significance of the body. Of course, Foucault and Butler are right to show the importance of 'discursive power relations' appearing in the order of the said, and apparently acknowledged by Levinas in the form of a relation between discourse and domination, knowledge and power. This arises for him with the association of philosophy '"with the State and with medicine"'. This can be extended to suggest the political character of logic itself and rationalism. Levinas's ambiguity about bodily constitutions suggests some other form of linguistic materialisation as well though, 'an anarchic ethics of embodiment' (85) which both interrupts and retreats from what is said. This might suggest a possible 'ethics of eros', but this is not developed and his own conceptions of eros and femininity are 'entangled in both patriarchal and metaphysical traditions': it needs Irigaray to develop a feminist ethic. We have already seen that Levinas argues that the incarnate subject is not a biological concept, but the result of a '"higher structure"'. Somehow, it becomes a condition of ethical experiences of 'unconditional responsibility'. In his view, the lived body already experiences a substitution effect, 'of one being for the other'. Levinas draws on Merleau-Ponty apparently, which itself draws on Lacan and the mirror stage [where relations with others are central to the coherence of the ego]. However, there is a 'dehiscence of the flesh' as well, where the unified embodied ego is seen as a constriction of this fullness. This parallels Irigaray on the imaginary [apparently]. The key thing is that the body is constituted by its relations with the outside, but these are no longer seen as 'subjective mastery over things, but, rather as the "hold" of exteriority on the subject'. The visual schema [as in mirrors] guarantees the mastery of the ego, but Levinas wants to go beyond the visual, the body as an image or a figure, to stress this broader notion of ipseity, with the body as '"contraction"' of it (86) it is a relation of 'torsion and constriction', and this is found in the more general relation between matter and form: there is 'disproportion or non-coincidence with form' (86), although of course [!] they are not entirely disjoined. Instead there is a 'not of ipseity': the ego, unlike matter, is not united to its form, but rather a cramped form of self, '"ill at ease in one skin"', allowing a certain withdrawal of immediate unity, implying '"the materiality more material than all matter"' [magic substance again]. Consciousness constantly offers a 'movement of loss and recovery' in terms of identifying with itself: there is an undoubted 'irremissible attachment to oneself', but also this 'radical exposure to the outside'. There is a corresponding 'identity of non-essence' or singularity. Apparently, Levinas is close to Irigaray here in describing this torsion and restlessness, some conflict where the unity of the subject is exposed to the outside, even by things like breathing, the actions of '"mucous membrane"'. However Irigaray goes on to redefine female embodiment as a matter of being more than one, and expressed through Eros: for Levinas it is more to do with the 'anguish of the unsexed subject' (87). There is a certain negativity and contradiction, the impossibility of going away from the body and consciousness, while threatening 'anarchic withdrawal of the body' from the symbolic order, even though the body also shows ties to that order. It is impossible to distance oneself from ones body or transcend one's skin — identity is '"irremissable"' (87). In a way, embodiment is even more material than the usual case because there is a certain way in which the body is not immediately identified with consciousness, form and language. The body occupies 'a paradoxical exile', even a split ego, although without the immediate pathologies. Incarnation is an exile in oneself, not related to anything external. It does not lead to ecstasy, though, more to some constant state. The inability of the ego to withdraw completely from the body becomes 'a paradigm of ethical responsibility that befalls the subject prior to any initiative'. Is impossible to flee responsibility all the time we are bodies in their skins, and therefore exposed ['to accusation']. Because bodies are more material, embodiment reveals the 'effect of a prior ethical relation to the other… "Having – the – other – in – ones – skin"'. Humans experience anguish not as some movement to death, but rather from some internal constriction, not a flight into the void but of passage into fullness, and exposure to the other. This produces responsibility 'up to the point of substitution for another'. Apparently there is a suggestion that this has origins in Jewish cabalistic traditions — a 'Jewish sense of [God's] constriction as creation' (88). It is kind of dialectical negativity, 'both the possibility and the effect of the relation to the other', not nonbeing, but a withdrawal into fullness. For Irigaray, this can be understood in terms of sexual desire, the result of 'an interval between matter and form' occupied by desire which turns into an attempt to change the interval and the relations on either side of it. Levinas separates sexual relations from ethics, but he still talks about obsession and passion as important [maybe in producing more visible things like '"transfers of sentiment"']. Ethical bodies are passionate bodies. Passion arises from being 'in the accusative', being responsible and being able to substitute. It is '"anarchic"' [maybe implying something natural,beyond cultural anyway?]. Carnality and passion are 'analogues' which show how responsibility precedes freedom [with an odd bit about how it is nothing to do with spontaneity, but is a matter of affect from unrepresentable sources]. Passion, even delirium means that the disturbance produced by this affects is never represented, never turned into an image, even though it affects consciousness. Levinas addresses the Kantian legacy in attempting to purify ethical imperatives from passion, and equate responsibility with individual freedom, as a way of taming this anarchy and domesticating it. Kant tries to establish a direct equivalence between ethical obligations as universal norms and specific directives for individuals [in the categorical imperative], but this makes morality dependent on norms and descriptive statements [specifically their 'metalanguage']. For Levinas this would separate ethical conduct from the body and its passions. For him there is no easy  equivalence between obligation and social laws, or freedoms, the individual who enunciates, and the individual who is addressed. Kant's conception arises from an undue emphasis put on knowledge as well as a suppression of the body. There are no universal laws and instead 'ethical obligation finds its form in sensibility'. However, it stutters when confronting sexuality. It should have led Levinas to discuss embodied love as Irigaray does. He still wants to purify passions in terms of disconnecting them from sex, in forms of 'ethical masochism and sublimation' (90). Passion has an ethical significance only in the form of pain, as Lacan apparently suggested for Kant. The danger is that Levinas might be confusing the anguish of the ethical subjects with 'the secret enjoyment of the pain itself'. There should be something more positive said about sex and Eros. Sublimation arises because Levinas is still interested in divine creation as the ultimate ethical form of embodiment. That finds an earthly counterpart in passionless motherhood, 'idealising sublimation' for Z, still mixed with violation and disrespect for non-supplemented Eros and thus femininity. Femininity gets associated with 'animality, profanation, shame, indecency, irresponsible infancy', all of which excludes it from ethics. Irigaray particularly spots this in the link between sublimation and debasement of Eros. The consequence is that male ethics turns towards transcendent God, while females are left in the 'abyss of the nonhuman', something between animals and humans (91). Women's sensibility cannot be divine, nor can sexual love. Sex means irrational discourse and leads to a state of fallenness. For Irigaray, this is a strange notion of God who does not seem to respect female others. Irigaray therefore shifts Levinas's discussion towards an ethics of sexual difference. She stresses 'erotic wonder' as the basis for an ethical passion, where surprise and wonder follow from an encounter with the unknowable, with sexual difference as its primary form. She knows that sexual relations also involve greed, possession or discussed, but there is also wonder, the inability to completely subsume the other.. Wonder is 'the ethical passion par excellence' and is a precondition of pleasure, and ethical anguish. Pain becomes a secondary emotion resulting from that first judgement of the encounter with the unknowable. This also makes the erotic encounter different from the mundane transactions of ego or knowledge. It suspends all our 'schemas and definitions' and we can glimpse a genuine other, not graspable in the conventions, and yet unique and not a substitute for something [like God]. This complements Levinas for Z. Eros involves de- sublimation, sexual pleasure is creative [not God]. There are implications for the body's 'anarchic passivity' in Levinas, arising from the overthrow of all controlling consciousness. Levinas sees this is similar to the 'classical opposition between the passive matter and active form' (92), which also privileges logos and meaning over matter, matter becoming a category, or something completely obdurate, at best a cause [of subsequent form]. For Levinas, this shows an 'anarchic susceptibility to passion'. For Irigaray the passionate body is never just passive, but a creation, needing to engender something, including mystery, transforming flesh itself. Erotic passion implies that the lovers are giving each other 'time and the future', a new dimension to Levinas on embodiment. For him, it is primarily a temporal matter [as in all the stuff about ageing, which apparently will 'suggest a correspondence between the temporality of the body and the diachrony of the trace of the other' (93) — this apparently implies that the past can never be mastered in memory nor dominated by future products, as the ageing process shows us: it appears as a 'passive synthesis', not retrievable by memory. The trace of the other also means something unattainable in the past even though it troubles the present — '"and immemorial past"'. For Levinas, this past is experienced in encounters with the other, as another trace which exceeds the order of the said — so does 'the passive synthesis of ageing'. For Irigaray this is implicated with the denial of a sexual pleasure component to ethics. The implication is that male lovers recover from ageing by procreating sons, that children establish the relationship with the future [hence the emphasis on fecundity], and defies age. Ageing and procreation are integral the Levinas, but Irigaray suggests another ethical dimension, where lovers create a future even before procreating, one which does more than justify death, but which calls 'to birth of the self and the other' and invites people to become [something other]. Levinas apparently discusses this not in terms of sexual pleasure, but through the idea of infinity, and never considers Irigaray's temporal dimension of sexual love. Finally, although he is not very good on sexual difference, he is good at criticising the masculine side of difference, attacking '"virile and heroic" conception of masculinity' (94), although he never develops what the feminine side might look like. Back to Barad page