E THICAL I NTERRUPTION

What then can interrupt the circular thinking of economy and politics and break with the homogenizing and totalizing functions of society? In Levinasian ethics there is only one way and that is by letting ethics interrupt common sense (see for example Levinas, 1969: 43). Ethical interruption is in this sense essential to avoid totalization or moral distance, which are the likely results of rigid rules, calculations and procedures. Ethics, for Levinas, functions as the interruption of my knowledge, and exposes my willingness to be changed by the Other’s critique. Levinasian ethics does not start with external calculations, rules or definitions. It is not rules for other people to live by, “alterity is possible only starting from me” (Levinas, 1969: 40, original italics). Ethics arises in the encounter with the Other, and is only possible when I let myself be changed. It is about calling the self into question by letting otherness interrupt my thoughts.

Levinasian ethics might therefore appropriately be called a responsive ethics rather than a communicative ethics (Waldenfels, 1995). This implies that the response primarily refers to something that has to be said or done, as opposed to something that has already been said and done. By emphasizing the response, Levinas opens up for a future; a future that is not reached by the self alone. The Other’s face challenges me to go beyond the limits of myself and into the world of the Other. This is a desire for the infinity of the Other—a desire for the novelty the Other might bring into my world. ”It consists paradoxically, in thinking more than is thought while keeping it immeasurable with regard to thought, and entering into relation with the ungraspable while maintaining its status as ungraspable” (Levinas, 2003: 33). The desire for knowing more about the ungraspable world of the Other is thus called upon me in the proximity of the face to face encounter.

The questioning glance of the Other seeks a meaningful response—for the self to be response-able. I can respond with a simple word, and proceed with indifference, concentrating on my own task, passing the Other by. But if an ethical relation is to be achieved, a real response, a responsible answer must be given. “The calling into question of the I, coextensive with the manifestations of the Other in the face, we call language” (Levinas, 1969: 171). This means that I must be ready to put my world into words (Wild, 1969: 14), and to expose myself and offer my vulnerability to the Other. The ethical demand arises when the face presents itself in its nakedness (Levinas, 2003), stripped of all plastic form, and it is an exposure of the vulnerability of the self. It is a window to one’s otherness, and in this exposure there is a calling for responsibility—a call for a response.

My response to the Other is exposure through saying. To respond ethically to the Other is, therefore, to expose one’s inner self. In saying, the self approaches the Other by expressing itself in its vulnerability. As Levinas explains: “Saying uncovers beyond nudity, what dissimulation there may be under the exposedness of a skin laid bare” (Levinas, 1981: 49). This nudity is thus not a physical nudity. Rather, it is a mental nudity, or a vulnerability, which Levinas calls the extreme passivity of responsibility:

The passivity of the exposure responds to an assignation that identifies me as the unique one, not by reducing me to myself, but by stripping me of every identical quiddity, and thus of all form, all investiture, which would still slip into the assignation (…) stripped to the core as in an inspiration of air, an ab-solution to the one (…) a denuding beyond the skin. (Levinas, 1981: 49)

In this way, the self is ‘stripped’ from all identical being and is reduced to the ethical one, willing to change. Therefore, in extreme passivity, the self is ethical in its response, without any intentions or any relations to who the self is. Exposedness is the one in its uniqueness, stripped of all protective categories that could multiply it and make it belong to a defined group.

Exposedness is the self, without prejudges towards the Other, and thus reduced to the one-in-responsibility. When the self appears in a ‘denuding beyond the skin’ it therefore means that it shows levels of itself, which are beyond the categorical difference, it exposes its otherness.

Levinas continues by clarifying that saying thereby uncovers the responding self “in the sense that one discloses oneself by neglecting one’s defences, leaving a shelter, exposing oneself to outrage, to insults and wounding”

(Levinas, 1981: 49). That is, exposedness is not just to strip oneself of categorical differences. To expose oneself is also to take a chance, to run a risk of failure and embarrassment. “The one is exposed to the Other as a skin is exposed to what wounds it” (Levinas, 1974:49). In responding to the Other in a saying I reveal my inner self and offer my world to the Other. In this exposure I make myself vulnerable to critique and attacks. That is, in this sense I make myself ready to be changed by the Other.

The exposed response creates a passage to the Other, or rather a passage for the Other to interrupt and thereby change me. In fact, saying is the non-thematizable ethical element of language that is capable of interrupting thought, and thereby enables the movement from the Same to the Other (Werhane, 1995)—the possibility of change.

Language is perhaps to be defined as the very power to break the continuity of being or of history. The knowledge that absorbs the Other is forthwith situated within the

discourse I address to him. Speaking rather than ‘letting be’ solicits the Other.

(Levinas, 1969: 195)

In other words, the exposure of myself in saying requests for the Other’s questioning, and through his questioning I open up to novelty; I open up for the experience of the Other to change my world. The learning experience from the encounter with the Other is central in the work of Levinas. To approach the Other in conversation is therefore to welcome the Other’s expression, in which at each instant the Other overflows my thoughts. To approach the Other is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I. It means to be taught (Levinas, 1969: 51).

An ethical encounter with the Other is therefore an encounter I can learn from.

It is an encounter that transforms me, changes my future. As Levinas says: the Other is the future. ”The future is what is not grasped, what befalls us and lays hold of us. The Other is the future. The very relationship with the Other is the relationship with the future” (Levinas, 1987b: 77). Affecting the future or creating something new is therefore not the work of the self alone. Instead, it is the Other that opens op to a changed future. By not exposing myself, and by not opening up to what the Other might offer, I create a deadlock, where my thoughts stay rigid and the same. This would result in a situation where I try to assimilate or illuminate the Other instead of welcoming the Other, and assimilation or illumination does not bring novelty. However, if I encounter the Other in an ethical readiness to expose myself, and with a willingness to let the Other change me, I hold the chance of gaining novelty. The very existence of a future bears otherness, and the alterity of the future then is discovered in the alterity of the other person. Rosenthal (2003) explains that it is exactly because the responsibility for the Other is transcendent that it can change my existence. Transcendence fosters real newness, because the

transcendence per definition cannot be pre-thought. The sense of the future that is opened by transcendence to the Other, is another instant rather than continuity of the same. A new instant is what allows for radical novelty.