{"id":9854,"date":"2012-11-19T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9854"},"modified":"2012-11-21T00:13:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T05:13:40","slug":"156-i-am-a-hole-in-the-order-of-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/19\/156-i-am-a-hole-in-the-order-of-being\/","title":{"rendered":"155-7 I am a hole in the order of being obscene supplement to levinas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Levinas asserts this asymmetry as universal (every one of us is in the position of primordial responsibility toward others), does this asymmetry not effectively end up in privileging one particular group<\/strong> that assumes responsibility for all others … in this case, of course, Jews … \u201cThe idea of a chosen people must not be taken as a sign of pride. … It knows itself at the centre of the world … for I am always alone in being able to answer the call, I am irreplaceable in my assumption of responsibility\u201d (DF,176 \u201377).<\/p>\n

Self-questioning is always by definition the obverse of self-privileging; there is always something false about respect for others which is based on questioning of one\u2019s own right to exist<\/span>. 155<\/p>\n

For Spinoza<\/strong> there is no Hobbesian \u201cSelf\u201d as extracted from and opposed to reality. Spinoza\u2019s ontology is one of full immanence to the world; in other words, I \u201cam\u201d just the network of my relations with the world, I am to-tally \u201cexternalized\u201d in it. My conatus<\/strong>, my tendency to assert myself, is thus not my assertion at the expense of the world, but my full acceptance of being part of the world, my assertion of the wider reality only within which I can thrive. The opposition of egotism and altruism is thus overcome: I fully am, not as an isolated Self, but in the thriving reality, part of which I am. When Levinas writes that \u201cenjoyment is the singularization of an ego. . . . it is the very work of egoism\u201d and when he concludes from it that \u201cgiving has meaning only as a tearing from oneself despite oneself. . . . Only a subject that eats can be for-the-Other,\u201d he therefore secretly imputes to Spinoza an egotistic \u201csubjectivist\u201d notion of (my) existence. 156<\/p>\n

His anti-Spinozistic questioning of my right to exist is inverted arrogance, as if I am the center whose existence threatens all others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So the answer should not be an assertion of my right to exist in harmony with and tolerance of others, but a more radical claim:<\/span> Do I exist in the first place? Am I not, rather, a hole in the order of being?<\/span> 156<\/p>\n

This brings us to the ultimate paradox on account of which Levinas\u2019s answer is not sufficient: I am a threat to the entire order of being not insofar as I positively exist as part of this order, but precisely insofar as I am a hole in the order of being. As such, as nothing, I \u201cam\u201d a striving to reach out and appropriate all (only a Nothing can desire to become Everything)<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Friedrich Schelling already defined the subject as the endless striving of the Nothing to become Everything. On the contrary, a positive living being occupying a determinate space in reality, rooted in it, is by definition a moment of its circulation and reproduction.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The figure of Benny Morris, this symptom of the falsity of the liberal-benevolent-peacenik Israelis, is to be conceived as the concealed obscene supplement to Levinasian ethics<\/span>. After bringing to the light the \u201cdark\u201d side of the emergence of the State of Israel (the aim of David Ben-Gurion and the first generation of Israeli leaders in the 1949 war was to provoke the Arab population to leave Palestine … including raping and killing innocent civilians), for which he was shunned by the Israeli academic establishment, Morris…stated that these \u201cdark\u201d acts were necessary for the constitution and survival of the State of Israel…Ben-Gurion\u2019s mistake was that he did not complete the ethnic cleaning, including expelling Arabs<\/strong> from the West Bank \u2014 in this case, there would have been peace today in the Middle East. 157<\/p>\n

The merit of this reasoning is that it thoroughly avoids the standard liberal hypocrisy: if you want the State of Israel, you have to accept the price of ethnic cleansing;<\/span>\u00a0there was never any third way of living peacefully side by side with the Palestinians in a Jewish or even secular democratic state.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the liberal complaints about the unfair harshness in the treatment of Palestinians, all their condemnation of the terror of the West Bank occupation, avoid the key issue by sustaining the illusion that a little bit more tolerance and withdrawal will bring peace.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…the State of Israel was possible only through the ethnic cleansing of the majority of people living there prior to the Jewish resettlement.<\/p>\n

One should effectively read Morris as anti-Levinas par excellence, as the truth of Levinas\u2019s hope that the State of Israel will be a unique state directly grounded in the messianic promise of Justice<\/span>; to retain his vision of Israel, Levinas has to deny what Morris ruthlessly admits<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Morris\u2019s attitude, his cold acceptance of the fact that we have to kill others in order to survive, is the truth of the Levinasian questioning of one\u2019s own right to exist.<\/strong> 157<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although Levinas asserts this asymmetry as universal (every one of us is in the position of primordial responsibility toward others), does this asymmetry not effectively end up in privileging one particular group that assumes responsibility for all others … in this case, of course, Jews … \u201cThe idea of a chosen people must not be … Continue reading “155-7 I am a hole in the order of being obscene supplement to levinas”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,138,15,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-butlerethics","category-subjectivity","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9854"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9941,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9854\/revisions\/9941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}