Hi Dan--
Good to hear from you, hope all is well. My first
reaction is to wonder if the question itself does not
beg the question. In other words, in criticizing
Deleuze for not taking account of alterity aren't we
assuming that the primary domain of ethics lies in
that of alterity? Historically I'm not so sure this
is the case. A great deal of ethical thought seems to
be taken up with questions of what the good life is,
of how desire should be regulated and formed, of
what's worth pursuing. But that response would be
unfair.
First, I think Deleuze does deal with otherness. His
essay "Tournier and a World Without Others" seems to
give us a Lacan-Husserlian inspired account of
otherness that maps the passage from the other as the
imaginary alter of a rivalrous relationship to the
Other as desire, as that idiosyncratic, unthinkable
repetition that endless passes from object, to object,
to object without reaching a final term but which
creates much in the process. Deleuze, during this
period, would thus offer a sort of invective against
identification and the rivalrous love-hate that grows
out of it. Crusoe needs to pass from seeing the other
as either his slave or companion in order to reach a
point of absolute otherness in which Friday can become
a possible world diverging from his own. This sort of
analysis is repeated again in the fifth chapter of DR
and the relation to the Other is a necessary condition
for the actualization of worlds in the Static
Ontological Genesis of LS.
So there is a phase for the Other or alterity in
Deleuze's ethics. But here is where we would
differentiate Deleuze from Levinas. In Levinas we
experience the call of the Other in which we must
submit ourselves in a relation of solicitude that
demands that we selflessly give ourselves up to give
ourselves over to its demand. But since the Other is
absolutely transcendent to us-- beyond as Levinas puts
it --in fullfilling the demand of the Other it's clear
that that fullfillment can never be anything but a
fantasy. We assume we know what the Other is calling
for and that we can give it. But in giving to the
Other in this way we just treat the Other as
narcissistic alter, as our neighbor like us.
Ultimately a logic of the same is necessarily assumed
here. The Other must be like us for us to act
ethically towards them. It seems to me that Deleuze
feels we must move beyond this stage. If Deleuze
holds that our ethics must ultimately be an ethics of
the event, then it is because only there does our
desire manage to escape all the rivalrous
identifications that otherwise beset it in the domain
of recognition. A relation to the Other that no
longer reduces them to the same is only acheived at
that point at which desire becomes a desire for an
absolute difference that is thereby able to resonate
with all other differences by virtue of its difference
with respect to them. A difference that would desire
itself as difference is a difference that is no longer
capable of desiring everyone else as the same. I'm
not sure if any of this makes sense, but it's the
first approach I would take in responding to the
criticism.
Best Regards,
Paul
--- "D. Smith" <dls216@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 05:46 PM 7/28/02 -0700, Paul Bryant wrote:
> >Goodchild seems to be seeking some noxious
> synthesis
> >of Levinas and schizoanalysis. Given that Levinas'
> >conception of the Other seems to be a superstitious
> >mystification of the Other, I say no thanks!
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> I'd never thought of Goodchild's work that way, but
> it hits the mark. Just
> wondering what you'd say in response to those who
> claim that an ethics
> stemming from Deleuze's philosophy would be
> problematic b/c of its lack of
> attention to the issue of alterity? The issue, I
> think, is more
> complictaed than that, but what's your take?
>
> Regards,
> Dan Smith
>
>
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