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(2013) Late modernist style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas, Dordrecht, Springer.
Levinas's revision of terminology, making strange the roster of familiar concepts that had at first seemed to come to the confounded reader's aid, is particularly interesting with regard to the question of ethical discourse. I have, at various points, implied that Levinas's philosophy itself has an ethical character. It is, as is Beckett's, an oeuvre written in response to an obligation and in its demonstration of the inscrutable nature of its subject, seems to give witness to a certain nonperception of the other. There are objections to be made, however. Without wishing to voice Levinas's intentions or properly pin down the significance of his terms we might make sense of ethical discourse as he portrays it. A very simple form of contact between people, ethical discourse is entirely without content. Coming prior—in time and in importance—to more complex interactions such as a chat about the activities of the neighbors, it is rather the willingness of one to respond to the other. We may understand Levinas's ethics, I suggest, in terms of the domestic sphere: for example, my readiness to answer my front door when I hear the bell. Any intercourse with the caller subsequent to opening the door is established upon my initial attitude of willingness to respond to whoever is on the doorstep, even if it was a prank and the prankster has left.
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Full citation:
Fifield, P. (2013). The turn to hyperbole, in Late modernist style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 141-159.
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