Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other (Edinburgh, 2011) Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other is an ambitious re-interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical work, placing that work in new conceptual, cultural, and political spaces. This “re-introduction” is situated after what could be called “the Levinas effect” – that effect in which tropes and figures of “otherness” have gained such currency and force. Levinas fundamentally changes the meaning of philosophy and philosophical experience. The scope of Levinas’ critique has therefore (rightly) provoked substantial commentary, exposition, and important internal and external critiques. As with any groundbreaking thinker, however, there is also an aftermath to the Levinas-effect, a moment in which readers of Levinas re-evaluate and further extend the significance of his work. This book begins in such a moment. That is, while Levinas’ texts have been read closely and accounted for in considerable detail, scholars have only just begun to explore the wider impact of his work, with often uneven points of emphasis. The importance of Levinas for theology and religious studies, for example, has garnered substantial creative commentary and stands as an exemplary case of critical re-evaluation and extension. That remains an exceptional case, though, rather than a rule; the same cannot be said for other areas, especially outside contemporary European philosophy proper. And herein lies the prompt for Levinas and the Postcolonial: the time has come for a re-reading of Levinas that puts him in conversation with companion and parallel theories of alterity. To that end, the book offers a systematic interpretation of and re-introduction to Levinas with a view toward engaging with hitherto neglected conceptions of difference in thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmad, Gayatri Spivak, John Beverley, Homi Bhabha, Édouard Glissant, Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, and Subcommandante Marcos. Now, Levinas’ work has long made a significant impact on European philosophy, shifting so many of the conversations about being and knowing away from what he calls the obsession with totality, toward the enigmatic and interruptive function of alterity. The consequences of this shift are enormous, and indeed one is hard-pressed to imagine the contemporary European philosophical scene without Levinas’ transformative interventions. At the very same time, numerous other engagements with the deconstructive function of alterity in aesthetics, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory have developed alongside Levinas’ work. Yet there has been no sustained conversation with these developments, even as questions intersect with intriguing resonances and important differences. How is the language of otherness altered by trans-national and trans-cultural contact, with all of the ideological formations at stake in that exchange? How does the experience of historical violence (subjugation, enslavement, colonialism) change the meaning of speaking and silence? How does the experience of cultural mixture open up the complex interstitial space of an identity affirming, rather than obscuring, radical difference? What is the meaning of a politics that puts difference first, always resistant to the hegemony of identity even as hegemony is formulated and exercised? Levinas and the Postcolonial raises these questions in the context of theories of trans-cultural contact, subaltern studies, and postcolonial theory and politics in order to begin a conversation, guided by a pair of questions: what does Levinasian thinking have to say to companion and parallel accounts of alterity, singularity, and difference? How do those accounts challenge the Levinasian prerogative? And so the book is committed to exploring the zig-zag movement of how a distinctively Levinasian concern with the Other gains nuanced insight from cultural studies and postcolonial theory, just as the latter stand to gain so much normative purchase from Levinas’ work. The motivation for the present project is therefore straightforward. While there have been a number of introductions to Levinas’ work over the past two-plus decades, the thematic orientation of those introductions has remained largely the same. Introductions to Levinas’ work follow a consistent interpretative pattern, covering his critique of Husserl and Heidegger, engagement(s) with Jewish mystical and religious sources, and the novelty and enigma of the Levinasian ethical. Those studies have been enormously helpful in clarifying central concepts. No small task. But Levinas and the Postcolonial is a different kind of introduction. It is written as an introductory study in the sense that it introduces Levinasian thinking, but is structured by a different constellation of concepts – concepts that are internal to the Levinasian prerogative and that share important family resemblances with other theorizations difference. In this sense, the book introduces Levinasian problematics through an engagement with theoretical problems, rather than through narration of intellectual background and textual explication. The result is a wider sense of Levinas’ significance as a thinker, which I hope will both introduce new areas of study to Levinas scholars and convince scholars in cultural studies and postcolonial theory that Levinas must be taken seriously as a thinker of difference. Thus, the significance of Levinas and the Postcolonial does not lie in adding yet another rehearsal of the already numerous renderings of trans-cultural contact, subalternity, and hybridity. As well, neither is the aim to reinvent Levinas as a postcolonial thinker, nor is it to simply critique his work as Eurocentric. Rather, in re-introducing Levinas’ work, this book breaks new ground by thinking, with Levinas, across geographies – literal and figurative – in order to think more rigorously about the question of the Other as an ethical question. Trans-cultural contact, subalternity, and hybridity retain the cultural and political force articulated by innovators of the terms, but that force, by way of Levinas, gains two crucial features: an important phenomenological mode of legitimation and the claim of the ethical in difference. Levinas and the Postcolonial thereby labors between multiple modes of discourse in a conversation about alterity, silence, responsibility, and (ultimately) the paradox of thinking identity and difference at the same time. This is a conversation that gathers together so many urgent questions – questions that transcend academic trends, disciplines, and traditions by asking the very Levinasian question: what does it mean to be in a world structured by difference? And what are the possibilities for at least a little bit of goodness in that world? For there is always the Other – that jewel, however small, who still adorns the earth.

john e. drabinski

department of black studies

amherst college

amherst, massachusetts 01002

- email -

Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other

(Edinburgh, 2011)

Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, Other is an ambitious re-interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical work, placing that work in new conceptual, cultural, and political spaces. This “re-introduction” is situated after what could be called “the Levinas effect” – that effect in which tropes and figures of “otherness” have gained such currency and force. Levinas fundamentally changes the meaning of philosophy and philosophical experience. The scope of Levinas’ critique has therefore (rightly) provoked substantial commentary, exposition, and important internal and external critiques. As with any groundbreaking thinker, however, there is also an aftermath to the Levinas-effect, a moment in which readers of Levinas re-evaluate and further extend the significance of his work. This book begins in such a moment. That is, while Levinas’ texts have been read closely and accounted for in considerable detail, scholars have only just begun to explore the wider impact of his work, with often uneven points of emphasis. The importance of Levinas for theology and religious studies, for example, has garnered substantial creative commentary and stands as an exemplary case of critical re-evaluation and extension. That remains an exceptional case, though, rather than a rule; the same cannot be said for other areas, especially outside contemporary European philosophy proper. And herein lies the prompt for Levinas and the Postcolonial: the time has come for a re-reading of Levinas that puts him in conversation with companion and parallel theories of alterity.

To that end, the book offers a systematic interpretation of and re-introduction to Levinas with a view toward engaging with hitherto neglected conceptions of difference in thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmad, Gayatri Spivak, John Beverley, Homi Bhabha, Édouard Glissant, Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, and Subcommandante Marcos. Now, Levinas’ work has long made a significant impact on European philosophy, shifting so many of the conversations about being and knowing away from what he calls the obsession with totality, toward the enigmatic and interruptive function of alterity. The consequences of this shift are enormous, and indeed one is hard-pressed to imagine the contemporary European philosophical scene without Levinas’ transformative interventions. At the very same time, numerous other engagements with the deconstructive function of alterity in aesthetics, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory have developed alongside Levinas’ work. Yet there has been no sustained conversation with these developments, even as questions intersect with intriguing resonances and important differences. How is the language of otherness altered by trans-national and trans-cultural contact, with all of the ideological formations at stake in that exchange? How does the experience of historical violence (subjugation, enslavement, colonialism) change the meaning of speaking and silence? How does the experience of cultural mixture open up the complex interstitial space of an identity affirming, rather than obscuring, radical difference? What is the meaning of a politics that puts difference first, always resistant to the hegemony of identity even as hegemony is formulated and exercised? Levinas and the Postcolonial raises these questions in the context of theories of trans-cultural contact, subaltern studies, and postcolonial theory and politics in order to begin a conversation, guided by a pair of questions: what does Levinasian thinking have to say to companion and parallel accounts of alterity, singularity, and difference? How do those accounts challenge the Levinasian prerogative? And so the book is committed to exploring the zig-zag movement of how a distinctively Levinasian concern with the Other gains nuanced insight from cultural studies and postcolonial theory, just as the latter stand to gain so much normative purchase from Levinas’ work.

The motivation for the present project is therefore straightforward. While there have been a number of introductions to Levinas’ work over the past two-plus decades, the thematic orientation of those introductions has remained largely the same. Introductions to Levinas’ work follow a consistent interpretative pattern, covering his critique of Husserl and Heidegger, engagement(s) with Jewish mystical and religious sources, and the novelty and enigma of the Levinasian ethical. Those studies have been enormously helpful in clarifying central concepts. No small task. But Levinas and the Postcolonial is a different kind of introduction. It is written as an introductory study in the sense that it introduces Levinasian thinking, but is structured by a different constellation of concepts – concepts that are internal to the Levinasian prerogative and that share important family resemblances with other theorizations difference. In this sense, the book introduces Levinasian problematics through an engagement with theoretical problems, rather than through narration of intellectual background and textual explication. The result is a wider sense of Levinas’ significance as a thinker, which I hope will both introduce new areas of study to Levinas scholars and convince scholars in cultural studies and postcolonial theory that Levinas must be taken seriously as a thinker of difference.

Thus, the significance of Levinas and the Postcolonial does not lie in adding yet another rehearsal of the already numerous renderings of trans-cultural contact, subalternity, and hybridity. As well, neither is the aim to reinvent Levinas as a postcolonial thinker, nor is it to simply critique his work as Eurocentric. Rather, in re-introducing Levinas’ work, this book breaks new ground by thinking, with Levinas, across geographies – literal and figurative – in order to think more rigorously about the question of the Other as an ethical question. Trans-cultural contact, subalternity, and hybridity retain the cultural and political force articulated by innovators of the terms, but that force, by way of Levinas, gains two crucial features: an important phenomenological mode of legitimation and the claim of the ethical in difference. Levinas and the Postcolonial thereby labors between multiple modes of discourse in a conversation about alterity, silence, responsibility, and (ultimately) the paradox of thinking identity and difference at the same time. This is a conversation that gathers together so many urgent questions – questions that transcend academic trends, disciplines, and traditions by asking the very Levinasian question: what does it mean to be in a world structured by difference? And what are the possibilities for at least a little bit of goodness in that world? For there is always the Other – that jewel, however small, who still adorns the earth.