Husserl and Levinas

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187DISSYMMETRY AND HEIGHT Human Studies 27: 187–206, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Dissymmetry and Height: Rhetoric, Irony and Pedagogy in theThought of Husserl, Blanchot and Levinas

GARY PETERSUniversity of the West of England, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol, BS3 2JT, UK (E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. This essay is concerned with an initial mapping out of a model of intersubjectivitythat, viewed within the context of education, breaks with the hegemonic dialogics of currentpedagogies. Intent on rethinking the (so-called) “problem” of solipsism for phenomenologyin terms of a pedagogy that situates itself within solitude and the alterity of self and other,Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas will here speak as the voices of this other mode of teaching. Beginning with the problematization of intersubjectivity in romantic aesthetics andhermeneutics, I introduce the concept of irony as a crucial element in the conceptualizationof this other pedagogical model, one that requires, initial ly, a discussion of Husserl’s responseto the charge of solipsism in the 5th Cartesian Meditation. As a starting point I introduce hissymmetrical notion of bodily “pairing” into a consideration of rhetoric, understood here asan integral part of teaching, thus forging links with phenomenology via the work of Merleau-Ponty. The above provides a context for an extended discussion of pedagogy as it appears inthe work of Blanchot and Levinas. Although similar in many respects, on closer inspection it

will emerge that important differences are evident in the dissymmetrical and asymmetricalmodels suggested by the two thinkers respectively. These differences, I will argue, begin toopen up a critical perspective on Levinas’ “height” model of teaching in the name of the moreradical configuration of phenomenology and rhetoric to be found in Blanchot.

Misunderstanding and Incomprehension

The degree to which human action and interaction is inexplicable is the de-gree to which the human sciences have been able to propose strategies of intersubjective engagement that produce meaning in the absence of truth.However, prior to the rise of the Geisteswissenschaften in late 19 th Century

Germany, the German romantic theorists Schleiermacher and Friedrich Schlegelhad already signaled the fundamental challenge to the social and human sci-ences by positing mis understanding and in comprehensibility as the nega-tive ground and positive groundlessness of human interaction respectively(Schleiermacher 1986, p. 82; Schlegel 1984, pp. 32–40). In both cases the ab-sence of an originary communicative community (to use Habermas’ vo-cabulary) results in deeply aporetic models of sociality being promoted,one divinatory and the other ironic; models where intersubjective understand-



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ing and an expressed desire for dialogue are made to depend on an “art of guessing” (Ricoeur 1981, p. 211) while at the same time having to confront,in the case of irony, what might be called an art of second-guessing.

To explain: if liberated from textual analysis, the project of romantic di-vinatory hermeneutics is to initiate a dialogue with the other through a pro-ductive process of imagining the intentions of social action. Dialogue hererequires the removal or crossing of a distance between self and other in a desireto overcome an originary misunderstanding conceived, by Schleiermacher, inboth an active and a passive way, although, significantly, active misunderstand-ing is understood by him as being the result of “reading something into”an other’s action rather than the conscious intention of the action itself (Schleiermacher 1986, p. 83).

For Friedrich Schlegel, a contemporary and friend of Schleiermacher, in-comprehensibility is far from being an essentially passive negativity to beovercome, albeit infinitely; on the contrary, it is a positive function of whatmight be called the ironic dimension of sociality itself . While sharing hisfriend’s desire for dialogue, Schlegel recognizes the more active role playedby irony in both social action and the interpretation of that action. In this modelof intersubjectivity irony is understood as a positive force of disruption anddissemblance, an “eternal agility” (Schlegel 1991, p. 100) that explicitly in-tegrates rhetoric into social action (1991, p. 31) to provide persuasive formsand the necessary finitude for the communication of a subjectivity that is si-multaneously conscious of its infinite otherness and form less ness. So while

dialogue is promoted by Schlegel it is also, paradoxically, ironized to thedegree that the divinatory “art of guesswork” necessary for such dialogue tocommence comes to inhabit both action and reaction, production and recep-tion. That is to say, the understanding of an intentional act through hermeneuti-cal divination is here pre-empted (second-guessed) by the author or agent of this act as part of a mobility that is above all intent on infinitely breaching therestrictive horizon of each new interpretation.

These introductory remarks are not intended as an introduction to roman-tic hermeneutics and irony but, rather, as one way into a consideration of theextraordinary lure of dialogics and its various models of thought and action,shared (against the odds) by both of the above thinkers. In addition, these initial

thoughts point towards a rather different model of sociality, one more sensi-tive to the active solitariness of the self and the consequent aporias of inter-subjectivity.

From within hermeneutics it is Paul Ricoeur who makes the decisive break with dialogics, and it is, thus, his thought that provides a useful frame for thefollowing reflections. Of particular relevance is his notion of “appropriation”(Ricoeur 1981, pp. 182–193) which replaces the dialogical structure of au-thor/reader, actor/reactor with a much more complex and more productivemodel that offers an account of the way in which the text does not simply, or



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primarily, ask a question that can be answered, as dialogicians such as Bahktinwould have it, but, rather, is the occasion for the unfolding of a “world” be-fore the text, an opening up of meaning which similarly unfolds or “enlarges”(1981, p. 182) the subjectivity of the reader regardless of the intentions of theauthor. In short, the text educates or teaches the reader not through its com-munication of an intended content but through and exemplary “world”-crea-tion that in turn invites or, indeed, demands an analogous productivity on thepart of the reader.

Importantly for the following essay, the same can be said for social actionand interaction which, in Ricoeur’s view, can only be interpreted and under-stood once it has been “fixed” (1981, p. 203) as an autonomous discourse that,in the absence of the agent, leaves its mark or trace for the other to introduceinto his or her own world and its own unfolding. Clearly, once again, it is herethat one might identify the hermeneutical source of the teaching situation inthe place and at the moment where and when the trace of one world is left asan imprint in another, where and when the conclusion of one act marks thecommencement of another.

This, no doubt, is indeed how the actions of others become meaningful tous and how we might gain an understanding of the world through the inter-pretive unfolding of an endless stream of “worlds” in the marked space leftby the other. Having said that however, Ricoeur leaves unaddressed a numberof issues that have a crucial bearing on the specifics of teaching as outlined inthe following essay, as well as leaving in abeyance more general questions of

rhetoric, authority and power. In particular he fails to make a clear distinctionbetween those acts that leave a mark and those that do not; just as he fails todistinguish between what, following Barthes, might be called “open” and“closed” or, better, opening and/or closing texts. A consequence of this is thatthe rhetorical and ironic strategies necessary to ensure that one configurationof actions sets in motion another are left largely unanalyzed by Ricoeur. If,against the grain, teaching is understood as a primarily non-dialogical enter-prise, then the movement or agility necessary to increase a certain non-empathic

fascination (a term returned to below) needs to be central to the discussion. Thisis where it will be necessary to move outside of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of social action.

In what follows, two very different strands of thought will be woven togetherin an attempt to identify what might be called the educative dimension of intersubjectivity and social interaction. Initially, and in keeping with Ricoeur’sown intertwining of hermeneutics and phenomenology (1981, pp. 101–128)Husserl’s trajectory will be followed through solipsism and the painstakingworking-out of an (ultimately unconvincing) model of intersubjectivity to thepoint where the very different tradition of irony and rhetoric is called upon aspart of a necessary strategy to hold firm to the radical separation bequeathedby phenomenology in the face of those dubious totalities shadowing the



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dialogical and the empathic.In spite of its title, my intention in this paper is not to propose a novel phi-

losophy of education or pedagogical theory that can be unproblematicallysituated within current academic debates. Far from it, and on the contrary, theengagement with the pedagogical should here be understood in Weberian termsas an ideal typification of a model of social interaction that is sensitive to theeducative dimension of all human intersubjectivity. The aporetic origin of thismodel is situated in Husserl’s famous struggle with solipsism.

Phenomenological Symmetry and the Body

In Husserl’s hands, phenomenology is intent on disclosing the symmetricalstructure of the lifeworld as constituted by the transcendental ego through aphenomenological “reduction” which removes alienation from experience. Theachievement of a pure sphere of “ownness” thus requires a form of experien-tial cleansing which “frees” the horizon from “everything that is at all alien”(Husserl 1995, p. 95) thus forging a symmetrical and “harmonious” link be-tween “noesis” and “noemata.” The price paid for the phenomenologicalachievement of a strict reciprocity between “ownness” and otherness, throughthe constitutional role of intentionality, is that the figure of the other can onlyappear within the sphere of ownness as an “alter-ego;” that is to say, withHusserl, a “mirroring” of my own self – a non-alienating product of the soli-

tary transcendental ego. As an analogical twin the Other does not breach thepurified phenomenological horizon, but, rather, reflects back onto the pri-mary constitution of alterity described by Husserl as “pairing,” whereby thephenomenological account of “association” is understood in terms of what hecalls a “unity of similarity.” This constitution of plurality through the processof “pairing” ensures that “separate pluralities,” “not in communion” (1995,p. 140) are rendered inconceivable by Husserl, allowing him to assume a “sin-gle universal community” that validates his reliance on “empathy” as a keymoment in the phenomenological account of intersubjectivity.

Importantly, the “pairing” Husserl speaks of is an experience of the body .It concerns the sensation of the physical presence of an other in the primor-dial sphere of ownness. It is only to the extent that the self and other form analo-gous parts of an immediately intuited organic totality that the desired harmonyof intersubjectivity is achieved. However, and in spite of his sustained attemptto constitute a symmetrical and harmonious intersubjective world through the“pairing” of ego and alter-ego, Husserl nevertheless acknowledges that, “closerinspection would further show that two streams of experience (spheres of consciousness for two pure Egos) cannot be conceived as having an essentialcontent that is identically the same; moreover, as is evident from the forego-ing, no fully determinate experience of the one could ever belong to the




other.”(Husserl 1969, p. 241) Closer inspection still reveals that the asymme-try of Husserl’s “monadic community” is also a consequence of the “ promi-nence” (Husserl 1995, p. 113) of each solitary ego within its “sphere of ownness,” a prominence which, when introduced into the intentionality of empathic intersubjectivity, threatens to produce precisely the inorganic (or“pseudo-organic”) “discord” Husserl is intent on avoiding. It is in the light of this more contestational version of intersubjectivity that I bring rhetoric andironic configuration into the discussion. Both have pedagogical implicationsfor what follows.

Rhetoric and Ironic Configuration

Rhetoric, as an un-founded mode of persuasion operative within the domainof truth’s absence, is particularly suited to the radical pluralism both producedand resisted by phenomenology. The transportation and subsequent actuali-zation of one ego’s prominence (within its sphere of ownness) into the sphereof an other, that is to say, beyond bodily “pairing” and analogical reflection,is undoubtedly at the root of teaching and the “mastery” associated with it –not the mastery of a body of knowledge but, rather, the mastery of a regimeof persuasion engaged in the configuration of possible “worlds.” Indeed, asPaul de Man observes, the persuasiveness of persuasion is itself dependentupon an identifiable set of tropes and figures that are singularly or collectively

mobilized during a rhetorical speech act or event. (1979, p. 6) It is these fig-ures that are at the heart of rhetoric. In his deconstruction of these rhetoricalpatterns he enumerates mimesis, paronomasia and personification as playinga crucial role. Noteworthy here is how each of these figures uses “resemblanceas a way to disguise differences.” (1979, p. 16)

Whether textually, pedagogically, or socially, it is here that a certain ironycan be located, one that knowingly (to speak with Levinas) reduces othernessto the same without (to speak otherwise than Levinas – ironically, perhaps)resulting in an undifferentiated totality. The irony of irony is that it seeks dia-logue, filiation, and community but only as a means to articulate fragmenta-tion and irreducible difference – a totality of difference. The “eternal agility”of the ironist is by no means simply the empty play and infinite self-enjoy-ment of the deluded post-Kantian/Fichtean autonomous subject, as Hegelwould have it (1981, pp. 101–102), but a more rigorous strategy of forgingintegrated structures which either fail to integrate or achieve a degree of inte-gration that, as a consequence, demands precisely the infinite movement of irony to disengage the ironist from the non-ironic stasis that threatens. Theexemplary nature of this perpetual flight from identity to difference and back again infinitely, its spectacular restlessness for the sake of the other who risksincarceration within the dubious totalities that are everywhere apparent, al-



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lows a claim to be made for irony’s pedagogical efficacy, driving, as it does,the formation and utilization of the rhetorical patterns already presented.

The role of rhetoric within teaching – both inside and outside the classroom– is, thanks to its necessary liaison with irony, an art of movement. To be per-suaded the other must be moved . Movement requires the rhetorical fabrica-tion of a continuity between one place and another, one structure and another,one order of thought and another. The rhetorician invites the other into a worldthat can be shared, a world that (returning to Ricouer) “opens before” the ironicfixity of a certain speaking, writing and intersubjective action. To “enlarge”the mind is to enter into this other world (which is, of course, hermeneutically(re)constructed in the process) only to discover that the rhetorician (as ironist)is no longer present. This absence of rhetoric from itself – even, one shouldsay against de Man, from its own tropes and figures, which are equally capa-ble of ensnaring it (political rhetoric being a grim reminder of this) – consti-tutes a fundamental problematization not only of hegemonic pedagogicalpractices, but of all models of social interaction that fail to take into accountthe educative role of dissembling and deception. This is the unteachable inteaching.

The peculiarity of rhetoric, then, is that it does not instruct – it persuades,and it does so in a manner that is itself essentially unteachable. Rhetoric is, atthe deepest level, unteachable because its very efficacy depends upon absence;not only the absence of a singular, absolute truth, but also the absence of acommunicative community – Husserl’s organic harmony – that might share this

truth and allow it to inform and, indeed, constitute the intersubjective domain.Rhetoric capitalizes on this absence by satisfying the desire for meaning andclarity in the face of their impossibility.

The art of rhetoric – of persuasion – can only be taught by example. Therhetorician as teacher must be exemplary; that is precisely his/her power. It isthe manner in which rhetoric is delivered – its exemplary form rather than thevalidity of its content , which is secondary – that accounts for its effectiveness.As Levinas puts it: the “saying” rather than the “said.” (1998, pp. 5–7)

Given that, for Husserl, intersubjectivity is grounded in both the physicalmirroring of the other’s presence and the empathic (if partial) interminglingof consciousness streams, there emerges a shared, co-presented lifeworld that

is best addressed through a particular rhetoric of familiarity or of (ironic) simi-larity as outlined by de Man, one that presents itself as a product of whatHeidegger calls “everydayness.” For the other to be educated by phenomenol-ogy, the movement here called “reduction,” it is crucial for Husserl that hisexample can be followed by all once they have liberated themselves from the“natural attitude.” Paradoxically, however, it is precisely the “natural attitude”– “everydayness” – which allows self and other, teacher and student to rec-ognize their commonality as analogous components of the “they.” It is onlyafter the liberation that communication and teaching become problematical.




This is somewhat obscured by Husserl who, in his attempt to constitute anintersubjective world, begins with the transition from the (already solipsistic)“immanency of the ego to the transcendency of the other,” (Husserl 1995, p.89) thus leaving out of account not only the prior motivation for this transi-tion, rooted in the other , but also the extent to which the primordiality of “being-with” (to use Heidegger’s vocabulary) forms an essential part of themanner in which such motivation takes place through persuasive teaching.

To summarize and explain before moving forward: Husserl’s ambitions not-withstanding, I understand phenomenology as radically undermining the hastyactualization of objective certainty. Through its painstaking detour throughthe intentional constitution of noemata it allows the transcendental ego toachieve a degree of certitude, which, however, it cannot translate into objec-tive certainty without re-establishing intersubjective relations with the other.Suspended between the naive intersubjectivity of the “natural attitude” andthe phenomenologically re-constituted “intermonadic” world (1995, p. 156),the transcendental ego can only arrive at its desired destination if it carrieswith it – from one world to the other – the other subjects/monads necessary toactualize this possibility; otherwise nothing will have changed. It is the task of making this transition from one world to another in the company of the other that requires the rhetorical skills necessary to persuade and motivate thisphenomenological transformation as a collective rather than a merely solitaryact. It is here that phenomenology touches upon the most fundamental peda-gogical issue: the transformation of worldviews without the mediation of a

founding “truth.”

The Rhetoric of the Body

For Husserl, the transition from the “natural” to the phenomenological “atti-tude” must pass through the mediating presence of the body – of both self andother as animated reflections of each other. In this way the radicality of thephenomenological reduction – which strips away the “natural” world – is,nonetheless, tempered by a recognition of the body of the other as a mark of commonality. The recognition of the other as bodily presence is however muchmore than the neutral verification of exteriority. Indeed, as Merleau-Pontymakes evident in his work, the body of the other is phenomenologically lo-cated in, and of course contributes to, a force field of intentions that animatesnot only the body but, more importantly, the space between bodies.

The body of the teacher is seen in its singularity, separated from the massboth spatially and existentially. The rhetoric of the body, responsible for in-troducing the dimension of spectacle into the pedagogical event, is the initialmeans by which the essential solitude of the ego is signified physically andits phenomenological “prominence” within the sphere of ownness is translated



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into a certitude and commitment that can be “read” from the visible body of the teacher, a cultural knowledge that is inherited from the “natural attitude.”Indeed, the very act of separation, the willingness to expose one’s singularbody to the collective gaze of the other, itself already suggests an authoritythat is absent in the collective: collectivity has a very different physical power,one based upon force rather than persuasion.

Phenomenologically, it is precisely the analogizing gaze of one body to-wards an other that allows the rhetorical gesture of separation to achieve thepower that it does, in that the constitution of the other as organically the samepermits the bodily empathy required for rhetoric to work. Students must “feelfor” the teacher, must identify with him or her, as being “like them” and yet,at the same time, acknowledge that they themselves have not placed their ownbody before the collective gaze of the other. It is, thus, similarity that allowsalterity to be measured, and empathy that allows difference to be felt. Cogni-zant of this, the persuasive teacher devises teaching strategies, whether con-sciously or not, that both enable and disable empathy.

Without empathy, teaching can provide data, information, and certain formsof knowledge, but as if from another world that, in its absolute difference, isdevoid of the transformative power necessary for education. Conversely, theidea (or ideal) of absolute empathy renders teaching redundant, suggesting,as it does, an extreme maeiutics where the evaporation of distance and differ-ence between teacher and student would leave rhetoric nothing to do.

It is between these two poles that the teaching strategy of the rhetorician

needs to be situated, not at one particular point, but across the whole terrain,understood as a zone of transition where the approach of the analogous bodyis simultaneously countered by a retreat enacted within language. The bodyof the teacher is there, analogous to the student and exposed to his or her fa-miliarizing gaze but, as a sound source , as a voice – a speaking, a “saying” –this same body is drawn towards a radical exteriority outside of the regime of the visible – “speaking is not seeing,” as Blanchot famously expresses it (1993,p. 25).

Clearly, the particular balance of physicality and language, of bodily prox-imity and distance, of familiarity and disengagement will prove to be differ-ent depending on the given context. It might be useful, as a research project

for example, to trace the transition from elementary, to secondary, to univer-sity education through this particular phenomenological terrain with a viewto registering the rhetorical shifts necessary to construct and sustain an inter-subjective site that utilizes the appropriate means to achieve its educationalends. Any such study would, no doubt, witness a wide range of pedagogicalpossibilities from the intimacy of the kindergarten to the (sometimes neces-sary) severe formalism of secondary education, on to the delicate play of equality and inequality, of reverence and contempt to be found in the univer-sity. Whatever the findings, such a study would need, above all, to be sensi-





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art of persuasion that does not hide absence behind the illusory presence andsubstance of its fine words. On the contrary, rhetoric draws attention to andintensifies the experience of a fundamental ontological void, the “primordialsilence” (1981, p. 184) between the “speaking word” (1981, p. 197). This isthe power of rhetoric, the power to produce a world in the face of a radicalphenomenological pluralism that, in spite of Husserl’s efforts, unravels theintersubjective lifeworld, casting its inhabitants out into a solitary exterioritythat only rhetoric can speak to, albeit obscurely.

By all accounts this describes very well Heidegger’s “manner” of teach-ing, creating, in his case, a pedagogy where phenomenology and rhetoric,working in tandem, become the vehicle for the radical transformation neces-sary to remember and address again the question of Being. Anticipating, in asense, Merleau-Ponty’s observation that nothing passes between teacher andstudent – and yet there is transformation, Rudiger Safranski grasps the absenceat the core of Heidegger’s singular, but famed, teaching when he recalls Jas-per’s comments on Heidegger:

It is astonishing how Heidegger manages to captivate us. . . Admittedly,his students then will have felt much the same as we do today – that one isdrawn into his thought until one arrives at the moment of rubbing one’s eyesin astonishment and asking oneself: that was quite something, but what useis the. . . experience to me? Karl Jaspers strikingly formulated this experi-ence with Heidegger’s philosophizing in his notes. . . This is what Jasperssaid about Heidegger: ‘Among contemporaries the most exciting thinker,

masterful, compelling, mysterious – but then leaving you empty-handed’(Safranski 1999, p. 100).

All of the rhetorical ingredients are here: mastery, compulsion, mystery andnothingness. Rhetoric gives nothing, it does not instruct, it persuades, andpersuasion masters the other not through a superior grasp of a knowledge thatcan be bequeathed by the teacher, but through the production of a fascinat-ing, seductive and compelling body, occupying in a specific manner, an other,more powerful world. Merleau-Ponty, with typical subtlety, grasps this par-ticular mode of learning:

I begin to understand a particular philosophy by feeling my way into itsexistential manner , by reproducing the tone and accent of the philosopher.In fact, every language carries its own teaching. . . (Merleau-Ponty 1981,p. 179).

Merleau-Ponty is not describing “empathy” but something quite different. Themodel of learning suggested here is, like Kant’s, imitative or reproductive andforms part of the model of exemplification where the singular manner of theteacher provides the model to be adopted by the students and used in their ownway. (Kant, 1973, para. 49) In this regard, and with the phenomenological




project in mind, it is the fundamental productivity of the phenomenological/ rhetorical compact which ensures that the reproduction in question is, para-doxically perhaps, the reproduction of production: production can only be re-

produced .

Pluralism, Language and Estrangement

A pedagogy based upon the reproduction of production will not be empathicbut, rather, pluralistic . Instead of eroding the barrier between self and otherthrough dialogue and understanding, the infinite plurality of producers (andthe production of infinite plurality) creates what Blanchot calls a relation of the “third kind.” He writes:

Now what ‘founds’ this third relation, leaving it still unfounded, is no longerproximity – proximity of struggle, of services, of essence, of knowledge,or of recognition, not even of solitude – but rather the strangeness betweenus: a strangeness it will not suffice to characterize as a separation or evenas a distance.– Rather an interruption– An interruption escaping all measure (Blanchot, 1993, p. 68).

Teaching, in this view, would resemble a regime of estrangement rather thanof empathy, where teacher and student are cast as strangers rather than ana-

logical twins, and where the phenomenological continuity between self andother, so important for Husserl as a guarantor for a “predictable” intersubjectiveworld beyond/after the “reduction,” suffers an “interruption” that, as Blanchotwill argue, breaks the bonds of intersubjectivity.

Instead of an organic/psychic bond there is an “interval”; an empty space,a “between” that demarcates a radical pluralism not based upon the all-too-familiar notions of diversity, co-existence and toleration, all of which sit onlytoo comfortably alongside empathy and dialogue, but one signifying a fun-damental inequality that strips the other of its horizon (its “sphere of own-ness”), its position in space and time, its selfhood. For Blanchot this does notleave nothingness but, rather, it leaves speech – the violence of speech .

Here Blanchot distances himself from the perspective of his friend Levinas.For the latter, teaching is rooted in the “height” of a non-violent ethics of alterity explicitly pitted against the violence of rhetoric. Blanchot, very dif-ferently, sees violence as the “secret” of all speech and language:

All speech is violence, a violence all the more formidable for being secretand the secret centre of violence; a violence that is already exerted uponwhat the word names and that it can name only by withdrawing presencefrom it (1993, p. 42).



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The primordial violence of language is the withdrawal of the self as a pres-ence within the written and spoken word. The peculiar death enacted withinwriting that so concerns Blanchot – thus introducing a fundamental rhetori-cal dimension into all communication – is the violence necessary to persuadethe other through the power of production rather than the reproduction of agiven substance or truth. The strangeness and estrangement of speech then isnot the product of an unknown incapable of integration into the communica-tive community but, instead, the very production of an exteriority that, in itsaffirmative force enters – as other – into the horizon of the self as differencerather than contradiction or negation; as an “interruption.” It is precisely thefact that the other is not constituted as a self within an identifiable horizonthat precludes the formation of a shared intersubjective domain within whichteaching, as the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, can takeplace. This does not destroy teaching, but it transforms its relation to the“known” (knowledge) in a manner that requires, initially, the re-evaluationof mastery.

Mastery

Both Blanchot and Levinas use the terms mastery and master repeatedly in,among other things, an effort to resist the longstanding, and continuing, domi-nation of maieutics as a pedagogical model – a model that, as the figure of

Socrates confirms, dispenses with the teacher/master: “teaching is not reduc-ible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I con-tain” (Levinas, 1969, p. 51). The two thinkers have a great deal in common –rooted, no doubt, in a long friendship where ideas have been exchanged andshared. However, there are important differences, which will emerge as wecontinue.

To begin with, both Blanchot and Levinas share a concern with othernessand infinity; these terms are central to their pedagogies. Indeed, for Levinas,it is teaching itself which produces the infinite:

Teaching signifies the whole infinity of exteriority. And the whole infinityof exteriority is not first produced, to then teach: teaching is its very pro-

duction (1969, p. 171).

Similarly, Blanchot describes the master/student relationship as a “relationof infinity”, signifying “a kind of abyss between the point occupied by themaster. . .and the point occupied by the disciple.” (1993, p. 6) In both casesthere exists a radical non-reciprocity between master and disciple/teacher andstudent that precludes the establishment of an empathic occupation of eachother’s position within a symmetrical pedagogical structure. In the case of Blanchot this results in the positing of a dissymmetrical “interrelational”





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he be higher, autrui is also lower than I am, but always Other, Distant, theStranger (1993, p. 63).

Paradoxically then, given his vehement opposition to the violence of rheto-ric, Levinas’ own image-happy rhetoric obstructs, for Blanchot, an approachthat must situate itself outside of the “optical imperative” (1993, p. 27) if it isto begin to comprehend the exteriority of speech. But there is more to it thanthis; it concerns the mode of address, which, in turn, raises doubts about thedegree of radical asymmetry to be found in the “height” model of teaching.

By placing the master above the student and then, initially at least, view-ing the teaching situation through the eyes of the student (but we are all stu-dents in this respect), who is compelled – ethically – to be “instructed”(Levinas, 1969, p. 73) by the infinite otherness produced by the teacher, a peda-gogical regime of “command” and obedience are established which, at eachinstant , are irreversible. However, beyond the instant the pedagogy of alteritydescribed proves to be less asymmetrical than it appears. To explain: in orderto avoid reducing the teacher to a figure of force, an oppressive commander,Levinas more than once proclaims that the command of the teacher is a “com-mand to command” (1969, pp. 178, 213). Indeed, a requirement of “facing”the other-as-master within Levinas’ version of an ethical domain is that we –the student/disciple/”poor one” – are also, at another time , masterful and thusequal to the teacher. It is only through this balance of power that that masterybecomes an issue – a “concern” – for Levinas.

The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as an equal. . . He comes to joinme. . .but he joins me to himself for service; he commands me as a Master.The command can concern me only inasmuch as I am a master myself; con-sequently this command commands me to command (1969, p. 213).

Over time, then, the teacher/student relationship proves itself to be perfectlyreversible, reciprocal and, in a word, symmetrical. What is more, the fact thatonly the master can obey the infinite command of the other master suggests amaieutics of mastery – a reciprocal anamnesis of an already given equality –very much at odds with the central thrust of Levinas’ anti-Socratic pedagogy.

Distance

Returning to Blanchot’s horizontal, dissymmetrical model of teaching, it isclear, to reiterate the earlier reflections, that it is devoid of the hierarchical(albeit reversible) structure of Levinas’ thought, placing strangeness and dis-tance above eminence and “height.” Again, to reiterate, it is not the “height”of the other that defines alterity. For Blanchot otherness can be understood aseither high or low – or, more to the point, neither. It is, rather, the peculiar




spatial and temporal “distance” between teacher and student that accounts forthe “strangeness” of the “interrelational” space in which they find them-selves. It is important, too, to note that Blanchot works with a notion of inter-relationality rather than the more familiar intersubjectivity, a strategy thateffectively removes selfhood and with it the demands of a phenomenologicalconstitution of the other as an other subjectivity. This renders the teacher/stu-dent relation “neutral,” to use Blanchot’s vocabulary, or, perhaps, “faceless,”to counter Levinasian language, thus grounding non-reciprocity and dissym-metry in a “distorted field of relations” rather than the infinite excess of the“other man.” Blanchot writes:

[the teacher]. . . is not merely someone who teaches what he knows; andwe should not be content with attributing to the master the role of exam-ple, or with defining his bond with the student as an existential one. Themaster represents a region of space and time that is absolutely other. Thismeans that, by his presence, there is a dissymmetry in the relations of com-munication; this dissymmetry means that where he is the field of relationsceases to be uniform and instead manifests a distortion that excludes anydirect relation, and even the reversibility of relations. The presence of themaster reveals a singular structure of interrelational space, making it so thedistance from student to master is not the same as from master to student. . .(Blanchot, 1993, p. 5).

The presence of the teacher is here marked not by the “person” who, as “ex-ample,” is in danger of embodying the “unknown” as guru, thereby falselyconstituting an identity for the alterity of teaching, but by speech ; by the rheto-ric of the master. Like Levinas, Blanchot places an emphasis on the sayingrather than the said, but their understanding of the master’s voice is different,which in turn signals again two rather different pedagogies.

For both thinkers the teacher does not use speech to convey knowledge tothe student: on the contrary, both see knowledge as a secondary issue. Instead,as Levinas writes, “speech is a teaching” (Levinas, 1969, p. 98) thanks not towhat is said but to the manner in which it impacts on the intersubjective orinterrelational pedagogical structure.

To begin with, Levinas, in the absence of an order of totality (denied byhis philosophy) requires an alternative ordering principle that will not jeop-

ardize the necessary alterity of his ethical project. It is within this context thatspeech, for him, “introduces a principle into anarchy,” (1969, p. 98) puttingan end to “equivocation” and “confusion” (1969, p. 99). This is achievedthrough the master’s act of “thematization,” which reveals the objective or-der of phenomena through a “primordial frankness” (“of revelation”) that, asa giving from master to student founds an association that, for Levinas, isintrinsically moral: “Speech first founds community by giving , by presentingthe phenomenon as given; and it gives by thematizing” (1969, p. 99).



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The promotion here of the thematization rather than the theme (the infiniteis not a theme for Levinas) is not the same as promoting the saying rather thanthe said, in spite of appearances to the contrary. In fact, it is precisely the an-archy of the saying, its radical discontinuity, and its “intermittence” (to useBlanchot’s language) that is destroyed by thematization. Even without freez-ing phenomena into specific themes (the “said”), thematization, to make sense,must (as Husserl demonstrates) assume a continuous phenomenology of in-ternal time consciousness on the part of the other in order for the retentionand protention necessary for thematization to be recognised for what it is (seeHusserl, 1964). This would seem to be something of a retreat from Levinas’more radically discontinuous treatment of the “instant” in his earlier Exist-ence and Existents (Levinas, 1978, pp. 73–75).

The same could certainly not be said of Blanchot who, while also seeingspeech as teaching, retains throughout his thought an almost brutal indiffer-ence to the other as source or destination of a pedagogical language of abso-lute estrangement. “Intermittence,” “interruption,” and “interval” are the termshe uses to articulate the strange region of mastery. All are the product of infi-nite affirmation .

Unlike Levinas’ prioritization of the other – the “poor one” – as master,Blanchot is much closer to Bataille whose attempt to think a sovereignty of pure expenditure outside of all dialectics requires a consideration of affirma-tion cut loose from the hegemony of negation and critique so powerful withinthe University. By allowing the answer to precede the question – a method

Blanchot detects, and admires, in the thought of figures such as Nietzsche andSimone Weil – the responsibility for, and response to, the Other – crucial forLevinas – is removed by Blanchot and replaced by what he describes as the“movement of affirmation” (1993, p. 108), a movement that can be traced asan interruptive moment in the discontinuity of certitude, thereby creating –rather than suffering – the fragmentation typical of a radically dissymmetri-cal order. The teacher here does not create an association through giving, oralienate through taking away; there is, rather, an ontological indifference tothe other – a being in difference – which accounts for the distance, or “inter-val” marked by the master/student relation – a relation of ir-responsibility. Itis this distance that is dissymmetrical, thus allowing an alternative model of

non-reciprocity to Levinas’ chain of command.As Blanchot understands it, the master is the “representative” for a “regionof space and time that is absolutely other,” (1993, p. 5) a dissymmetrical space/ time where the distance between the master and student is radically differentfrom the distance between student and master. It is this “distorted” interrelationthat structures the pedagogical event but not in the sense that it allows the trans-mission of a body of authoritative knowledge from teacher to student. On thecontrary, Blanchot’s model of teaching is somewhat perverse (or is it?) in thatit is primarily concerned with the interruption of such continuous transmission.









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