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

Dissymmetry and Height: Rhetoric, Irony and Pedagogy in the Thought of Husserl, Blanchotand LevinasAuthor(s): Gary PetersSource: Human Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2004), pp. 187-206Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010368 .

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Human Studies 27: 187-206, 2004.

? 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Dissymmetry and Height: Rhetoric, Irony and Pedagogy in the

Thought of Husserl, Blanchot and Levinas

GARY PETERS University 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 intersubjectivity

that, viewed within the context of education, breaks with the hegemonic dialogics of current

pedagogies. Intent on rethinking the (so-called) "problem" of solipsism for phenomenology

in 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 and

hermeneutics, I introduce the concept of irony as a crucial element in the conceptualization

of this other pedagogical model, one that requires, initially, a discussion of Husserl's response

to the charge of solipsism in the 5th Cartesian Meditation. As a starting point I introduce his

symmetrical notion of bodily "pairing" into a consideration of rhetoric, understood here as

an 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 in

the 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 asymmetrical

models suggested by the two thinkers respectively. These differences, I will argue, begin to

open up a critical perspective on Levinas' "height" model of teaching in the name of the more

radical 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 19th Century

Germany, the German romantic theorists Schleiermacher and Friedrich Schlegel had already signaled the fundamental challenge to the social and human sci?

ences by positing m/sunderstanding and incomprehensibility 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

w



188 GARY PETERS

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 here

requires the removal or crossing of a distance between self and other in a desire

to overcome an originary misunderstanding conceived, by Schleiermacher, in

both 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 be

overcome, albeit infinitely; on the contrary, it is a positive function of what

might be called the ironic dimension of sociality itself. While sharing his

friend's desire for dialogue, Schlegel recognizes the more active role played

by irony in both social action and the interpretation ofthat action. In this model

of intersubjectivity irony is understood as a positive force of disruption and

dissemblance, an "eternal agility" (Schlegel 1991, p. 100) that explicitly in?

tegrates rhetoric into social action (1991, p. 31) to provide persuasive forms

and the necessary finitude for the communication of a subjectivity that is si?

multaneously conscious of its infinite otherness and formfesness. So while

dialogue is promoted by Schlegel it is also, paradoxically, ironized to the

degree that the divinatory "art of guesswork" necessary for such dialogue to

commence 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 the

restrictive 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 the

extraordinary 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 the

following 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 productive model that offers an account of the way in which the text does not simply, or



DISSYMMETRY AND HEIGHT 189

primarily, ask a question that can be answered, as dialogicians such as Bahktin

would 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 the

author. 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 the

part of the reader.

Importantly for the following essay, the same can be said for social action

and 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 introduce

into his or her own world and its own unfolding. Clearly, once again, it is here

that one might identify the hermeneutical source of the teaching situation in

the place and at the moment where and when the trace of one world is left as

an imprint in another, where and when the conclusion of one act marks the

commencement of another.

This, no doubt, is indeed how the actions of others become meaningful to

us 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 left

by the other. Having said that however, Ricoeur leaves unaddressed a number

of issues that have a crucial bearing on the specifics of teaching as outlined in

the following essay, as well as leaving in abeyance more general questions of

rhetoric, authority and power. In particular he fails to make a clear distinction

between those acts that leave a mark and those that do not; just as he fails to

distinguish between what, following Barthes, might be called "open" and

"closed" or, better, opening and/or closing texts. A consequence of this is that

the rhetorical and ironic strategies necessary to ensure that one configuration of 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. This

is 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 together in an attempt to identify what might be called the educative dimension of

intersubjectivity and social interaction. Initially, and in keeping with Ricoeur's

own intertwining of hermeneutics and phenomenology (1981, pp. 101-128) Husserl's trajectory will be followed through solipsism and the painstaking

working-out of an (ultimately unconvincing) model of intersubjectivity to the

point where the very different tradition of irony and rhetoric is called upon as

part of a necessary strategy to hold firm to the radical separation bequeathed

by phenomenology in the face of those dubious totalities shadowing the



190 GARY PETERS

dialogical and the empathie. 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 unproblematically situated within current academic debates. Far from it, and on the contrary, the

engagement with the pedagogical should here be understood in Weberian terms

as an ideal typification of a model of social interaction that is sensitive to the

educative dimension of all human intersubjectivity. The aporetic origin of this

model is situated in Husserl's famous struggle with solipsism.

Phenomenological Symmetry and the Body

In Husserl's hands, phenomenology is intent on disclosing the symmetrical structure of the lifeworld as constituted by the transcendental ego through a

phenomenological "reduction" which removes alienation from experience. The

achievement 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 phenomenological achievement of a strict reciprocity between "ownness" and otherness, through the constitutional role of intentionality, is that the figure of the other can only

appear within the sphere of ownness as an "alter-ego;" that is to say, with

Husserl, 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 the

purified phenomenological horizon, but, rather, reflects back onto the pri?

mary constitution of alterity described by Husserl as "pairing," whereby the

phenomenological account of "association" is understood in terms of what he

calls a "unity of similarity." This constitution of plurality through the process of "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 key moment 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 harmony of intersubjectivity is achieved. However, and in spite of his sustained attempt to constitute a symmetrical and harmonious intersubjective world through the

"pairing" of ego and alter-ego, Husserl nevertheless acknowledges that, "closer

inspection would further show that two streams of experience (spheres of

consciousness for two pure Egos) cannot be conceived as having an essential

content 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

empathie 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 and

ironic configuration into the discussion. Both have pedagogical implications for what follows.

Rhetoric and Ironic Configuration

Rhetoric, as an un-founded mode of persuasion operative within the domain

of truth's absence, is particularly suited to the radical pluralism both produced and resisted by phenomenology. The transportation and subsequent actuali?

zation of one ego's prominence (within its sphere of ownness) into the sphere of 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 regime of persuasion engaged in the configuration of possible "worlds." Indeed, as

Paul de Man observes, the persuasiveness of persuasion is itself dependent

upon 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 rhetorical

patterns he enumerates mimesis, paronomasia and personification as playing a crucial role. Noteworthy here is how each of these figures uses "resemblance

as a way to disguise differences." (1979, p. 16) Whether textually, pedagogically, or socially, it is here that a certain irony

can be located, one that knowingly (to speak with Levinas) reduces otherness

to 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 Hegel would have it (1981, pp. 101-102), but a more rigorous strategy of forging

integrated 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. The

exemplary nature of this perpetual flight from identity to difference and back

again infinitely, its spectacular restlessness/br the sake of the other who risks

incarceration within the dubious totalities that are everywhere apparent, al



192 GARY PETERS

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 world

that can be shared, a world that (returning to Ricouer) "opens before" the ironic

fixity of a certain speaking, writing and inter subjective 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 should

say 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 pedagogical

practices, but of all models of social interaction that fail to take into account

the educative role of dissembling and deception. This is the unteachable in

teaching. The peculiarity of rhetoric, then, is that it does not instruct - it persuades,

and it does so in a manner that is /^//essentially unteachable. Rhetoric is, at

the deepest level, unteachable because its very efficacy depends upon absence; not only the absence of a singular, absolute truth, but also the absence of a

communicative community - Husserl's organic harmony

- that might share this

truth and allow it to inform and, indeed, constitute the inter subjective domain.

Rhetoric capitalizes on this absence by satisfying the desire for meaning and

clarity in the face of their impossibility. The art of rhetoric - of persuasion

- can only be taught by example. The

rhetorician as teacher must be exemplary; that is precisely his/her power. It is

the manner in which rhetoric is delivered - its exemplary form rather than the

validity 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 physical

mirroring of the other's presence and the empathie (if partial) intermingling of 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 what

Heidegger calls "everydayness." For the other to be educated by phenomenol?

ogy, the movement here called "reduction," it is crucial for Husserl that his

example 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 only

after the liberation that communication and teaching become problematical.




This is somewhat obscured by Husserl who, in his attempt to constitute an

intersubjective 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 the

manner 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 hasty actualization of objective certainty. Through its painstaking detour through the intentional constitution of noemata it allows the transcendental ego to

achieve 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" and

the phenomenologically re-constituted "intermonadic" world (1995, p. 156), the transcendental ego can only arrive at its desired destination if it carries

with it - from one world to the other - the other subjects/monads necessary to

actualize 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 this

phenomenological transformation as a collective rather than a merely solitary act. 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 and

other as animated reflections of each other. In this way the radicality of the

phenomenological 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 much

more than the neutral verification of exteriority. Indeed, as Merleau-Ponty makes 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 animates

not only the body but, more importantly, the space between bodies.

The body of the teacher is seen in its singularity, separated from the mass

both spatially and existentially. The rhetoric of the body, responsible for in?

troducing the dimension of spectacle into the pedagogical event, is the initial

means by which the essential solitude of the ego is signified physically and

its phenomenological "prominence" within the sphere of ownness is translated



194 GARY PETERS

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 singular

body to the collective gaze of the other, itself already suggests an authority that 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 the

power that it does, in that the constitution of the other as organically the same

permits the bodily empathy required for rhetoric to work. Students must "feel

for" 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 own

body before the collective gaze of the other. It is, thus, similarity that allows

alterity 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 forms

of knowledge, but as if from another world that, in its absolute difference, is

devoid of the transformative power necessary for education. Conversely, the

idea (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 body is simultaneously countered by a retreat enacted within language. The body of 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 view

to registering the rhetorical shifts necessary to construct and sustain an inter

subjective site that utilizes the appropriate means to achieve its educational

ends. Any such study would, no doubt, witness a wide range of pedagogical

possibilities 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




tive to the underlying irony of sociality and the rhetorical figures necessary to manage and control this irony. What both the "loving" mother/father fig? ure and the "hateful," "vindictive" task master/mistress have in common is a

knowledge and, hopefully, a mastery of the appropriate rhetorical models for

the particular intersubjective environment within which they work. The dis?

tance or alterity within the rhetoric of empathy is no greater or smaller than it

is in the rhetoric of cold aloofness. Both are active strategies within what might be called a hermeneutics of action where a certain ironic agility and rhetori?

cal expertise are necessary to take some control over the "worlds" available

to be opened up by the pupil/student. Such strategies, regardless of apparent

differences, are not, to reiterate, primarily empathie or dialogical; indeed,

empathy halts the creation of such "worlds."

Rhetoric and Absence

This splitting of the teacher's body into sight and sound disturbs the symme?

try of the organic "pairing" assumed by Husserl, by juxtaposing the presence of the other body as the flesh seen with the peculiarly compelling absence of

the embodied voice heard. Anticipating Derrida in many respects, and beau?

tifully capturing the phenomenological essence of rhetoric, Merleau-Ponty writes:

The orator does not think before speaking, nor even while speaking; his

speech is his thought. In the same way the listener does not form concepts on the basis of signs. The orator's 'thought' is empty while he is speaking and, when a text is read to us, provided it is read with expression, we have no thought marginal to the text itself, for the words fully occupy our mind and exactly fulfil our expectations, and we feel the necessity of the speech.

Although we are unable to predict its course, we are possessed by it. The end of the speech or text will be the lifting of a spell (Merleau-Ponty 1981, p. 180).

The essence of rhetoric is its lack of essence, its emptiness, which, nonethe?

less, bewitches and persuades thanks to a speech that literally formulates the

body of the speaker for the duration of the teaching event. This body does not

mirror the other but, rather, flares-up as an embodied language: an improvi sational gesture that radically exceeds the reflexive power of the alter-ego, thus constituting a teaching, albeit one devoid of a body of knowledge that

can be passed from teacher to student. As Merleau-Ponty affirms: "nothing

really passes between them" and yet "the fact is we have the power to under?

stand over and above what we may have spontaneously thought." (1981, p.

178) But, and this is the point, it is a power that is produced by the movement

of rhetoric into an exteriority that is radically absent from given forms of

knowledge. In this respect, and contrary to the derogation of rhetoric, it is an



196 GARY PETERS

art of persuasion that does not hide absence behind the illusory presence and

substance of its fine words. On the contrary, rhetoric draws attention to and

intensifies the experience of a. fundamental ontological void, the "primordial silence" (1981, p. 184) between the "speaking word" (1981, p. 197). This is

the power of rhetoric, the power to produce a world in the face of a radical

phenomenological pluralism that, in spite of Husserl's efforts, unravels the

inter subjective lifeworld, casting its inhabitants out into a solitary exteriority that 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 a

sense, Merleau-Ponty's observation that nothing passes between teacher and

student - and yet there is transformation, Rudiger Safranski grasps the absence

at 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 is drawn into his thought until one arrives at the moment of rubbing one's eyes in astonishment and asking oneself: that was quite something, but what use

is the. .. experience to me? Karl Jaspers strikingly formulated this experi?

ence with Heidegger's philosophizing in his notes. . . This is what Jaspers said 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 and

nothingness. Rhetoric gives nothing, it does not instruct, it persuades, and

persuasion masters the other not through a superior grasp of a knowledge that

can 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 its

existential 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. The

model of learning suggested here is, like Kant's, imitative or reproductive and

forms part of the model of exemplification where the singular manner of the

teacher provides the model to be adopted by the students and used in their own

way. (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 empathie

but, rather, pluralistic. Instead of eroding the barrier between self and other

through dialogue and understanding, the infinite plurality of producers (and the 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 longer proximity

- proximity of struggle, of services, of essence, of knowledge,

or of recognition, not even of solitude - but rather the strangeness between us: a strangeness it will not suffice to characterize as a separation or even as 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 than

of empathy, where teacher and student are cast as strangers rather than ana?

logical twins, and where the phenomenological continuity between self and

other, so important for Husserl as a guarantor for a "predictable" intersubjective world beyond/after the "reduction," suffers an "interruption" that, as Blanchot

will 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 only too 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 not

leave 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 secret and the secret centre of violence; a violence that is already exerted upon

what the word names and that it can name only by withdrawing presence from it (1993, p. 42).



198 GARY PETERS

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 within

writing that so concerns Blanchot - thus introducing a fundamental rhetori?

cal dimension into all communication - is the violence necessary to persuade the other through the power of production rather than the reproduction of a

given substance or truth. The strangeness and estrangement of speech then is

not the product of an unknown incapable of integration into the communica?

tive community but, instead, the very production of an exteriority that, in its

affirmative force enters - as other - into the horizon of the self as difference

rather than contradiction or negation; as an "interruption." It is precisely the

fact that the other is not constituted as a self within an identifiable horizon

that precludes the formation of a shared inter subjective domain within which

teaching, as the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, can take

place. This does not destroy teaching, but it transforms its relation to the

"known" (knowledge) in a manner that requires, initially, the re-evaluation

of 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 and

shared. However, there are important differences, which will emerge as we

continue.

To begin with, both Blanchot and Levinas share a concern with otherness

and 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 infinity of 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 "relation

of infinity", signifying "a kind of abyss between the point occupied by the

master.. .and the point occupied by the disciple." (1993, p. 6) In both cases

there exists a radical non-reciprocity between master and disciple/teacher and

student that precludes the establishment of an empathie occupation of each

other's position within a symmetrical pedagogical structure. In the case of

Blanchot this results in the positing of a dissymmetrical "interrelational"




(1993:6) structure that might be seen as horizontal in that it flattens the hier?

archy which traditionally legitimates the master: the University and, by im?

plication, the State.

Levinas, on the other hand, in his understanding of pedagogical non-reci?

procity, arrives at a model that is "asymmetrical" - "the asymmetry of the

interpersonal" -

(1969, p. 215) and, structurally, hierarchical. For him, the mas?

ter always speaks from a position of "height": teaching comes from "on high" and is delivered as a (non-violent) "command" (1969, pp. 178, 213) that de?

mands obedience in the name of an ethics of the Other.

In both cases the impossibility of empathy not only blocks the phenomen?

ological constitution of the other within an intersubjective life world, but, in

fact, promotes this impossibility - this "impossible relation" (Blanchot)

- as

the very crux of teaching. However, the nature of this teaching emerges as

something different in each case, opening a rift between the apparent similar?

ity of Blanchot and Levinas.

Height

From the outset Blanchot is suspicious of the dimension of "height" as it re?

lates to the proposed alterity of the teacher. There are two main reasons for

this - one institutional, the other structural. As he makes clear, his pedagogy

aligns itself with those he names "dissidents" (Blanchot, 1993, p. 4) teaching outside of the State University system (Descartes, Pascal, Kierkegaard,

Nietzsche, Bataille. . . himself). As with Levinas, Hegel represents, for

Blanchot, an absolute dialectics that must be resisted in the name of an irre?

ducible solitude, but more than this he represents a "magisterial form" of

philosophy that speaks from the "height of a university chair" (1993, p. 4). It

is precisely the disintegration of such legitimating hierarchies in the fragmen?

tary form of the "dissident" that underpins Blanchot's particular perspective.

Secondly, and more explicitly, Blanchot places a question mark above

Levinas' use of both ethics and "height" in his explication of the "unequalness" of the master/student relation, introducing, as they do, a structural order or

perspective that fails to do justice to the inscrutability of this strange "interre?

lation":

But what is the meaning of this "unequalness"? Of what order is it? I don't see it.

I don't see it well either. Emmanuel Levinas would say that it is of an ethi? cal order, but I find in this word only secondary meanings. That autrui [the

Other] should be above me, that his speech should be a speech of height, of eminence - these metaphors appease, by putting it into perspective, a difference so radical that it escapes any determination other than itself. If



200 GARY PETERS

he be higher, autrui is also lower than I am, but always Other, Distant, the

Stranger (1993, p. 63).

Paradoxically then, given his vehement opposition to the violence of rheto?

ric, Levinas' own image-happy rhetoric obstructs, for Blanchot, an approach that must situate itself outside of the "optical imperative" (1993, p. 27) if it is

to begin to comprehend the exteriority of speech. But there is more to it than

this; it concerns the mode of address, which, in turn, raises doubts about the

degree 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 each

instant, are irreversible. However, beyond the instantthe pedagogy of alterity described proves to be less asymmetrical than it appears. To explain: in order

to 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 thus

equal to the teacher. It is only through this balance of power that that mastery

becomes an issue - a "concern" - for Levinas.

The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as an equal... He comes to join me.. .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 perfectly

reversible, reciprocal and, in a word, symmetrical. What is more, the fact that

only the master can obey the infinite command of the other master suggests a

maieutics 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 is

clear, 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 as

either high or low - or, more to the point, neither. It is, rather, the peculiar




spatial and temporal "distance" between teacher and student that accounts for

the "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 that

effectively removes selfhood and with it the demands of a phenomenological constitution 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; and we 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. The master represents a region of space and time that is absolutely other. This means that, by his presence, there is a dissymmetry in the relations of com?

munication; this dissymmetry means that where he is the field of relations ceases to be uniform and instead manifests a distortion that excludes any direct relation, and even the reversibility of relations. The presence of the

master reveals a singular structure of interrelational space, making it so the distance 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 falsely

constituting 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 saying rather 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 to

the 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 to

what is said but to the manner in which it impacts on the inter subjective or

interrelational pedagogical structure.

To begin with, Levinas, in the absence of an order of totality (denied by his philosophy) requires an alternative ordering principle that will not jeop? ardize the necessary alterity of his ethical project. It is within this context that

speech, for him, "introduces a principle into anarchy," (1969, p. 98) putting an end to "equivocation" and "confusion" (1969, p. 99). This is achieved

through the master's act of "thematization," which reveals the objective or?

der of phenomena through a "primordial frankness" ("of revelation") that, as

a giving from master to student founds an association that, for Levinas, is

intrinsically moral: "Speech first founds community by giving, by presenting the phenomenon as given; and it gives by thematizing" (1969, p. 99).



202 GARY PETERS

The promotion here of the thematization rather than the theme (the infinite

is not a theme for Levinas) is not the same as promoting the saying rather than

the 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 use

Blanchot'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 retention

and protention necessary for thematization to be recognised for what it is (see

Husserl, 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 seeing

speech 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 terms

he 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 within

the University. By allowing the answer to precede the question - a method

Blanchot detects, and admires, in the thought of figures such as Nietzsche and

Simone Weil - the responsibility for, and response to, the Other - crucial for

Levinas - is removed by Blanchot and replaced by what he describes as the

"movement of affirmation" (1993, p. 108), a movement that can be traced as

an 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, or

alienate through taking away; there is, rather, an ontological indifference to

the other - a being in difference - which accounts for the distance, or "inter?

val" marked by the master/student relation - a relation of ir-responsibility. It

is 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 "region

of space and time that is absolutely other," (1993, p. 5) a dissymmetrical space/

time where the distance between the master and student is radically different

from the distance between student and master. It is this "distorted" interrelation

that 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 the

contrary, Blanchot's model of teaching is somewhat perverse (or is it?) in that

it is primarily concerned with the interruption of such continuous transmission.




The master is destined... not to smooth out the field of relations but to up? set it, not to facilitate the paths of knowledge, but above all to render them not only more difficult, but truly impracticable (1993, p. 6).

A representative of an other space/time rather than the embodiment of knowl?

edge, a space/time that cuts across the student's as an intermittent affirmation

of difference, the teacher, rather than being the "face" of the other demanding a response and responsibility (Levinas) comes, rather, to resemble him/her?

self as an "image," as the mediating appearance or presence of an absent

knowledge or truth. It is this irresolvable juxtaposition of presence and ab?

sence - epitomised for Blanchot in the self-resemblance of the cadaver (teacher

as corpse! !) - that produces a "fascination" which endlessly delays the edu?

cative process, obstructing the impatient rush to the illusory goal of knowledge in an infinite detour of turning and returning that Blanchot calls "research"

(1993, p. 6).

Fascination

Perhaps by thus importing (whether legitimately or illegitimately) this par? ticular notion of "fascination" into his pedagogy, some sense can be made of

Blanchot's differentiation of distances between teacher and student. Certainly both Blanchot and Levinas make much use of the notion of "proximity" which, for them, articulates both intimacy and remoteness simultaneously. But how

is the aforementioned "distortion" of proximal interrelations to be understood

here? Who, or what, is close or distant and how does this differential work

itself out within the teaching situation?

Fascination allows, indeed compels, the fascinated to draw close to the fig? ure of fascination - enticed by anything from intrigue to obsession. In this

regard if, as I speculate here, the teacher is or becomes the subject of fascina?

tion then it is difficult to see how we can measure this distance and differen?

tiate it from its reverse relation with the student when, as Blanchot affirms, it

is both close and distant:

Whoever is fascinated doesn't see, properly speaking, what he sees. Rather it touches him in an immediate proximity: it ceases and ceaselessly draws

him close, even though it leaves him absolutely at a distance (Blanchot, 1982, p. 33).

If, as I believe to be the case, the teacher does draw the student close in order

to open up an infinite distance that is not dialectically resolvable - an "Out?

side" - then at what distance is the student located, and how is this distance

different? To answer this, one must begin by recognizing that the teacher is not nor?

mally fascinated by the student. Without fascination, the distance between the



204 GARY PETERS

master and the student is neither close nor distant; there is no proximity but

only what might be called an interior absence rather than the absence of

"exteriority" that, as witnessed in the movement of rhetoric and irony, cre?

ates fascination. The teacher is thus indifferent to the student, and irrespon? sible in the face of those demands that accompany the constitution of an

interrelational space. Thus, as Blanchot affirms, there are two distances within

the distorted relations of the teaching situation: one is the paradoxical meas?

ure of the teacher's proximity, both near and far; the other is the absence of

all measure within what might be called the "dead" time/space of the student - a time/space devoid of the near and far and (note) the dimension of "height." There is no possibility of reciprocity here.

Having reached what looks like an extreme, perhaps terminal point in peda?

gogical thinking, it might be asked what manner of teaching is under consid?

eration here? Is this teaching at all, or its impossibility as described by Kant

in the Critique of Judgment? In fact, to make sense, Blanchot's pedagogical model would have to be brought into some engagement with Kant's notion of

"exemplification"; not, as Blanchot rightly warns us, by promoting the body of the teacher as "example"

- the guru again - but through the body never?

theless, as will be suggested in a conclusion which attempts to trace this thought back through the phenomenological tradition to Husserl, where we started.

To be fascinating the teacher must present an image to the student. To present an image the teacher must be constituted as a body, one that takes on pres? ence within the student's sphere of ownness and which draws the other out of

this sphere through such fascination. It is however, not the body of the teacher

that is fascinating (not alone anyway) but the voice that, as speech, is medi?

ated there, as is the visual resemblance of the self to itself as presence and

absence respectively - as a rhetorical figure. In fact, it is precisely this splitting

of the body - between sight and sound - that renders the teacher fascinating.

The physicality of teaching, its aesthetic rather than ethical face-to-face-ness,

allows the proximity of the teacher/student interrelation to be experienced as

a closeness measured by the presence of the other organic body recognized as analogous. At the same time (or is it?) the speaking body interrupts this or?

ganic pairing through the force of a language that, unlike the flesh, is not owned

by the teacher or student. Here the mediating role of the body introduces

the strange and estranging incessance of language which speaks through the

speaker from an absolute distance; a distance that the eternal detour of ironic

agility works tirelessly to maintain in the face of the teleological urgency that

accompanies the insatiable desire for knowledge. If teaching is to take place

- the teaching of exteriority that is, the most

important teaching (?) - then the student's body must fall within earshot of

this voice. As Nietzsche, and following him, Heidegger and Derrida recog?

nize, teaching depends on the ear, on hearing or, better, "hearkening" (Derrida,

1988, pp. 1-38; Heidegger, 1962, pp. 206,313; Shapiro 1991, pp. 15-28) The




responsibility for this necessary approach falls to the organic body of the

teacher who, as described already by Merleau-Ponty, must arrive at, or de?

vise a "manner" of teaching that can be felt as well as heard by the student

through the rhetoric of the body - its posture, its gesture, its movement and

stasis, its concentration and intensity; its physical presence as the flesh of a

voice that, nevertheless, escapes all embodiment, hence its rhetorical essence

and incomprehensible source.

This, perhaps, is the final and primary responsibility of the teacher, the

responsibility for an irresponsible and incomprehensible sovereignty that, as

the exemplification of an other region of space/time - the teacher's - must be

steadfast in its refusal to engage with the other in anything other than a dis?

symmetrical and distorted interrelational space. It is only through the radical

indifference made possible by this distortion of the symmetrical intersubjective

space of Husserl's phenomenology, that the student can receive an education

worthy of the name.

A bold claim indeed, and one actively seeking "misunderstanding," thus

allowing these reflections to open out, as is only proper, into the "incompre?

hensibility" from where they arose.

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

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