III. Space for the Individuality
With the split of the self, time plays an ethically-significant role which Deleuze recognizes as “the possibility of thinking . . . . the possibility of a future, what is possible or unforeseen, which is given rise to by the creative interval of time that constitutes the fault-line of the brain” (Crocket 185). More importantly, while time brings out new possibilities, it renders the self a new post with different qualities.
Here is where the notion of the space incorporated. Despite the fact that time plays a premier role in the self’s confrontation with the ethical Other or the generation of one’s individuality, space is what we could not neglect. Ethically, the “I,” in the wake of the consciousness of the Other, has to take the responsibility for the Other.
Remarkably, it demands the un-adequatable thinking as well as the post of the self.
That is, as time reveals the inescapable confrontation with the Other, space is meant to renew the possibilities in the self. Mead’s notion of the self’s split into the “me” and the “I” partly echoes what Deleuze’s idea of the deterritorialization and
reterritorialization which designates the contingent ongoing process of becoming.
Both of them notice the spatial incorporation of the self.
Yet, the spatial incorporation does not mean the representable or identifiable position of the self. It actually comes from the pre-conscious ethical relation. The first site of the space goes from the body which is open to the empirical stimulations or confrontations, as mentioned in the preceding chapters. The body is a delicate receiver whose sensibility is never a programmed scheme. There is no fixed pattern designating any possible center of the self. Instead, the space is more unexpected than determinate, more Other-oriented than self-centered, as Richard A. Cohen maintains that “[e]mbodiment, for Levinas, is not the inevitable closure of the
mortality of each; rather, it is openness to the mortality of others. . . . The significance of embodiment is neither attachment to self nor attachment to being but rather
vulnerability to the other, hence moral compassion” (Levinas 2003: xxxiii). The body acts as the very first site of the confrontation with the Other. If time evokes the possibility of new thought or actions, the body “inseparable from creative activity”
(Levinas 2003: 15) incarnates the new possibilities in the ethical response. The new possibilities in thoughts and actions are registered in the sensibility of the self.
However, these thoughts or actions do not make a coherent representation of the self.
More contradiction than compromise is found in the self’s ethical relation with the Other. In Moa II, Karen, as an individual, makes different responses to the image of the crowd. She seemingly rids herself of the least bit of individuality by joining the mass wedding under the guidance of a spiritual guru who even assigned her a
never-met spouse. The act dissolves her in a crowd, like being immersed in an embryonic capsule. But, as she returned to her normal life, her commitment in the mass wedding had little effect on her as her sexual relation actually alternated between Billy, the writer, and his assistant, Scott. However, in the case of the
homeless people, she felt compassionate and willing to stand up for them—a strong way to demonstrate her ideas and beliefs in social justice. The point is that her involvement did not last long enough to indicate any self-integrity. In Karen’s case, there is no denying that the image of the crowd would provide certain sense of belonging while surrounded and intoxicated by the ambience. The self is
encompassed by the self-diminishing power lying behind the image of the crowd.
On the other hand, the self is awakened to the threat of the devouring power of the crowd. The sense of the threat, put in another way, signals her consciousness of being an individual and prompts her to react individually and originally. Thus, her reaction to the image of the crowd by doing things irrelevant or even contrary to the image of the crowd is her way to add new elements to the world. Being one member of the crowd or crowds, Karen maintains her novelty in facing up the
incomprehensible ethical Other.
Despite the fact that the self is not centered on a coherent belief or attitude, it does not mean that the self is a provisional and contingent fabric. There is no doubt that life is contingent in the sense that people could never choose what confronts and influences their life. Life is somehow determined by what surrounds them. No matter what, Karen demonstrates that the new possibilities are more individual than provisional and evanescent, since being provisional or contingent designates collage of certain kind, clinging to or grafting what is around. The provisional or the contingent does not make a fixed attachment as the responsibility of the self would make a different construct with different components. In contrast, the individuality in Karen comes from her breaking out of the delimitation of the ethical confrontation and responds in an unprecedented and unpredictable way. She does not merely take advantage of what is contingently around but has her way to deal with it. More importantly, the influence of the crowd does not completely disappear; it comes back
in the scene of another crowd. Her decision to voice for the homeless is an evident application of the ideas she gathered from the Master Moon. It appears that Karen easily slides in and out of the boundary set for the crowd of the spiritual guru. There is surely the provisional and evanescent part of the self but individuality is what marks the self in an ethical relation in the wake of his responsibility for the ethical Other. To be specific, the individuality features not in the contingent concoction of different elements but freeing himself from the constraints of the boundaries or delimitations. The emancipation from the conventional boundaries or provisional engagements means the space spared for one’s individuality. The individuality expresses the self’s uniqueness in having his way to response to the ethical Other.
The individuality in the ethical relation is characterized by the process of the spatialized time. It starts with the recognition of time as the axis of the ethical relation in which the self is vulnerable and passive in face of the self-diminishing Other and proceeds with the self’s engagement and responsibility for the Other. It is in the responsibility for the Other that new possibilities are evoked and the space for individuality is refound. As the Other preconsciously imposes on the self but evokes the self’s individuality, time comes to take on the spatial contour. Concretely
speaking, the time of the event might slide by but the effect of the event lingers on.
As Karen makes her sexual relation a way to walk out of the self-dissolving force of the crowd, the body helps explore new and different elements and record the
newly-made inscriptions. Bill the writer makes more radical efforts to preserve his individuality in face of the reading public in his journey to rescue the poet who was taken as the hostage. The body makes the space for one’s individuality. The spatialized time of the ethical relation does not converge with the traditional linear and spatialized time. The spatial feature of time on the one hand corresponds to the unbridgeable gap between the self and the otherness, illustrated by Levinas’s notion of
diachrony. On the other hand, the utter alterity prolongs and complexes time which does not end with the self’s recognition of his own heteronomy and vulnerability. To put it in another way, the reason why the self’s response could extend the time of the event rests on the situation that every response of the self could be regarded as the way to deal with the Otherness, the step approaching the alterity, as well as the means to remake him-self. Hence, the time of the event is spatialized in the self’s creating difference, and, more importantly, uniqueness in his response to the alterity. It is different from DeLeuzian notion of the “schizophrenic table,” which is based on the theory of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, as if the self could easily drift from one event to another without any hesitance or resistance against the effect of any particular event. In actuality, DeLillo portrays that the self is first awaked to the pre-conscious responsibility for the Other and it follows that the self starts from such an awareness to the generation and insertion of new possibilities into the ethical relation. The temporal character of the event corresponds to the confrontation of the ethical Other. However, as the relation with the ethical Other includes not merely the moment before the self’s awareness of the existence of the Other but, more decisively, after the moment which involves the response. And it is in the response that time would be embodied and spatialized as different sensual confrontation would equip the self with stimulations for new possibilities.
However, the new possibilities generated in different events are not totally irrelevant from each other, though. Instead, they might become certain kind of reference in the coming response to the Other. DeLillo’s portrait of the self in the ethical moment or event (in Lyotard’s terms) lays out that every event might engage the self and induce new possibilities which might be the referring point for next event as Karen could walk in and out of the crowd led by the spiritual guru randomly.
While her sexual relation breaks her commitment to the crowd of the Master Moon,
she applied the doctrines learned from Master Moon to her devotion to another group, the homeless. She was and was not severed from what happened before. But, what is worth-noting is that these referring points do not follow any causal order; yet, the only thing they have in common is they come from the self’s compulsory response to the ethical Other, which is illustrated by Karen’s constant change from one way to another and to whatever new possibilities there could be. Nevertheless, this is not a defiant attitude that she took. She enjoyed certain kind of ease and freedom and, interestingly, had her individuality sustained in those responses to the Other.
Besides, different characters demonstrate their individualities in response.
While Karen makes her individuality by trying different angles to involve herself in the crowd, Bill the writer more acutely felt the self-dissolving threat from the crowd.
Being a writer, he is destined to have a reading crowd to face. First, he wrote a novel which he was reluctant to finish, deliberately deferring the time for its
publication. He meant to preserve his individuality by means of keeping something of himself from the crowd. Second, he had his photograph taken by a photographer:
on the one hand to sustain his fame as a writer but on the other to preserve more freedom to claim his sense of being an individual behind the picture. More radically, he joined a plan to rescue the writer taken as hostage by terrorists. In the rescue, he partly journeyed through the rescue process but partly made new possibilities by writing in the persona of the hostage.
The temporality of his experience is embodied, that is, spatially incorporated.
While the events always unpredictably and ungraspably lie before his experience, the vulnerability and possibility of the self are first detected as “Others challenge me, empties me of myself and keeps on emptying me by showing me ever new resources”
(Leivnas 2003: 30). That is the moment the self is emptied out so that the Other emerges in the self. The imposition of the Other on the self is a paradoxical situation
as Sandra B. Rosenthal comments that in Levinas’s ethical time, “Levinas preserves both the uniqueness of the individuality and the openness of the future” (193). It is
“me,” not anyone else that answers the immediate call of the Other. The
confrontation with the Other not merely dissolves the self-autonomy but particularly marks the individuality engaged in the responsibility for the Other. The space occupied by the Other actually calls for the reconfiguration of the self who could no longer sustain the way he was but requires new thoughts or actions in face of the irreducible alterity, as Levinas details that ‘it is not because the novelty that it ‘gives room’ for a relation of transcendence. It is because the responsibility for the Other is transcendence that there can be something new under the sun” (Levinas 1989: 245).
The responsibility for the Other embodies one’s individuality as derived from the utter alterity. Ronald C. Arnett maintains that
Levinas’s ethics begins with answering the call of the Other that shapes the identity of the “I” as a by-product. . . . Ethics becomes a
phenomenological call to the responsive care of the Other, from which action shapes the “I.” The “I” is derivative of attentiveness to the Other and responsive to an ethical call.” (40)
The responsive “I” thus constantly lays different marks on the terrain of the self.
This could be illustrated by what Don DeLillo says about how he remakes himself whenever he is engaged in writing. Writing becomes a form of ethical responsibility and simultaneously founds his individuality.
Judging from the ongoing discussion, it is assured that the self, though no longer self-sufficient or autonomous, still maintains the individuality which could add new possibilities to the world while responding to the Other. The ethical relation, pivoted on the temporal and spatial reconfiguration, is at a paradoxical brink, because the individuality revives the concern about whether we are resuming the humanistic
vein in the ethical relation or it is the ethical relation that means to redefine what is human in the postmodern. Apparently, it is impossible to carry on with the
traditional humanistic trend. Then, what does the ethical relation suggest concerning the human in the postmodern? Despite the recognition that the self is Other-reliant and even Other-derived, individuality is still confirmed in the self’s ability for bringing out new possibilities. From the Other-engaged to Other-responding, the self claims his individuality which survives and even revives the ethical responsibility.