Levinas and Gender
Parallels
between the dynamics of the gender debate and
a radical interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s
thinking
Introduction with thesis
This article is the fruit of two streams of ideas
that have crossed my path over the past year and a
half. The first stream is that of the gender
discussion, which has of course been going on for
much longer, but has apparently only recently become
unavoidably topical for me. The other stream is that
of the book Un-common Sociality. Thinking
sociality with Levinas by the Swedish
philosopher Ramona Rat, which I was able to take a
closer look at due to the relative calm of the
corona lockdown.
The first stream follows closely concrete persons
and groups of whom I pick up the ideas from an
almost daily flood of articles in – mainly Dutch –
newspapers and magazines, and sometimes from books.
The resulting harvest presented in this article is
largely from the summer of 2021. The second stream,
derived almost entirely from Rat’s book on the
thinking of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel
Levinas (1906 – 1995), is more theoretical and moves
through an intellectual space of notions and
concepts.
Remarkably enough, in my head, the two streams
appeared to cross each other and form a connection.
This is expressed in the following thesis that I
gradually formulated:
Much of what Levinas, according to Ramona Rat,
brings about in his thinking on sociality
resembles the dynamics generated by the gender
movement.
The purpose of this article is to further
substantiate this thesis. I will do this by first
(Section 1) pointing out in a somewhat superficial
way phenomena that occur both in the gender
movement and, according to Rat, in Levinas.
This involves the blurring of traditional concepts,
the creation of new language and the irritation that
the blurring and the new language evoke. Then
(Section 2) I will formulate a common denominator
for these phenomena, both in the debate about gender
and that about Levinas, namely: the presence or
absence of ontological security. I explain this
concept and on that basis I, in Section 3,
reformulate the thesis in terms of ontological
security. This makes it possible to identify more
deeply and more explicitly the parallels that I
could intuitively point out between the two areas,
and thus to substantiate the thesis (Sections 4 and
5). This substantiation enables me to articulate
what is at stake in both dynamics: liberation from
forms of closedness. Then it also becomes clear
(Section 6) that the gender movement has already
taken significant steps on the path of that
liberation. I conclude by expressing the expectation
that Rat’s interpretation of Levinas can further
support such kinds of liberation.
1.
Parallels at first sight regarding use of language
in the gender movement and in Levinas
Between the dynamics of the gender movement on the one
hand, and what in Rat’s view is happening in Levinas’s
work with regard to the theme of sociality on the
other hand, the following parallels can be noted: the
blurring of traditional concepts, the search for new
language, and the irritation about those two
phenomena.
Blurring
of traditional concepts
In the field of gender discussions, the most
striking feature is the blurring of the terms ‘man’
and ‘woman’. The fixed definition of these concepts
appears to be under discussion in the current gender
debates, the demarcation of the genders in relation
to each other seems to be becoming fluid. This is
apparent, for example, in the relativization of
gender differences by transgender Ian Morris, who
thinks the word ‘change’ sounds too heavy for her
transition from male to female. “I haven’t changed
gender, it’s never been so black and white for me:
I’ve absorbed one into the other, I’m a bit of both
now.” The blurring of the line between the two
is also apparent from the sensitivity to the obvious
link between pregnancy and women, and the call to
say ‘pregnant human being’ instead of ‘pregnant
woman’ . What once was considered exclusively
pertaining to women, pregnancy, turns out to be a
possibility that can also be attributed to men.
This is drastic. If – in the mind of most people –
there is one thing that has been fixed since the
very beginning of mankind, it was the difference
between man and woman, attributing specific
characteristics to each of the two categories. This
dichotomy – binarity – has apparently been so
fundamental for centuries that it has left its mark
on the patterns of our language. Linguist Marc van
Oostendorp points out that in language the
grammatical gender is an age-old fact. Language is
interspersed with the dichotomy between man and
woman, for example in personal pronouns and nouns.
If this dichotomy disintegrates at the conceptual
level, this will have immediate consequences for
everyday language use. Because how do you designate
someone who is neither he nor she, that is:
non-binary?
Then over to Levinas. One example of his blurring
of concepts is that he doesn’t seem to mind talking,
when he speaks about the ethical relationship that
can exist between people, about a ‘relationship
without relationship’. Because if in one place he
describes that relationship with another human being
comprehensibly as “the direct and full face welcome
of the other by me” , he says in another
place: “For the relation between the being here
below and the transcendent being that results is no
community of concept or totality – a relation
without relation (…)” .
Another example of a possibly shocking lack of
clarity, or irritating deliberate vagueness, is when
Levinas speaks of a contradiction such as that
between an active and a passive human attitude which
at first sight is not too complicated. In common
parlance, the first attitude is linked to showing
initiative, making a start, for example in
approaching another person. Not so with Levinas, as
commentator Rat points out: she calls Levinas
apparently careless “when it comes to attributing
the approach to an initiator” , thereby blurring the
familiar opposition between activity and passivity.
One more example: in general it is clear that there
is a difference between inside and outside. That is,
quite simply, determined by the dividing line that
lies between those two categories. For a house, that
dividing line is the outer wall, which makes it
irrefutably clear what you call inside and what you
call outside. Common parlance sees this happening in
people too: some things take place in your mind,
others outside or in other minds. The premise here,
as with the outer wall of the house, is that there
is a clear boundary between the two minds. Levinas
gleefully mixes up things when, according to Rat, he
says that “the interiority of the self is not its
own, but is given through the other (…) and in this
way, it is an opened-up interiority. Here, the
relative determination between the inside and
outside is disturbed. The inside is not determined
by the boundaries of the outside, but the self is
from the start invaded by the outside” .
New
language
For those who want to say new things, language can
apparently have a limiting effect. The words in
which the new can be said are not readily available
and common strict distinctions in the traditional
language can feel oppressive. An obvious way out is
to invent new words or to give existing words a
different meaning. We see that happening within the
gender movement and with Levinas and, following in
his footsteps, Ramona Rat.
In the past decade, the gender movement has been
actively searching for new words to soften the
strong rootedness of binarity in language. Because
in most languages this dichotomy is deeply anchored
in the personal pronouns (she, he, him, her), much
of the effort is focused on launching new,
non-binary personal pronouns.
This seems to have worked out quite well in Sweden.
Journalist Sander Becker talks about this in his
article Is Dutch ready for the gender-neutral ‘Hen
runs’? : “At the beginning of this century, the
Swedish LGBTQI+ community started promoting the
gender-neutral ‘hen’ alongside ‘han’ (he) and ‘hon’
(she). With success: the word received a lot of
media attention and caught on. In 2014, ‘hen’ was
included in the dictionary of the Swedish academy.
The word has two meanings: it can refer to a person
whose gender is irrelevant – say the ‘he/she’ from a
job ad – or it can refer to a non-binary
individual”. The Swedish media use ‘hen’ a lot.
Becker points out that the success of ‘hen’ in
Sweden is partly due to the fact that the word
differs from ‘han’ and ‘hon’ by only one vowel,
which makes it less noticeable. That helps
acceptance.
English has a similar advantage with the words
‘they/their’, which apart from the common non-binary
plural can also be used to indicate the non-binary
singular. The latter meaning has historical roots.
Since the Middle Ages, you can refer to a general
person in English as “they” regardless of gender,
which aids the contemporary use of the word as a
gender-neutral designation.
For Dutch this kind of new use of pronouns is more
difficult to achieve because a fluent connection
with history (as in English) or with existing words
(as in Swedish) is not available. Becker talks about
an attempt by the Dutch Transgender Network to have
a gender update of the Dutch language: “In 2016, the
foundation conducted a survey among 500 non-binary
Dutch people. Participants could choose from three
alternatives for the Dutch equivalents of the
personal and possessive pronouns he/him/his and
she/her/her. The options were: die/die/diens, or
hen/hen/hun or dee/dem/dijr” .
Linguist Van Oostendorp is quite skeptical about
such attempts at artificially creating
gender-neutral pronouns. “They are a system, a
conservative force. You don’t do much about
that.” That is: you don’t just change them
because they are embedded in the foundation of a
language. Nevertheless, the change has officially
been partially implemented in the Netherlands. The
Dictionary of the Dutch Language Van Dale took the
plunge and now ‘hen’ is included in the dictionary
as a reference to a non-binary person. The news
agency ANP, supplier of almost all Dutch media,
adopts gender-neutral pronouns from the Dutch
Transgender Network, with ‘hen’ or ‘die’ for
non-binary persons.
In addition, in the public discussion about gender
diversity, new customs and words continue to emerge,
that should help to make visible the newly felt
fluidity of gender boundaries. For example,
secondary school teachers Borsboom and
Draaisma say that at their school it is not
only increasingly common for students to insert
desired pronouns above their digital profile or
after their e-mail signature, but also that teachers
and students are inventing new ways of addressing
the teacher, such as ‘mevreer’ or ‘menouw’ which are
composed of elements of ‘mevrouw’ (female) and
‘meneer’ (male).
If, as we saw, Levinas sometimes questions usual
contradictions or creates unusual combinations, he
often finds it difficult to use the words that are
available in the handed down arsenal of language. He
then has to create new words, or give existing words
a new meaning. Where, for example, he tampers with
the traditional sharp boundary between subject and
object, he resorts as we shall see below to the word
‘substitution’. When he starts treating the concept
of passivity in his own way, he likes to use the
expression ‘more passive than all passivity’ .
Sometimes it is not Levinas himself, but an
interpreter of his work who arrives at new language
use on the basis of Levinas’s reasoning. We’ll see
that this applies to Ramona Rat. Following Levinas’s
intertwining of inside and outside, she proposes to
speak of ‘opened-up interiority’ , in which, as we
have seen, “the interiority of the self is not its
own, but is given through the other” . You could say
that the self is turned ‘inside out’, or ‘outside
in’.
Irritation
Blurring of familiar concepts can create
discomfort, and the confrontation with artificial
new words or word meanings can feel forced and
irritating. These reactions do indeed occur to both
the gender movement and Levinas. When it comes to
the dynamics of the gender movement, the irritated
reactions can be easily scooped out of the media on
almost daily basis. A selection from this:
“There is nothing wrong with ‘pregnant
person’, but why should ‘pregnant woman’ give way to
that?”
“The concepts of woman and man belong to all of us,
just like mother and father. Egg cell and sperm: who
didn’t grow up with them?”
“For example, ‘woman’ is suddenly removed from the
dictionary.”
“The French language will perish if the existence of
gender-neutral pronouns is recognized.”
“Isn’t it better then to eliminate the phenomenon of
language?”
Journalist Menno Sedee notes that non-binary people
in the Netherlands apparently still cause a lot of
discomfort. In 2018, the Social and Cultural
Planning Office calculated that 20 percent of adult
Dutch people believe that “something is wrong with
people who do not feel like a man or a woman”.
Almost half think it is “important to know whether
someone is a man or a woman” . Apparently ideas,
opinions and feelings about what that is, ‘man’ or
‘woman’, have a strong effect. We all have them –
and usually we cherish them .
With regard to Levinas’s use of words, I will
confine myself for the moment to pointing out my own
regularly emerging skepticism and irritation. When I
read about ‘a relationship without a relationship’,
the ‘unknowability of the face’ or similar
paradoxical statements about the ‘thematization of
the unthematizable’, is it still about something? Or
is this just word play? How vague can you be?
Perhaps these questions are the motive for me to
write this article.
2. A
common denominator for those parallels: ontological
(in)security
The blurring of traditional concepts, the creation
of new words or word meanings and the associated
discomfort can be labeled as ‘ontological
insecurity’. Or vice versa: the loss of ‘ontological
security’, where ontological security roughly stands
for the possession (in individuals or groups) of a
firm and stable identity that does not like too much
change. But this description is too rough to serve
in this article. If we want to be more precise, two
schools can be distinguished that interpret the
concept of ontological security differently: the
existentialist variant and the epistemological
variant. By briefly describing both variants below
and then choosing the epistemological variant, I try
to make clear how I will use the concept of
ontological security, and thus also its opposite,
ontological insecurity.
The
existentialist conception of ontological security
In the last twenty years there has been an
explosion of books and articles that present
themselves as ‘ontological security literature’. It
covers such diverse fields as international
relations, psychiatry, and sociology. Due to the
variety of subjects, the confusion of tongues in
this literature is sometimes great, and thus also
the meaning of the word ontological (in)security.
But thanks in part to the efforts of Karl Gustaffson
and Chris Rossdale, it is possible in the
ontological security literature to demarcate the
existentialist variant from the epistemological
variant of ontological security.
The term ontological security comes from the
existentialist direction. It was coined around 1960
by the psychiatrist Ronald Laing in his book The
Divided Self, with the intention of formulating an
existentialist approach to psychoanalysis. Laing
says of ontological security: “The individual (…)
may experience his own being as real, alive, whole;
as differentiated from the rest of the world in
ordinary circumstances so clearly that his identity
and autonomy are never in question; as a continuum
in time; as having an inner consistency,
substantiality, genuineness, and worth; as spatially
coextensive with the body; and, usually, as having
begun in or around birth and liable to extinction
with death. He thus has a firm core of ontological
security” .
You could say: for Laing, an ontologically secure
person is a one-piece person, possessing an
unshakable, stable identity. And in that way of
being, Laing emphasizes, a person finds the
opportunity to interact authentically with other
people and to lead a social life. That Laing in his
conception of ontological security is inspired by
existentialist philosophy is apparent from his
attention to the finiteness of human existence and
the fear that confrontation with it can evoke in
man. Face to face with this, we must realize, says
Laing, that absolute security is unattainable and
that we do not have complete control over what
happens to us. The solidity of the autonomous
subject, or: ontological security, enables us to
deal with it. In this regard, Laing refers to the
notion of ‘the courage to be’, taken from the book
of the same name by the existentialist Paul Tillich,
which emphasizes the importance of “facing anxiety
as well as the possibility of obtaining a feeling of
ontological security in spite of such anxiety” .
The word ‘ontological’ is used here adverbially, in
the sense of ‘concerning the way of being’. The
etymology of the word ontology allows this, because
it is composed of the Greek words ontos (genitive of
on which can be translated as ‘existence’ or
‘being’) and logos, that is, ‘doctrine’,
‘interpretation’, or ‘explanation’; so, put
together: teachings about (the way of) existence.
Ontological security then means: the certainty of
the subject about his way of being. Clearly the term
originated in the field of psychiatry, where it
referred to individuals. But then the term found its
way into all sorts of other fields, where it was
applied not only to individuals but also to groups
of people or states.
The sociologist Anthony Giddens introduced the term
to sociology. For Giddens, ontological security
stands for the sense of identity and orientation
that people in society derive from legal, cultural
and existential narratives, conceived as practices
of daily life that have become routine, through
which you can find your way there. Rossdale
explains: “The coherence of these practices, and the
narrative around which they form, becomes central to
an actor’s capacity to act, to have sufficient
confidence in their space and narrative of being to
make choices and interventions” . From there, the
existentialist concept of ontological security has
subsequently spread to and been used extensively in
the field of the science of international relations
(IR). IR studies took a big step by applying the
notions of ontological security or insecurity to
states, depending on the degree of confidence they
have in themselves and the international legal
order. In this way ontological security could take
on the meaning of a state’s certainty about its
existence and way of acting.
The
epistemological conception of ontological security
The other way of using the word combination
ontological security addresses the interpretation of
the part ‘on’ (in ontology) not as a ‘way of being’
but as ‘that which is’, being. Then ontology is an
‘explanation of that which is’, in other words:
clarification of everything that is, whereby the
clarification takes place, among other things, by
dividing that which is (the beings) into levels and
categories. This ontology claims to have insight
into the world, and is thus epistemological in
nature. In line with this, ontological security then
becomes: the feeling that the available explanation
of what is, is correct; that the ordering of the
world that the ontology provides is convincing. This
epistemological variant of ontological security is
much older than the existentialist one, it fits in
with the meaning that the word ontology has had
since time immemorial, at least in the West from the
Ancient Greeks. For two and a half thousand years,
ontology in the sense of the explanation and
arrangement of being and beings has been an
essential part of Western philosophy.
This variant of ontological security also uses
routines and stories and meaningful constructions.
But they are less focused on embedding a practical
existence and more on acquiring knowledge. The
epistemological commitment of these routines appears
from the centrality of logical clarification and
ordering and from the cognitive claim that emanates
from them. I think Chris Rossdale uses ontological
security in this sense in his article Enclosing
Critique: The Limits of Ontological Security.
Speaking of ontological security, he states that
“[i]n placing certain assumptions and routines at
the level of common sense, and in being able to
trust in the stability of these routines, actors are
able to build narratives, stories and plans without
being perpetually confronted by the contingent
nature of their foundations” . From Rossdale’s
emphasis on ‘common sense’ in achieving ontological
security, I infer that in his view the order
afforded by assumptions and routines must be
persuasive to the mind—however superficially—and
thereby claims cognitive validity.
The knowledge claim is characteristic of
ontological security in the epistemological sense of
the word combination. This variant of ontological
security pretends to have certainty about what is
and about the organization of the world. Ontological
security sees the world as a coherent whole that is
knowable. In order to achieve this closed
arrangement, this epistemological ontology is based
on a synthetic unitarian thinking: all elements,
categories and levels of the thought order are
connected, whether or not by hierarchical lines, to
the highest principle of the order (often God, but
it can also be nature) and with each other.
Furthermore, to fill in the various categories, one
falls back on the ‘essence’ of each category of
beings. This is obtained by a process of abstracting
from the really existing instances of that category.
Thus for the category of woman an ‘essence of the
female’ arises and for the category of man an
‘essence of the male’, as abstractions of the real
existing women and men.
How far this deviates from the existentialist
ontological security can be deduced from Laing’s
aversion to the epistemological variant. In his
defense of the existentialist ontological security,
he points to the fundamental character of the
existentialist sense of self in relation to
traditional philosophy: “It (the sense of self,
NvdV) exists prior to the scientific or
philosophical difficulties about how such experience
is possible or how it is to be explained” . For the
existentialists, interpretation of one’s own
existence precedes an explanation of the world in
terms of essences.
Choice
for the epistemological variant
The pretensions of traditional epistemological
ontology of a known world order can indeed be quite
repulsive, and ontological security in the
epistemological sense can assume arrogant and
oppressive forms. It is not for nothing that
thinking in categories of beings is often aptly
referred to as ‘pigeonhole thinking’, or
‘pigeonholing’. Nevertheless, in the remainder of
this article I will choose to use the word
combination ontological security in an
epistemological sense, and therefore not to use
ontological security in an existentialist sense, as
it recently has been widely used in psychiatry,
sociology and international relations.
The two reasons for this are related. In the first
place, there is the historical dominance of the
epistemological interpretation of ontological
security over the existentialist interpretation.
Although the word combination ontological security
has been coined by the existentialists, ‘security’
and the pursuit of it are also excellently linked to
ontology in an epistemological sense. If moreover
that epistemological ontology lasts for already
thousands of years – compared to several decades for
existentialist ontology – and if for many
generations in the West it was something to hold on
to in some way, then it makes sense to take this
interpretation of ontological security as a starting
point.
This is all the more true as we saw that the
first-sight similarity we observed between the
dynamics of Levinas and those of the gender movement
was also termed in terms of the ‘blurring of
traditional concepts’. The word traditional therein
refers to age-old traditions. So by definition it is
about the ontological certainties with claims to
knowledge, because the existentialist concepts are
not old enough.
3.
Reformulation of the thesis in terms of ontological
security
At the beginning of the previous Section I
indicated that the observed phenomena of the
blurring of traditional concepts, the search for new
words and the irritation about them can be discussed
in terms of ontological (in)security. I find it
desirable indeed to do so, because ontology plays a
large role in the millennia-old Western
philosophical tradition that continues to this day.
The use of the term ontology makes it easier to
refer to that tradition, and it will be seen that
both Levinas’s position and the dynamics of the
gender movement gain in comprehensability when the
context of traditional ontology is included.
For the sake of clarity, it appeared necessary in
the previous Section to demarcate the ontological
security that I have in mind from existentialist
ontological security. Now that it is clear that I am
concerned with the epistemological variant of
ontological security, I would like to reformulate my
original thesis as follows:
The gender discussion on the one hand and
Levinas’s thinking about sociality in Ramona
Rat’s interpretation on the other are similar in
the effects on ontological security they
produce.
This reformulation allows me to use the terms
ontological security and ontological insecurity to
support the thesis. The substantiation will consist
of an in-depth exploration of the three phenomena
mentioned – concept blur, new language and
consequent irritation – first for the gender
movement (Section 4), then for Rat’s presentation of
Levinas (Section 5). For both dynamics, I
investigate what striving underlies the concept blur
and the new language use and what the motive is for
that striving. In the evaluation that follows
(Section 6) I conclude that the gender movement and
Levinas indeed strive parallel to each other to let
go of ontological security, and that in doing so
they are both motivated by a perspective of
liberation. The question is to what extent the
results of that aspiration are the same.
4.
Problematization of categories in the gender
movement
Blurring
of traditional concepts
Insofar as there is a blurring of concepts in the
gender debate, the reference to the ontological
tradition is constantly imposed. This blurring is
often expressed in the gender literature in the
rejection of what we have already called ‘pigeonhole
thinking’. In concrete terms, this usually concerns
the division of humanity into strictly biologically
and culturally demarcated categories of men and
women. But characterized as a way of thinking,
pigeonholing refers directly to classical ontology,
i.e. to a much broader practice of categorization
than just the distinction between male and female.
After all, it tries to classify all beings – from
heavenly bodies to grains of sand, from God to
angels, and from people to insects – into categories
of being on the basis of their properties, often
ordered in a hierarchical way, ranging from higher
to lower forms of being.
The word ‘pigeonholing’ may sound disrespectful,
and in view of its focus on category demarcation,
ontology is sometimes referred to, more neutrally,
as ‘category theory’. But, actually,
‘pigeonhole thinking’ excellently indicates what is
happening. In any case, I notice that when
explanations are given about what is going on in the
gender movement, the word ‘pigeonholes’ is used
abundantly. Journalist Sander Becker explains, for
example, that non-binary people are people “who
don’t feel at home in the binary pigeonholes of male
or female” , and Menno Sedee that “intersex means
that someone’s body (visible or invisible) does not
fit into the male or female pigeonhole” . And for
those who think that journalists in particular like
to use the word ‘pigeonholes’, there is the
statement by philosopher Frank Meester on the
occasion of his latest book Why we cannot get the
world fixed: “That’s how we are, yes. We all think
in pigeonholes, but we never get everything packed
in them” . That pigeonholing regularly targets the
handed down ontological categories is apparent when
in a text the word ‘pigeonhole’ is alternated with a
description and is spoken, for example, of a growing
group of people who no longer feel at home with
“narrowly defined gender identities” .
Now you can deal with that in two ways, which I
would call less and more reflexive. The less
reflexive gender activists can live well with
pigeonholes. They often do not oppose pigeonholing
itself, but they oppose the definition of the
contents of the holes or want to switch holes. The
more reflexive gender activists question the
existence of pigeonholes, they turn against
pigeonholing itself. This group realizes that
classical ontology has a long history of claiming to
represent a necessary natural or divine order. So
there is more at stake for this group than for the
first group.
Some gender activists that have no objection to the
two (or, including gay women and men: four) existing
pigeonholes just want to be able to switch holes
smoothly. For them it’s about making a clear choice
for one of the two (or four) holes. Publicist
Stephan Sanders amusingly describes how that worked
when he came out as a homosexual. At the time, no
one was fussing about his newly discovered
orientation, Sanders was even encouraged to embrace
it. In that sense he was free, but at the same time
he felt trapped, “now in the homosexual role, which
you also are supposed to consistently adhere to”
according to the bystanders. It felt like a
rendition “to the librarians of sex, who categorize
our thoughts and label our behavior” . The old
thinking in terms of categories is very much alive
here.
Others likewise are not against pigeonholes, but
find it problematic that the traditional thinking
only leaves room for two holes when it comes to
biological sex: that of man and woman, while there
is a need for more intermediate shades. These people
actually want more holes for defining gender
identity. The Dutch Transgender Act is a thorn in
the side for those who fight against the stringent
dichotomy of only two alternatives. Because the
Transgender Act states that for gender reassignment
persons must be convinced that they belong to “the
opposite sex”. But, according to the non-binary Senn
van Beek , that is not always easy, because 3 to 6
percent of all Dutch people do not identify
themselves (entirely) as a man or a woman, so two
holes do not suffice for them. The proposed
amendments to that law will provide that in the
future everyone can determine their own gender, but
for the time being there are only two flavors: male
or female.
A number of female writers who like women think the
indication ‘lesbian’ sounds too limited to
themselves , because that word is linked to one of
the two poles of man and woman, but they don’t
object against other categories, for example with
the labels gay, queer or gender diverse. Hadas
Itzkovitch interviews four 25-year-old LGBTQ+ people
, one of whom speaks of “shades of LGBTIQ+ identity”
and another says “I really like men and women, and
everything in between for that matter”, and it
sounds like that in-between may be put in holes. In
these statements, pigeonholes continue to play a
role in determining identity.
It is more drastic when not only the pigeonholes,
but the pigeonholing itself become the object of
reflection and criticism. That happens with the more
reflexive gender activists. Among them is
anthropologist Rahil Roodsaz, who, together with
colleague Katrien De Graeve, compiled the book
Intimate revolutions: contrary in sex, love and
care, in which scientists, writers and artists
investigate the revolutionary potential of sex, love
and care relationships. They discuss the problematic
nature of categorization, for example when they talk
about the standard of normality that is established
by pigeonholing. Because of those standards, such as
the traditional interpretation of the terms ‘man and
woman’, “there is little room left to investigate
whether you yourself have feelings and desires that
deviate from this narrative. Which are surprising or
alienating, because you did not expect them from
yourself. At the same time, such a narrative can
make you think you can fully understand the other
person in advance: you are a woman, so you want
this. You’re a man, so you’ll like that. Or: you are
my child, so I can fully know your needs. Because of
this, your partner, friendly relationship or child
does not get a chance to be a little different or
strange” . Here it becomes clear that not only the
pigeonholes, but also thinking in terms of
pigeonholes can be problematic. This causes the
capture of essences and the bricking up of
identities so that people can feel locked up. From
this perspective, a way out of the pigeonholes
requires a completely different way of thinking.
While categorizing thinking feels so familiar and
natural – because it connects to the age-old
ontological tradition – you have to ask yourself
whether this obviousness is justified.
This question, therefore, is asked by the more
reflexive. They search the foundations of our
thinking for potentially problematic presuppositions
that predispose us to pigeonholing. Roodsaz and De
Graeve touch on this when they say that we often
assume “that some relationships are more natural,
‘more original’ or ‘real’ than others” . And Miriam
Rasch dedicates her book Friction. Ethics in the age
of dataism to the existence of erroneous
presuppositions on a much broader level than just
gender, but she makes it clear that taking
traditional views for granted also touches the field
of gender: “binarity is not a given at all, but a
convention” . In other words: you can also get rid
of it. The more reflexive gender activists therefore
question the idea that the categories of ontology
(the pigeonholes of pigeonholing) are an
indisputable fact that together form an indisputable
order. In doing so, they also question the
substances that are often presented as initiators,
foundations or guarantors of that order: God or
nature. The pigeonholes are man-made. As a
consequence, for these reflexives also the idea
disappears that is traditionally connected with
creation by God or nature, namely that creation
forms a closed whole, a totality that can be known
and understood.
The step that usually follows with many reflexives
from this relativization of traditional ontology is
the intention or the call to formulate another model
of thought that should break through the closedness
of the traditional model. For example, Rogier van
der Wal does this in his discussion of Friction when
he says: “Not everything is quantifiable, there is a
surplus that escapes categorization, which John
Cheney-Lippold in We are data calls ‘the else’ (…) .
The unspeakable sets a limit for datafication: not
everything can be translated into data and not
everything has to be completely understandable” . In
which statement we can safely relate data, in their
quality of fixed pieces of knowledge, to the
pigeonholes of the categories in which they are
defined. “In the end”, says Miriam Rasch, “people
and their stories are more important than data” .
She thus claims a degree of freedom for humans with
regard to determination by data.
An implication of this turn in thinking that wants
to leave closedness behind is that there is no
longer a whole on which thinking can get a grip.
When totality breaks, things start to slip away from
us. The pretense of complete understanding of people
and things, characteristic of millennia of
philosophy, is then abandoned. In this context,
Roodsaz quotes the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa,
who says that love can never go hand in hand with a
full understanding of yourself or the other. I
am inclined to include Ian Morris in this reflexive
group of gender activists. We saw earlier that she
could not cope with the traditional strict dichotomy
of man and woman: “It has never been so black and
white for me: I have absorbed one into the other, I
am now a bit of both” .
New
language
Objection to existing pigeonholes characterizes all
gender activists, but we just saw that for some
blurring the boundaries of the pigeonholes is about
creating new ones, while others (the more reflexive
ones) question the categorization itself. We
encounter the same distinction when it comes to the
call for a new language. The former group of
activists mainly search for new words, that is: for
new pigeonholes; for the second, the entire
designation system is at stake.
An example of the first approach is the trans woman
who says: “Trans woman sounds too medical to me, so
I came up with a new definition: Tranja! I like
labels quite a bit; it helps me define who I am”.
The group of writers we already encountered, who
prefer not to use the word ‘lesbian’ anymore, but
who do use the words gay, queer or gender diverse,
also opt for this approach.
Examples of more radical language innovation are
given in the first Section. Think of the
gender-neutral ‘hen’ or attempts such as ‘mevreer’
and ‘menouw’. Typical of these new words is that
there may still be categories, but that they are
stretched in such a way that they acquire a more
open character, where there is room for an
theoretically infinite number of variants. The
critical linguist Van Oostendorp declares that the
issue is more than just a number of new words when
he states that the emergence of gender-neutral
pronouns cannot be seen as an organic development,
but as something exceptional. “We all decide
together: the language is now moving in this
direction because we think it is necessary. That
conscious intervention in how language develops is
rare, especially when it comes to personal pronouns.
They rarely change because they are ingrained in the
foundation of a language.” Sjoerd de Jong,
philosopher and ombudsman of the national paper NRC,
sees his newspaper struggling with gender and with
what has come to be called ‘gender criticism’. He
notes that there are philosophical questions
underlying this that he would like to address, in
order to clear up confusion about the concept of
gender. In other words, here a complete world
view may be at stake.
Irritation
and resistance
Two trends are reflected in the irritation caused by
the gender discussion: for some it is limited to
irritation about new words, others are also irritated
by the fact that the gender discussion is jeopardizing
an entire world view.
Using new words can feel forced. Linguist Marc van
Oostendorp refers to this irritation on the occasion
of a radio conversation about presenter Raven van
Dorst, who identifies as non-binary: “All the
interlocutors tried their best to use the correct
pronouns, but it felt forced”. That in those cases it
is only about words and not about the categories
themselves can be seen from the NRC commentary on
gender-neutral film awards: “Can you become more
gender neutral without flattening the relievo between
people by using neologisms such as ‘people who
menstruate’ instead of ‘women’? Vigilance remains
necessary against denying average differences between
men and women, or imposing gender-neutral language and
newspeak from above” .
The deep resistance that resents the fact that a
complete order of being (ontology) is threatened is
perhaps best expressed in the objection of ‘intrinsic
disorder’ that some Christian churches use. This
expression is not of recent date, and has been used by
the churches against the phenomenon of homosexuality
for much longer. But the word clearly indicates that
in the perception of some groups a whole of ordering
principles is shifting. One is confronted with
ontological insecurity. The Polish organization Ordo
Iuris strongly opposes the interest that is also
growing in Poland for the LGBTI+ movement, and is the
driving force behind the anti-LGBTI+ resolutions of
the Polish parliament. Ordo Iuris spokesman Nikodem
Bernaciak makes it clear what is at stake for him. In
an interview , he calls the aspiration of the gender
movement “ideologically motivated”, referring to a
revolutionary worldview that threatens the whole of
natural law, attachment to patriotic values and to
values of the Christian heritage of the nation” – in
short, the traditional ontology. When asked whether
Ordo’s set of values is not also ideologically
motivated, he responds almost indignantly: no, that is
not the case, precisely because that order is nature-
and God-given.
5.
Problematization of categories in Levinas
In the first Section, we have seen some examples of
effects of Levinas’s treatment of sociality in the
presentation of Rat, expressed in terms of blurring of
traditional concepts, new words, and irritation about
the blurring and new words. I will go into more detail
about these effects below. It will turn out that for
Levinas, as in the gender discussion, ontological
security is at stake.
Blurring
of traditional concepts
With Levinas we don’t have to beat around the bush.
For the interpretation of the examples of his
blurring use of language, it is not necessary in his
case to make a distinction between a less and more
reflexive interpretation, i.e. between less or more
opposition to pigeonholing. Levinas is absolutely
clear that, as far as he is concerned, a complete
ontological system is under discussion. He fights
ontological security. That can be seen from his
substantiation, in Rat’s presentation, of the blurs
we discussed in Section 1, which I’ll go over piece
by piece. To clarify this substantiation, I first
add another example of blurring in Levinas, namely
the elimination of the difference between order and
anarchy.
Order
and anarchy
Levinas, says Rat, wants his reasoning to arrive at
“a movement that is outside of order” , outside of
any order. And outside of order, that is very
precisely expressed in the term ‘anarchy’. “Anarchy
(…) encompasses Levinas’s efforts to disrupt
chronological and ontological order” . ‘Archè’
(Greek for ‘beginning’, NvdV) “is understood here as
originarity and as principle itself, and hence
becomes the building block of any kind of order” .
The prefix ‘an-‘ to anarchy could be understood as
the opposite of archè. Archè and an-archè (anarchy)
would then be each other’s opposites, and thus refer
to each other and have a reference with a shared,
more abstract, concept in common. Just as order and
disorder have in common with each other that, as
opposites, they both refer to the idea of order. In
order the idea is realized, in disorder it is not,
but both words have a relationship with that idea
and thus share something. But Levinas does not want
to understand archè and an-archè in that way. He
wants to avoid calling archè and an-archè each
other’s opposites, precisely because they would then
have a relationship in common. An-archy is therefore
not concerned with the opposite of archè (understood
as ‘beginning’, thus creating time). Rat explains:
“The privative tone of the ‘without’ (the ‘an’ from
‘an-archy’) does not have an annulling function that
would transform the anarchical into the eternal, nor
does it suggest some kind of primordiality (in the
sense of the first order); instead it breaks down
the very ‘logic’ of ordinarity and originarity
itself” . And: “The form of anarchy that escapes
both order and disorder is anarchy understood as
without origin; (…) an-archy disturbs not only order
(as disorder, or the contestation of order would
do), but the very thinking in terms of order” .
The way in which Levinas does not simply want to
oppose archè to an-archè because that again creates
an order that he precisely does not want, is
exemplary, according to Rat, for how Levinas deals
with other familiar dichotomies: he systematically
refuses all kinds of dualities, he rejects thinking
in alternatives. “[H]ence we find here, once again,
the refusal of dichotomies, a gesture repeated by
Levinas throughout his work” . The various other
paradoxes and forms of stretching of concepts that
we encountered in Section 1 can now be placed in the
frame that Levinas’s treatment of anarchy provides:
he breaks the order-thinking by refusing dualities.
Active/passive
For that reason, Levinas blurs the familiar opposition
between activity and passivity as we saw above. After
all, that’s what happens when Levinas uses the phrase
‘prior to all passivity’, for example in Otherwise
than being . Rat says: “By “prior” Levinas is not
suggesting some kind of chronological hierarchy or
order of causality. (…) he is not opposing passivity
to activity; on the contrary, he continues to refuse
dualities” . And: “[T]he point is precisely that pure
passivity is beyond alternatives. By going beyond the
dualities of passive-active, a move similar to the one
observed in the case of an-archy and order, Levinas
refuses what he considers to be a synthetical,
unifying way of thinking”. It denotes a breach of the
thinking of passivity and activity as counterparts.
And the ‘synthetical, unifying way of thinking’ refers
to classical ontology, which Levinas therefore
rejects.
Inside/outside:
on subjectivity
The same blurring applies to the dividing line
between inside and outside, which Levinas stretches
insofar as the subjectivity of the subject is
concerned. While it is common to associate
subjectivity with the inside of a subject, which is
distinguished from the outside—including other
subjects—by the boundary they have in common,
Levinas according to Rat says, as we have already
seen, that the distinction between inside and
outside is disturbed. “The inside is not determined
by the boundaries of the outside, but the self is
from the start invaded by the outside” , where the
‘outside’ stands for the other. Self and other to a
certain extent blend into each other, in Levinas’s
new conception of subjectivity, according to Rat. As
a result, the subject finds itself out of its closed
inner sphere, it is, as it were, pushed out of its
center in a movement of “de-position characteristic
of the subject as sub-jectum, where the subject is
out of its place, and in this sense, outside itself
as ground. The interplay between inside and outside
that the de-posed self creates is best articulated
in Levinas’s notion of substitution” , on which
later we get more.
Rat explains how analogous this is to Levinas’s
treatment of (an)archy: “Due to its disruptive
character, the hither side (inside, which is no
longer an inside, NvdV) cannot be integrated into an
order (e.g. the order of transcendence, the order of
immanence, the order of dialectics, etc.). It
represents, Levinas says, ‘a movement’ that is
‘outside of order.’ Outside of order, the hither
side is anarchy: ‘On the hither side is expressed
precisely in the term anarchy.’ Anarchy designates
the way Levinas formulates the disruption, or the
how of the hither side that we are looking for” .
Relationship
without relationship
This also makes the expression ‘relationship
without relationship’ somewhat clearer: Levinas’s
expression is about an encounter without a common
boundary or interface. Again he wants to avoid
strict determination here, which a boundary
invariably gives rise to. Thinking in terms of an
encounter of opposites would be like thinking in
terms of the resolution of opposites. Such thinking,
says Rat, “would indeed lead to an abstract problem,
as it would introduce relatedness and co-definition.
This, in turn, would be a mere conceptual play of
abstract notions, co-defining each other. In our
view, Levinas has something different in mind” .
Levinas consciously embraces the paradox.
Thematising
without thematising
While in her book Rat is discussing the paradoxes
presented above around her theme of ‘sociality in
Levinas’, a fifth paradox arises. After all, if
Levinas detaches himself in all sorts of ways from
the pursuit of ontological security and the
universal and abstract terms that go with it, this
tendency also affects his treatment of the notion of
sociality itself. It is inevitable that “Levinas’s
philosophical stand (…) gives sociality the role of
interrupting determination, while not forming a
separate realm or a determined essence that causes
the interruption” .
But, Rat then thinks, is that possible? Speaking of
a notion and then mean something non-determining?
Doesn’t formulating a notion come from the arsenal
of ontological security, just like formulating a
concept, discussing a theme, drafting a theory?
Surely all of this is by definition determinative in
nature and “part of a formal system of thought, and
as such, it presupposes a certain degree of
abstraction, which in its turn implies a unifying
ideal principle?” Formulating a notion would
run counter to the pre-eminently anarchic character
of sociality.
Here Rat comes across what is perhaps the most
fundamental paradox inherent in Levinas’s thinking.
Before she can continue with the treatment of
sociality in Levinas, Rat must first switch back to
the treatment of this determination paradox. The
question that this paradox poses is “how we can
speak in terms of notion, which usually means at
least some degree of determination, when we, along
with Levinas, need to sustain a resistance to the
determination of the relation to the other. In other
words, how can one disclose the resistance to
disclosure, without damaging it? Why and how can we
thematize the very impossibility of
thematization?” For Rat, this paradox gets to
the heart of the matter: “Now we have reached the
core of the problem: the difficulty of thematizing
the very impossibility of thematization”. For
Levinas himself, according to Rat, this question of
how to deal with that paradox was also of essential
importance, and so was his answer to that question.
Levinas “points out that thematizing the refusal of
thematization becomes a problem only if one
continues to think in the logic of thematization, by
applying the rules of unifying coherence applicable
to a thematizing language. What Levinas is trying to
underline is precisely the necessity of interrupting
thematization and its rules of coherence, in order
to resist its totalizing logic” .
From that answer and the instructions it contains,
Rat can switch back to her treatment of the notion
of sociality: “Our reading of sociality implies
precisely the breakdown of any unifying principle
that a universalized abstract concept would
presuppose”. “[T]he notion of sociality designates a
relation to the other(s) where the resistance to the
determination of the other(s) remains important”.
This can be achieved by seeing sociality as
something that precedes determination and
appropriation, because it has always been there.
New
language
When it comes to the search for new language,
Levinas, with few exceptions, does not create new
words. He generally uses familiar words, but he
gives them a new meaning. This applies, for example,
to the words ‘substitution’, ‘saying’ and some
personal pronouns. Inspired by Levinas, Rat gives a
new meaning to the familiar word combination ‘inside
out’.
Substitution
In discussing the blurring of the boundary between
outside and inside in Levinas’s conception of
subjectivity, we came across the word
‘substitution’. We saw that that word has a place in
Levinas’s attempts to relativize the mutual
determination of inside and outside. The word
denotes a shift of the self, “where the for itself
is replaced by the for the other”. This displacement
creates a different interpretation of the word
‘subjectivity’. In the essentialist view of the
ontological tradition, the self is at the heart of
its subjectivity; the substitution puts the self
outside that core. Rat calls it the “the deposition
of the self”.
Saying
The familiar word ‘saying’ takes on a special
meaning in Levinas when he places it next to the
word ‘said’ (that which has been said). In his
efforts to move beyond determination and
pigeonholing, Levinas redefines the relationship
between Saying (le dire) and the Said (le
dit). The Said stands for that which has
already been recorded, because it has been spoken.
Determination has already taken place. The Saying,
on the other hand, which Levinas has in mind,
precedes any recording. It is not so much “saying
something, but the simple ‘here I am’ or ‘here’s me’
(me voici) of the emerging self. ‘Saying saying
itself, without thematizing it, but exposing it
again.’(…) In this way, the exposure of the Saying,
its communication, is very different from
thematization. It does not show anything (in the way
the Said shows this as that), but it is contact
without contracting, without transmission, holding
nothing in common, but an opening in a response”.
Saying ís communication, but much more it is the
precondition for all communication.
In this context, Levinas himself still creates the
new word ‘un-saying’ (French: dédire). Rat: “The
Unsaying has the role of disrupting the way of
thinking in alternatives, by constantly rescuing the
Saying from being a mere correlate of the Said,
through an interruption, a protest”.
Personal
pronouns
Important familiar words to which Levinas gives new
meaning according to Rat are the personal pronouns.
This is interesting because they are also given a
lot of emphasis in the treatment of gender.
The blurring of the subject by substitution, and
Levinas’s distinction between the ‘self for oneself’
and the ‘self for the other’ acquire a counterpart
in grammar. Levinas connects those positions with
two grammatical cases: the for itself with the
nominative, the subject form; and the other with the
accusative, the direct object form. Thus
subjectivity in substitution is no longer thought in
terms of the words ego or I, but instead in terms of
the word me. Rat says: “Taken in purely grammatical
terms, the nominative form would characterize the
subject case, while the accusative would be the
object case, and would relate back to the nominative
(subject). However, Levinas proposes the subject as
accusative: ‘And it is the sense of the ‘oneself,’
that accusative that derives from no nominative; it
is the very fact of finding oneself while losing
oneself’”.
Inside
out
The observation that with Levinas the distinction
between the inner world and the outer world is
becoming looser, and his interpretation of the word
substitution as the interchange of self and other
inspires Rat to introduce the word ‘inside out’ as
an indication of what Levinas is referring to. She
explains this as follows: “Although Levinas never
discusses it in terms of inside-out dimension of the
relation to the other, he certainly calls attention,
as we have seen, to the self on the “hither side [en
deçà] of my identity.” For the purpose of this
thesis, it is important to bring forth this
inside-out dimension of the relation to the other,
so that later on, sociality cannot be confused with
a notion of social relations focusing on the
relation itself, or with a pure subjectivism
representing a relative point of view” .
Just to be sure, she adds that by using the term
inside out, she does not mean to restore the
dichotomy of inside and outside. It is precisely
about the “the very disruption of the two poles
“inside” and “outside,” “in” and “out,” without one
becoming another”.
Irritation
Levinas’s blurring of concepts can cause all sorts
of annoyances. I limit myself to Rat’s comments. In
addition, I briefly discuss the ontological
insecurity that his attack on ontological security
can evoke.
Rat speaks out in some places about the lack of
clarity in Levinas. For example, she is sometimes
forced, “due to a certain lack of clarity and some
inconsistencies in Levinas’s thought” , to make
choices of interpretation, and thereby distance
herself from some parts of his work. In general, she
then opts for the more radical and ontology-critical
interpretation. For example, she opposes the
traditional conception of sociality in dyadic terms
, which runs counter to many of Levinas’s
anti-dualistic views, but which can be found in his
work.
For thinkers other than Rat, ontology-critical
thinking sometimes goes too far, or runs the risk to
go too far. They show a perhaps healthy revulsion or
skepticism towards ontology-critical thinkers in
general. So it’s not just about Levinas, but also
about, for example, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard
or Latour. In her book A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna
Haraway points out the danger that attacks on
ontological security can trigger trauma and feelings
of insecurity. As mentioned, she is not referring
specifically to Levinas’s work, but given its
tendency we have observed, his work may contain that
risk. Haraway warns that in criticizing stable and
totalizing categories, “we risk lapsing into
boundless difference and giving up on the confusing
task of making partial, real connection” . There is
a danger that critical thinking à la Levinas will
degenerate into “a celebration of the reign of the
undetermined – of ontological insecurity as such –
which would be a reign of chaos. It is a (plea for
the) search for new life strategies which would not
exclude death from life but which would emphasize a
life within ambivalence”.
6.
Evaluation
Evaluating, you can say that Levinas in Rat’s
presentation and some segments in the gender
movement have a number of things in common. They
share the aspiration of letting go of ontological
security, and they share the motivation for that
aspiration. The question is to what extent the
results of that striving are the same.
Striving
for letting go of ontological security
Quite a bit is happening, both in Levinas and in
the gender movement; an attempt is made to let go of
ontological security, that much has become clear in
Sections 4 and 5. Looking at the thesis, I therefore
think that we can confirm it. Certainly if we adjust
it slightly by inserting the word ‘want’: Levinas
according to Rat and the gender discussion are
similar in the effects on ontological security that
they want to bring about. Because of the oppression
(for the gender movement) or the totalization (for
Levinas) that emanates from traditional ontology,
they want to breach pigeonholed thinking. Levinas
and the gender movement definitely have this
aspiration in common.
Which is not to say that it always works. But, you
could say, they also have those failures in common.
In the gender movement, the rejection of existing
pigeonholes appears in many cases to lead to new
ones. And in his struggle against ontological
security, Levinas also understands that it is not
possible to completely dispense with determinative
order thinking and theory. Rat rightly remarks that
“a full escape from the theoretical is impossible,
and Levinas knows this well”.
Motivation
for that striving
What the gender movement and Rat’s portrayal of
Levinas also share is the motivation for that
endeavour. They agree that the determination and
constraint that ontological security entails costs
us too much.
The gender movement points to the constraint of
traditional narrow definitions of identity and
subjectivity, stemming from a desire for ontological
security. The gender activists’s critique focuses on
efforts to achieve ontological security, described
by Rossdale as efforts “to securitize subjectivity,
which means an intensified search for one stable
identity (regardless of its actual existence)”.
Rossdale believes that sharply demarcating
subjectivity and identity comes at a cost: this is
done “along axes of self and other in ways which
achieve ontological security at the expense of those
others”. That is, through exclusion and violence.
After all, he quotes Catarina Kinnvall, “[t]he
construction of self and other is (…) almost always
a way to define superior and inferior beings.
Increasing ontological security for one person or
group is thus likely to decrease security for those
not included in the nationalist and/or religious
discourse”. And Frank Dekkers, information officer
at Transvisie Go, states that if children are not
free to experience their identity, this generally
leads to more problems than solutions.
The Levinasian keyword for designating the cost of
ontological security is totalization. In many places
Levinas speaks of totalizing ontology that dominates
our thinking and life. As we saw, the division of
the world into categories or opposites that refer to
each other has totalizing features for Levinas,
precisely because those categories and opposites
form a closed world with each other. It is for this
reason, Rat says, that in Totality and Infinity,
“the break with thinking in dichotomies is expressed
in the form of a break with totality, since an
all-embracing, totalizing gaze is what makes the
dichotomies function as they refer back to one
another”.
And how does this evil effect of totalization take
place? Because totalization names everything in
terms of a mediating larger whole and thus blocks
communication between people – described by Levinas
as the direct and unmediated “exposure of one to the
other”. For real communication – or real speaking –
“the escape from a totalizing system of
thematization” is necessary. As we saw, Rat
also regularly speaks of ‘disruption’ . You could
call it a liberating conception of sociality.
Result
of that endeavor
What the fight against ontological security aims
at, both in the gender movement and in Levinas,
according to Rat, is: liberation from ‘forms of
closure’, in Rossdale’s terms . To what extent is
that aspiration being fulfilled in the gender
movement and in Levinas?
The gender dynamics offers real examples of
liberation. In response to the introduction of
gender-neutral film prizes, the Dutch newspaper NRC
writes in its commentary that it is striking again
and again how logical gender developments in society
actually are “at a time when a growing group of
people no longer feel at home with narrowly defined
gender identities” . We’ve already read about Ian
Morris and the relief she felt. Another transgender
woman, Denny Agassi, says of herself that she is not
taken seriously everywhere after coming out, but
that does not alter the fact that “I know myself to
be real”. In an article about the increasing gender
fluidity, Jonathan Walford of the Fashion History
Museum in Cambridge says that he no longer adheres
to the distinction between men’s and women’s clothes
when it comes to fashion: “It was a serious life
hack to discover that we can make our own rules”.
With regard to the work of Levinas, I do not know
of such grateful testimonies of liberation from
forms of closure. That is why I sometimes wonder: is
it perhaps too intellectual what he is doing, can
such language as he uses still cover reality? But
there is something to that. After all, if the gender
movement – which can indeed boast of concrete
examples of liberation – thinks about what it is
doing and what else is needed, it appears to end up
with exactly what Levinas is doing.
For example, Rossdale mentions as the aim of his
article to get a feeling for possibilities to flee
from the terrain of ontological security/insecurity.
Because “aspirations toward (or claims of)
ontological security enact significant limitations
(…) insofar as they close down the question of the
subject precisely at the point where it might more
productively be kept open” . Reading Levinas
according to Rat’s interpretation is useful here.
And Judith Butler “restates the problems of
ontological security in a manner which celebrates
precisely that which Laing rejects, acknowledging
the subject’s instability, non-autonomy and
biographical incompleteness as a potent source for
ethical reflection” . “The pre-established or prior
contours of the subject are a limited and limiting
space from which to begin ethical reflection” .
Rossdale mentions that Butler was partly inspired by
Levinas in this.
I therefore conclude that, in their shared pursuit
of resistance to forms of closure in favor of a new
conception of subjectivity, Queer Theory and
interpretations of Levinas will, as yet, be able to
continue to fertilize each other.
Literature
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