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Giving an Account of Oneself

Author(s): Judith Butler


Source: Diacritics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 22-40
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566427
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Diacritics.

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GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF
ONESELF

JUDITHBUTLER

In recent years, the critique of poststructuralism,itself loquacious, has held that the
postulationof a subjectwho is not self-groundingunderminesthe possibility of respon-
sibility and, in particular,of giving an account of oneself. Critics have arguedthat the
various critical reconsiderationsof the subject, including those that do away with the
theory of the subjectaltogether,cannotprovidethe basis for an accountof responsibil-
ity, thatif we are, as it were, divided,ungrounded,or incoherentfromthe start,it will be
impossible to grounda notion of personalor social responsibilityon the basis of such a
view. I would like to try to rebutthis view in what follows, and to show how a theoryof
subject-formationthat acknowledgesthe limits of self-knowledgecan work in the ser-
vice of a conception of ethics and, indeed, of responsibility.If the subjectis opaqueto
itself, it is not thereforelicensed to do what it wants or to ignore its relationsto others.
Indeed,if it is precisely by virtueof its relationsto othersthatit is opaqueto itself, and
if those relationsto others are precisely the venue for its ethical responsibility,then it
may well follow that it is precisely by virtue of the subject's opacity to itself that it
sustainssome of its most importantethical bonds.
In all the talk about the social constructionof the subject, we have perhapsover-
looked the fact that the very being of the self is dependentnot just on the existence of
the Other-in its singularity,as Levinas would have it, though surelythat-but also on
the possibility that the normativehorizon within which the Other sees and listens and
knows andrecognizes is also subjectto a criticalopening.This opening calls into ques-
tion the limits of establishedregimes of truth,where a certain risking of the self be-
comes, as Levinas claims, the sign of virtue [see Foucault].Whetheror not the Otheris
singular,the Otheris recognized and confers recognition througha set of norms that
governrecognizability.So whereasthe Othermay be singular,if not radicallypersonal,
the normsare to some extent impersonaland indifferent,and they introducea disorien-
tationof perspectivefor the subjectin the midst of recognitionas an encounter.For if I
understandmyself to be conferringrecognition on you, for instance, then I take seri-
ously that the recognition comes from me. But in the moment that I realize that the
terms by which I confer recognitionare not mine alone, that I did not singlehandedly
make them, then I am, as it were, dispossessedby the languagethatI offer.In a sense, I
submit to a norm of recognition when I offer recognition to you, so that I am both
subjectedto that normand the agency of its use.
As Hegel would have it, recognitioncannot be unilaterallygiven. In the moment
that I give it, I am potentially given it, and the form by which I offer it is one that
potentiallyis given to me. In this sense, one mightsay,I can neverofferit, in the Hegelian
sense, as a pureoffering, since I am receiving it, at least potentiallyand structurally,in
the moment,in the act, of giving. We might ask, as Levinas surelyhas, whatkind of gift
this is thatreturnsto me so quickly,thatneverreally leaves my hands.Is it the case that
recognitionconsists, as it does for Hegel, in a reciprocalact whereby I recognize that

22 diacritics 31.4: 22-40


the Otheris structuredin the same way that I am, and I recognize that the Other also
makes, or can make, this very recognitionof sameness?Or is thereperhapsan encoun-
ter with alterityhere that is not reducibleto sameness?If it is the latter,how are we to
understandthis alterity?On the one hand, the Hegelian Otheris always found outside,
or at least it is first found outside, and only laterrecognizedto be constitutive.This has
led critics of Hegel to conclude that the Hegelian subjecteffects a wholesale assimila-
tion of what is externalto it into a set of internalfeaturesof itself, and thatits character-
istic gesture is one of appropriation.There are other readingsof Hegel, however,that
insist thatthe relationto the Otheris ecstatic,1thatthe "I"repeatedlyfinds itself outside
itself, and thatit cannotput an end to this repeatedupsurgeof its own exteriority.I am,
as it were, always other to myself, and there is no final momentin which my returnto
myself takes place. In fact, the encountersI undergo,if we are to follow the Phenom-
enology of Spirit,arethose by which I am invariablytransformed;recognitionbecomes
the processby which I become otherthanwhatI was and,therefore,also, the processby
which I cease to be able to returnto what I was. Thereis, then, a constitutiveloss in the
process of recognition,a transformationthat does not bring all that once was forward
with it, one that forecloses upon the past in an irreversibleway. Moreover,it is one in
which the "returnto self' becomes impossible for anotherreason as well: there is no
stayinginside. I am compelled andcomportedoutsidemyself;I find thatthe only way to
know myself is precisely througha mediationthattakes place outside of me, exteriorto
me, in a convention or a normthatI did not make, in which I cannotdiscern myself as
an authoror an agent of its making.In this sense, then, the subjectof recognitionis one
for whom a vacillationbetween loss and ecstasy is inevitable.The possibility of the "I,"
of speakingandknowing the "I,"resides in a perspectivethatdislocatesthe first-person
perspectivewhose very condition it supplies.
The perspectivethatboth conditionsand disorientsme from the very possibility of
my own perspectiveis not reducibleto the perspectiveof the Other,since the perspec-
tive is also what governs the possibility of my recognizing the Other,and the Other
recognizing me. We are not mere dyads on our own, since our exchange is mediatedby
language,by conventions,by a sedimentationof normsthat are social in character.So
how are we to understandthe impersonalperspectiveby which our personalencounter
is occasioned and disoriented?
Although the Hegelian account has been criticized for its insistence on the dyad,
the Subjectand its Other,it is importantto see what the strugglefor recognitionreveals
aboutthe inadequacyof the dyad as a frame of reference.After all, what follows from
this scene, eventually,is a system of customs and, hence, a social accountof the norms
by which reciprocalrecognition might be sustainedin ways that are more stable than
the life-and-deathstrugglewould imply. When we ask, by virtue of what exteriorityis
recognitionconferred?,we find thatit cannotbe the particularendowmentof the Other
who is able to know and to recognize me, since thatOtherwill also have to rely upon a
certaincriterionto establish what will and will not be recognizable,a frame for seeing
andjudging. In this sense, if the Otherconfers recognition-and we have yet to know
precisely in what that consists-it does this not primarilyby virtue of special internal
capacities. There is already not only an epistemological frame within which the face
appears,but an operationof power as well, since only by virtue of certain kinds of
anthropocentricdispositions and culturalframes will a given face seem to be a human
face to any one of us. After all, under what conditions do some individualsacquire a
face, a legible and visible face, and others do not? There is a language that frames the

1. See Rotenstreich,"Onthe Ecstatic Sourcesof the Conceptof Alienation";Nancy, Hegel:


TheRestlessnessof theNegative.

diacritics / winter 2001 23


encounter,and embeddedin thatlanguagea set of normsconcerningwhat will and will
not constituterecognizability.This is Foucault'spoint and, in a way, his supplementto
Hegel, when he asks, as he does, "Whatcan I become, given the contemporaryorderof
being?"He understandsthatthis "order"conditionsthe possibility of his becoming, and
thata regime of truth,in his words, constrainswhatwill and will not constitutethe truth
of his self, the truthhe offers abouthimself, the truthby which he might be known and
become recognizablyhuman,the accounthe might give of himself.
If the social theory of recognition,however,insists upon the impersonaloperation
of the normin constitutingrecognizability,a critiquefrom anotherdirectiondemandsa
rethinking of singularity. In a Levinasian vein-though perhaps more decidedly
Arendtian-the ItalianphilosopherAdrianaCavareroarguesthat the questionto ask is
not "what"we are, as if the task were simply to fill in the content of our personhood.
The questionis not primarilya reflexive one, as it is for Foucault,when he asks, "what
can I become?"Forher,the very structureof address,thatthroughwhich the questionis
posed, gives us the clue to understandingthe significanceof the questionitself. Forher,
the questionmost centralto recognitionis a directone, and it is addressedto the Other:
"who are you?"This question assumes that there is an Otherbefore us, one we do not
know,whom we cannotfully apprehend,one whose uniquenessand nonsubstitutability
set a limit to the model of reciprocalrecognitionoffered within the Hegelian scheme,
and to the possibility of knowing anothermore generally.Cavareroarguesthat we are
beings who are, of necessity, exposed to one another,and that our political situation
consists in partin learninghow best to handlethis constantand necessaryexposure.In
a sense, this theory of the "outside"to the subjectradicalizesthe ecstatic trendin the
Hegelian position. In her view, I am not, as it were, an interiorsubject, closed upon
myself, solipsistic, posing questions of myself alone. I exist in an importantsense for
you, and by virtueof you. If I have lost the conditionsof address,if I have no "you"to
address,then I have lost "myself."In her view, one can only tell an autobiography,one
can only referencean "I"in relationto a "you":without the "you,"my own story be-
comes impossible.
For Cavarero,this position implies a critiqueof conventionalways of understand-
ing sociality, and in this sense she reverses the progressionwe saw in Hegel. If the
Phenomenologyof Spiritmoves from the scenarioof the dyad towarda social theoryof
recognition,for Cavarero,andin a way, for Levinasas well, it is necessaryto groundthe
social in the dyadic encounter.She writes:

the you comes beforethe we, beforetheplural you and beforethe they. Symp-
tomatically,the you is a termthat is not at home in modernand contemporary
developmentsof ethics andpolitics. The "you"is ignoredby the individualis-
tic doctrines, which are too preoccupiedwithpraising the rights of the I, and
the "you" is maskedby a Kantianform of ethics that is only capable of staging
an I that addresses itself as a familiar "you."Neither does the "you"find a
homein theschools of thoughtto whichindividualismis opposed-these schools
reveal themselvesfor the mostpart to be affectedby a moralisticvice, which,
in orderto avoidfalling into the decadenceof the I, avoids the contiguityof the
you, andprivileges collective,pluralpronouns.Indeed,many "revolutionary"
movements(which rangefrom traditionalcommunismto thefeminism of sis-
terhood)seem to share a curious linguistic code based on the intrinsicmoral-
ity of pronouns.Thewe is alwayspositive, theplural you is a possible ally, the
they has theface of an antagonist,the I is unseemly,and the you is, of course,
superfluous.[90-91]

24
For Cavarero,the "I"encountersthe Othernot as a specific set of contents,but as a
being fundamentallyexposed, visible, seen, existing in a bodily way and of necessity in
a domain of appearance.It is, as it were, this exposure that I am that constitutes my
singularity.I cannot will it away, for it is a featureof my very corporealityand, in this
sense, my life, and yet it is not that over which I can have control. One might borrow
Heideggerianparlanceto explain Cavarero'sview and say that no one can be exposed
for me, thatI am, in this way, nonsubstitutable.But does the social theoryderivedfrom
Hegel, in its insistence on the impersonalperspectiveof the norm,establishmy substi-
tutability?Am I, in relationto the norm, substitutable?And yet, as a being constituted
bodily in the public sphere,arguesCavarero,I am exposed, and this is as much a partof
my publicity, if not my sociality, as the way that I become recognizable throughthe
operationof norms.
Cavarero'sargumentlimits the claims of Hegelian sociality upon us, but it also
offers directionfor a differenttheory of recognition.Thereare at least two points to be
made here: the first has to do with our fundamentaldependencyon the Other,the fact
that we cannot exist without addressingthe Otherand without being addressedby the
Other,thatthereis no wishing away ourfundamentalsociality.(Youcan see thatI resort
here to the pluralwe, even as Cavarreroadvises against it, precisely because I am not
convinced that we must abandonit.) The second, however, limits the first point. No
matterhow much we each desire recognition and requireit, we are not thereforepre-
cisely the same as the Other,and not everythingcounts as recognitionin the same way.
Although I have arguedthat no one can recognize anothersimply by virtue of special
psychological or critical skills, and thattherearenormsthatconditionthe possibility of
recognition,it still mattersthatwe feel more properlyrecognizedby some people than
we do by others.And this differencecannotbe explainedsolely throughrecourseto the
notionthatthereis a variableoperationof the normat work in these instances.Cavarero
is braverthanI am and remarksthatthereis an irreducibilityto each of our beings, one
which becomes clear in the distinct stories we have to tell, so that any effort to fully
identify with a collective "we"will fail. The way thatCavareroputs it is, "whatwe have
called an altruisticethics of relationdoes not supportempathy,identification,or confu-
sions. Ratherthis ethic desires a you thatis trulyan other,in her uniquenessand distinc-
tion. No matterhow much you are similarand consonant,says this ethic, your story is
nevermy story.No matterhow muchthe largertraitsof ourlife-stories aresimilar,I still
do not recognize myself in you and, even less, in the collective we" [92]. The unique-
ness of the Otheris exposed to me, but mine is also exposed to her, and this does not
mean we are the same, but only thatwe areboundto one anotherby what differentiates
us, namely,our singularity.
The notion of singularityis very often bound up with existential romanticismand
with a claim of authenticity,but I gatherthatprecisely because it is withoutcontent,my
singularityhas some propertiesin common with yours, and so is, to some extent, a
substitutableterm. In other words, even as she argues that singularitysets a limit to
substitutability,she also arguesthat singularityhas no defining content other than the
irreducibilityof exposure,of being this body exposed to a publicitythatis variablyand
alternatelyintimateand anonymous.But Hegel's analysis of the "this"points out thatit
never specifies withoutgeneralizing,thatthe term,in its very substitutability,undercuts
the specificity it seeks to indicate.Insofaras this fact of exposureis a collective condi-
tion and characterizesus all equally, it not only reinstalls the "we" but establishes a
certain principle of substitutabilityat the core of singularity.You may think that this
conclusion is too happily Hegelian, but I would like to interrogateit further,since I
think it has ethical consequences for the problematicof giving an account of oneself,
and of giving an account for another.This exposure, for instance, is not precisely

diacritics / winter 2001 25


narratable.I cannotgive an accountof it, even as it structuresany accountI might give.
The normsby which I seek to make myself recognizableare not precisely mine. They
are not born with me; the temporalityof their emergence does not coincide with the
temporalityof my own life. So in living my life as a recognizablebeing, I live a vector
of temporalities,one of which has my death as its terminus,but anotherof which con-
sists of the social temporalityof norms by which my recognizabilityis established.
These normsare, as it were, indifferentto me, my life, and my death.This lattertempo-
rality interruptsthe time of my living, but it is, paradoxically,this interruption,this
disorientationof the perspectiveof my life, this instanceof an indifferencein sociality,
that sustainsmy living.
In a sense, my accountof myself is never fully mine, and is never fully for me, and
I would like to suggest thatthis "interruption" of the accountalways takesplace through
a loss of the sense of its being mine in any exclusive way. This interruptionand dispos-
session of my perspectiveas mine can take place in differentways. There is the opera-
tion of a norm, invariablysocial, that conditions what will and will not be a recogniz-
able account. And there can be no account of myself that does not, to some extent,
conform to norms that govern the humanlyrecognizable,or that negotiate these terms
in some ways, with various risks following from that negotiation.But, as I will try to
explain later,it is also the case thatI give an accountto someone, andthatthe addressee
of the account,real or imaginary,also functionsto interruptthe sense of this accountof
myself as mine. If it is an accountof myself, and it is an accountingto someone, then I
am compelledto give the accountaway,to send it off, to be dispossessedof it at the very
momentthatI establishit as my account.No accounttakes place outsidethe structureof
address,even if the addresseeremainsimplicit and unnamed,anonymousand unspeci-
fied.
If I try to give an account of myself, if I try to make myself recognizable and
understandable,then I mightbegin with a narrativeaccountof my life, butthis narrative
will be disorientedby what is not mine, or what is not mine alone. And I will, to some
degree, have to make myself substitutablein orderto make myself recognizable.The
narrativeauthorityof the "I"must give way to the perspectiveand temporalityof a set
of normsthatcontest the singularityof my story.
We can surely still tell our stories-and therewill be manyreasonsto do precisely
that-but we will not be able to be very authoritativewhen we try to give an account
with a narrativestructure.The "I"cannot tell the story of its own emergence, and the
conditions of its own possibility, without in some sense bearing witness to a state of
affairsto which one could not have been present,priorto one's own becoming, and so
narratingthat which one cannotknow. Fictional narrationrequiresno referentto work
as narrative,and we might say thatthe irrecoverabilityof the referent,its foreclosureto
us, is the very conditionof possibility for an accountof myself, if thataccountis to take
narrativeform. It does not destroy narrativebut producesit precisely in a fictional di-
rection. So to be more precise, I would have to say thatI can tell the story of my origin
and even tell it again and again, in several ways; but the story of my origin I tell is not
one for which I am accountable,andit cannotestablishmy accountability.At least, let's
hope not, since, over wine usually, I tell it in various ways, and the accounts are not
always consistent with one another.Indeed, it may be that to have an origin means
precisely to have several possible versions of the origin-I take it that this is part of
what Nietzsche meant by the operationof genealogy. Any one of those are possible
narratives,but of no single one can I say with certaintythat it is true.
Indeed,I can try to give narrativeform to certainconditionsof my emergence,try,
as it were, to tell a story about human exposure to the Other,what it was to be this
emergentbody in that public sphere,try to tell a story about norms as well, when and

26
where I learnedthem, whatI thoughtof them, which ones became incorporatedat once,
and in what way. At this point the story that I tell, one that may even have a certain
necessity, cannot assume thatits referentcan adequatelytake narrativeform. (The nar-
rativeworks as allegory,attemptingto give a sequentialaccountfor that which cannot,
finally, be graspedin sequentialterms, for that which has a temporalityor a spatiality
that can only be denied or displaced or transmutedwhen it assumes narrativeform.
Indeed, it may be that what I am perhapsboldly calling the referenthere works as a
constantthreatto narrativeauthorityeven when it functions as the paradoxicalcondi-
tion for a narrative,a narrativethatgives provisionaland fictive sequenceto thatwhich
necessarilyeludes that construction.)
There are, then, several ways in which the account I may give of myself has the
potentialto break apartand to become undermined.My efforts to give an account of
myself founder in part upon the fact of my exposure to you, an exposure in spoken
language and, in a different way, in written address as well [see Felman]. This is a
condition of my narrationthat I cannot fully thematize within any narrativeI might
provide,and thatdoes not fully yield to a sequentialaccount.Thereis a bodily referent
here, a condition of me, that I can point to, but I cannotnarrateprecisely, even though
thereareno doubtstoriesaboutwhere my body went andwhat it did anddid not do. But
there is also a history to my body for which I can have no recollection, and there is as
well a partof bodily experience-what is indexed by the word "exposure"-that only
with difficulty,if at all, can assumenarrativeform. On the otherhand,exposure,like the
operationof the norm,constitutesthe conditionsof my own emergenceandknowability,
and I cannotbe presentto a temporalitythatprecedes my own capacityfor self-reflec-
tion. This means thatmy narrativebegins in media res, when many things have already
takenplace to make me and my story in languagepossible. And it means thatmy story
always arriveslate. I am always recuperating,reconstructing,even as I producemyself
differentlyin the very act of telling. My accountof myself is partial,hauntedby thatfor
which I have no definitive story. I cannot explain exactly why I have emerged in this
way, and my effortsat narrativereconstructionare always undergoingrevision.Thereis
that in me and of me for which I can give no account.But does this mean thatI am not,
in the moralsense, accountablefor who I am andfor whatI do?And if I find thatdespite
my best efforts,a certainopacity persistsandI cannotmakemyself fully accountableto
you, is this ethical failure?Or is it a failurethatgives rise to a certainethical disposition
in the place of a full and satisfying notion of narrativeaccountability?
It may be that a certainability to affirmwhat is contingentand incoherentin iden-
tity allows one to affirmothers who may or may not "mirror"one's own constitution.
After all, the mirroralways tacitly operatesin Hegel's concept of reciprocalrecogni-
tion: I must somehow see that the Otheris like me, that the Otheris makingthis same
recognitionof our likeness. There is lots of light in the Hegelian room, and the mirrors
have the happy coincidence of usually being windows as well [see Abrams;Kearney].
In this sense, we might consider a certainpost-Hegelianreadingof the scene of recog-
nition in which precisely my own opacity to myself occasions my capacity to confer a
certainkind of recognitionon others.It would be perhapsan ethics based on our shared,
and invariable,partialblindness about ourselves. The recognitionthat one is, at every
turn,not quite the same as what one thinks that one is, might imply, in turn, a certain
patience for others that suspends the demandthat they be selfsame at every moment.
Suspendingthe demandfor self-identityor, more particularly,for complete coherence,
seems to me to counter a certain ethical violence that demandsthat we manifest and
maintainself-identityat all times and requirethatothersdo the same. For subjectswho
live in time this is a hard norm to satisfy, if not impossible. For subjects whose very
capacity to recognize and become recognized is occasioned by a norm which has a

diacritics / winter 2001 27


temporalityother than that of a first-personperspective, a vector of temporalitythat
disorients one's own, it follows that one can only give and take recognition on the
conditionthatone becomes disorientedfromoneself by somethingwhich is not oneself,
thatone undergoesa decenteringand "fails"to achieve self-identity.
Can a new sense of ethics emergefromthatinevitableethical failure?I suggest that
it can, and that it would be spawned from a certain willingness to acknowledge the
limits of acknowledgmentitself, thatwhen we claim to know andpresentourselves, we
will fail in some ways thatare neverthelessessential to who we are, and thatwe cannot
expect anythingelse from others.If we speakaboutan acknowledgmentof the limits of
acknowledgmentitself, are we then assumingthatacknowledgmentin the first sense is
full andcomplete in its determinationof the limits of acknowledgmentin the second?In
otherwords, do we know in an unqualifiedway that acknowledgmentis always quali-
fied? Is the first kind of knowing qualified by the qualificationthat it knows? This
would have to be the case, for to acknowledgeone's own opacityor thatof anotherdoes
not transformopacity into transparency.To know the limits of acknowledgmentis a
self-limiting act and, as a result,to experiencethe limits of knowingitself. This can, by
the way, constitutea disposition of humility,and of generosity,since I will need to be
forgivenfor what I cannotfully know, what I could not have fully known, and I will be
under a similar obligation to offer forgiveness to others who are also constituted in
partialopacity to themselves.
If the identitywe say we are cannotpossibly captureus, and marksimmediatelyan
excess and opacity that fall outside the termsof identity,then any effort made "to give
an account of oneself' will have to fail in orderto approachbeing true.As we ask to
know the Other,or ask thatthe Othersay, finally, who he or she is, it will be important
not to expect an answerthat will ever satisfy. By not pursuingsatisfaction,and by let-
ting the questionremainopen, even enduring,we let the Otherlive, since life might be
understoodas precisely that which exceeds any account we may try to give of it. If
letting the Other live is part of a new definition of recognition, then this version of
recognitionwould be one thatis basedless on knowledgethanon an apprehensionof its
limits. In a sense, the ethical stance consists in asking the question, "Who are you?,"
andcontinuingto ask the questionwithoutany expectationof a full or final answer.This
Otherto whom I pose this questionwill not be capturedby any answerthatmight arrive
to satisfy the question.So if thereis, in the question,a desirefor recognition,this will be
a desire which is underan obligation to keep itself alive as desire, and not to resolve
itself throughsatisfaction."Oh,now I know who you are":at this moment, I cease to
addressyou, or to be addressedby you. Lacaninfamouslycautioned,"donot cede upon
your desire."This is a complicatedclaim, since he does not say thatyour desire should
or must be satisfied.He says only thatdesire should not be stopped.Indeed,sometimes
satisfactionis the very means by which one cedes upon desire, but it can also be the
means by which one turnsagainstit, arrangingfor its death.
Hegel was the one who linkeddesire to recognition,providingthe formulationthat
was recastby Hyppoliteas the desire to desire.And it was in the context of Hyppolite's
seminarthat Lacan was exposed to this formulation.Although Lacan will argue that
misrecognitionis a necessaryby-productof desire, it may be that an accountof recog-
nition, in all its errancy,can still work in relation to the problem of desire. For us to
revise recognition as an ethical project, it would have to become, in principle,
unsatisfiable.For Hegel, it is importantto remember,the desire to be, the desire to
persistin one's own being, a doctrinearticulatedfirstby Spinoza,is only fulfilledthrough
the desire to be recognized. But if recognition works to captureor arrestdesire, then
what has happenedto the desire to be and to persist in one's own being? In a sense,
Spinozamarksfor us the desireto live, to persist,upon which any theoryof recognition

28
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is built.And because the termsby which recognitionoperatesmay seek to fix and cap-
ture us, they run the risk of arrestingdesire, and of putting a certainend to life. As a
result, it would be importantto consider that any theory of recognitionwould have to
give an account of the desire for recognition,and recognize that desire sets the limits
and the conditions for the operationof recognition itself. Indeed, a certain desire to
persist, we might say, following Spinoza, underwritesrecognition, such that forms of
recognitionor, indeed,forms of judgmentthatseek to relinquishor destroythe desireto
persist,the desire for life itself, undercutthe very conditionsof recognitionitself.
In this sense, recognitioncould not be reducedto makinganddeliveringjudgments
aboutothers,althoughthe latterwould be obligatedto honorthe conditionsfor recogni-
tion. In fact, recognitionsometimesobligates us to suspendjudgmentin orderto appre-
hend the Other.We sometimes move too quickly to summarizeanother'slife, andthink
thatthe ethical postureis, and must be, the one thatjudges, that can show not only that
it can and will makejudgments,but thatit canjustify thejudgmentsthatit makes.What
is the scene of recognition,however,that is presupposedby the act of judgment?And
does recognitionprovidea broaderframeworkwithinwhich moraljudgmentitself might
be assessed? Does it allow us to ask the question, "Whatis the value of moraljudg-
ment?,"in a way that recalls Nietzsche's question, "Whatis the value of morality?"
When he posed it, he also posited a value in the very way that the question was posed,
for if thereis a value to morality,it is one thatwe find outside of morality,by which we
gauge morality,thus assertingthat moralitydoes not have a monopoly on the field of
values.
The scene of moraljudgment,when it is thejudgmentof personsthatis at issue, is
invariablyone which establishesa clearmoraldistancebetweenthe one who judges and
the one who is judged. If you consider, for instance, Simone de Beauvoir's question,
"MustWe Bur Sade?,"mattersbecome more complicated.It turnsout that it may be
that only throughan experience of the Otherunderconditions of suspendedjudgment
do we finally become capableof an ethicalreflectionon the humanityof the Other,even
when thathumanityhas turnedagainstitself. And thoughI am certainlynot arguingthat
we ought never to makejudgments-they are necessary for political and personallife
alike: I make them, and I will-I think that it would be important,in rethinkingthe
termsof the cultureof ethics, to rememberthatnot all ethical relationsare reducibleto
acts of judgment.The capacity to make andjustify moraljudgments does not exhaust
the sphereof ethics, of eitherethical obligationor ethical relationality.Indeed,priorto
judging an Other, we must be in some relation to him or her, and this relation will
ground and inform the ethical judgments we finally do make. We will, in some way,
have to ask the question, "Who are you?" If we forget that we are relatedto those we
condemn,even those we mustcondemn,thenwe lose the chanceto be ethicallyeducated
or "addressed"by a considerationof who they areandwhattheirpersonhoodsays about
the range of humanpossibility thatexists, and even to prepareourselves for or against
such possibilities. We also forget that judging an Other is a mode of address:even
punishmentsarepronouncedanddeliveredto the face of the Other,requiringthatOther's
bodily presence.Hence, if thereis an ethic to the address,andjudgment,includinglegal
judgment,is oneform of address, then the value ofjudgmentwill be conditionedby the
form of address it takes.
Consider that one way we become responsible and self-knowing is precisely by
deferringjudgments,since condemnation,denunciation,and excoriationwork as quick
ways to posit an ontological difference between judge andjudged, and even to purge
oneself of anotherso that condemnationbecomes the way in which we establish the
Otheras nonrecognizable.In this sense, condemnationcan workprecisely againstself-
knowledgeinasmuchas it moralizesa self througha disavowal.Althoughself-knowledge

30
is surely limited, that is not a reason to turn against it as a project;but condemnation
tends to do precisely this, seeking to purge and externalizeone's own opacity, and in
this sense failing to own its own limitations,providingno felicitous basis for a reciprocal
recognitionof humanbeings as constitutivelylimited.
Similarly,condemnationis very often an act that not only "gives up" on the one
condemned,but seeks to inflict a violence upon the condemnedin the name of "ethics."
Kafka offers several instances of how this kind of ethical violence works. We might
consider in this regardthe fate of Georg in the story called "The Judgment,"in which
his fathercondemnshim to deathby drowning;Georg is rushedfrom the room, as if by
the force of the utteranceitself, andover the side of the bridge.Of course, thatutterance
has to appealto a psyche disposed to satisfy the father'swish to see the son dead, as the
story also confirms,so the condemnationcannotwork unilaterallyin that sense. Georg
must take the condemnationas the principle of his own conduct. Georg's suicidal im-
pulse, however,does not take away from the fact thatif condemnationdoes seek, in the
extreme, to annihilatethe Other,then it not only, quite obviously, destroys the condi-
tions for autonomy,but erodes the capacityof the addressedsubjectfor both self-reflec-
tion and social recognition,two practicesthat are, I would argue,essential to any sub-
stantive account of ethical life. It also, of course, turns the moralist into a murderer.
When denunciationworks to paralyzeand deratifythe critical capacitiesof the subject
to whom it is delivered, it underminesor even destroys the very capacities of the ad-
dresseethatareneededfor ethical reflectionandconduct,sometimesleadingto suicidal
conclusions. This suggests that recognition must be sustainedfor ethical judgment to
work productively;thatis, for it to come to informthe self-reflective deliberationsof a
subjectwho standsa chance of acting differentlyin the future,it must be a recognition
in the service of sustainingand promotinglife. In a real sense, we do not survive with-
out being addressed,which means thatthe context of addresscan and should provide a
sustainingconditionfor ethical deliberation,judgment,and conduct.In the same way, I
would argue,the institutionsof punishmentand imprisonmenthave the responsibility
to sustainthe very lives thatentertheirdomainsprecisely because they have the power,
in the name of "ethics,"to damage and destroylives with impunity.
So how do these concernsrelateto the questionof whetherone can give an account
of oneself? Let us rememberthat one gives an account of oneself to another,and that
every accountingtakes place in the context of an address.I give an accountof myself to
you. Further,the context of address, what we might call the rhetorical context for
responsibility,means thatI am engaging not only in a reflexive activity,thinkingabout
and reconstructingmyself, but also in speakingto you and thus institutinga relationin
languageas I go. The ethical valence of the situationis thus not restrictedto the question
of whether or not my account of myself is adequate.One must also ask whether in
giving the account,I establisha relationshipto the one to whom my accountis addressed,
and whether both parties to the interlocutionare engaged in a sustaining address, a
revised scene of reciprocalrecognitionin which full accountabilityis neitherexpected
norprovided.Withinthe contextof the transference,the "you"is often a defaultstructure
of address,2the elaborationof a "you"in an imaginarydomain,and an addressthrough
which prior,andmorearchaic,formsof addressareconveyed.In the transference,speech
works primarilynot to convey information(includingthe informationabout my life),
but as the conduitfor a desire, andas a rhetoricalstructurethatseeks to alteror act upon
the interlocutoryscene itself. Psychoanalysishas alwaysunderstoodthis dualdimension
of the self-disclosing speech act, that it is, on the one hand, an effort to reveal oneself

2. I am gratefulto BarbaraJohnson'sforthcomingworkon Baudelaire,MotherTongues:


Sexuality,Trials,Motherhood, for thenotionof a defaultstructureof address.
Translation,

diacritics / winter 2001 31


and, on the other,the constitutingof a relationshipon the basis of a transference[see
Felman].
If we considerhow narrativefunctions,then, withinthe contextof the transference,
it is not only a meansby which informationis conveyed, but a rhetoricaldeploymentof
language that seeks to act upon the Other,motivatedby a desire or wish that takes an
allegoricalform in the interlocutoryscene of the analysis. The "I"is not only narrated,
but also posited, andin ways, and for purposes,thatvery often confoundthe intentional
aims of speaking. The "you" is variable and imaginary,and it posits an aim for the
trajectoryof a desirethatcannotbe fully transparentto the one who uses languageto tell
its story.So "I"tell a story to "you,"and we might considerthe details of the story that
I tell. But if I tell them to you in the context of a transference,I am doing something
with this telling, and this telling is doing somethingwith me; it is ridinga desire whose
aims are not fully transparentto me.
Withinsome psychoanalyticcircles, doctrines,andpractices,one of the statedaims
of psychoanalysisis to offer the client the chanceto put togethera storyaboutherself,to
recollect the past, to interweavethe events-or, rather,the wishes-of childhood with
laterevents, to try to make sense throughnarrativemeans of what this life has been and
what it might become. Indeed, some have argued that the normative goal of
psychoanalysisis to permitthe client to tell a story aboutherself, to producea coherent
narrative,a goal that seeks to satisfy the wish to know oneself, and to know oneself in
part through a narrativereconstructionin which the interventionsby the analyst or
therapistcontributein many ways to the making of the story. Roy Schafer has surely
arguedthis position,andwe see it in severalversionsof psychoanalyticpracticedescribed
by clinicians in scholarlyand popularvenues.
But whatif the narrativereconstructionof a life cannotbe the goal of psychoanaly-
sis, and thatthe reasonfor this has to do with the way in which the life of the subjectis
constituted?If a life is constitutedthrougha fundamentalinterruption,even interrupted
prior to thepossibility of any continuity,then narrativereconstructionwill also have to
be subjectto an interruptionif it is to approximatethe life it meansto convey.Of course,
learningto constructa narrativeis a crucialpractice,especially when discontinuousbits
of experience remain dissociated from one anotherby virtue of traumaticconditions.
And I do not mean to undervaluethe importanceof narrativeworkin the reconstruction
of a life. But whatis left out if we assume, as some do, thatnarrativegives us the life, or
that life takes place in narrativeform?What intervenesupon narrationto make narra-
tion possible thatis not, strictlyspeaking,subjectto being narrated?We might approach
an answerto this questionby notingthatthe "I"who begins to tell its storycan only tell
it accordingto recognizablenorms of life narration,we might say; to the extent that it
agrees,from the start,to narrateitself throughthose norms,it agrees to circuitits narra-
tion throughan externality,and so to disorientitself in the telling. Of course, Lacanhas
made clear that whateveraccount is given about the primaryinauguralmoments of a
subject is belated and phantasmatic,and that developmentalnarrativestend to err by
assuming the narratabilityof an origin that is only made available retroactivelyand
throughthe screenof fantasy.The mentalhealthnormwhich tells us thatgiving a coher-
ent accountof oneself is partof the ethical labor of psychoanalysismisconstrueswhat
psychoanalysiscan and must do, subscribingto an accountof the subjectthat, in fact,
belies partof the very ethical significance of its formation.
If I give an account,and give it to you, then my narrativedependsupon a structure
of address.But if I can addressyou, it must be that I was first addressed,broughtinto
the structureof addressas a possibility of language before I was able to find my own
way to make use of it. This follows not only from the fact thatlanguagefirstbelongs to
the Other,andthatI acquireit througha complicatedform of mimesis, butalso fromthe

32
fact thatthe very possibility of linguistic agency is derived from the situationin which
one finds oneself addressedby a language one never chose. If I am first addressedby
another,and if this addresscomes to me priorto the questionof my individuation,then
in what sense does it come to me? Levinas has claimed that the addressof the Other
constitutes me. And Jean Laplanche,within a psychoanalyticvein, argues something
similarwhen he claims thatthe addressof the Other,conceived as a demand,implants
or insinuates itself into what will later come to be called, in a theoreticalvein, "my
unconscious."In a sense, this nomenclaturewill always be giving the lie to itself. In a
sense, it will be impossible to say "myunconscious,"because it is not a possession; it is
precisely that which I cannot own. And yet the grammarby which we seek to give an
account of this psychic domainthat I do not, and cannot, own paradoxicallyattributes
this unconsciousto me, as thatwhich belongs to me, the subject,as any numberof other
features might be said to belong to me, the subject. To understandthe unconscious,
however,is precisely to understandwhat cannotbelong, properlyspeaking,to me, pre-
cisely because it is a way of being dispossessed throughthe addressof the Otherfrom
the start.For Laplanche,I am animatedby this call or this demand, and I am at first
overwhelmedby this demand;the Otheris, from the start,too much for me, enigmatic,
inscrutable.And this "too much-ness"must be handled and contained for something
called an "I"to emerge in its separateness.The unconscious is not a topos into which
this "toomuch-ness"is deposited.The unconsciousis formed,as a psychic requirement
of survivaland individuation,as a way of managing-and failing to manage-that ex-
cess and, in that sense, as the continuinglife of that excess itself.
The transferenceis precisely the emotionallyladen scene of address,recallingthat
Otherand its overwhelmingness,reroutingthe unconsciousthroughan externalityfrom
which it is returnedin some way. So the point of the transferenceand the countertrans-
ference is not only to build or rebuild the story of one's life, but also to enact what
cannotbe narrated,and to enact the unconsciousas it is relived in the scene of address
itself. If the transferencerecapitulatesthe unconscious, then I undergoa dispossession
of myself in the scene of address.This does not mean thatI am possessed by the Other,
since the Otheris also dispossessed,called upon, andcalling, in a relationthatis not, for
that reason, reciprocal.Nevertheless,just because the analyst handles this disposses-
sion betterthan I do, there is a dislocation that both interlocutorsundergoin orderfor
access to the unconscious to take place. I am caught up in that address, even as the
analystcontractsnot to overwhelmme with her need. Nevertheless,I am overwhelmed
by something,andI thinkI am overwhelmedby her;she is the name I have for this "too
much-ness,"butthereis alwaysthe questionof the "who"-by whom am I overwhelmed?
And who is she? The "Who are you?" is in a sense the question that the infant poses
towardthe demandsof the adult("Whoareyou, andwhat do you want of me?").In this
respect, the Laplanchianperspectiveoffers us a way of revising Cavarero'sclaim that
the question that inauguratesethics is, "Who are you?" In the case of the analyst, I
cannotknow,but the pursuitof this unsatisfiablequestionelaboratesthe ways in which
that enigmatic Otherinauguratesand structuresme. It also means that she is interpel-
lated for me as both more and less than what she is, and this incommensurabilityac-
counts for the countertransference.She is, in her own way, dispossessed in the moment
of acting as its site of transferfor me. Whatam I calling on her to be? And how does she
takeup thatcall? Whatmy call recalls for her will be the site of the countertransference,
but about this I cannot know. Vainly I ask, "Who are you?," and then, more soberly,
"Whathave I become here?"And she asks those questionsof me as well, from her own
distance, and in ways I cannotprecisely know or hear.This not-knowingdrawsupon a
priornot-knowing,the not-knowingby which the subjectis inaugurated,althoughthat
"not-knowing"is repeatedand elaboratedin the transferencewithoutprecisely becom-
ing a site to which I might return.

diacritics / winter 2001 33


If the inauguralmomentsof the "I"arethose in which I am implicatedby the Other,
the Other'saddress,the Other'sdemand,then there is some convergencebetween the
ethical scene in which my life is, from the start,boundup with others,and the psycho-
analytic scene that establishes the intersubjectiveconditions of my own emergence,
individuation,and survivability.The transference,insofar as it recapitulatesand reen-
acts in refractedform the primaryscenes of address,operatesnot only in the service of
narratinga life, assisting in the buildingof a life story,but as a force that interruptsthe
suspectcoherencethatnarrativeforms sometimesconstruct,and thatcan displace from
considerationthe rhetoricalfeaturesof the scene of address,those that simultaneously
drawme back to the scene of not knowing, of being overwhelmed,but that also, in the
present,sustainme. The transferencenot only, at its best, provideswhatWinnicottterms
a holding environment,but offers a bodily presencein a temporalpresentthatprovides
the conditions for a sustaining address. This is not to say that transferencedoes not
contributeto the narratingof a life, thatone may be able to tell one's story betterwhen
being "held"in the Winnicottiansense. And it does not mean thatnarratinga life, in its
partialityand provisionality,is not an importantthing to do. I am sure thattransference
can facilitate narration,and that narratinghas a crucial function. No one can live in a
radicallynon-narratableworldor survivea radicallynon-narratablelife. Indeed,even in
Kafka'sstory,when Georg appearsto throwhimself off the bridgeand to end his life, a
narrativevoice uncannily remains, reportingon the noises that populate that event's
aftermath.The final line of thattext, "atthis momentan unendingstreamof trafficwas
just going over the bridge,"is spoken by some voice that claims to be present to the
moment described,and the third-personperspectiveis disjoined from the characterof
Georg,who has alreadylet himself dropbelow.AlthoughGeorgis gone, some narrative
voice remains,suggesting that narrationoffers resourcesfor survival.Even so, no one
survives without being addressed,no one survives to tell his or her story without first
being addressed,given some stories,broughtinto the discursiveworld of the story,and
then finding one's way in languageonly later,only afterit has been imposed, only after
it has produceda web of relationsin which one is caught,andin which one also thrives.
My suggestion here is that the structureof address is not precisely a feature of
narrative,one of its many and variableattributes,but an interruptionof narrativeitself.
The momentthe story is addressed,it assumes a rhetoricaldimensionthatis not reduc-
ible to a narrativefunction, and furtherthat address,as non-narrative,is nevertheless
what supportsnarrativeitself. I am preparingto make anothersuch argumentabout
makingmoraljudgmentsas well, thatthe structureof addressconditionsthe makingof
judgments about someone or his or her actions, but that it is not reducibleto the judg-
ment, and that the judgment, alleviated of the structureof address,tends towardvio-
lence.
But here, and for the time being, my concern is with a suspect coherence that
sometimes attachesto narrativeand, specifically, with the way in which narrativeco-
herencemay foreclose upon an ethical resource,namely,an acceptanceof the limits of
knowabilityin oneself and others.It may even be thatto hold a person accountablefor
his or her life in narrativeform is to requirea falsification of that life in the name of a
certainconception of ethics. Indeed,if we requirethat someone be able to tell in story
form the reasons why his or her life has taken the path it has, that is, to be a coherent
autobiographer,it may be thatwe preferthe seamlessness of the story to somethingwe
might tentativelycall the truthof the person, a truthwhich, to a certaindegree, and for
reasons we have already suggested, is indicated more radically as an interruption.It
may be thatstorieshave to be interrupted,andthatfor interruptionto takeplace, a story
has to be underway.This bringsme closer to the accountof the transferenceI would like
to offer, a transferencethat might be understoodas a repeatedethical practice.Indeed,

34
if, in the name of ethics, we requirethatanotherdo a certainviolence to herself, and do
it in frontof us, offeringa narrativeaccountor, indeed, a confession, then, conversely,it
may be thatby permitting,sustaining,accommodatingthe interruption,a certainprac-
tice of nonviolence precisely follows. If violence is the act by which a subject seeks to
reinstallits masteryand unity,then nonviolencemay well follow from living the persis-
tent challenge to masterythat our obligationsto othersrequire.
Although some would say that to be a split subject, or a subject whose access to
itself is opaque and not self-grounding,is precisely not to have the groundsfor agency
and the conditionsfor accountability,it may be thatthis way in which we are, from the
start,interruptedby alterityand not fully recoverableto ourselves, indicatesthe way in
which we are,from the start,ethically implicatedin the lives of others.The point here is
not to celebratea certainnotion of incoherence,but only to consider that our incoher-
ence is ineradicablebut nontotalizing,and that it establishes the way in which we are
implicated,beholden,derived,constitutedby whatis beyond us andbefore us. If we say
thatthe self mustbe narrated,thatonly the narratedself can be intelligible, survivable,
then we say that we cannot survive with an unconscious. We say, in effect, that the
unconsciousthreatensus with an insupportableunintelligibility,and for thatreasonwe
mustoppose it. The "I"who makes such an utterancewill surely,in one formor another,
be besieged precisely by what it disavows. This stand, and it is a stand, it must be a
stand, an upright,wakeful, knowing stand, believes that it survives withoutthe uncon-
scious or, if it accepts an unconscious, accepts it as something which is thoroughly
recuperableby the knowing "I,"as a possession perhaps,believing thatthe unconscious
can be fully and exhaustivelytranslatedinto what is conscious. It is easy to see this as a
defended stance, for it remainsto be known in what this particulardefense consists. It
is, after all, the stand that many make against psychoanalysis itself. In the language
which articulatesthe opposition to a non-narrativizablebeginning resides the fear that
the absence of narrativewill spell a certainthreat,a threatto life, and will pose the risk,
if not the certainty,of a certainkind of death,the deathof a subjectwho cannot,who can
never,fully recuperatethe conditions of its own emergence.
But this death,if it is a death,is only the deathof a certainkind of subject,one that
was neverpossible to begin with, the deathof a fantasy,and so a loss of what one never
had.
One goes to analysis, I presume, to have someone receive one's words, and this
produces a quandary,since the one who might receive the words is unknownin large
part,and so the one who receives becomes, in a certainway, an allegory for reception
itself, for the phantasmaticrelationto receiving that is articulatedto, or at least in the
face of, an Other.But if this is an allegory,it is not reducibleto a structureof reception
that would apply equally well to everyone, althoughit would give us the general struc-
tures within which a particularlife might be understood.We, as subjects who narrate
ourselves in the first person,encounterin common somethingof a predicament.Since I
cannottell the storyin a straightline, and I lose my thread,and I startagain, and I forget
somethingcrucial, and it is to hardto think abouthow to weave it in, and I startthink-
ing, thinking,there must be some conceptualthreadthat will provide a narrativehere,
some lost link, some possibility for chronology,and the "I"becomes increasinglycon-
ceptual,increasinglyawake, focused, determined,it is at this point thatthe threadmust
fall apart.The "I" who narratesfinds that it cannot direct its narration,finds that it
cannotgive an accountof its inabilityto narrate,why its narrationbreaksdown, and so
it comes to experienceitself, or, rather,reexperienceitself, as radically,if not irretriev-
ably, unknowingaboutwho it is. And then the "I"is no longer impartinga narrativeto
a receiving analystor Other.The "I"is breakingdown in certainvery specific ways in
frontof the Otheror, to anticipateLevinas, in the face of the Other(originallyI wrote,

diacritics / winter 2001 35


"the in face of the Other,"indicatingthat my syntax was alreadybreakingdown) or,
indeed, by virtue of the Other'sface. The "I"finds that, in the face of an Other,it is
breakingdown. It does not know itself, and perhapsit never will. But is thatthe task, to
know itself, to achieve an adequatenarrativeaccountof a life? And should it be? Is the
task to cover over the breakage,the rupture,which is constitutiveof the "I"througha
narrativemeans that quite forcefully binds the elements togetherin a narrationthat is
enacted as if it were perfectly possible, as if the breakcould be mended and defensive
masteryrestored?
Before the Other one cannot give an account of the "I" who had been trying all
along to give an accountof itself. And so thereis a certainhumilitythatmust emerge in
this process, perhapsalso a certain knowingness about the limits of what there is to
know.Perhapsevery analysandbecomes, in this sense, a lay Kantian.But thereis some-
thing more:it is a point aboutlanguageand its historicity.The means by which subject
constitutionoccurs is not the same as the narrativeform that the reconstructionof that
constitutionattemptsto provide. So what is the role of language in the constitutingof
the subject?And whatdifferentrole does it assumewhen it seeks to recuperateor recon-
stitutethe conditions of its own constitution?First, there is the question:how is it that
my constitutionbecame "myown"?Whereandwhen does this presumptionof property
and belonging take place? We cannot tell a story aboutthis, but perhapsthere is some
other way in which it is available to us, and even availableto us throughlanguage. In
the moment in which I say "I,"I am not only citing the pronomialplace of the "I"in
language,but at once attestingto, and takingdistancefrom, a primaryimpingement,a
primaryway in which I am, priorto acquiringan "I,"a being who has been touched,
moved, fed, changed,put to sleep, spokento, and spokenaround,andthese impressions
are all signs of a certainkind, signs thatregisterat the level of my formation,signs that
are partof a languageirreducibleto vocalization.These are signs of an Other,but they
are also the tracesfrom which an "I"will eventuallyemerge, an "I"who will never be
able, fully, to recover or read these signs, for whom those signs will remain in part
overwhelmingand unreadable,enigmatic and formative.
Levinas speaks of a passivity priorto passivity,and therehe means to indicatethe
differencebetween the passivity that a subjectundergoesand relates to througha cer-
tain act of reflexivity,and a passivitythatis priorto the subject,the conditionof its own
subjectivation,its primaryimpressionability.We might relate this to the Freudianin-
sight that the infant will be disposed to love any and everythingthat emerges as an
"object"(ratherthan not love at all). And this is a scandal, since it shows us that love
from the outset is withoutjudgment, and that, to a certain extent, it remains without
judgment,or at least withoutgood judgment,for the rest of its career.WhatI am trying
to describeis the conditionof the subject,but it is not mine:I do not own it. It is priorto
what constitutesthe sphereof what might be owned or claimed by me. By virtueof its
status as a continuing condition of subjectivation,it persistentlyundoes the claim of
"mineness,"mocks it, sometimes gently, sometimes violently. Primaryimpressionabil-
ity is not a featureof myself so thatI might say, by way of a warning,"I am impression-
able."I mean, I can say that,but it would be a paradoxicalform of speaking.It is a way
of being constitutedby an Otherwhich precedesthe formationof the sphereof the mine
itself. But at this level, we are not yet referringto boundariesin the process of forma-
tion, we are not yet seeking recourseto a capacityfor reflexivity,for self-reference,the
linguistic supportfor self-possession. This is a domain in which the grammarof the
subjectcannot hold, for dispossession in and throughanotheris priorto becoming an
"I"who might claim, on occasion, and always with some irony,to possess itself.
You may think that I am in fact telling a story aboutthe prehistoryof the subject,
one thatI have been arguingcannotbe told. And therearetwo responsesto this: (1) that

36
there is no final or adequatenarrativereconstructionof the prehistoryof the speaking
"I" does not mean we cannot narrateit. It only means that at the moment when we
narratewe become speculativephilosophersor fiction writers.And (2) it is this prehis-
tory which has never stoppedhappeningand, as such, is not a prehistoryin any chrono-
logical sense. It is not done with, over,relegatedto a past, which then becomes partof a
causal or narrativereconstructionof the self. On the contrary,it is thatprehistorywhich
interruptsthe story I have to give of myself, which makes every account of myself
partialand failed (and constitutes,in a way, my failure to be fully accountablefor my
actions, my final "irresponsibility,"one for which I may be forgiven only because I
could not do otherwise,and thatnot being able to do otherwiseis our common predica-
ment). Indeed,considerthatthe way in which thatprehistorycontinuesto happenis that
every time I enunciatemyself, I undergosomethingof what cannotbe capturedor as-
similatedby that"I,"thatI always come too late to myself (rememberNietzsche's bees)
and, in thatsense, can never providethe accountof myself which both certainforms of
moralityas well as models of mental health require,namely,that the self deliver itself
throughcoherentnarrative.The "I"is the momentof failurein every narrativeeffort to
give an accountof oneself. It remainsthe unaccountedfor and,in thatsense, constitutes
the failure that the very project of self-narrationrequires.It is the failure that every
effort to give an accountof oneself is boundto encounterand upon which it founders.
To tell the storyof oneself is alreadyto act, since telling is a kind of action, and it is
performedwith some addressee,generalizedor specific, as an implied feature of this
action. So it is an action in the directionof an Other,but also an action that requiresan
Other,for which an Otheris presupposed.The Otheris thus in the action of my telling,
andso it is not simply a questionof impartinginformationto an Otherwho is over there,
beyond me, waiting to know. On the contrary,the telling is the performingof an action
that presupposesan Other,posits and elaboratesthe Other,is given to the Other,or by
virtueof the Other,priorto the giving of any information.So if, at the beginning-and
we must laugh here, since we cannotnarratethatbeginningwith any kind of authority,
indeed, such a narrationis the occasion in which we lose whatevernarrativeauthority
we might otherwiseenjoy-I am only in the address to you, then the "I"which I am is
nothing withoutthis "you,"and cannoteven begin to referto itself outside the relation
to the Otherby which its capacity for self-referenceemerges. I am mired, given over.
Even the word "dependency"cannot do the job here.And what this means is that I am
also formed in ways that precede and enable my self-forming and that this particular
kind of transitivityis difficult, if not impossible, to narrate.
So what will responsibilitylook like accordingto such a theory?And haven't we,
by insisting on something non-narrativizable,limited the degree to which we might
hold ourselves or others accountablefor their actions? I want to suggest that the very
meaning of responsibilitymust be rethoughton this basis; it cannotbe tied to the con-
ceit of transparency.Indeed, to take responsibilityfor oneself is to avow the limits of
any self-understandingandto establishthis limit not only as a conditionfor the subject,
but as the predicamentof the humancommunityitself. But I am not altogetherout of the
loop of the Enlightenmentif I say, as I do, thatreason'slimit is the sign of ourhumanity.
It might even be understoodas a legacy of Kantto say so. My accountof myself breaks
down, and surely for a reason, but that does not mean that I can supply all the reasons
that would make my account whole. There are reasons that course throughme that I
cannotfully recuperate,thatremainenigmatic,that abide with me as my own, familiar
alterity,my own private,or not so private,opacity.I speak as an "I,"but do not makethe
mistakeof thinkingthatI know precisely all thatI am doing when I speak in thatway. I
find that my very formationimplicates the Other in me, that my own foreignness to
myself is, paradoxically,the source of my ethical connection with others. Do I need to

diacritics / winter 2001 37


know myself in orderto act responsiblyin social relations?Surely,to a certainextent,
yes. But is therean ethicalvalence to my unknowingness?I am wounded,andI find that
the wounditself testifies to the fact thatI am impressionable,given over to the Otherin
ways thatI cannotfully predictor control.I cannotthinkthe questionof responsibility
alone, in isolation from the Other,or if I do, I have taken myself out of the mode of
addressthat framesthe problemof responsibilityfrom the start.
This is not to say that being addressedcannot be done in a harmfulway. Or that
being addressedis not sometimes traumatic.For Laplanche,the primaryaddressover-
whelms; it cannotbe interpretedor understood.It is the primaryexperienceof trauma.
To be addressedcarries with it a trauma,resonates with the traumatic,and yet this
traumacan only be experienced retrospectivelythrough a later occurrence.Another
wordcomes our way, a blow, an addressor namingthatslaughters,even as one lives on,
strangely,as this slaughteredbeing, speakingaway.
Given thatwe are vulnerableto the addressof othersin ways that we cannotfully
control,no more thanwe can controlthe sphereof language,does this mean thatwe are
without agency and without responsibility?For Levinas, who separatesthe fact of re-
sponsibilityfrom the possibility of agency, to be subjectto the unwilled addressof the
Otherheightensresponsibility.This is partof what he means when he claims, madden-
ingly, that to be persecuted creates a responsibility for the persecuted. Most people
recoil in horrorwhen they first hearthis statement,but let us considercarefullywhat it
does and does not mean. It does not mean thatI can tracethe acts of persecutionto the
deeds I have performed,thatI have broughtit on myself, and that it is only a matterof
finding the acts I performedbut disavowed. No, persecutionis precisely what happens
withoutthe warrantof any deed of my own. And it returnsus not to our acts andchoices,
but to the region of existence that is radicallyunwilled, the primaryimpingement,the
primary,inaugurativeimpingementon me by the Other,an impingementthatis priorto
any "me."
The Levinasianposition is not compatiblewith a psychoanalyticone, finally,even
as it might appearthat this primarypersecutionparallelsLaplanche'snotion of a pri-
mary addressthat overwhelms.The Levinasianposition cannot accommodatethe no-
tion of a primaryset of needs or drives, or even of a primarydesire to persist in one's
own being. And this becomes the basis of Levinas'sresistanceto Spinoza.For Spinoza,
thereis no passivity priorto passivity,no primaryimpressionability,and this is truefor
Laplancheas well, for whom a certaindrive alreadyoperates,even if it is always insti-
gated and structuredby the enigmatic addressof an Other.
But can we say thatthe experienceof being imposeduponfromthe start,andagainst
one's will, heightensa sense of responsibility?Have we perhapsunwittinglydestroyed
the possibility for agency with all this talk about being given over, being structured,
being addressed?In adultexperience,we no doubtsufferall kinds of injuries,and even
violations,andthese expose somethingof a primaryvulnerabilityandimpressionability
and may well recall those experiencesin more or less traumaticways. Do such experi-
ences form the basis for a sense of responsibility?And in what sense can we understand
a heightened sense of responsibilityto emerge from the experience of injuryor viola-
tion? Let us consider for a moment that by responsibilityI do not mean a heightened
moral sense that consists simply in an interalization of rage and a shoring up of the
superego,nor am I referringto a sense of a guilt that seeks to find a cause in oneself for
what one has suffered.These are surely possible and prevalentresponses to injuryand
violence, but these are all responseswhich heightenreflexivity,shoreup the subject,its
claims to self-sufficiency, its centralityand indispensabilityto the field of its experi-
ence. Bad conscience is a form of negative narcissism, as both Freud and Nietzsche
have told us in differentways, and it is importantto rememberthatthe negativenarcis-

38
sism of conscience is still a narcissism.And as a narcissism,it recoils from the Other,
fromimpressionability,susceptibility,vulnerability.The myriadformsof badconscience
thatFreudand Nietzsche analyze so deftly show us thatmoralizingforms of subjectiv-
ity harness the very impulses they seek to curb. Moreover,they show that the very
instrumentof repressionis wrought from those impulses, creating a tautological cir-
cuitry in which impulse feeds the very law by which it is prohibited.But is there a
theorizationof responsibilitybeyondbad conscience?To the extentthatbad conscience
withdrawsthe subject into narcissism, to that degree it works against responsibility,
precisely because it forecloses upon the primaryrelation to alterityby which we are
animated.What might it mean to undergoviolation, to insist upon not resolving grief
and vulnerabilitytoo quickly into violence, and to practice,as an experimentin living
otherwise,nonviolencein an emphaticallynonreciprocalresponse?Whatwould it mean
in the face of violence to refuse to returnit? Perhapswe mighthave to think,along with
Levinas, that self-preservationis not the highest goal, and the defense of a narcissistic
point of view, not the most urgentpsychic need. That we are impingedupon primarily
and againstour will is the sign of a vulnerabilityand a beholdennessthatwe cannotwill
away. We can defend against it only by prizing the asociality of the subject over and
againstits difficultandintractable,even sometimesunbearable,relationality.Whatmight
it mean to make an ethic from the region of the unwilled? It might mean that one does
not foreclose uponthatprimaryexposureto the Other,thatone does not try to transform
the unwilled into the willed, but to take the very unbearabilityof exposure as the sign,
the reminder,of a common vulnerability,a common physicality,a common risk.
It is always possible to say, "Oh,some violence was done to me, and this gives me
full permissionto act underthe sign of 'self-defense."' Many atrocitiesare committed
underthe sign of a "self-defense"that,preciselybecause it achieves a permanentethical
justification for retaliation,knows no end, and can have no end. Such a strategyhas
developed an infinite way to rename its aggression as suffering, and so provides an
infinitejustificationfor its aggression.Or it is possible to say thatI or we have brought
this violence upon ourselves, and so to accountfor it throughrecourseto our deeds, as
if we believed in the omnipotenceof ourdeeds. Indeed,guilt of this sortexacerbatesour
sense of omnipotencesometimes underthe very sign of its critique.Violence is neither
a just punishmentwe suffernor a just revengefor what we suffer.It delineatesa physi-
cal vulnerabilityfrom which we cannot slip away, which we cannot finally resolve in
the name of the subject,but which can providea way to understandthe way in which all
of us are alreadynot precisely bounded,not precisely separate,but in our skins, given
over, in each other'shands, at each other'smercy.This is a situationwe do not choose;
it forms the horizon of choice, and it is that which groundsour responsibility.In this
sense, we are not responsiblefor it, but it is thatfor which we are neverthelessrespon-
sible.

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