Driftwork

Levinas rather famously prioritizes ethics over ontology and consequently difference… “The subject is inspired by the infinite, which is illeity (the there of the face), does not appear, is not present, has always passed, is neither theme, telos, nor interlocutor …” (Levinas Otherwise than being or beyond essence p155.) It’s a question of reversing the Levinas prioritisation of ethics over ontology. Just as for Deleuze we would argue that a properly differential ontology must underpin the possibility of ethics. Such an ontology responds to Levinas’s dislike of the role of identity, representation and totality in ontology through the terms of of the statement ‘ is already a hypostasis of the eon'’ (Logic of Sense). What is made is the thought that a difference resistant to representation is the condition for identity and representation is the condition for identity and representation. It is notable that Lyotard also states the priority of difference over ethics (in the differend). He convincingly argues that the differend between different phase regimes is prior to the Levinasian infinite obligation that occurs with the face of the other. This does not deny this obligation, rather it places it within the many different types of obligation, relations and phase-regimes.