Giving an Account of Oneself Author(s): Judith Butler Source: Diacritics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp.

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GIVING
ONESELF

AN

ACCOUNT

OF

JUDITHBUTLER

itself loquacious, has held that the In recent years, the critique of poststructuralism, postulationof a subjectwho is not self-groundingunderminesthe possibility of responof sibility and, in particular, giving an account of oneself. Critics have arguedthat the of various critical reconsiderations the subject, including those that do away with the theoryof the subjectaltogether,cannotprovidethe basis for an accountof responsibilor ity, thatif we are,as it were, divided,ungrounded, 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 that subject-formation acknowledgesthe limits of self-knowledgecan work in the service 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 ethical bonds. sustainssome of its most important In all the talk about the social constructionof the subject, we have perhapsoverlooked 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 surely that-but also on the possibility that the normativehorizon within which the Othersees and listens and knows and recognizes is also subjectto a criticalopening.This opening calls into question the limits of establishedregimes of truth,where a certainrisking of the self becomes, as Levinas claims, the sign of virtue [see Foucault].Whetheror not the Otheris singular,the Otheris recognized and confers recognitionthrougha set of norms that governrecognizability.So whereasthe Othermay be singular,if not radicallypersonal, the normsare to some extent impersonaland indifferent,and they introducea disorientationof perspectivefor the subjectin the midst of recognitionas an encounter.For if I understand myself to be conferringrecognitionon you, for instance, then I take seriously 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, dispossessed by 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 thatnorm and 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 in sense, as a pureoffering, since I am receiving it, at least potentiallyand structurally, 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

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diacritics 31.4: 22-40

in the Otheris structured the same way that I am, and I recognize that the Otheralso makes, or can make, this very recognitionof sameness?Or is thereperhapsan encounter with alterityhere that is not reducibleto sameness?If it is the latter,how are we to understand alterity?On the one hand,the Hegelian Otheris always found outside, this 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 assimilation of what is externalto it into a set of internalfeaturesof itself, and thatits characteristic gesture is one of appropriation.There are other readingsof Hegel, however,that insist thatthe relationto the Otheris ecstatic,' thatthe "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 moment in which my returnto myself takes place. In fact, the encountersI undergo,if we are to follow the Phenomenology of Spirit,are those by which I am invariablytransformed; recognitionbecomes the process by which I become otherthanwhatI was and,therefore,also, the process by which I cease to be able to returnto what I was. Thereis, then, a constitutiveloss in the that process of recognition,a transformation does not bring all that once was forward with it, one that forecloses upon the past in an irreversibleway. Moreover,it is one in to which the "return self' becomes impossible for anotherreason as well: there is no inside. I am compelled andcomportedoutside myself;I find thatthe only way to staying know myself is precisely througha mediationthattakes place outside of me, exteriorto me, in a convention or a norm that I 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 perspectivethatdislocates the 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 perspective 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 So language, by conventions,by a sedimentationof norms that are social in character. how are we to understand impersonalperspectiveby which our personalencounter the is occasioned and disoriented? Although the Hegelian account has been criticized for its insistence on the dyad, the Subjectand its Other,it is important see what the strugglefor recognitionreveals to 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 reciprocalrecognitionmight be sustainedin ways that are more stable than the life-and-deathstrugglewould imply. When we ask, by virtueof what exteriorityis endowmentof the Other recognitionconferred?,we find thatit cannotbe the particular 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 alreadynot only an epistemological frame within which the face appears,but an operationof power as well, since only by virtue of certain kinds of anthropocentric dispositions 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 languagethat frames the
1. See Rotenstreich,"Onthe Ecstatic Sourcesof the Conceptof Alienation";Nancy, Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative.

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encounter,and embeddedin thatlanguagea set of normsconcerningwhat will and will not constituterecognizability.This is Foucault'spoint and, in a way, his supplementto orderof Hegel, when he asks, as he does, "Whatcan I become, given the contemporary that conditionsthe possibility of his becoming,and being?"He understands this "order" thata regime of truth,in his words,constrainswhat will 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 ItalianphilosopherAdrianaCavareroarguesthatthe 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 structure address,thatthroughwhich the questionis of us the clue to understanding significanceof the questionitself. Forher, the posed, gives 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 one know,whom we cannotfully apprehend, 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 subject radicalizesthe 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 one address,then I have lost "myself."In her view, one can only tell an autobiography, can only referencean "I"in relationto a "you":without the "you,"my own story becomes impossible. For Cavarero,this position implies a critiqueof conventionalways of understanding sociality, and in this sense she reverses the progressionwe saw in Hegel. If the Phenomenologyof Spiritmoves from the scenarioof the dyad towarda social theoryof and recognition,for Cavarero, in 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. Symptomatically,the you is a termthat is not at home in modernand contemporary developmentsof ethics andpolitics. The "you"is ignoredby the individualistic doctrines, which are too preoccupiedwithpraising the rights of the I, and the "you"is maskedby a Kantian form 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 whichindividualism opposed-these schools is reveal themselves the mostpart to be affectedby a moralisticvice, which, for 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 sisterhood)seem to share a curious linguistic code based on the intrinsicmorality 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]

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For Cavarero,the "I"encountersthe Othernot as a specific set of contents,but as a exposed, visible, seen, existing in a bodily way and of necessity in being fundamentally 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 But for me, thatI am, in this way, nonsubstitutable. does the social theoryderivedfrom in its insistence on the impersonalperspectiveof the norm,establish my substiHegel, And yet, as a being constituted tutability?Am I, in relationto the norm, substitutable? I bodily in the public sphere,arguesCavarero, am exposed, andthis 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 differenttheoryof recognition.There are 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 ourfundamental sociality.(Youcan see thatI resort here to the pluralwe, even as Cavarrero advises 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 thereforeprecisely 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 criticalskills, 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 workin these instances.Cavarero to is braverthanI am and remarksthatthereis an irreducibility each of ourbeings, 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 thatCavarero puts it is, "whatwe have called an altruisticethics of relationdoes not supportempathy,identification,or confusions. Ratherthis ethic desires a you thatis trulyan other,in her uniquenessanddistinction. 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 uniqueness 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 existentialromanticismand but with a claim of authenticity, 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 she substitutability, also arguesthat singularityhas no defining content other than the of irreducibility 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 condition 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

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I narratable. cannotgive an accountof it, even as it structures accountI mightgive. any 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 deathas its terminus,but anotherof which consists of the social temporalityof norms by which my recognizabilityis established. These normsare, as it were, indifferentto me, my life, and my death.This lattertempothis rality interruptsthe time of my living, but it is, paradoxically,this interruption, of disorientation the perspectiveof my life, this instanceof an indifferencein sociality, that sustainsmy living. In a sense, my accountof myself is never fully mine, and is neverfully for me, and I would like to suggest thatthis "interruption" the accountalwaystakesplace through of a loss of the sense of its being mine in any exclusive way. This interruption disposand session of my perspectiveas mine can take place in differentways. There is the operation of a norm, invariablysocial, that conditions what will and will not be a recognizable account. And there can be no account of myself that does not, to some extent, conform to normsthat govern the humanlyrecognizable,or that negotiatethese 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 interrupt sense of this accountof the as mine. If it is an accountof myself, and it is an accountingto someone, then I myself am compelledto give the accountaway,to send it off, to be dispossessedof it at the very momentthatI establishit as my account.No accounttakesplace outside the structure of address,even if the addresseeremainsimplicit and unnamed,anonymousand unspecified. If I try to give an account of myself, if I try to make myself recognizable and then accountof my life, butthis narrative understandable, I mightbegin with a 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 narrative authorityof 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 many reasonsto do precisely that-but we will not be able to be very authoritative when we try to give an account structure.The "I"cannot tell the story of its own emergence, and the with a narrative 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 that requiresno referentto work narrating which one cannotknow. Fictional narration as narrative, we might say thatthe irrecoverability the referent,its foreclosureto and of 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 direction. So to be more precise, I would have to say that I 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,and it cannotestablishmy accountability. least, let's At 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 but narratives, of no single one can I say with certaintythat it is true. form to certainconditionsof my emergence,try, Indeed,I can try to give narrative 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

at where I learnedthem, whatI thoughtof them, which ones became incorporated once, and in what way. At this point the story that I tell, one that may even have a certain form. (The narnecessity, cannot assume thatits referentcan adequatelytake narrative 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 paradoxicalcondithatgives provisionaland fictive sequenceto thatwhich a tion for a narrative, narrative necessarily eludes thatconstruction.) There are, then, several ways in which the account I may give of myself has the potential to 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 cannot narrate precisely, even though thereareno doubtstories aboutwheremy body went andwhatit 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 assumenarrative form. On the otherhand,exposure,like the of the norm,constitutesthe conditionsof my own emergenceandknowability, operation and I cannotbe presentto a temporalitythatprecedesmy own capacity for self-reflection. This means thatmy narrative begins in media res, when many things have already takenplace to make me and my story in languagepossible. And it means that my story even as I producemyself always arriveslate. I am always recuperating, reconstructing, in the very act of telling. My accountof myself is partial,hauntedby thatfor differently which I have no definitive story. I cannot explain exactly why I have emerged in this reconstruction always undergoingrevision.Thereis are way, andmy effortsat narrative 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 what I do? And if I find thatdespite my best efforts,a certainopacitypersistsand I cannotmake myself fully accountableto you, is this ethical failure?Or is it a failurethatgives rise to a certainethicaldisposition in the place of a full and satisfying notion of narrativeaccountability? It may be that a certainability to affirmwhat is contingentand incoherentin identity allows one to affirmothers who may or may not "mirror" one's own constitution. After all, the mirroralways tacitly operatesin Hegel's concept of reciprocalrecognition: I must somehow see thatthe Otheris like me, that the Otheris making this 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 considera certainpost-Hegelianreadingof the scene of recognition in which precisely my own opacity to myself occasions my capacityto 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. for Suspendingthe demandfor self-identityor, more particularly, 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

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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, that one undergoesa decenteringand "fails"to achieve self-identity. Can a new sense of ethics emerge fromthatinevitableethicalfailure?I suggest that it can, and that it would be spawned from a certain willingness to acknowledge the limits of acknowledgment itself, thatwhen we claim to know andpresentourselves, we will fail in some ways thatare neverthelessessential to who we are, and thatwe cannot of expect anythingelse from others.If we speakaboutan acknowledgment the limits of in acknowledgmentitself, are we then assumingthatacknowledgment the first sense is in of full andcomplete in its determination the limits of acknowledgment the second?In other words, do we know in an unqualifiedway that acknowledgmentis always qualified? 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 To not transformopacity into transparency. know the limits of acknowledgmentis a act and, as a result,to experiencethe limits of knowingitself. This can, by self-limiting 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 constitutedin partialopacity to themselves. If the identitywe say we are cannotpossibly captureus, and marksimmediatelyan excess and opacity thatfall outside the terms of 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 letting 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 of recognitionwould be one thatis based less on knowledgethanon an apprehension 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 captured any answerthatmight arrive by 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,"do not cede upon your desire."This is a complicatedclaim, since he does not say that your desire should or must be satisfied.He says only thatdesire shouldnot 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, arranging its death. for that was the one who linkeddesire to recognition,providingthe formulation Hegel 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 recognition, in all its errancy,can still work in relation to the problemof 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 first persistin one's own being, a doctrinearticulated by 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 capture 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 makingand deliveringjudgments aboutothers,althoughthe latterwould be obligatedto honorthe conditionsfor recognition. In fact, recognitionsometimesobligates us to suspendjudgmentin orderto apprehend the Other.We sometimes move too quickly to summarizeanother'slife, and think that the 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 broader framework withinwhich moraljudgmentitself might be assessed? Does it allow us to ask the question, "Whatis the value of moraljudgment?,"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 questionwas 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 whojudges and the one who is judged. If you consider, for instance, Simone de Beauvoir's question, "MustWe Burn 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 necessaryfor 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 an Other, we must be in some relation to him or her, and this relation will judging 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 of or "addressed" a consideration who they areandwhattheirpersonhoodsays about by 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 are that and punishments pronounced deliveredto the face of the Other,requiring Other's bodily presence.Hence, if thereis an ethic to theaddress,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 deferring judgments,since condemnation,denunciation,andexcoriationwork as quick ways to posit an ontological differencebetween 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 againstselfa Althoughself-knowledge knowledgeinasmuchas it moralizesa self through disavowal.

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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 in consider in this regardthe fate of Georg in the story called "The Judgment," 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 disposedto 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 impulse, 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 conditions for autonomy,buterodes the capacityof the addressedsubjectfor both self-reflection and social recognition,two practicesthat are, I would argue,essential to any substantive account of ethical life. It also, of course, turns the moralist into a murderer. When denunciationworks to paralyzeand deratifythe criticalcapacitiesof the subject to whom it is delivered, it underminesor even destroys the very capacities of the addresseethatareneededfor ethical reflectionand conduct,sometimesleading to 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 without 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 destroy lives 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 reconstructing myself, but also in speakingto you and thus institutinga relationin as I go. The ethicalvalence of the situationis thusnot restrictedto the question language of whether or not my account of myself is adequate.One must also ask whether in to giving the account,I establisha relationship 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, "you"is often a defaultstructure the of address,2 elaborationof a "you"in an imaginarydomain,and an addressthrough the which prior,andmorearchaic,formsof addressareconveyed.In the transference, speech works primarilynot to convey information(including the informationabout my life), but as the conduitfor a desire, andas a rhetoricalstructure seeks to alteror act upon that the interlocutory scene itself. Psychoanalysishas alwaysunderstood dualdimension this of the self-disclosing speech act, that it is, on the one hand, an effort to reveal oneself
2. I am grateful to Barbara Johnson'sforthcoming work on Baudelaire, MotherTongues: Sexuality,Trials,Motherhood,Translation, the notion of a defaultstructureof address. for

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and, on the other,the constitutingof a relationshipon the basis of a transference[see Felman]. If we considerhow narrative functions,then, withinthe contextof the transference, it is not only a means by which information conveyed, but a rhetoricaldeploymentof is language that seeks to act upon the Other,motivatedby a desire or wish that takes an scene of the analysis. The "I"is not only narrated, allegoricalform in the interlocutory but also posited, and in ways, andfor purposes,thatvery often confoundthe intentional aims of speaking. The "you" is variable and imaginary,and it posits an aim for the of to trajectory a desirethatcannotbe fully transparent 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, andthis telling is doing somethingwith me; it is ridinga desire whose aims are not fully transparent me. to Withinsome psychoanalyticcircles, doctrines,andpractices,one of the statedaims of psychoanalysisis to offer the client the chanceto puttogethera storyaboutherself, to recollect the past, to interweavethe events-or, rather,the wishes-of childhood with laterevents, to try to make sense throughnarrative meansof 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 Schaferhas surely arguedthisposition,andwe see it in severalversionsof psychoanalytic practicedescribed clinicians in scholarlyand popularvenues. by But whatif the narrative reconstruction a life cannotbe the goal of psychoanalyof sis, and thatthe reasonfor this has to do with the way in which the life of the subjectis constituted?If a life is constitutedthrougha fundamental even interrupted interruption, will also have to reconstruction prior to thepossibility of any continuity,then narrative if be subjectto an interruption it is to approximate life it meansto convey.Of course, the is learningto constructa narrative a crucialpractice,especially when discontinuousbits of experience remain dissociated from one anotherby virtue of traumaticconditions. And I do not mean to undervaluethe importanceof narrative workin the reconstruction of a life. But what is left out if we assume, as some do, thatnarrative gives us the life, or form?What intervenesupon narration make narrato that life takes place in narrative We tion possible thatis not, strictlyspeaking,subjectto being narrated? might approach an answerto this questionby noting thatthe "I"who begins to tell its storycan only tell we it accordingto recognizablenorms of life narration, might say; to the extent that it fromthe start,to narrate itself throughthose norms,it agrees to circuitits narraagrees, 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 of assuming the narratability an origin that is only made available retroactivelyand the screenof fantasy.The mentalhealthnormwhich tells us thatgiving a coherthrough 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 narrative dependsupon 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 complicatedformof mimesis, butalso fromthe

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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 then another,and if this addresscomes to me priorto the questionof my individuation, 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 theoretical vein, "my unconscious."In a sense, this nomenclaturewill always be giving the lie to itself. In a sense, it will be impossibleto 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, what cannotbelong, properlyspeaking,to me, prehowever,is precisely to understand is a way of being dispossessed throughthe addressof the Otherfrom cisely because it 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 excess and, in that sense, as the continuinglife of that excess itself. The transference precisely the emotionallyladen scene of address,recallingthat is Otherandits overwhelmingness,reroutingthe unconsciousthroughan externalityfrom in which it is returned some way. So the point of the transferenceand the countertransference is not only to build or rebuild the story of one's life, but also to enact what and cannotbe narrated, 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 dispossession 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,and I thinkI am overwhelmedby her;she is the name I have for this "too but much-ness," thereis alwaysthe questionof the "who"-by whomam 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, and whatdo 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 interpellated for me as both more and less than what she is, and this incommensurability acShe counts for the countertransference. 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 is "not-knowing" repeatedand elaboratedin the transferencewithoutprecisely becoming a site to which I might return.

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If the inaugural momentsof 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,bound up with others, and the psychoanalytic scene that establishes the intersubjectiveconditions of my own emergence, The transference,insofar as it recapitulatesand reenindividuation,and survivability. acts in refractedform the primaryscenes of address,operatesnot only in the service of a the narrating life, assisting in the buildingof a life story,but as a force that interrupts forms sometimesconstruct,andthatcan displace from suspectcoherencethatnarrative 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 not present,sustainme. The transference 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 of contributeto the narrating a life, thatone may be able to tell one's story betterwhen "held"in the Winnicottiansense. And it does not mean thatnarrating life, in its a being and provisionality,is not an important to do. I am sure thattransference thing partiality and that narrating a crucial function. No one can live in a can facilitate narration, has worldor survivea radicallynon-narratable Indeed,even in life. radicallynon-narratable Kafka'sstory,when Georg appearsto throwhimself off the bridgeandto end his life, a narrativevoice uncannily remains, reportingon the noises that populate that event's The final line of thattext, "atthis momentan unendingstreamof trafficwas aftermath. just going over the bridge,"is spoken by some voice that claims to be presentto the moment described,and the third-person perspectiveis disjoined from the characterof Georg,who has alreadylet himself dropbelow.AlthoughGeorgis gone, some narrative offers resourcesfor survival.Even so, no one voice remains,suggesting that narration 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,and in which one also thrives. My suggestion here is that the structureof address is not precisely a feature of of itself. but one narrative, of its many and variableattributes, an interruption narrative The momentthe story is addressed,it assumes a rhetoricaldimensionthatis not reducis ible to a narrativefunction, and furtherthat address,as non-narrative, nevertheless what supportsnarrativeitself. I am preparingto make anothersuch argumentabout of makingmoraljudgmentsas well, thatthe structure addressconditionsthe makingof about someone or his or her actions, but that it is not reducibleto the judgjudgments ment, and that the judgment, alleviated of the structureof address,tends towardviolence. But here, and for the time being, my concern is with a suspect coherence that cosometimes attachesto narrativeand, specifically, with the way in which narrative 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 falsificationof 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 it autobiographer, may be thatwe preferthe seamlessness of the story to somethingwe might tentativelycall the truthof the person, a truthwhich, to a certaindegree, and for It reasons we have already suggested, is indicated more radically as an interruption. to be thatstorieshave to be interrupted, thatfor interruption takeplace, a story and may I This bringsme closer to the accountof the transference would like has to be underway. to offer, a transference that might be understoodas a repeatedethical practice.Indeed,

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if, in the name of ethics, we requirethatanotherdo a certainviolence to herself, and do accountor, indeed, a confession, then, conversely,it it in frontof us, offeringa narrative a may be thatby permitting,sustaining,accommodatingthe interruption, certainpractice of nonviolence precisely follows. If violence is the act by which a subjectseeks to reinstallits masteryand unity,then nonviolencemay well follow from living the persistent 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 it and the conditionsfor accountability, may be thatthis way in which we are, from the start,interrupted alterityand not fully recoverableto ourselves, indicatesthe way in by which we are, fromthe start,ethically implicatedin the lives of others.The point here is not to celebratea certainnotion of incoherence,but only to consider that our incoherence is ineradicablebut nontotalizing,and that it establishes the way in which we are implicated,beholden,derived,constitutedby whatis beyondus andbefore us. If we say self that thatthe self mustbe narrated, only the narrated can be intelligible, survivable, then we say that we cannot survive with an unconscious. We say, in effect, that the unconsciousthreatensus with an insupportable unintelligibility,and for thatreason we will surely,in one formor another, mustoppose it. The "I"who makes such an utterance 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 unconscious or, if it accepts an unconscious, accepts it as something which is thoroughly by recuperable the knowing "I,"as a possession perhaps,believing thatthe unconscious into what is conscious. It is easy to see this as a can be fully and exhaustivelytranslated defense consists. It defended stance, for it remainsto be known in what this particular the stand that many make against psychoanalysis itself. In the language is, after all, which articulatesthe opposition to a non-narrativizable beginning resides the fear that will spell a certainthreat,a threatto life, and will pose the risk, the absence of narrative 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 relationto receiving that is articulatedto, or at least in the itself, for the phantasmatic of face of, an Other.But if this is an allegory,it is not reducibleto a structure reception thatwould apply equally well to everyone, althoughit would give us the general structures within which a particularlife might be understood.We, as subjects who narrate Since I ourselves in the first person,encounterin common somethingof a predicament. 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 startthinking, thinking,there must be some conceptualthreadthat will provide a narrativehere, some lost link, some possibility for chronology,and the "I"becomes increasinglyconceptual,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 breaksdown, and so cannotgive an accountof its inabilityto narrate, why its narration it comes to experienceitself, or, rather,reexperienceitself, as radically,if not irretrievto ably, unknowingaboutwho it is. And then the "I"is no longer impartinga narrative 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,

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"the in face of the Other,"indicatingthat my syntax was already breakingdown) or, indeed, by virtue of the Other's face. 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 adequatenarrative accountof a life? And should it be? Is the task to cover over the breakage,the rupture,which is constitutiveof the "I"througha that is narrativemeans that quite forcefully binds the elements together in a narration 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 something more:it is a point aboutlanguageand its historicity.The means by which subject of constitutionoccurs is not the same as the narrativeform that the reconstruction that constitutionattemptsto provide. So what is the role of language in the constitutingof or the subject?And whatdifferentrole does it assumewhen it seeks to recuperate reconstitutethe conditions of its own constitution?First, there is the question:how is it that of my constitutionbecame "myown"?Whereand when does this presumption property and belonging take place? We cannottell a story aboutthis, but perhapsthere is some other way in which it is availableto 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 traces from 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,enigmaticand formative. Levinas speaks of a passivity priorto passivity,and therehe means to indicatethe differencebetween the passivity that a subjectundergoesand relates to througha certain act of reflexivity,and a passivitythatis priorto the subject,the conditionof its own We subjectivation,its primaryimpressionability. might relate this to the Freudianinsight 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 mocks it, sometimes gently, sometimes violently. Primaryimpressionabil"mineness," is not a featureof myself so thatI might say, by way of a warning,"I am impressionity 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 formation, 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 about the prehistoryof the subject, one thatI have been arguingcannotbe told. And therearetwo responsesto this: (1) that

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of there is no final or adequatenarrativereconstruction 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 prehistory which has never stoppedhappeningand, as such, is not a prehistoryin any chronological sense. It is not done with, over,relegatedto a past, which then becomes partof a of it reconstruction the self. On the contrary, is thatprehistorywhich causal or narrative the story I have to give of myself, which makes every account of myself interrupts partialand failed (and constitutes,in a way, my failure to be fully accountablefor my one actions, my final "irresponsibility," for which I may be forgiven only because I could not do otherwise,and thatnot being able to do otherwiseis ourcommon predicament). Indeed,considerthatthe way in which thatprehistorycontinuesto happenis that every time I enunciatemyself, I undergosomethingof what cannot be capturedor asNietzsche's bees) similatedby that"I,"thatI always come too late to myself (remember which both certainforms of and, in thatsense, can neverprovidethe accountof myself moralityas well as models of mentalhealth require,namely,that the self deliver itself The "I"is the momentof failurein every narrative effort to throughcoherentnarrative. for give an accountof oneself. It remainsthe unaccounted 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 bound to 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, and so it is not simply a questionof impartinginformation an Otherwho is over there, to the beyond me, waiting to know. On the contrary, 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 cannotnarrate thatbeginningwith any kind of authority, is indeed, such a narration 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" cannotdo 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, limited the degree to which we might by insisting on something non-narrativizable, hold ourselves or others accountablefor their actions? I want to suggest that the very meaningof responsibilitymust be rethoughton this basis; it cannotbe tied to the conceit of transparency. Indeed, to take responsibilityfor oneself is to avow the limits of and any self-understanding to establishthis limit not only as a conditionfor the subject, but as the predicament the humancommunityitself. But I am not altogetherout of the of if loop of the Enlightenment 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,thatabide with me as my own, familiar alterity,my own private,or not so private,opacity.I speakas 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 the myself is, paradoxically, source of my ethical connection with others. Do I need to

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know myself in orderto act responsiblyin social relations?Surely,to a certainextent, I yes. But is therean ethicalvalence to my unknowingness? am wounded,andI find that the wound itself testifies to the fact thatI am impressionable,given over to the Otherin ways that I cannotfully predictor control.I cannotthinkthe question of 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 primaryaddressoveror whelms; it cannotbe interpreted understood.It is the primaryexperienceof trauma. To be addressedcarries with it a trauma,resonates with the traumatic,and yet this traumacan only be experiencedretrospectivelythrougha later occurrence.Another wordcomes our way, a blow, an addressor namingthatslaughters,even as one lives on, strangely,as this slaughteredbeing, speakingaway. Given that we are vulnerableto the addressof others in ways that we cannotfully control,no morethanwe can controlthe sphereof language,does this mean thatwe are without agency and without responsibility?For Levinas, who separatesthe fact of responsibilityfrom the possibility of agency, to be subjectto the unwilled addressof the Otherheightensresponsibility.This is partof what he means when he claims, maddeningly, 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 of withoutthe warrant 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, inaugurative impingementon 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 primary addressthat overwhelms.The Levinasianposition cannot accommodatethe notion 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, this is truefor and Laplancheas well, for whom a certaindrive alreadyoperates,even if it is always instigated and structured the enigmatic addressof an Other. by 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 doubt sufferall kinds of injuries,and even and violations,andthese expose somethingof a primaryvulnerability impressionability and may well recall those experiencesin more or less traumaticways. Do such experiAnd in what sense can we understand ences form the basis for a sense of responsibility? a heightenedsense of responsibilityto emerge from the experience of injuryor violation? Let us consider for a moment that by responsibilityI do not mean a heightened moral sense that consists simply in an internalization rage and a shoring up of the of superego,nor am I referringto a sense of a guilt thatseeks to find a cause in oneself for what one has suffered.These are surely possible and prevalentresponsesto injuryand violence, but these are all responseswhich heightenreflexivity,shoreup the subject,its claims to self-sufficiency,its centralityand indispensabilityto the field of its experience. Bad conscience is a form of negative narcissism, as both Freud and Nietzsche to have told us in differentways, and it is important rememberthatthe negativenarcis-

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sism of conscience is still a narcissism.And as a narcissism,it recoils from the Other, The fromimpressionability, vulnerability. myriadformsof badconscience susceptibility, that Freudand Nietzsche analyze so deftly show us that moralizingforms of subjectivity harness the very impulses they seek to curb. Moreover, they show that the very instrumentof repressionis wrought from those impulses, creating a tautological circuitry 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 emphaticallynonreciprocal response?Whatwould it mean in the face of violence to refuse to returnit? Perhapswe mighthave to think,along with is Levinas, that self-preservation not the highest goal, and the defense of a narcissistic point of view, not the most urgentpsychic need. That we are impinged upon 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 even sometimesunbearable, Whatmight againstits difficultandintractable, relationality. 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 unbearability exposure as the sign, of the reminder,of a common vulnerability, common physicality,a common risk. a 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 permanent ethical for retaliation,knows no end, and can have no end. Such a strategyhas justification 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 revenge for what we suffer.It delineatesa physical vulnerabilityfrom which we cannot slip away, which we cannot finally resolve in the name of the subject,but which can providea way to understand way in which all the of us are alreadynot precisely bounded,not precisely separate,but in our skins, given over, in each other'shands, at each other's mercy.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 neverthelessresponsible.

WORKS CITED Abrams,Meyer Howard.TheMirrorand the Lamp:RomanticTheoryand the Critical Tradition.Oxford:Oxford UP, 1953. Cavarero,Adriana. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Trans. Paul A. Kottman.New York:Routledge, 2000. Felman, Shoshana.The Scandal of the SpeakingBody. Stanford:StanfordUP, 2003. Foucault,Michel. Fearless Speech. Ed. JosephPearson.New York:Semiotext(e),2001. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenologyof Spirit.Trans.A. V. Miller.Oxford:OxfordUP, 1977. A Doctor Trans.KevinBlahut.Prague:Twisted Kafka,Franz."TheJudgment." Country Spoon, 1997.

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a Kearney,Richard.The Wake oflmagination: Toward PostmodernCulture.Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 1989. Laplanche,Jean.Essays on Otherness.Ed. JohnFletcher.New York:Routledge, 1999. OtherwiseThanBeing,or,BeyondEssence.Trans. Levinas,Emmanuel. AlphonsoLingis. Pittsburgh: DuquesneUP, 1998. Hegel: TheRestlessnessof theNegative.Trans.JasonSmithandSteven Nancy,Jean-Luc. Miller. Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 2002. Rotenstreich,Nathan."Onthe Ecstatic Sources of the Concept of Alienation."Review of Metaphysics63.3 (1963): 550-58.

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