To Approach, to Welcome, to Contest.

Abstract

As Jacques Derrida emphasizes in his eloquent funeral tribute to Emmanuel Levinas, “welcome” is one of the most frequently used words in Totalité et infini. In the early pages of this work Levinas insists on the broadly framed significance of welcoming and teaching as manifestations of the ethical encounter. In later sections, however, he carefully distinguishes between the discreet welcome of the feminine whose language is silent and without teaching, and the approach of an absolute Other, who teaches transcendence itself. Levinas privileges the masculine when referring to the Other who teaches and seems to relegate the feminine to a silent presence whose welcome sets the stage for the ethical experience but who lacks the capacity to accept this challenge. The role and status of sexual difference in relation to the ethical is perhaps the most highly contested aspect of Levinas's writings, and since the late 1980s women scholars have ever more boldly probed the tensions in Levinas's writings with respect to these issues. Their commentaries, written from a variety of perspectives, force us to acknowledge Levinas's shortcomings. At the same time they enable us to appreciate more specifically the significance of Le Clézio's own undertaking, which changed form dramatically following his years with the Indians in Panama to assume an openly acknowledged ethical dimension. The works from the last two decades that most daringly concretize the process of refusing or accepting the summons of an Other are the Mauritian sagas of Le chercheur d'or, La quarantaine, and Révolutions. These works both valorize the welcome of the Levinasian feminine and embody teaching in female characters, such as Ouma, Suryavati, Ananta, Anna Archambeau, and Catherine Marro. The male protagonists in these works, Alexis L'Étang, Léon Archambeau, and Jean Marro, either reject their teaching outright, preferring to remain enclosed in the solitude of the Same, or in different ways, accept the possibility of re-commencement as Other, which Le Clézio himself so eagerly embraced.