In this conclusion, I would like to take up Robert Gibbs’ challenge to consider possible relationships between Marx and Levinas though a rereading of this thesis.[1] The trajectory from Descartes to Levinas charts a profound transformation in man’s consumer relationship to a developing commodity economy. Descartes writes at a period which marks the beginning not only of modern thought, but also of bourgeois capitalism. Descartes’ description of himself figures him as almost the paradigmatic bourgeois consumer. Descartes sits down at his desk, calm and clear-headed, relaxing in the complacency of his home, to write his Meditations on First Philosophy. From this space of comfort, Descartes looks out at a threatening world filled with possible uncertainty and insecurity. In response, he attempts to preserve this security by domesticating exteriority. Descartes masters the external world by positing it as a set of objects which offer themselves to him for his contemplation. He does not figure his consciousness as a tabula rasa, reacting to new, unexpected sense-data. Rather, Descartes sets a table for himself with morsels which offer themselves for his consumption and domination.
Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s works express their distrust and disdain of this consumerist position. Both of them warn that Descartes’ spectatorial paradigm constitutes a cowardly retreat from life and its contingencies. Heidegger explains that mass culture submerges and loses Dasein by transforming its authentic possibilities into exchangeable and consumable commodities. Nietzsche contends that society effeminizes the individual, making him unable to assert his sovereign will-to-power. Both of them overcome their anxiety over modern economic circumstances by developing an anxiety over an underlying abyss. They assert that, by confronting the limits of one’s own existence, one can find one’s will to take risks, no matter what outcome fate may destine. In response to the flaccidity and passivity of modern selfhood, Nietzsche and Heidegger affirm the importance of creative, heroic individuals, of tragic artists and poetic builders. By doing so, both of them try to oppose the dominant consumerist subjectivity with a productive subjectivity. Nietzsche’s argues that the self should assert its will to power by producing new perspectives and creating new poetic visions. By developing a concept of possibility which can not be reduced to actuality, Heidegger establishes a process of perpetual production which can not be reduced simply to the commodities it produces. Furthermore, Heidegger’s Dasein confronts its world as entity which it can manipulate to promote its own possibilities like the solitary capitalist entrepreneur who exploits reality in the name of free enterprise.[2]
Before discussing how Levinas’ works relate to consumer capitalism, I would like to meditate on what his work describes. Although Levinas is an ethical thinker, we must be precise about what this term means for him. Levinas is not a thinker of morals or virtues. He does not — at least, not explicitly — prescribe any specific behaviors or attitudes. Furthermore, he does not furnish us with the equivalent of a Kantian imperatives; he does not give us ground rules for moral laws. Instead, I would argue that Levinas’ project in Totality and Infinity is quite similar to Heidegger’s project of constructing a ontological phenomenology in Being and Time. Although the terminology often seems cryptic and the sentences often become dizzying, Levinas intends to describe the exact structures of our everyday empirical existence.
Levinas’ philosophy attempts to radically reorient my conception of my life. Rather than letting me think of myself as an independent, autonomous entity, Levinas wrenches the center of my life outside of myself. Levinas teaches me just how radically I, at every moment of my life, am radically exposed to the wills of other people. The Other always maintains the capacity to shock me in both delightful and horrifying ways. My openness to the Other explains why I can not shut out another person’s suffering, even if I choose to ignore it. Conversely, this exposure also enables another person to invade my privacy in order to harm me. By orienting me towards ethics, Levinas does not necessarily make me act “better” in the conventional sense. Rather, he demonstrates how my interactions with others — and even my relationship with myself as one who transubstantiates into an Other over time — will always disrupt my self-assertive will. The Other confronts me as a person whose actions I can’t fully predict and whose statements I can’t completely control, yet whose commitments and words directly affect me. Furthermore, the Other seizes my destiny away from myself because he always takes over my projects and my works at the very moment that I project and produce them. Therefore, Levinas demonstrates that, in this post modern age of The Rapture, control will always slip out of our grasp and our will will always be violated by others.
Like Marx, Levinas’ works meditate on the irreducible materiality of the human condition and on the need for economic justice. Totality and Infinity always brings the reader back to a contemplation of the incarnate nature of existence, showing how our transformations from one moment to another are always resurrections of the flesh. Furthermore, this book always makes me contemplate how my discourse, my commerce, with others always occurs through the economic relationships I establish with them and with myself. In his discussions of enjoyment, Levinas consistently praises Marx for recognizing the fundamental sincerity of man’s material desires. Describing life as alimentation, as eating, Levinas’ analysis of enjoyment grounds my existence in my consumerism. Rather than viewing the world as possibilities I can seize, I ground my existence on my sensual enjoyment of the objects I consume. Levinas cites Theophile Gautier’s assertion, “I am one of those people for whom the external world exists.”[3] He does not figure my life as a heroic one, but rather describes me as more of a dandy, as effeminate, indulging myself in the element.
Levinas’ ideas can be applied to think through concrete phenomena which we encounter in our contemporary consumerist economy. For example, Levinas explains that the Other retains his transcendence through his infinite capacity to clarify the image he presents. Although he may manifest a particular facade at one moment, the Other can always present a completely different one in a new moment. The infinity of temporality allows the Other to create himself anew in a form which I never could have anticipated. This description, I would argue, can give us a phenomenology of Madonna, the post-modern person par excellance. Doesn’t Madonna’s constitute her “identity” precisely on her infinite capacity to recreate herself from one album to another, from the Boy Toy of Borderline, to the seductress of Like a Virgin, to the sophisticated vamp of Vogue? Similarly, Levinas explains that one establishes oneself in the moment by positing oneself as a concrete work. By manifesting oneself in the public world, one creates oneself as a consumable object. Again, doesn’t Madonna’s “power” derive precisely from her infinite ability to exploit herself, her infinite capacity to control her own commodification?
More importantly, Levinas’ analysis can also lend itself to a new critique of the consumerist economy. The anarchist Raoul Vaneigem, in his Revolution of Everyday Life critiques consumerism in, as the title suggests, a Heideggerian manner. He argues that modern society forces us into a survival mentality in which we merely consume goods rather exploring and exerting our creative wills.[4] Conversely, Levinas can help us to develop an an-archism of the other man. For Levinas, survival connotes a literal “living over,” an existence which lives off of those who have been slaughtered by history. Levinas explains that the self’s enjoyment derives through its concretization and incorporation of the elemental as objects for its bodily consumption. Furthermore, Levinas explains that this elemental enjoyment is produced from the materiality of the works it has inherited from the past, from the human suffering and death which has congealed itself in the production of a work. Levinas updates Marx’s analysis of capitalism as vampirism, Marx’s descriptions of the machinery of production sucking the life out of the bodies it consumes in production. He draws our attention to the fact that, in an era where all dresses are made from the blood of children and all overcoats are made from human hair, the everyday of consumption implicates the consumer in profound violence.
Perhaps we can use Levinas to develop a phenomenology of social protest. The Other presents me with a being who “burns without being consumed,” whose humanity can not be fully absorbed by a consumer economy, yet whose epiphany also teaches me the possibility of a holocaust. Levinas figures me as someone who is profoundly aware of human suffering, even if I choose to ignore this degradation. Furthermore, in his later works, he repeatedly explains that the material needs of the Other are my own spiritual needs. The Other calls me away from my complacent comfort, demanding that I work to promote social and economic justice. Levinas describes ways in which I can confront systems of oppression. He explains that my freedom does not derive from my ability to exert my will, but rather from an awareness that anonymous powers always threaten to crush my freedom. Although outside powers can indeed control me and objectify me, I always maintain the infinite capacity to speak to the Other. Like Abraham who argues desperately against God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, I retain the infinite ability and duty to bear witness to the suffering of myself and the Other and to speak out against the concrete facts which oppress us.
[1] Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas. [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.]
[2] Heidegger’s later work criticizes this exploitation of the world through his analysis of Enframing [Gestell.] See his piece “The Question Concerning Technology” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. [Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.]
[3] Existents and Existence p. 37
[4] Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, p. 159- 163. [London: Left Bank Books and Rebel Press, 1993]