discontenti am trying to figure out how to reconcile levinas' radical separation of the i with an i that is thoroughly contaminated with that which does not properly belong to it. i think singularity or fold might be the way to think his 'psychism' which is a certain inwardness of sentience, a singular site of sensation which yet does not necessarily coalesce into the identity of an i. he wouldn't say that but i think he takes a big leap from the singularity of sentience to the 'i' especially if one considers sentient beings to include the nonhuman.
there must be a way to think the 'i' which is not proper to itself yet displays the inward properties of sentience and 'secretiveness' and thus resists totalization or systematization.
well that didn't really help. mainly i am annoyed because levinas is turning out to be more problematic than i thought he would be and he is a slow read and i don't have time for slow reads and it seems like once upon a time i felt a resonance in this book that i don't feel now and this is symptomatic of my relation to my work now in that i can't locate the intuitive thread anymore and so am stuck intellectually piecing together the arguments without a leading idea or more to the point without a leading sense.
i complain about this all the time and never get a satisfactory answer which would be 'here you are! here is all the feeling you thought you'd lost. it's all here waiting for you and it won't do you any harm to just pick it up where you left off!'
i would be happy if i could spend the rest of my life riding the train writing little spasms of essays about riding the train. anyone know how i could pull this off? it's not asking for so much i don't think. no mansions and no sports cars. just a sleeping berth and lots of paper.
