"Oral discourse is the plenitude of discourse": Emmanuel Levinas’s Philosophy of language applied to reading

ENLevinas’s philosophical grounding of ethics in the relation of the self to the other is inextricably connected with the notion of language, and to a great extent, relies on as well as transforms that notion. In this essay, I will trace some of the implications of this transformation for the theory of reading and how they bear on certain widespread reading practices, which I group together as one mode of reading: when the text one reads is informed by an other or others and reading is primarily a relationship with these others. The terms in which I will relate to reading in the context of Levinas’s philosophy of language will differ from most of the discussion on reading in Levinas studies so far. Closest to my approach is Adriaan Peperzak’s notion of the “presentation” of the text that is necessary for reading and the way he addresses the face-to-face aspect of reading. However, here I am applying Levinas’s insights about language to historically and culturally-specific modes of reading, which for a long time were and still are considered low-brow, feminine or adolescent, naive and unprofessional. Particularly, what concerns me is how Levinas’s philosophy of language can contribute to the theory of reading in the following cases: sentimental reading, which grants reality to the characters by emotional involvement; “reading for the author,” in Barbara Hochman’s term, which assumes that the author becomes the reader’s acquaintance and friend; and fan mail, fan fiction, and other forms of involvement with authors and characters as persons.