Face to Face with the Other Other: Levinas versus the Postcolonial

T he concept of the other is pivotal to postcolonial studies. If its original function, as Edward Said demonstrated in Orientalism, was to circulate as a domesticated object of knowledge in the discourse of the hegemonic same, the field of postcolonial studies — at least in its more discursive, poststructuralist orientation — derives its raison d’être to no small degree from an impulse to critique and overcome such a limited and stereotyped sense of cultural otherness. And yet, in spite of rigorous postcolonial critique over the past few decades, the other persists — and persists precisely as an ethical and political touchstone in the field.1 Given this persistence, it is perhaps surprising that the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas — who so often, if somewhat reductively and misleadingly, is referred to as “the philosopher of the other”2 — has only recently been receiving greater attention by postcolonial scholars.3 In fact, the uptake of Levinasian philosophy in postcolonial studies has been extremely sluggish and less than enthusiastic; one would not be far off the mark to call it — with a nod