Though dwelling is constitutive of being, one might say that the arrival
of the other, or the anticipation of the arrival, activates the dwelling of
being. And even though it has been stated in this chapter that the dwell-
ing of being anticipates, beforehand, the arrival of the other, these state-
ments ought not be understood as contradictory. That the other brings
about the dwelling of being, and that the dwelling of being anticipates the
other, is an aporia that cannot be put to rest or settled. It is a deconstruc-
tion; it remains ambiguous. The relation of the self and the other is one
in which they anticipate one another, and yet are only each unconcealed
and revealed to oneself in the presence of each other. They are subject to
one another. If the other invents me, then I also invent the other—not in
the manner of forethought and intention, but in the manner of invention
that invents itself, free from our determination. The self and other arrive
in each other’s presence and are thus invented by the arriving that consti-
tutes being. While each must certainly exist, for without existence there
would be no one to arrive, neither is realized until arriving occurs. Each
participates necessarily in the coming-into-being of the other and is thus
determined only in relation.
For Derrida, alterity is the concern. We must understand that differ-
ence is prior to identity. 31 What Derrida means is that identity appears as
the result of difference being recognized. There is a sense in which one
knows one’s own self as distinct when one experiences the presence of the
arrivant. That is, one perceives alterity in that moment of arrival and thus
discovers identity. Some thinkers, like Levinas, want to preserve the other
as distinct from the self that encounters the other in an attempt to protect
the other from being harmfully dominated by the self. But for Derrida,
this is nearly impossible because encounter is generative. Both the self and
the other are necessarily mutually affected by the encounter. The other
is always other so that our experience never coincides because the self is
here and the other is there. 32 And yet there must be something that binds
up the self with the other and makes the encounter possible. Perhaps it is
in this way that the other reveals itself in language. To use language is to
presume that there is a common experience of language, or at least a faith
in the ability of language to facilitate a relation. 33 Along these same lines,
there is something to be said about limits, and infi nities, that we discover
in the encounter with the other. That is to ask whether by thinking the
relation with the other through language, do we force that relation into
being made subject to a third voice, that is, language? Can we avoid this,
or even view the encounter from the outside? Derrida writes:
TONGUES AND THE REVELATION OF BEING: READING PENTECOSTAL... 61