marius timmann mjaalandfully understand the Other in his or her Otherness. The relationship
between Oneself and the Other is most convenient when it is regulated
by a foreseeable economy, with restrictions and mutual obligations,
with duties, justice, and gestures of politeness. Thus symmetry or a
stable asymmetry may be established as basis for the relationship — and
alterity has been reduced to the logic of the Same, to the expectation
that every other is similar to myself and is constructed and reconstructed
“in my similitude.”
In Derrida, the discussion on alterity and subjectivity is kept in
suspense. But as we have seen, this suspense without equilibrium is
also the topos of a crisis in Derrida’s philosophy — a crisis at times dom-
inated by the empty “production” of Selves and Others and at times
by the collapse and levelling of the difference as such, between alterity
and subjectivity. In order to resist this levelling of alterity, there ought
to be presupposed a space for Otherness prior to the definition, situated
in the very act of defining. As long as this commandment is observed,
as the first commandment of deconstruction, the discourse on Self and
Other will remain open for the possibility of an interruption, for a
revolt, interference or break-down of discourse, properly opening the
gap of alterity. Given there is such crisis: How could we avoid speaking
of an ultimate condition of discourse?