One knows one has hit rock bottom. Verity of verities, to believe in one’s beliefs is necessarily to fail. One hits rock bottom… and realises that images, understood as copies, are done in imitation of one’s cares, of what one cares… to remember – of what one cares to care about. There is no end until the Self stumbles into it. Chronological time is a difficult and, perhaps, a useless discipline. There is no real reality after all. Images, seemingly generated from nowhere, are jumbled up repeatedly until a (confused and obfuscated) narrative emerges that rings true with what (one believes) one somehow already knew. After all, ‘the photographic’ decried psychology all along.
Goodness thus involves the possibility for the I that is exposed to the alienation of its powers by death to not be for death.
LEVINAS 1969:247
The Being in being of the Other is tasked with making beings be/appear. What stands in front of, the otherwise, is hence the reason in being of Alterity that is relative to me. The Other populates (brings into view) the Otherwise. This being of Alterity is not an ontological argument, but, truly, metaphysics itself – the infinite. Life?
Ontology strictly belongs within the domain of metaphysics. There is no such thing that linguistically translates into a statement of such sort as: “My Being!”
‘The photographic’ was the me finding you finding me.
Infinity never proves itself such.
Knowing is not a knowing. Knowledge is unknowing.
‘The photographic’, the it is what it is, reneges nothing… only asks, “when?”
Featured Image:
Untitled. December 2019 at Wied il-Mielaħ, L-Għarb, Gozo. Photograph by the author.
References:
LEVINAS, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity (1961). Translated by Alphonso Lingis. USA: Duquesne University Press.
