The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

Nodes 65
face because enmity is always “faced” or constituted by a confrontation.
We stand alongside our friends; I stand opposite my foe. Friends only
“face” each other insofar as they stand opposite and “face” their common
foe (their enmity - in - common). Enmity is an interface.
The Schmittian friend - foe distinction is not just political in the
military sense but political in the ethical sense, too. The basis of the
friend - foe distinction is intimately related to the relation between
self and other. But this self - other relation need not be a rapid fire of
glances, gazes, and recognition (as in the Hegelian - Kojèvean model).
For Levinas, ethics is first constituted by the ambiguous calling of
the “face” of the other, for there is an affective dynamic at work
between self and other that revolves and devolves around the “face”
(a verb more than noun): “The proximity of the other is the face’s
meaning, and it means from the very start in a way that goes beyond
those plastic forms which forever try to cover the face like a mask of
their presence to perception.” 33 Perhaps there is something to be
learned by positioning Levinas in relation to Schmitt on this issue. A
self does not set out, avant la lettre, to identify friend or foe according
to preexisting criteria (political, military, ethical). Rather, the strange
event of the “face” calls out to the self, in a kind of binding, intimate
challenge: “The Other becomes my neighbor precisely through the
way the face summons me, calls for me, begs for me, and in so doing
recalls my responsibility, and calls me into question.” 34 What implications
does this have for enmity? Certainly that the self exists for
the other. But it is much more than this. Enmity is not simply some
final, absolute split (friend/ foe, self/ other) but rather a proliferation
of faces and facings, whose very spatiality and momentary, illusory
constrictions create the conditions of possibility for enmity in both
its political and military forms (facing - allies, facing - enemies). Friends,
foes, selves—there are faces everywhere.
But what of an enmity without a face? What of a defacement of enmity?
This is where a consideration of politico - military topologies comes
into focus. Enmity is dramatized or played out in the pragmatic and
material fields of strategy and war. The emerging “new symmetry”