paul-denicola-literature-pure-mediality

interpretation, one that allows for what Levinas will later refer to as the, “other as other 5 .”
Any violence to otherness results out of this process of interpretation or conceptualization
in which meaning is violently forced out of that which is irreducibly distinct.
The problem that Nietzsche notes in terms of the creation of constructs lies in the human
process of translation and interpretation. According to him, unique and dissimilar
phenomena are categorized as selfsame via human interpretation. Human beings fail to
recognize that their perceptions of the "actual world" are fictitious, because they fail to
recognize their primary error: the mistaken translation of distinct phenomena into the
categorical.
2.3 Benjamin and the “Un-mittelbar-keit” of Language:
While the movement away from binary thinking - and a view of instrumental language
which is suspect- also receives significant attention from Benjamin, who writes
extensively on Kafka. We see Benjamin’s initial approach to an analysis of linguistics
and communications emerge in a June 1916 correspondence with Martin Buber. In this
letter he states:
I can understand writing as such as poetic, prophetic, objective in terms of its
effect, but in any case only as magical, that is as unmediated. Every salutary
effect, indeed every effect not inherently devastating, that any writing may have
resides in its mystery. In however many forms language may prove to be
5 Levinas’ text Otherwise than Being contains an extensive discussion of the “alterity of
being” which are discussed further in my “Concluding Remarks.”
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