Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Relating to the Other

Author(s): Derek Attridge

Source: PMLA, Vol. 114, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethics and Literary Study (Jan., 1999), pp. 20-31
Published by: Modern Language Association
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Innovation, Literature, Ethics:
Relating to
DEREK ATTRIDGEis Lever-
hulmeResearchProfessorin the
Departmentof English and Re-
latedLiteratureat the University
of York, England, and distin-
guishedvisitingprofessorin En-
glish at RutgersUniversity,New
Brunswick. Among his recent
publications is Writing South
Africa: Literature, Apartheid,
and Democracy, 1970-1995
(CambridgeUP,1998), coedited
with RosemaryJolly. His forth-
coming publications include a
book on James Joyce and liter-
ary theoryand a collection enti-
tled SemicolonialJoyce,coedited
with Marjorie Howes (both
CambridgeUP). He is complet-
ing a studyof J. M. Coetzeeand
the singularityof literature.
20
DerekAttridge
the Other
OW CAN WE understand the ceaseless demand for innovation
in cultural practice?1 How does the obligation to be innovative
in artistic creation relate to the obligation to be inventive in one's re-
sponses to cultural productions? What is the relation between the latter
obligation and the apparently contradictory obligation to respond to cul-
tural artifacts with fidelity and justness? Do any of these obligations have
the force of ethical responsibility, and if so, how do they relate to ethical
demands in the realm of personal and social interaction? And do the
questions posed here have a distinctive valence in the field of art and
more particularly in the institution or practice we call literature?
The Creation of the Other
I sit at my computer, writing the first draft of this essay-not tinkering
with an existing text or working out a problem according to a set of rules
but composing new sentences out of nothing, or rather out of a largely
inchoate swirl of half-formulated thoughts and faint intimations. I am
trying to verbalize a cluster of interconnected ideas that I can only dimly
apprehend; from time to time the nebulous outlines take shape as
phrases or argumentative links, but I keep losing the thread, deleting,
going back over my typed words, making one more attempt to say what
needs to be said, or even, it sometimes seems, demands to be said. What
I have to resist is my mind's inclination toward repetition, its tendency
to process novelty in terms of the familiar. Motivated by some obscure
drive, I sense that I am pushing at the limits of what I have hitherto been
able to think.
What exactly am I doing? It is a common enough activity, with ana-
logues in many other fields, but one that resists precise terminology-
perhaps because it is so familiar.2 Let me suggest three possibilities. I
could say that I am creating, or at least attempting to create; this would
be to invoke a long aesthetic tradition and an even longer theological
one. I could say that I am inventing, trying to be inventive, hoping to
 DerekAttridge
bring into the culture to which I belong a text that
will have the status of an invention. If I use this
term, I align myself with an ancient rhetoricaltra-
dition, in which inventio is the first phase in the
generationof a new discourse, the findingof mate-
rials to be shaped and presented in persuasive
speech. Finally, I could say that I am attemptingto
respondto the new ideas whose potentialexistence
I intuit, that I am tryingto articulatea just or an ad-
equate response to these unformulatedinsights. In
what follows, I examinethe somewhatdifferentim-
plicationsof these threeterminologicalpossibilities.
The title of this section echoes thatof a demand-
ing and suggestive essay by JacquesDerrida:"Psy-
che: Inventionof the Other."Like Derrida'ssubtitle,
the creation of the other can be read in two ways.
As "creatingthe other,"it emphasizes agency and
activity:to be truly creativeis to wrest from the fa-
miliar the hitherto unthought, to bring into exis-
tence by skillful and imaginativeintellectual labor
an entity that is absolutely different from what is
already in being. Such an account does not seem
entirely true to the experience I am trying to de-
scribe, however.In a curious way, the ideas I have
not yet been able to formulate seem to be "out
there"ratherthan simply nonexistent. My experi-
ence has an element of passivity, of attemptingto
heighten my responsiveness to hints of relation,to
incipient arguments, to images swimming on the
edges of consciousness, an element of letting them
come as much as seeking them out. When I write a
sentence that seems just right, thatpleases me with
its encapsulationof a point I had not known I was
about to make, I am not able to say how it came
into being, but I can say I did not produceit solely
by means of an active shaping of existing, con-
scious, mental materials. If this is true for minor
achievementsof creativearticulation,it seems likely
that major feats of creativity, inventiveness of a
fuller kind, spring from a more remarkableopen-
ness of the mind to what it has not yet grasped.
Hence the appropriateness of the alternative
readingof the genitive constructionin the creation
of the other, according to which my text, and per-
haps something of myself, is created by the other.
This should not be taken to imply a mystical belief
in an exterior agent; rather,it indicates that the re-
lation of the createdwork to conscious acts of cre-
21
ation is not entirely one of effect to cause. The
coming into being of the wholly new requiressome
relinquishment of intellectual control, and the
other is a possible name for thatto which controlis
ceded.3 Furthermore,if the settled patternsof my
mental world have been so freed up that the truly
other finds a welcome, my subjectivity will have
been alteredin some degree, and thus-especially
if the cumulativeeffect of such events is taken into
account-the self too can be said to be a creation
of the other. In fact, as I shall argue more fully
below, when I experience alterity,I experience not
the other as such (how could I?) but the remolding
of the self that brings the other into being as, nec-
essarily,no longer entirelyother.
The value of a single phrase that invokes both
these perspectives on the coming into existence of
the new is that it fuses what might otherwise seem
different processes or opposing accounts. It thus
achieves what a logical or discursiveaccountcould
not-the phrase is itself creative. What the phrase
highlights is that novelty is achieved by means
both of the refashioningof the old and of the unan-
ticipated advent of the new or, more accurately if
more paradoxically,that the adventof the new is a
particularrefashioningof the old. We may say that
the other's arrivaldestabilizesthe field of the same
or that the destabilization of the field of the same
occasions the arrivalof the other;both these state-
ments are true, though each is incomplete without
its counterpart.Our accounts of this process usu-
ally have to veer between narrativesthat suggest
the active reshaping of existing configurations-
"forging in the smithy of one's soul" and so on-
and narrativesthat suggest the passive experience
of the other's irruptioninto the settled order,such
as inspiration by the Muse. Thinking creatively
aboutcreationmeans thinkingof these as two sides
of the same coin.4
The other is an overworkedphrasein currentac-
ademic discourse and may seem too portentousor
too imprecise for my purposeshere, but it has cer-
tain merits.One is its implicationthat,althoughthe
kind of encounterI am discussing happensrepeat-
edly, what is encounteredis always singular. Alter-
natives such as otherness and alterity are rendered
less useful by their generality,their suggestion that
we aredealingwith a substancethatcould be spread
22 Literature,Ethics:Relatingto the Other
Innovation,
about or divided up. Tout autre est tout autre is the
motto Derrida coins in The Gift of Death (68):
every other is completely other.The othernessthat
is broughtinto being by an act of writing, whether
this othernessis embodiedin an argument,a partic-
ular sequence of words, or an imagined series of
events, is not just a matter of perceptible differ-
ence. It implies a wholly new existent that cannot
be apprehendedby the old modes of understanding
and could not have been predicted by means of
them; its singularity,even if it is producedby noth-
ing more than a slight recastingof the familiarand
thus of the general, is absolute. A furtheralterna-
tive, the new, while it has some advantages and
will be used as an approximate synonym in this
essay, lacks-even with the definite article-this
implicationof singularity.
Anothervirtueof the phrasethe other-which it
shareswith the new-is thatit is premisedon a rela-
tion.To be otheris necessarilyto be otherto. Whatis
the same to me is other to someone else and vice
versa.Moreover,it is otheronly in the circumstances
within which the encounter takes place. Although
those who use the phrase do not always acknowl-
edge its relationalimplication,we shall see thatit is
importantto do so. It is alreadyevidentthatit com-
plicates the account of absolute singularity that I
havejust given. If the otheris always and only other
to me, I am alreadyin some kindof relationto it, and
this means thatit participateswith me in some gen-
eral, shared framework.Otherness, that is, is pro-
duced in an active or eventlike relation-we might
call it a relating:the other as other to is always and
constitutively on the point of turningfrom the un-
knowninto the known,fromthe otherinto the same.
(An entity without this relation would simply not
impinge on me; as far as I was concerned, it would
be nonexistent.) This turnfrom the singular to the
general is not what is alluded to in such phrases as
the violence of representation and the domestication
of the other. They presuppose a narrativein which
the other startstotally outside my ken, its existence
unsuspected,and is then strippedof its othernessso
thatI can come to grips with it. In the account I am
giving, the otheris not an entity at firstutterlyinac-
cessible and then all too accessible. Only in relating
to me is the otherother,and in coming to be as a sin-
gular otherit at the same time comes to be as a part
of my world. As importantas the new creation are
the transformationsthathad to occurto make its ex-
istence (as singular turninginto general) possible
and that will in turn make furthertransformations
possible-each of which will also be singular and
generalizable.
Creation,then, is both an act and an event, both
somethingthatis done and somethingthathappens.
Since there is no recipe, no program,for creation
(this is partof what we mean by creation),it cannot
be purely a willed act; but since creation requires
preparationand labor,it cannotbe purely an event.
(The term inventionbetrayssomethingof this dual-
ity in its double referenceto the act of making and
the event of coming upon.) Moreover,each of these
aspects of creation can be described in two ways:
the act of breakingdown the familiaris also the act
of welcoming the other;the event of the familiar's
breakingdown is also the event of the irruptionof
the other.5If one is able to breakdown the old cre-
atively and not just negatively (and it is not possi-
ble to be sure which of these one is doing), the new
comes into being; at the same time, the breakdown
of the old is necessarily produced by the pressure
of its internalcontradictions-which, since its con-
tradictionsare a functionof what it excludes, is the
same as saying that it breaksdown underthe pres-
sure of the other.6
Creation, Invention
I have been discussing creativity or inventiveness
as if it were an inherentpropertyof certainacts and
productsof acts,7a quality of absolute newness at-
tributableto an individual's mental processes and
their results. I shall continue to use the term cre-
ation to refer to the private, mental aspects of this
process, but it is important to acknowledge that
creationalways takes place in a culture,not just in
a mind. For the public aspect I shall reserve the
term invention (leaving innovation to cover both
aspects). I have already suggested that innovative
mental acts produce lasting alterationsin the sub-
jectivity that achieves them: once I have articulated
the new thoughtsthatI had dimly apprehended,my
thinking will never be entirely the same again. If
that new articulationbecomes public, with the dis-
articulationof settled modes of thought that made
 DerekAttridge
it possible (and thus that it made possible), it may
alter cognitive frameworksacross a wider domain,
allowing furtheracts of creativity in other minds.
This sequence of events is familiar in many fields,
including philosophy, the sciences, politics, reli-
gion, and art.8
The use of the word invention for this process
tallies closely with common usage.9 An invention
may be a new device or program,but the act of in-
vention is a mental feat that makes possible both
the manufacture of the new entity and, perhaps
more important,new instancesof inventiveness.In-
ventiveness in the cultural field, too, connotes not
only the creationof a new artifactbut also a way of
deploying materials that can be both imitated and
inventively developed,parodied,challenged.These
furtherforms of inventiveness cannot be predicted
from the invention that makes them possible-if
they could, they would not be inventive.10
The creativeact, howeverinternalit might seem,
works with materials absorbed from what we can
broadly call a culture or a melange of cultures (in-
cluding, among other things, aesthetic, scientific,
moral, religious, economic, and political practices,
institutions, norms, and beliefs), and it is on cul-
tures thatit has its inventiveeffects. To be creative,
in the limited sense I mean, the mind needs only
the materialsit happensto have, whethersharedor
not, but invention-which is the only way in which
creativity can be registered-requires a close en-
gagement with the circumambientculturalmatrix.
The most innovative artists or scientists have usu-
ally had an exceptionallygreatcapacityto incorpo-
rate culturalmaterialsand have thereforebeen able
to make the strongest impression on cultures. Nor
is this merely a question of the richness and range
of the stuff that the mind has to work on; what the
inventorfinds in the culturalfield is not just mate-
rial but gaps in the material, strains and tensions
that suggest the pressure of the other, of the hith-
erto unthoughtand unthinkable.
A number of pragmatic issues help determine
whethera privatecreationbecomes a public inven-
tion." A createdentity that could effect significant
changes may be ignored for variousreasons. Its in-
fluence may be diverted, diminished, or overshad-
owed by the circumstancesof its productionor by
contemporaneousevents elsewhere. History has no
23
reputationfor fairness in this regard.An inventive
act may be registeredor, more precisely, produced
after a lag of severalgenerations.Hence inventive-
ness is not an inherentpropertyof an act or a cre-
ated object; it can only be retrospectively, and
nevercertainly,assigned. Nor, however,is it simply
a property conferred by an external and arbitrary
history: an invention always engages closely with
culturalpractices and systems as it deforms or dis-
joins them, and so the inventive act must already
have a more-than-casualrelationto the contingen-
cies that surroundit and that will influenceits fate.
The Encountered Other
In many discussions from Hegel to the present,the
other (or the Other) possesses a somewhat differ-
ent significance from the one with which I have
endowed it. In particular,it indicatesan alreadyex-
isting entity that the self encounters: most obvi-
ously, anotherhumanbeing. The otherin Levinas's
writing, for example-frequently called "Autrui"
ratherthan"l'Autre"to bring out its humandimen-
sion-is linked closely to the biblical "neighbor,"
even though ultimatelythe othernessin question is
that of God. In colonial and postcolonial studies,
the other tends to standfor the colonized cultureor
people as viewed by the dominantpower.'2What-
ever its precise complexion, the other in these ac-
counts is primarily an impingement from outside
that challenges assumptions,habits, and values and
that demandsa response.
How substantial is the difference between the
other as an existing entity, such as a humanbeing,
to which I am enjoined to respondand the other as
that which beckons or commands from the fringes
of my mental sphere as I engage in a creative act?
At first sight they may seem to have little in com-
mon. In the formercase, it might be said, the other
is other because its substance, its center of con-
sciousness, its ethical claim on me, or some such
fact aboutit is wholly beyond my grasp,absolutely
foreign to me and to my experience. In the latter
case the other is other because it has not yet come
into being, because current modes of thought or
language are insufficient to realize it-and as it is
realizedit necessarilyceases to be other.In the first
case we can pronounce the other to be other, it
24 Literature,Ethics:Relatingto the Other
Innovation,
seems, from the beginning of the encounterwith it;
in the second case it is only retrospectively and in
the past tense that we can make this pronounce-
ment, since during the process of creation all is
risk, guess, potential, with no sure outcome, and
after it the other has become assimilated to the
same. Ourtask in the first instance is to respondto
the other as other, in the second to bring the other
into being as somethingotherthanthe other.
Yet this starkcontrastdoes not survivecloser in-
spection. For insofar as I apprehendthe alreadyex-
isting other,it is not other:I recognize the familiar
contours of a human being, which is to say I ac-
commodate him or her to my existing schemata.
One aspect of my response,it is true,may be an ac-
knowledgmentof the otherperson's subjectivityas
impenetrableto mine or an acceptance that his or
her claims as an ethical subject are unlimitableby
mine. But these are responses to the person not as
singular individual but as (generic) person, with a
selfhood equivalent to mine. However, if in this
process I remain aware, or become aware through
an act of attention, of some failure in my accom-
modation, some strain or internal conflict in my
categorization,I may be respondingto the singular
otherness of the other person. It is in the acknowl-
edgment of the other human being's uniqueness
and therefore of the impossibility of finding gen-
eral rules or schemata to account fully for him or
her that one can be said to encounterthe other. At
the same time as it is an affirmationof the other as
other, therefore, the experience is an encounter
with the limits of one's powers to think and to
judge, a challenge to one's capacities as a rational
agent. In this way, it is not differentin its essentials
from the experience of the other as one attempts
creatively to formulatenew thoughtsor to produce
an originalwork of art.
Furthermore,the response that seems called for
by this glimpsed apprehensionof othernessas a re-
sult of the failure of existing modes of thoughtand
evaluation is a kind of creation and may be an in-
vention. To respond fully to the singularotherness
of the other person (and thus renderthat otherness
apprehensible)is to creatively refashionthe norms
whereby we understandpersons as a category and
in that refashioning-necessarily inaugural and
singular-to find a way of respondingto his or her
singularity.This response may be a purely internal
one, or it may issue in deeds or words. If deeds and
words ensue, the inventivenessof the responsemay
in turnprovoke inventive responses not only to it-
self but also to other persons and bring about a
more widespread alteration in intersubjective be-
havior. The other in this situation is therefore not,
strictlyspeaking,a personas conventionallyunder-
stood in ethics or psychology; it is once again a re-
lation, or a relating, between me, as the same, and
that which, in its uniqueness, is heterogeneous to
me. If I succeed in responding adequately to the
othernessand singularityof the other,it is also that
relating-which is always in a specific time and
place-to which I respond, in creatively changing
myself and perhapsinventively changing a little of
the world. In this process the other is transformed
from otherto same, but the same is not the same as
it was before the encounter.
This operation is similar, then, to the one that
occurs when a writer refashions norms of thought
to realize an inventivenew possibility in a poem or
an argument. As has often been remarked, the
sense of finding the appropriateword in a poetic
line or articulatingthe next stage of an argumentis
that of achieving what one was seeking and would
be accuratelyexpressed not by "At last, I've made
something new!" but ratherby "At last I've got it
right!" or even "At last I've got it!" Granted,it is
presumablypartof the writer'sgeneralintentionto
compose sentences that are differentfrom anything
writtenbefore and that at the same time are intelli-
gible, informative, pleasure-giving. But what is
foremostin the creativemind is the issue neitherof
originalitynor of communication;it is the demand
that justice be done to thoughts that have not yet
even been formulatedas thoughts.
Reading
If the emergence of the other in innovativeactivity
takes place in writing, in scientific, mathematical,
and philosophical thought, in political engage-
ments, in painting and musical composition, and
in intersubjective and intercultural relations, to
namejust a few of its instances,it is not difficultto
see that it takes place in reading. Reading (and I
include here listening to an utterance) involves a
 DerekAttridge
number of different types of activity, the simplest
of which is the mechanical conversion of typo-
graphic marksor phonetic sequences into concep-
tual structures. Among these many activities is
readingas an attemptto respondto the othernessof
the other, a process that is not essentially different
from the inauguralacts already described and like
them one that brings about unexpected reshapings
of the familiar.
Reading innovatively in this way, then, may be
described in terms similar to those I have been
using. With respect to the questions that interest
me here, a text is to be considerednot a fixed set of
signifiersor signifieds but somethinglike a field of
potential meaning awaiting realization without
wholly determining it in advance.13Reading in-
volves working against the mind's tendency to as-
similate the other to the same, attending to that
which can barely be heard, registering what is
unique aboutthe shapingof language,thought,and
feeling in a particularwork. Encounteringthe other
in reading, the mind (understood in the broadest
sense) lets itself be carriedto the bordersof its ac-
customed terrainby the text. And the other here,
once again, is a relation or relating ratherthan an
object; it is the act-event-for it is clearly both-of
my reading,now, here, of this particulartext.
As I have said, when a creative act issues in an
object,thatobject is not a simple materialentity but
is constitutedby normsor codes that,howevernew,
can be deduced and duplicated, as well as inven-
tively reformulated.Were this not true, the object
would simply remainopaque.An essentialpartof a
full responseto a text that strikesme with the force
of the new, therefore, is a deduction of its modus
operandi,an accurateunderstandingof the repeat-
able rules accordingto which the text operatesas a
meaningful entity.'4 But this operation is not just
mechanical. If the text is truly new to me (and as I
show later, this condition requires neither recent
publicationnor a first-timereading),my responseto
it will involve a suspensionof my habits, a willing-
ness to rethinkold positions in orderto apprehend
the text's inauguralpower. (It is this rethinkingthat
will continue to have effects as I read other texts.)
Since the subjectiverefashioningthat the text calls
for is necessarilydifferentfor every subject,indeed
for every reading, singularity is in play from the
25
start.To respondto the singularityof the text I read
is thus to affirm its singularity in my singular re-
sponse, open not just to the signifying potential of
the words on the page but also to the time andplace
within which the reading occurs, the ungeneraliz-
able relation between this text and this reader.'5
While generalizable norms are involved from the
start,as I have noted, it is only retrospectivelythat
we can extract them as norms (and thus objectify
the transitionfrom the otherto the same), although
even this hypostatizationremainsrevisable.
Moreover, what I affirm when I respond to the
text in a way that does justice to its othernessis not
simply a particular argument or arrangementof
words but the creativityof the authoror authorsin
bringing into existence that argument or those
words. This is not a matter of trying to reproduce
the experience of writing innovatively; the pro-
cesses of creation (which probablyinvolved much
mechanical work as well) have now been left be-
hind.'6I may know nothing about the author,not
even his or her name, but I read the text on the as-
sumptionthat it is "authored,"that it is the creative
work, however mediated, of at least one mind.
While many of our encounters with texts and per-
haps the greaterpart of our experience of any text
operate without this assumption,a full response to
the othernessof the text includes an awarenessof, a
respect for, and in a certain sense (to which I shall
return)a taking of responsibilityfor, the creativity
of its author.
The singular, affirmative response to a text as
creativelygeneratedothermay occur entirelyin the
mental and affective domain. But a creative read-
ing often moves to an articulation in words, as if
the work being read demanded a new work in re-
sponse. This articulation-in a conversation,an ar-
ticle, a lecture,a letter-may itself inventivelymake
possible new ways of writing, new ways of read-
ing. It is subject to all the conditions under which
inventionfunctions,includingboth the necessity of
close engagementwith the culturalcontext and the
operationof contingentfactorsin thatcontext.
I indicated earlierthat the novelty of a text does
not simply entail recent production or a first-time
reading. The texts we read often do not have a
strongly inventive relationto the culturalenvelope
within which we encounterthem.Texts withoutthis
26 Literature,Ethics:Relatingto the Other
Innovation,
relation may have had it at a certain point in their
histories,andthey may have it again (since old texts
are constantly being rediscovered), but when we
read them they are partof the familiarcanon. How,
then, is it possible to experience them with the
shock of the new, as we often do? Again, we need to
considerthe otheras a relating:it is not the text "it-
self" but my singularand active relationto the par-
ticularconfigurationof possibilities representedby
the text that is the site of alterity.However old the
text, howeverfamiliarto me, it can always strikeme
with the force of novelty if, by means of a creative
readingthat strives to respondfully to the singular-
ity of the work in a new time and place, I open my-
self to its potential challenge. Rather than the
familiar model of the literary work as friend and
companion, sharing with the reader its secrets, I
propose the work as stranger,even and perhapses-
pecially when the readerknows it intimately.'7
Form and the Literary
The creative act of respondingto the singularoth-
erness manifestedin a humanartifacthappens,as I
have noted, in many different fields. The artifact
may be a philosophical argument,a mathematical
proof, a chemical experiment,a journalisticreport.
Or it may be what Western culture classes as an
aesthetic artifact:a painting, a sculpture,a theatri-
cal performance, a sonata, a novel. Do the argu-
ments developed here provide any assistance in
distinguishing between aesthetic and nonaesthetic
artifacts?Does responsivenessto the otheras a cre-
ated entity mean the same in both categories?
Let us focus on the question of literature,under-
standing that the discussion could be expanded,
mutatismutandis,to other artforms. I have already
suggested that the response to a text as new or
other includes a sense of its "authoredness,"not,
that is, of any intention or activity preceding its
production but of the (assumed) fact of its having
been brought into existence by the creative act of
an author or authors. Now literary criticism of
many varieties takes it as a founding principle that
a consideration of the author responsible for a
work is not relevantto its interpretationor evalua-
tion. While not seeking to deny that insight, my
proposal distinguishes between a concern with the
historical author-a legitimate but not a necessary
component of an attemptto do justice to a work-
and the coloring that is given to one's experience
of a text by the assumption that an authorcreated
it. For this reason,pace Roland Barthes, I find the
term workparticularlyappropriatehere, in contrast
to the anonymoustext.
In some worksthe author'screativelaborconsists
largely of the manipulationof ideas, the construc-
tion of arguments,the representationof previously
existing entities in a new light, or the imagination
of hithertononexistententities. In otherssuch labor
is combined with, and is in a certain sense always
subjectto, the selection and arrangementof words.
In these works othernessand singularityare inher-
ent in the words themselves, their sequence, their
suggestiveness, their patterning. To reexperience
the othernessof a work of this type thatI have read
before, it is not enough to recall the arguments
made,the ideas introduced,the images conjuredup;
it is necessaryto rereador recall the words, in their
created order. One way of saying this is that the
creativeachievementis aformal one, whateverelse
it may be. The commonest currentname for works
of this kind (though it is certainly not without its
problems)is literature.
It is obvious that such a distinctiondoes not cor-
respond exactly to the culturallyaccepted (though
historically mutable) categorizationof texts as lit-
erary or nonliterary.Many that are conventionally
considerednonliteraryare characterizedby formal
creativity (and this aspect may achieve longer-
lasting recognition than their argumentsor repre-
sentations), whereas many texts we identify as
novels, poems, andplays areotheronly to the extent
thatthey bringinto existencepowerfulimages or in-
novativelyhandleconcepts. But as an identification
of the "literary"in any text, the focus on formal
singularity and otherness (which are not separate
properties)has a certainusefulness. It is not only a
question of finding new ways of constructingsen-
tences or managing verbal rhythms, however; the
possibility of creating an otherness that may have
the effects I have been attempting to describe
springs from the fact not just that words consist of
sounds and shapes but also that these sounds and
shapes are nexuses of meaning and feeling and
hence are deeply rooted in culture,history,and the
 DerekAttridge
varieties of human experience. The formal se-
quence therefore functions as a kind of staging: a
semantic and emotional performance.Every time I
read a linguistic text as a literarywork (I can read
any text in many ways and usually read in more
than one way at once), I engage in and am taken
through that performance; indeed, as has often
been suggested, the work exists as a literarywork
only in the multiple events of its reading. Hence
the need to repeatthe work, as a temporal,sequen-
tial experience, if one wishes to repeat the appre-
hension of its otherness (though exact repetition
can never occur). Literaryworks offer many kinds
of pleasure, but the pleasure that can be called pe-
culiarly literary derives from this staging, this in-
tense but distanced playing out of what might be
the most intimate, the most strongly felt, con-
stituentsof our lives. Withoutthe crucial function-
ing of form, there would be no sense of staging. In
the readingof literature,one might say, meaning is
simultaneouslyformed and performed.
The creativity requiredin a just response to the
othernessof a literarywork, therefore,involves not
only a singularaffirmationof the work's singularity
based on an apprehensionof its inventive reorder-
ing of the cultural matrix but also an affirmation
of its occurrence, in being read, as an intellectual-
emotional event. A straightforwardlydiscursive,
analytic commentary, valuable though it may be,
cannotmake these affirmations.Only a new, unpre-
dictable, singular, creative act, as an inventive
event in its turn,can do justice to a literarywork as
literarywork.
Responsibility
Affirming the other, the new, in all the different
modes I have considered, makes demands. Atten-
tiveness to that which is outside the familiar re-
quires effort, even if it is the effort of resisting
effortfulbehavior,of emptying out the too full, ex-
cessively goal-orientedconsciousness. What drives
and directs this effort? We can talk about motiva-
tion in terms of the pleasures and rewards to be
gained from achieving something original and in-
fluentialor from doingjustice in a creativeresponse
to the uniquenessof a personor an artifact,but mo-
tivation accounts only for the desire to be inven-
27
tive, not for the act itself. The act springs from a
hard-to-explaincommitmentto the new, to what is
coming into being. Let me employ a much-used
word that, like any other I might choose in this
context, has its advantagesand disadvantages:re-
sponsibility. What I am concerned with here is re-
sponsibility for the other, which is significantly
differentfrom responsibilityto the other.Substitut-
ing a near synonym makes the difference even
clearer:to be answerableto someone is not be an-
swerable for him or her. Responsibility for the
other involves assuming the other's needs, being
willing to be called to accountfor the other,surren-
dering one's goals and desires in deference to the
other's. (Exactly to whom we are responsible or
answerablein this situationis one of the questions
I shall have to leave unaddressed.)
In the scenario of the inventive act with which I
began this essay-the creation of a new text-the
otheris not a person;inevitably,we begin to wrench
words a little when we talk of responsibility for
this other. But this form of expression is one way
of indicating the strange compulsion involved in
creative behavior,a compulsion that is manifest in
a minor way as I grope for sentences to articulate
ideas that do not have any substantialexistence be-
fore the sentences come to me and is much more
consequential in major acts of inventiveness, ver-
bal or otherwise. It is a compulsion that leads to
risk, a crucial concept in any considerationof cre-
ativity.Since by definitiontherecan be no certainty
in opening oneself to the other,every such opening
is a gamble. I trust the other before I know what
the other will bring.18It may be the best; it may be
the worst. I take responsibilityfor the otherbefore
any calculation-for the risk is necessarilyincalcu-
lable. I affirm,cherish,sustainthe other,not in spite
of but because of its otherness, which is precisely
what makes the other valuable to me, and without
any guaranteesI undertaketo realize this otherness
as fully as possible.
Conventionalmoral codes requirecertain kinds
of supportand succor for otherpersons,but my re-
sponsibility for the other person as other is more
demandingthanthese. As when I create a new arti-
fact or mode of thought,my obligationis to refash-
ion what I think and what I am in orderto take the
fullest possible account of-to respect, safeguard,
28 Literature,Ethics.Relatingto the Other
Innovation,
and learn from-the otherness and singularity of
the other and to do so without any certainty about
the consequencesof my act. The same is trueof the
productsof humancreativity.
Responsibility for the other is not additional to
the requirement of responsiveness that I have al-
ready discussed. Unlike responsivenessto physical
stimuli, responsiveness to the other necessarily in-
volves something like responsibility because the
othercomes into existence only when it is affirmed,
welcomed, trusted, nurtured(even though, as we
have seen, coming into existence involves ceasing
to be other). Furthermore,in responsibility I re-
spond with much more thanmy cognitive faculties:
my emotional and sometimes my physical self are
also at stake.Hence the risk involved-I am obliged
to affirm something with all that I am before I
know what it is, before, in fact, it is. There is no
straightforwardchronology here: this is one of the
ways in which invention does not conform to nor-
mal causality. Only in accepting responsibility for
the other do I bring it-or let it come-into exis-
tence; and thereis a sense in which the responsibil-
ity precedeseven the I thatis said to accept it, since
the act always remakesthe actor.
Ethics
Responsibilityis an ethicalterm;it implies an ought.
To be responsiblefor the as yet nonexistentotheris
to be underan obligation;to respondresponsiblyto
the othernessof a literaryworkis to do justice to it:
my entire discussion of innovationto this point has
been shot throughwith the ethical. This raises fresh
problems for my account of invention, creation,
and responsiveness. What is the ethical groundfor
attentionto and affirmationof otherness,when the
result of this effort may be without any humanly
recognizable merit or indeed may serve inhuman
ends? The otherthatis broughtinto being may turn
out to be a monstrosity.19We can only continue to
use terms with ethical implications, like respon-
sibility and obligation-indeed, ethics itself-if
we are preparedto make some kind of distinction
between the most fundamental ethical demands,
which always involve unpredictability and risk,
and specific obligations governing concrete situa-
tions in a social context, which requirethe greatest
possible controlof outcomes.To the latter,the name
moralityis often given.20Thereis no necessarycon-
nection between a responsiblerelationto otherness
as I compose music or respondto anotherpersonor
read a novel and the obligations I have under the
moral codes embodied in social norms, religious
institutions, the law of my country, and probably,
my own superego. This is not to say the two areas
are unrelated;on the contrary,a moral code, legal
system, or political programmay be called ethical
if it is informedby something like the responsibil-
ity that I have sketched,even though it will always
be tested and exceeded by such a responsibility.
Not only is there no moral or pragmaticground
for responsibility, there is also no philosophical
ground. The ethical force that conditions the cre-
ative act is ungrounded-here Levinas's difficult
thinkingis valuable-because that force is priorto
any possible grounds.This priorityis not temporal
but ontological (though Levinas would insist that
responsibilityprecedes ontology as well). Without
responsibility for the other, as we have seen, there
would be no other;withoutthe other,repeatedlyap-
pearing, always different,there would be no same,
no self, no society, no morality.We cannot deduce
the obligation to the other from the world; the
world-including the means by which any deduc-
tions could be made about ethics or responsibil-
ity-is premised on an obligation to the other.
Ethics, then, is the fundamental relation not just
between subjects but also between the subject and
its multiple others-a relationthat is not a relation
and thatcannotbe named,for it is logically priorto
relations and names, prior in fact to logic. Or,
puttingit more tentatively,if there is an ethical re-
lation thatgeneratesintersubjectivity,morality,pol-
itics, and culture,it is necessarily undemonstrable.
It is not an it thatwe can inspect or accountfor.
It may be objected that this use of terms like re-
sponsibility and ethics, lumping together kindness
to otherpeople, aestheticcreation,and acts of read-
ing, is so broad as to empty them of any useful
meaning. In particular,it might be said to dissipate
the terms' force, which can only be sustainedif we
recognize the primacyof interpersonalrelationsin
the deployment of such vocabulary.This criticism
has a certain validity and might lead to the use of
different terms, terms not already saturatedwith
 DerekAttridge
humanisticmoral implications,were it not that it is
precisely in invoking a long tradition of thought
that responsibility,ethics, and the like have partof
their value. For the claim implicit in using them is
that the currentdiscussion of alterityis both a dis-
ruptionand a continuationof an ancient discourse:
as always, we bring the new into being by refash-
ioning the old ratherthanby jettisoningit.
Let me try to be clearer:the ethicalresponsibility
for the other that, I argue, is at the heartof creativ-
ity has often been articulated,in differenttermsand
different contexts, more or less fully and coher-
ently, many times in history.The presentessay is an
attemptto derivefrom some partsof this long tradi-
tion an account of the issues appropriatefor my
time and place. I do not make any claims aboutthe
relative importanceof the differentmanifestations
of the ethical relationthat I have discussed:clearly,
moral or political judgment places the responsibil-
ity for humanbeings above responsibilityfor their
products and measures creativity by its benefits to
humanity (or to some other category). The useful-
ness of a nonmoraldiscourse of ethics is that it can
provideinsights into the fundamentalconditionsof
the moral-politicaldomain,the world of rules, pro-
grams,categories,withoutbeing reducedto them.
An Everyday Impossibility
I began with a self-reflexive commentary, my at-
tempt to describe the writing of this essay as a
minor example of possible inventiveness. Yet the
terms in which I have describedthe innovativeact,
the just response to the othernessof the other,may
make it sound like an extraordinarily arduous,
rarely accomplished task, with immense repercus-
sions. This impressionis in partthe resultof the in-
evitable magnification that occurs when fleeting
experiencesare describedat length. It is also the re-
sult of our tendency to conceive of the mind and of
culture as static and homogeneous entities (if only
to make it possible to talk about them). When full
account is taken of the fact that both are complex
and constantlychangingfields of interrelatedforces,
possibilities, nodes, and tendencies, it becomes
easier to acknowledge the everydaynessof creativ-
ity and inventiveness, their occurrence on a scale
thatreachesfrom the minuteto the momentous.
29
Virtually any mode of writing may be innova-
tive, any variety of aesthetic creation, any philo-
sophical or mathematical thought, any scientific
advance, the reading of any text, even any prag-
matic conceptualizationin politics or personalrela-
tions. An unpremeditatedact-a deed of generosity,
the movement of a surgeon's hand, a stroke in a
ball game-can be creative. One quickly realizes
thatcreative,responsibleresponsivenessto the other
is not a rarephenomenonbut partof the textureof
daily life. Levinas was fond of giving as an in-
stance of ethics in practicethe Afteryou wherebyI
invite someone to go through a door before me
(e.g., "Ethics"197 and "Entretiens"108). This ex-
ample is provocative,but it can be taken seriously:
the minimal acknowledgmentof the other implicit
in a gracious expression of deference may have in
it a grain of ethics, an ever-so-slight creative im-
pulse-perhaps the discoveryof a gestureor an ex-
pression that pleases and reassuresmy companion
not as a familiarfellow humanbeing but, for me in
this instant,as the other.
At the same time, thereis a sense, a precise sense,
in which the innovative act can be said to be im-
possible. The irruptionof the other into the same
does not and cannot sit comfortably within any of
the explanatory frameworksby which we charac-
terize the possible. The most ingenious explanation
will always fall short of the centralfact that has to
be accountedfor: somethingabsolutelynew, what I
have been calling the other, comes into the hu-
manly constituted and constitutingculturalsphere
and changes it. The othermay be psychologized, in
terms of materialheld in the preconscious and the
unconscious; sociologized, in terms of dimly per-
ceived cultural inheritances; or theologized, in
terms of divine intervention.None of these expla-
nations or any others, whatevertheir validity, can
claim to predict;they cannot state in advancewhen
or how an inventive act is to take place, who is to
be inventive, or what the invention is to consist of.
This is not because these discourseslack the neces-
sary power and precision but because an invention
thatcould be fully accountedfor, thatcould be pro-
grammedand predicted,would not be an invention.
The discourses at our disposal may provide a way
of understandingvirtually everything about an in-
novative act-its psychic ingredients, its cultural
30 Literature,Ethics:Relatingto the Other
Innovation,
matrix, its etiology and technology-but they will
leave unanswered the crucial question, how does
the new, the other, come into being when all we
have is what we have?
Ethicsmakesimpossibledemands,then.Not only
is it impossible to conceive of the otherfor which I
am responsible in terms that would allow me to
know in advance what my responsibility amounts
to, but I also have numerous-indeed, infinite-
responsibilities, all of which are absolute and im-
mediate in their demands (Derrida,Gift 1-87). Yet
ethically responsible acts occur every day, not just
in spite of this multiple impossibility but also in a
sense because of it. If it were possible to have a
purely conceptualknowledge of the otheras singu-
lar other, to predict or produce its arrival, neither
otherness nor inventiveness would exist. If I could
calculate, apportion,and satisfy all my responsibil-
ities, therewould be no such thing as responsibility
or ethics. And, to turnto my interest in this essay,
if literary works and our responses to them could
be programmed in advance, innovative literature
and creative criticism-literature and criticism as
we understandthem-would cease to be.
Notes
I thankTom Furiss, for his carefulreadingof an earlierdraftof
this essay, and the Camargo Foundation, for providing an in-
comparableenvironmentfor creativethought.
'This essay consists of a set of interrelated sections from a
longer work on the singularity of literature and the ethics of
reading. As will be evident, the argumentdraws concretely on
the work of Derridaand Levinas and more generally on a num-
ber of other writerswho have broachedthe issues of alterity,in-
vention,and the new, includingLyotard,Barthes,Blanchot,and,
in a ratherdifferentmode, Adomo. Also importantto my think-
ing have been my early training in critical reading in South
Africa, where the influence of F. R. Leavis was strong, and my
long engagement with the writing, both fictional and nonfic-
tional, of J. M. Coetzee. For the most part,I have not attempted
to signal specific points of indebtedness, many of which I am
doubtlessno longer awareof.
It will be clear, I trust, that my discussion pertainsprimarily
to the Western cultural norms and practices with which I am
most familiar. The double demand for innovation and fidelity
has operateddifferentlyacross Westernhistory,but in this brief
essay I am concernedonly with the observablecontinuities.
2This activityis also historicallyproduced,of course.The ap-
parently Cartesian method of my investigation should not be
taken to imply a claim that transhistoricaland transculturalex-
periences are possible. Such implicit claims in aesthetic dis-
course have been rightly criticized by Bourdieu, among others
(285-312).
3Another name might be the unconscious. To follow out
the implicationsof this substitutionwould requireat least a fur-
theressay.
4Adorno encapsulates this contradiction in a typical apho-
rism: "By exigency, the new must be somethingwilled; as what
is other,however,it could not be what was willed" (22).
51 use the verbal phrase break down because it can refer ei-
ther to an act or to an event. A related term, with a more philo-
sophical pedigree, is aporia-see, e.g., Derrida,Aporias, and
Beardsworth.Foucault's"problematization" (117-19) is another
related term (though Foucault would probably have contested
the connection).
6Withoutusing the language of alterity, Bourdieu notes the
paradoxhere: "Forbold strokes of innovation or revolutionary
researchto have some chance of even being conceived, it is nec-
essary for them to exist in a potential state at the heart of the
system of alreadyrealizedpossibles"(235).
71use the term act from now on as a shorthandfor the unde-
cidable act-eventstructurediscussed above.
8Kant,in the thirdCritique,regardsthis process as character-
istic of "genius":"The productof a genius [. . .] is an example
that is meant not to be imitated, but to be followed by another
genius. (For in mere imitation the element of genius in the
work-what constitutesits spirit-would be lost.)" (186-87).
9Derrida'sdiscussion of inventionin "Psyche"is the best ac-
count of the word's knot of meanings. In Lyotard'svocabulary
the closest term is "paralogy"or "paralogism"(Postmodern
Condition 43, 61; see also Readings 72-74), which denotes a
practicethat differs from "innovation"by inventing rules. (My
use of innovationis wider in its applicationthanLyotard's.)
10"Artistic" inventivenessis by no means limited to elite cul-
ture.Nor does it exhaustthe value of culturalproductionsor the
pleasures involved in their consumption:there are many other
attributesand effects for which culturalobjects may be valued
or enjoyed.
1Finally,the distinctioncannotbe maintainedin its purity.A
creativeact is one that brings into being not merely the new but
the recognizably new, arising out of existing historical condi-
tions by the logic I tracedearlier:that is, a creationis necessar-
ily a potentialinvention.
12Frequently, an oppressed culture or people is said to have
been categorizedas other (hence the verbto other). In such a re-
lation, thereis no creativity,no responseto alterityand singular-
ity; as Derridanotes, "Racismis also an invention of the other,
but in order to exclude it and tighten the circle of the same"
("Psyche"336nl7).
'3InWhatIs Literature?Sartreformulatesa view of the liter-
ary workthathas some similaritieswith this account.If his view
of readingmakesit a "re-invention," he states,"sucha re-invention
would be as new and as original an act as the first invention"
(31). For Sartrethis structureof invention answered by inven-
 DerekAttridge
tion is peculiar to the literary field; I am arguing that it occurs
more widely.
14These rules are not inherentin the object, nor do they nec-
essarily correspondto anythingin the creative process; they are
what constitute the object as meaningful (and, in their new-
ness, as inventive) in a given culturalcontext. There is no guar-
antee that they will remain unchanged in other temporal or
geographiccontexts.
15Derridauses the trope of signatureand countersignatureto
describe this process; see, for example, "'This Strange Institu-
tion"' 60-70.
16Recent work in the field of genetic criticism, however,has
made it possible to engage more fully with texts in prefinal
form. See, for example, Genesis, the journal of the Parisian
group ITEM.
'7Farfrom being new, this conception of literaryreadinghas
perhapsbeen the dominantone in the Westerntradition;it em-
braces Aristotle on the appropriatestyle for poetry, Longinus
and the many eighteenth-centuryand laterattemptsto develop a
theoryof the sublime, most Romanticcriticism,Freudand most
of those influencedby him, and a large swathe of modernistand
postmoderncriticism.I do not wish to deny thatthe contrarypo-
sition-summed up in the title of Wayne Booth's book on the
ethics of fiction, The CompanyWeKeep, and in Helen Vendler's
comment"Theimportantthingis to feel companioned,as you go
throughlife, by a host of poems which speakto your experience"
(89)-reflects an importantaspectof many readers'feelings; my
concern,however,is with what such an accountleaves out.
8Fora discussion of the importanceof trustin the ethical re-
lation, see Attridge,"Trusting."
19Iconsider some of the implications of this possibility in
"Expecting."
20Althoughmorality is defined in many ways, it has often
been said to provide a more knowable and codifiable set of
norms than ethics does. For a recent discussion that advertsto
otherunderstandingsof these concepts, see Harpham49-56.
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