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Handbook of Global Media Ethics pp 367–385Cite as

Levinas and Media Ethics: Between the Particular and the Universal

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Abstract

This chapter seeks inspiration for media ethics in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’s ethical message concerns the import of the relation with the Other, a relation that interrupts any attempt at its thematization, including Levinas’s own philosophy. Levinas’s writing serves as an exemplary medium for this ethical message in conveying the teaching of ethics along with the interruption it advocates. This chapter extends the logic of the ethical message beyond the two key media in Levinas’s work—speech and writing—to speculate on whether interruption can be carried over to audiovisual media. Running throughout the chapter is the question of mediation, which takes the discussion outside the context of the face-to face, where Levinas’s thought is typically situated, to the context of thirdness and justice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Christians, Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age; and Cortes, “A Critical Evaluation of Clifford Christians’s Media Ethics Theory.”

  2. 2.

    Arnett, Levinas’s Rhetorical Demand; Davis, Inessential Solidarity; Gehrke, “Being for the Other-to-the-Other;” Hyde, The Call of Conscience; Jovanic and Wood, “Speaking from the Bedrock of Ethics;”Lisbeth Lipari, “Rhetoric’s Other;” Murray, Face to Face in Dialogue; and Pinchevski, By Way of Interruption.

  3. 3.

    Boothroyd, “Touch, Time and Technics;” Butler, Precarious Life; Cohen, “Ethics and Cybernetics: Levinasian Reflections;” Gunkel, The Machine Question Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics; Irom, “Mediating Syria’s Strangers Through Levinas; Krämer and Enns, Medium, Messenger, Transmission; Silverstone, Media and Morality; and Zylinska, The Ethics of Cultural Studies.

  4. 4.

    Levinas, “The Trace of the Other,” 346.

  5. 5.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 162.

  6. 6.

    Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 51.

  7. 7.

    Levinas, “Secularization and Hunger,” 9.

  8. 8.

    Levinas, The Levinas Reader, 212.

  9. 9.

    Innis, The Bias of Communication, 190–191.

  10. 10.

    Levinas, The Levinas Reader, 214.

  11. 11.

    Levinas, The Levinas Reader, 218.

  12. 12.

    Levinas, The Levinas Reader, 221, 220.

  13. 13.

    Peirce, Selected Writings, 385.

  14. 14.

    Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 213.

  15. 15.

    Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, 31.

  16. 16.

    Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 96, 98.

  17. 17.

    Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 100, 99.

  18. 18.

    Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 182, 69.

  19. 19.

    Derrida, Writing and Difference, 102.

  20. 20.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 193.

  21. 21.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 47.

  22. 22.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 151.

  23. 23.

    Ricoeur, “Otherwise: A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas’s Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence.”

  24. 24.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 46.

  25. 25.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 46.

  26. 26.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 44.

  27. 27.

    Derrida, “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” 16.

  28. 28.

    Derrida, “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” 26.

  29. 29.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 169.

  30. 30.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 89.

  31. 31.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 15.

  32. 32.

    Levinas, Otherwsie than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 152.

  33. 33.

    Benjamin, Illuminations, 254.

  34. 34.

    Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, 230.

  35. 35.

    Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, 16.

  36. 36.

    Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 181–88.

  37. 37.

    Gumbrecht, Production of Presence, 17.

  38. 38.

    Gumbrecht, Production of Presence, 118.

  39. 39.

    Derrida, Writing and Difference, 111.

  40. 40.

    Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, 4.

  41. 41.

    Butler, Precarious Life, 141.

  42. 42.

    Butler, Precarious Life,144.

  43. 43.

    Butler, Precarious Life, 146.

  44. 44.

    Silverstone, “Proper Distance: Towards an Ethics for Cyberspace,” 475.

  45. 45.

    Bauman, Postmodern Ethics.

  46. 46.

    Silverstone, “Proper Distance: Towards an Ethics for Cyberspace,” 476.

  47. 47.

    Silverstone, “Proper Distance: Towards an Ethics for Cyberspace,” 483.

  48. 48.

    Silverstone, “Proper Distance: Towards an Ethics for Cyberspace,” 481.

  49. 49.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 158–59.

  50. 50.

    Peters, Speaking into the Air, 21.

  51. 51.

    Habermas, The Theoryof Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society; and Habermas, Lifeworld and System.

  52. 52.

    Vetlesen, “Worlds Apart?;” Gibbs, “Asymmetry and Mutuality;” and Hendley, From Communicative Action to the Face of the Other.

  53. 53.

    Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, 157.

  54. 54.

    Hendley, From Communicative Action to the Face of the Other, 56–57.

  55. 55.

    Dussel, “The Architectonic of the Ethics of Liberation.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Amit Pinchevski

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  1. Amit Pinchevski
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UBC Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Stephen J. A. Ward

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Pinchevski, A. (2021). Levinas and Media Ethics: Between the Particular and the Universal. In: Ward, S.J.A. (eds) Handbook of Global Media Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_19

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