Cont Philos Rev (2011) 44:151164 DOI 10.

1007/s11007-011-9180-y

In place of the Other

Bernhard Waldenfels

Published online: 23 April 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract This paper outlines the basic traits of a responsive phenomenology by focusing on the issue of originary substitution. On the one hand, a phenomenology of alienness or otherness and an ethics of the other in the sense of Levinas will prove to be closely bound up with this sort of substitution. On the other side, this substitution can be concretised by transitional gures such as the advocate, the therapist, the translator, the witness, or the eld researcher; they all intervene from the position of a Third without closing the ssure which opens between ourselves and the Other, between the own and the alien. Precisely by focussing on the issue of substitution, we have the opportunity to outline the basis traits of a responsive phenomenology and to discuss some of its institutional consequences. Keywords Substitution Levinas The Other Derrida Response Responsibility Phenomenology

Substitution does not rank with the main concepts of classical thinking. It is completely overshadowed either by a holistic view according to which everyone joins in the common place of a group, a family, a tribe, a nation or nally in the common world of mankind, or it is minimized by an individualistic view according to which everyone rst of all occupies his or her own place. As long as our being in the world is xed on occupying a certain place, either in common or each person for him- or herself, the possibility of speaking from the Others place seems to be secondary and provisional. This changes as soon as ones own position turns out never to be completely ones own, because we attain our own position only by responding to the Others demand. Due to such a shifting of the social perspective, we discover an originary form of substitution. The consequences are enormous.
B. Waldenfels (&) Institut fur Philosophie, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany e-mail: bernhard.waldenfels@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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On the one hand, our phenomenology of alienness or otherness and an ethics of the Other in the sense of Levinas will prove to be closely bound up with this sort of substitution. On the other side, this substitution can be concretised by transitional gures such as the advocate, the therapist, the translator, the witness or the eld researcher; they all intervene from the position of a Third without closing the ssure which opens between ourselves and the Other, between the own and the alien. Precisely by focussing on the issue of substitution, we have the opportunity to outline the basis traits of a responsive phenomenology and to discuss some of its institutional consequences.1

1 The riddle of substitution The terms in place of or instead of or, in other languages, , in loco, an Stelle von or au lieu de, lead us to a topical relation: A appears in place of B. But should we stop here, we would get stuck in the perspective of a neutral observer, describing given relations without being involved in anyone of them. Now, substitution as we understand it means more than this. It means that somebody takes somebodys place. The place we are speaking from is more than a given point within a homogeneous space. It refers to a privileged place, indicated by the word here. Here is the place from which I perceive, move, speak, act and where I am and where I nd myself according to Heideggers Bendlichkeit. The demonstrative pronoun here is, together with now, I or you, one of those occasional or indexical terms which the early Husserl analysed in his First Logical Investigation. Here marks a place in the world. As we will see, by taking the place of the Other we do not only change our position, but to some extent we enter another world. Substitution becomes enigmatic when we consider the fact that I am at once where the Other is. By means of substitution we do not exchange one standpoint for the other. I am not in the place where the Other has been or will be, like through an exchange of ideas which makes speaker and hearer change their roles. On the contrary, I am precisely in the place where the Other is, uno loco. This is not to be understood as if I would only imagine being there. Hobbes recommends that everyone, wondering whether what he or she is doing to the Other is in accordance with the law of nature, should conceive himself to be in that others stead (De cive 3, 26). But following Hobbes by referring to the Golden Rule: Do not that to others, which you would not have done to yourself, leads us on the path of equalisation [Gleichstellung] and not of substitution [Stellvertretung]. Nor do I reach the place of the Other, putting myself into the Others position by comprehension or empathy as Theodor Lipps presupposes in his psychology of Einfhlung. Substitution must just as little be confused with care or with Heideggers solicitude [Frsorge], which leaps in for the Other [Einspringen] or leaps ahead of him
1

Concerning my conception of a responsive phenomenology see my books Antwortregister (1994, Engl. trans. by Northwestern Press, forthcoming), Bruchlinien der Erfahrung (2002), Schattenrisse der Moral (2006b) and the compact presentation of its basic presuppositions in Grundmotive einer Phnomenologie des Fremden (2006a, Engl. trans. Phenomenology of the AlienBasic Concepts: Northwestern Press, forthcoming).

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[Vorausspringen].2 Finally, substitution has nothing to do with sharing common places like bed, town or country. By such attempts we miss the point. But how could it happen that I am at once where the Other is, considering that our bodily situation touches the uniqueness of our individuality and that occupying a certain place is required for any sphere of ownness, for any Eigenheitssphre in Husserls sense? Must we not admit that a radical substitution would come up either to an expropriation of the Other or to an expropriation of myself? How can I be just where the Other is staying without stepping quasi on the Others feet or without displacing and dislodging the Other? Does substitution not require that I am precisely there where you are and where I cannot be? The kind of impossibility that shows up here calls for counter-measures, which might save what seems to be saved. Substitution, yes, one may argue, but not before it has been cautiously trimmed and normalised. Thus what seems impossible becomes possible without disappearing in the clouds.

2 Normal substitution The riddle of the substitution seems to be soluble if it is taken as something secondary; this would mean that I am not properly there where the Other is. This switch over reminds us of the obstinate attempts to degrade signs and pictures to secondary remedies, restricted to mere representations. Thus substitution only means that I am primarily there where the Other is not, being secondarily there where the Other is, and controversially the same. We can distinguish several variants of substitution within the framework of normality. The rst variant does not raise great problems. It concerns provisional and retrospective forms of substitution, limited to certain periods of a lifetime. Something takes the Others place while it is not yet or any more occupied by the Other. For example, the guardian speaks in the name of the minor,3 the testator in the name of the deceased. In a similar way one treats faintness or insanity as deciencies which need some Frsprecher. In all these cases there is a need for an auxiliary form of substitution that lls in the vacant place, but not completely; for we must respect the Others quality of person which makes him or her substitutable, but not replaceable. Any complete substitution would extinguish the Others chance to occupy a place; nobody would be left to be answered for, and substitution would destroy itself. But how do we arrive at taking the Others place and at keeping it open, doing both at once? We get a step further by representing substitution as a form of delegation. Delegations take are constituted between different persons, each standing on his or her own feet. Sometimes one contents oneself with rst steps. So someone may pinch-hit for the Other without waiting for his or her agreement. But the status of a substitute needs more. Substitution in its full sense implies that somebody transfers rights, duties or competences to another, whether by an informal agreement, by a
2 3

See Being and Time, 26.

The German expressions Vormund and Unmndiger are closer to the possibility of Frsprache (= speaking in name of).

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formal contract or by the election of representatives. Similar to contracts, the transfer can be performed ad hoc for a certain period, or for an indenite time. Something is only transferable if it can be detached from the represented person. This concerns, rst of all, diverse kinds of function, unless the functions are bound to an individual ofce-holder. In any case, substitution remains something secondary as long as it comes from the person to be represented and remains dependent upon his or her responsibility. There are various ways of delegating. I can delegate an authority or competence by my signature or, in case of emergency, by a simple hint; I can yield to others the power to sign on order; but I can in no way delegate the signature itself without giving up my personal rights. The other will only be able to act in my name if I keep my name; as a mere functionary I could indeed be replaced. The provisional and posterior substitution mentioned above takes it bearings too from substituting responsible and living persons; this happens in such a way that the guard anticipates the minors agreement and the testator decides in the sense of the deceased. Substitution always leaves margins for decisions on ones own discretion. But it is also exposed to patronizing, to arbitrary decisions, to the pursuit of ones own interests, to falsehood and deceit. Novels dealing with heritage affairs are full of such manoeuvres which pertain to the risk of social life and to its institutional embodiment.4 Normal forms of substitution appear most frequently in the elds of right and politics. We should note that the representative form of parliamentary democracy is neither the primary form, nor is it undisputed as we learn from Rousseau or from the early Marx. Supposing that the peoples will were to manifest itself immediately, all representation would not only be superuous, moreover it would be a source of social alienation.5 But even if institutional representations are accepted as unavoidable, due to the articial elements of our sociability, they are normally based on autonomous self-activities. First subsistence, then substitution, this seems the right order. The substitutive speech or action is, so to speak, made of lent goods which are lent until they are recalled. Accordingly, Hobbes distinguishes between the natural person, speaking and acting in his or her own name, and the ctive person, speaking and acting in anothers name.6 As long as substitution is anchored in the consent of the represented person, it easily ts into the classical scheme of dialogue. The dialogue, which at its core is free from domination, is complemented by a dialogue, which at its core is free from substitution.7 Improper forms of substitution that are produced by misuse are to be attacked and curbed. Accordingly, Socrates insists that his interlocutors witness for themselves
4

Concerning the relations between citizens, Hobbes assumes that anyone who represents another does so either by or without the order of the represented (De homine, 15, 2). As to the relation between guardianship and violence see Hirsch (2004, pp. 223230). The fact that Rousseau explains the origin of the state, just like the origin of the language, without referring to any mediation, shows that the different modes of representation are closely connected. See Derridas comment on Rousseau in Grammatology. cf. Leviathan, I, 16 and De homine, 15, 1. The later Frankfort School around Jurgen Habermas speaks of a herrschaftsfreier Dialog, based on mere arguments; accordingly I would speak of a vertretungsloser Dialog, based on mere autonomy; both forms of dialogue can only be defended to a certain extent.

6 7

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what they say, without relying on other witnesses that may perhaps be false (Gorg. 472 bc). Truth speaks for and by itself. Thus the true dialogue has no need of a judge because everyone is judge and speaker in one and the same person (Rep. 348 b). Consequently, classical dialogue does not so much care for substitution, and this does not really change when in our days the dialogue turns into a universal hermeneutics or in a rule-governed discourse.

3 Originary substitution I designate a substitution as originary if it makes us stand on our own feet, taking at once and from the outset the place of the Other. Accordingly, one speaks for and by oneself, while speaking for and from the Other. Thus the mentioned impossibility, which lets me be where the Other is, would be more than a pure chimera. But how does this happen? At this point, we shall resort to a distinction, known from linguistics, but also from authors such as Lacan and Levinas: the distinction between saying and what is said or between the enunciation and the enunciated.8 On the one hand, what is said corresponds to the intentional or propositional content. This is part of a speech act I am performing, but it can as well be performed in place of the Other. So the advocate pleads for the client by adopting the clients interests. More precisely, I perform a speech act in place of others by saying what they mean, but are not in a position to say, and I do so by deciding what others will, but cannot defend. Everything the substitute is saying and doing has to suit the expectations of those for whom he or she substitutes, even if the agreement remains more or less hypothetical. We substitute for each other by means of the said and within the horizon of what can be said. On the other hand, an originary substitution takes place on the level of saying, and this in such a way that my saying covers the Others saying. This sort of covering-over [berdeckung], joining my own and the Others saying, clearly differs from acts of taking over [bernahme] common sense contents. While I am speaking, it is the Others demand which speaks through my voice. If my own and the Others saying would completely coincide, the representative difference between the representing and the represented would simply vanish.9 All substitution would be futile. Were I and the Other to speak with one voice, we would no longer speak for each other. One and the same logos would speak through each of us. By contrast, where something occurs to us which is simply said and exchanged, the event of saying leads us into the region of pathic experience. To the extent that our saying and acting does not only show a certain sense and follow certain rules, but rather happens here and now, it takes on certain traits of a pathos or Widerfahrnis. What happens to me in terms of a certain affect or appeal bestows on me the status of a patient, the latter taken in a wider sense. In this context I make use of the Greek word pathos which has a triple meaning; it denotes the passivity of
8 9

See Waldenfels (2005a, ch. 11, 2005b, ch. 7). See Waldenfels (2002, p. 34).

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endurance, the vulnerability of suffering, and the fervency of passion. The term affect comes rather close to it, provided that we do not conceive affect in terms of subjective states, but as af-fect, what literally means something done to, similar to the meaning of words like al-locution, ad-dressing, or ap-peal which suggest a sort of speaking to.10 The pathic, characterised in this way, should neither be confused with the pathetic as an intensied expression of the pathic, nor with the pathological. The latter confronts us with a whole scale of deviations which continue to touch the phenomenon of substitution. On the one end of the scale, we discover a lack of responsiveness, which causes a sort of apathy in which the pathos is drying up; on the other end, we come across a blockade of response, which means that we are captivated by the pathos. Whenever and wherever something happens to us by which we are struck, we touch the impossible, considering that something crosses our intentions, exceeds our expectations and leaves behind our projects and arrangements. Such a surplus of impossibility that shows up at the core of our experience may be called lived impossibility, and this stands in contrast to logical, ontological, practical, or technical impossibilities which shipwreck on the given conditions.11 To the extent that originary substitution takes on pathic features, it joins the above mentioned paradox of a lived impossibility. In contrast with the variants of normal substitution, originary substitution is not characterised by an attempt to occupy the Others place by myself, but rather by the fact that I start from the Others place. I start from where I cannot be, and where everything that strikes me, whether the Others gaze, the Others word, or the Others gesture, has its origin. To a certain extent, I am the Other for whom I substitute. Others are no duplicates of me, but doubles that we encounter from a distance out of reach. Aside from this, the pathic, which touches substitution, is doubled and multiplied. Whenever I am affected by the presence/absence of the Other, I am simultaneously affected by what affects the Other. The pathos of Otherness rises, so to speak, to a higher power, passing through the Others pathos, for example, when I am seized by the Others joy, fright, or concern. Sympathy and antipathy, and even more so consent and dissent, are posterior forms of response, rising from the depth of pathos. Further, since my response starts from what has happened to me, coming up from elsewhere, I will never be completely in my place and in the right place (in loco). The Other is literally implanted in me, as Jean Laplanche puts and shows it.12 Just as according to Laplanches general theory of seduction, the seducer is seduced for his or her part, the representative is represented for his or her part. Not unlike pathos, the process of substitution rises to a higher power. Finally, the inner tension of substitution can assume an extreme form. There is a possible over-identication with the Other, which prevents us from answering for the Other, and there is the splitting off from the Other, which on the basis of the participation of the Other in me, entails a self-splitting off of myself. In terms of our
The German language contains numerous expressions of addressing, marked by the prex an-, see Anruf, Ansprechen, Anspruch, Anblick, Anreiz, Anrhren, Antasten, Angreifen, Antun, Andenken, Angehen and so on. A part of them are used by Husserl, Heidegger and their followers in the context of a phenomenology of affection, affectivity, interpellation, pathos, or Bendlichkeit.
11 12 10

See Waldenfels (2009). See Laplanche (1997), Waldenfels (2005a, ch. 13).

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responsive phenomenology I would like to speak alternatively of a pathos without response and a response without pathos, or of being abroad without being at home and of being at home without being abroad. But both trends have to be taken as asymptotic approximations; otherwise our experience would properly go to pieces. What has been shown has an important consequence. Substitution turns out to be a basic component of our experience, no less than the mediation by pictures and signs. The supplement dorigine, introduced by Jacques Derrida (1967b) in his debate with Husserl in Voice and the Phenomenon13 and with Rousseau in his Grammatology14 with regard to writing, has its equivalent in an originary form of substitution. In the eyes of Levinas, this substitution is ethical through and through. Its effects are dened in a hyperbolic way as hostage and obsession. Here is not the place to go into further details.15 I only want to stress that there is a radical sort of the irrepresentative [Unvertretbare], transgressing every form of representation. It is remarkable to see that in our Western tradition the motive of substitution bears a strong religious and theological stamp. Take the idea of expiation: Jesus as a sacricial lamb prepared by the biblical gure of scapegoat; take the representative force of the Eucharist and, nally, Gods ecclesiastic substitutes on earth, followed by emperors and kings by the grace of God. More generally speaking, the religious aura of a phenomenon suggests something over-determinate, and transgressing the limits of the ordinary. It remains to ask how a process of secularisation can avoid getting stuck in a mere normalisation.

4 Figures of substitution Let us conclude by presenting some tting transitional gures that are able to evoke the diversity of the phenomenon of substitution. In each case, we will meet with something like the Third Party that intervenes in the relation between me and the Other, between the own and the alien, yet without striving after a nal mediation. This kind of intervention, which literally means coming between, is rather different from Hegels dialectics, which achieves an all-encompassing mediation. Generally speaking, our sort of originary and not merely subsidiary substitution does not get off the ground unless we assume that no one is completely in his or her place. Only under this condition we are able to speak for the Other, beyond speaking with and about the Other. This implies that even the Third, instead of staying simply outside, is touched and addressed by those for whom he or she answers. To that extent, the Third is a transitional gure, always transgressing the limits of the order it represents. The Third stands neither inside nor outside, but on the threshold.
13 14 15

English traslation by Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). English translation.

See Levinas, Autrement qutre (1974), ch. IV. As to the ethical meaning of the term substitution, we must be careful not to take the term fr den Anderen or pour lautre simply as the negation of against and in the sense of in favour of. Whereas the Latin word pro, just like the German word fr, suggests such an interpretation, the Greek word , which in many compounds signies against, points rather in the opposite direction. That speaks well for separating the substitutive und the altruistic meaning of fr or pour.

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However, this is only true on the condition that the Third does not fall back upon the role of a normal substitute, being nothing more than part of the order to be represented. The transitional gures we are going to present resemble transitional objects of Donald W. Winnicott.16 These appear in a crucial phase of the little childs self-growth, helping it to come over the mothers absence, such as the wooden spool in the fort-da-play, depicted in detail by Freud.17 4.1 Advocate As the rst gure we present the advocate who passes for the prototype of substitution. Advocates plead for the clients claims and interests, no matter if the client appears as a complainant or as a defendant. The introduction of lawyers, attorneys, or counsels is not self-evident. As we know, at the Athenian court everyone, that is to say every full and male citizen, had to defend his own affair even if he ordered a written speech; similarly, in the popular assembly the citizens took personally part in deliberations and decisions. Only in ancient Rome did representation take on distinct contours. Still, even if the special role of advocate is provided, we must keep in mind that all complainants or defendants stand up for themselves from the outset, charging an advocate, and they stand denitively for themselves in agreeing or disagreeing on an arrangement and receiving the sentence. The nal judgement does not tolerate any substitute. The advocate leaves the lawsuit scene, so to speak, only as a second order winner or loser. This conforms to what we called a normal substitution. Nevertheless, things are more complicated. The lawsuit starts from a personal violation which is going to be interpreted as an infringement of law and to be transformed into a case for trial. This means that the legal proceedings originate from an event which is ltered and treated by the law, but by no means engendered by it. Personal violations are more than breaches of law; they set the legal process in motion, yet without being absorbed into it. An offence can be punished or repaired, but it cannot be extinguished by jurisdiction. There is always something left, that is to say, a surplus of justice, only able to preserve the jurisdiction from being degraded to the mechanisms of a mere law machine.18 Were the advocate to behave like a simple chess-player, interested only in questions of victory or defeat, the incompetent lawyer would be the best advocate. There would not be any need for a Board of Attorneys, which, like the Medical Board, takes care of licensing and of observing the professional ethos. 4.2 Therapist The activities of the therapist, whether in the general function of physicians or in the special role of a psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, are integrated into an
16 17 18

1971. 1976.

On the role of justice see Waldenfels (2006b, ch. V); further, in reference to Levinas, Waldenfels (2005a, ch. 12, 2005b, ch. 7).

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institutional framework which is no less complicated than the juridical framework. Parallel to the advocates client, the therapists patient or client appears as somebody suffering from diseases, disturbances, or pains; such personal sufferings are transformed into cases of sickness, but from the outset they are more than general cases. A sub-system, governed by leading differences such as healthy/ unhealthy or legal/illegal, is a life construct and by no means a life sphere. Therefore, the Third cannot be identied with the prevailing embodiment of a code, such as the homo medicalis, the homo legalis or the best known homo economicus. Such constructs of man, which return in the formal approach of the recent system theory in terms of anonymous codes, are to be deconstructed without invoking the phantasm of a total manas yet the younger Marx used to do. Let us single out the special part of the analyst which has been thoroughly considered and modelled by Freud and his followers. First, analysts are quite far from playing the role of the Other by attracting the desire of the analysand, as if the cure were a continuation of life conicts by other means. The analyst precisely stands in for something that he himself is not and takes a position that substitutes for somebody else. Still, analysts are by no means reducible to a neutral instance, representing the societys common mores in terms of a moral censor. In this case the analyst would be nothing more than the amplier of an order, already in force. By contrast, the analysis runs through processes of transference and counter-transference. The transference is the special case of a between-event, a Zwischenereignis. This does not mean, on the one hand, that one speaks with his or own voice, and on the other hand with a meta-voice, as if one would perform a sort of reection deux. By contrast, what takes place is a superposition of the diverse voices through which affects and conicts nd their expression. The analyst stands in the place of further persons with whom the analysand settles his or her old conicts. In addition, there arises the possibility of displacements of affect [Affektverschiebungen] if somebody loves the Other instead of, for example instead of the mother or the brother (cf. the Latin phrase aliquem diligere fratris loco). The shifting of conicts allows us to live through former experiences anew, instead of repeating them under constraint. The very place of suffering, encompassed by the talking cure, escapes both the analysand and the analyst; to a certain extent, the same holds true for the relation between the patient and the doctor. What happens to us as pathos cannot be acquired like a knowledge or a skill, nor can it be solved like a problem. The analyst does not stand for the irreplaceable [Unersetzliche] of the other person, but for the non-substitutable [Unvertretbare] of a pathos to which he is responding as an analyst. If the analyst would take the role of the Other without a Third, the distance necessary to him or her would be lackinga distance that is required to make the analysand respond by him- or herself. By contrast, if the analyst would take the role of a Third without the Other, the due proximity would vanish, which prevents the patients suffering from being reduced to a normal case of health experts. Something that at the rst sight looks like a special problem of psychoanalysis is really a component of the therapeutic process as such. The physician too, diagnosing an uneasiness and calling it by its clinical name, does not cease to speak from the place of the patient who is touched by something adversarial or threatening. This does not change when the patient is deprived of her or his own

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voice. Finally, the transfer pertains to the non-everyday of everyday life. The simple question as to who speaks to whom when we are speaking opens paths to deep events, impelled by early identications, seductions, projections, introjections, and by the quis pro quo of parasitic feelings such as jealousy, envy or revengefulness. We learn from Nietzsche the extent to which sentiments are darkened and poisoned by resentments. To some extent, every conversation, not only the diplomatic talk, is double-edged and even hybrid.19 4.3 Translator No matter how polyglotal they may be, translators do not move upon the languages like a spirit moving upon the face of the waters. They move between the lines. Which language do they represent when uently switching from a language of departure to a language aimed at, ranging to further languages, and where do they themselves stand? Anyone who translates [ubersetzt] does so by passing over [bersetzen] to another bank, as Heidegger puts it in his lecture on Heraclitus.20 Translators represent speakers or authors within a linguistic region where the original language is more or less inaccessible. They would have little success if they would behave like second authors; they will only succeed when they present something that has been said or written in a new way, and when the words that are going to be translated remain perceivable, according to Walter Benjamins demand that a good translation should be trans-parent [durchscheinend].21 This is to say, that translations never occupy the place of the original and that they always show something of their alien origin. The pathos to a higher powera pathos of a pathosemerges again with regard to the fact that translated authors, for their part, bring to language what stimulated their own writing, without being at ones own disposal like a secure heritage. The nearer the translation comes to the mere exchange of information, the more the initial asymmetry between the departing and the aimed at language vanishesand the more the pathic element vanishes, too, namely, the element that is inherent in the process of speaking and writing, of listening and reading, which are beyond simple contents to be conveyed. To a certain extent, the search for linguistic equivalencies can be made pragmatic and automatized; one must only neglect everything that is unequal, like the special fees that accompany a simple exchange. In this way, the otherness or alienness that is immanent to the parole parlante, would be reduced to mere deviations from the normal course and code of the parole parle. However, even a good translation, being careful to preserve the features of alienness, moves between the extremes of over-exactness and an all too large liberty. In any case, every translation knows its lucky nds that create an osmosis from one text to the other.

19 See Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede (1999), ch. 7: on hybrid speech, and Waldenfels, Schattenrisse der Moral (2006b), ch. IX: on parasitic passions. 20 21

Heidegger (1979, p. 447 f). See Hirsch (1995).

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4.4 Witness An especially revealing gure of transition proves to be the witness whoas the Latin word testis, derived from tri-stis, suggestsstands by as a Third, but as a Third of a special kind. Testimonies of witnesses are frequently used in court when something has happened elsewhere and those who have to form a judgment on it have not been present. Qualied as witness are those who have seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Hence Plato explains our need for the legal witness by referring to the lack of autopsy which makes us dependent upon knowing by hearsay (Theaet. 201 bc). Historians are accustomed to invoke so-called Zeitzeugen, that is to say, contemporaries of what has happened. Testimonies can be completed and tested by circumstantial evidence and anonymous sources. Yet if this were the whole affair we would certainly need witnesses to compensate for the limits of our life experience, but in principle, they would be dispensable. We could have seen for ourselves what witnesses had really seen if the appropriate circumstances would have been present. Once more, this kind of substitution would be nothing more than secondary. If our experience were to be reduced to given data, we could make use of monitors to ll in the lacunae of our experience. To a certain extent, surveillance devices are even more reliable as any living witnesses; since automats do not understand what they record and do not suffer from it, they render everything that ts to the program without wonder and pity. Evidently, living witnesses are in a different situation, since they are more or less involved. The fundamental constellation to which they are submitted can be described as follows. Witnesses testify what has happened to Others or has been done by Others, and they testify it to Others who failed to be present. Obviously, the witness does not appear as the agent. In this case, the testimony would amount to an avowal; for this reason, in lawsuits, defendants have the right to remain silent in their own affair.22 The witness appears just as little as an observer and this for several reasons. Speaking of the Others experience, the witness refers to what has happened to somebody and what has done by somebody. This may be either a natural catastrophe such as the eruption of the Vesuvius, recorded by Plinius on the margin of his own death, or a crime such as the murder of the widow by Raskolnikov. Testimonies are basically unrepeatable. One can bear testimony of a discovery like that of X-rays or of America, but not of purposeful experiments which are valid as being repeatable in principle.23 Thus witnesses report what Others have done or endured. Now, at the same time they have to answer for what they report. With this they have to show sufcient credibility which cannot be compensated for by any certainty on the side of the testimonys addressee. The receiver of testimonies is forced to give credit to the witness words, or nothing will
22 Even Heideggers daseinsmige Bezeugung, which does not refer to acts of witness, but adheres to a sort of Selbstseinknnen (cf. Being and Time, 54), covers the phenomenon of bearing witness only in part.

Provided we take into account the course of natural history, things become more complicated, even for scientists. With respect to fossils, we speak of ndings; they are less remote from witness than experiments are, considering that they are not lived like lived experiences, but no less produced by experiments.

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happen. Swearing in court does not increase the epistemic, but only the moral certainty. In this respect it differs from taking nger prints or using a lie detector, which by the way does not discover lies but only the excitement of a supposed liar.24 There is something more that closely touches our issue. The witness is not like a reporter who is interested in certain events, either spontaneously or by order; the witness becomes a witness nolens volens. Certainly, the reporter can be urged to play the part of the witness.25 In any case, every bearing witness starts from something happening to someone, whether an accident or an assault, an injury, or an eruption of collective violence. To what extent the situation of a witness that is involved in the situation differs from the condition of an uninterested observer can be seen from the fact that anyone who becomes a witness of an event can be held accountable (juridically or at least morally) because he or she withheld succour or refrained from doing something. We may qualify witnesses as powerless or unconcerned, but once confronted with an event, which calls for invention, none of us turns out to be a simple free-rider or deadbeat. Witnesses are involved in the event that they are giving witness to. They are forced to speak from an event, before speaking about it. Here we meet again with an originary form of substitution. Witnesses respond to something happening, being involved in an indirect way, and they respond in a specic way, not only by intervening to the best of their power, but above all, by bringing to light or to language what they have seenor by refraining from doing this. That testimonies of this kind are especially important in the cases of misfortune, disaster or crime, is due to the fact that victims do not only need our help, but as well our reminding words and pictures.26 The testimony written in blood, the Blutzeugnis, is a borderline case that is generally attributed to the martyr. We would like to speak of victims by virtue of their convictions, alluding those who commit an offence because of their convictions [berzeugungstter]. No doubt, martyrdom may warrant the authenticity of a conviction, but it does not prove its truth. Various xed and fanatic ideas nd their martyrs as well, among them the suicidal assassins who recently populate our political everyday life. From time to time we see how Blutopfer, that is to say bloody victims, are redubbed, Blutzeugen [martyrs]. Many traditional memorials of war bear testimony to an ordered substitution, ordered in the name of the people, of the patrie, and at the very least in the name of a Fhrer, a Duce or a Caudillo.

24 For good reasons, the records of lie detectors, which in the meantime are improved by more sophisticated procedures like neuronal introspection, are not admitted in court. That resembles statements, extorted by torture. Close to Aristotle, who decided to call actions, performed under constraint, mixed actions (cf. Nic. Eth. III, 1), we can approximate the corresponding case of witness by speaking of mixed testimonies.

The Iraq war has contributed to blur the roles by permitting to take along reporters as witnesses, in war actions like the thrust of tanks. We should also take a special interest in so-called live transmissions which represent a mixed form of report, creating the possibility of a mediated co-presence.
26 An especially perverse arrangement of giving evidence, reported from Pakistan, prescribes that women have to prove their rape, although only male witnesses are admitted.

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4.5 Field researcher Let us take as a last example the researcher working in the eld. Since the time of the Polish explorer Boris Malinowski, ethnology or cultural anthropology has adopted and disseminated the method of participant observation. This mixture of nearness and remoteness preserves the explorer from observing ethnic customs, rituals, and expressions simply from the outside as if looking from another star. From this perspective, all that is alien or heterogeneous would be crammed into one and the same frame of reference; even if one pretends to follow the lines of a continuous universalisation, the results often betray nothing more than the masters of their own spirit [der Herren eigner Geist], as Mephistopheles is mocking in Goethes Faust. The strange moons of reason, explored by Marcel Mauss in his ethnological studies, fade away when the great sun of reason outshines everything.27 Still, participant observation does not postulate that the researcher converts and simply joins in. Exploration needs a certain distance, even a special sort of ethnological epoche, in order to enable the explorer to have an eye for what is alien or heterogeneous and to give voice to it. What appears as highly problematic is the simultaneity of contact and distance; they cannot be united in a third position. Explorers speak and write about those with whom they live together for a while and to a certain extent. Belonging to a common eld of action is unavoidable, yet the same eld functions at once as a eld of observation. In another context, I have proposed a sort of double game, implying something like a double look, a double ear and a double speech. All attempts to join both sides together lead to half-hearted compromises, as can already be seen in Malinowskis diaries; here the author returns to the same prejudices which he had combated on the terrain of research. If there is something to protect the research from these consequences, it seems to be precisely the originary form of substitution, this time applied to the task of ethnography. This would render possible a special kind of Fremddarstellunga presentation of the alienwhich, in accordance with Fremderfahrung, or the experience of the alien, starts from what is alien, even if it continues dealing with it in the framework of a certain order.28 Viewed from this perspective, the ethnologist assumes the task of a cultural interpreter. We Europeans or occidentals are not to be reproached for being who we are, but we are to be reproached for the tendency to Europeanize and Americanize the whole world, including the place from where we are invited to respond. Today this tendency passes under the cloak of globalisation. Provided this tendency prevails, we will never properly speak in place of the Other, but always exclusively in and from our own place. Even ethnologists, who work as Fremdheitswissenschaftler, as investigators of the alien, are tempted to seek shelter behind their own interpretations and constructs. However, in the end we will never speak of the Other without speaking from the Other. This pertains to the ABC of every phenomenology

27 28

cf. Darmann (2005).

I refer to the chapter Paradoxien ethnographischer Fremddarstellung in Waldenfels, Vielstimmigkeit der Rede (1999).

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of otherness or alienness. Eurocentrism as well as any other form of ethnocentrism seems to amount to something like a repressed substitution. Let me sum up what has been explained. Originary substitution means that we will never speak of the Other and even with the Other without speaking from the Others place. This holds true as long as we do not fall into the sleep of pure normality. The transitional gures we have presented could be like guards on the threshold of otherness.

References
Darmann, Iris. 2005. Fremde Monde der Vernunft. Die ethnologische Provokation der Vernunft. Munchen: W. Fink. Derrida, Jacques. 1967a. De la Grammatologie, Paris: Minuit. Engl. of Grammatology (trans: Spivak, G.C.), 1998. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Derrida, Jacques. 1967b. La voix et le phnomne, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Engl. Voice and Phenomenon (trans: Lawlor, L.), 2011. Northwestern Press, forthcoming. Freud, Sigmund. 1976. Hemmung, Symptom und Angst (GW, vol. XIV). Frankfurt/M: Fischer. Heidegger, Martin. 1979. Heraklit (GA, vol. 55). Frankfurt/M: Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin. 1953. Sein und Zeit. 7. ed., Tubingen: Niemeyer. Engl. Being and Time (trans: Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E.), 1962. New York: Harper and Row. Hirsch, Alfred. 1995. Der Dialog der Sprachen. Studien zum Sprach- und bersetzungsdenken Walter Benjamins und Jacques Derridas. Munchen: W. Fink. Hirsch, Alfred. 2004. Recht auf Gewalt?. Munchen: W. Fink. Laplanche, Jean. 1997. Le primat de lautre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1974. Autrement qutre ou au-del de lessence, The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Engl. Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (trans: Lingis, A.), 1981. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 1994. Antwortregister. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Engl. (trans.) Northwestern Press, forthcoming. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 1999. Vielstimmigkeit der Rede. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2002. Bruchlinien der Erfahrung. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2005a. Idiome des Denkens. Deutsch-Franzsische Gedankengnge II. Frankfurt/ M: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2005b. Levinas on the Saying and the Said. In Addressing Levinas, ed. E.S. Nelson, A. Kapust and K. Still. Evanston: Northwestern Press. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2006a. Grundmotive einer Phnomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Engl. (trans.) Northwestern Press, forthcoming. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2006b. Schattenrisse der Moral. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2009. Spielraume des Moglichen und Uberschusse des Unmoglichen. In Unmglichkeiten, ed. I.U. Dalferth, Ph. Stoellger and A. Hunziker. Tubingen: Siebeck. Winnicott, Donald W. 1971. Playing and reality. London: Tavistock Publications.

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