I think that what I find most difficult about many of the authors that we are reading is that they are all quite field-specific. They are pulled so tightly into their own worlds of words and phrases that there is no blending between them and the outside world. To understand sometimes requires a sort of immersion in a new theory. It's at once fascinating and a little intimidating. In particular, Levinas has a very lyrical quality to his work that I found mildly disconcerting.

So... with that in mind, I did have a few questions about today theorists and hoped that I might get a little outside input.

My specific concern was with the concept of the 'Other'. If I understand it correctly, this is vaguely the heart of what Levinas is talking about. It seems to be both the self and rather what distinguishes the self from the rest of humanity... therefore allowing Otherness to be shunned? Or is this referring exclusively to the latter, where Otherness is something both in the self and in other people that must be contained and shunned? Again, or is this just a sort of reworking of Freud's idea of the subconscious, where a part of the self remains hidden, locked away from the conscious mind only to manifest its power in all sorts of strange ways? I find the last concept rather intriguing in a way (it has so many possibilities), so... help?