Deconstructing The Lulz

Because I’ve been reading Harman so much lately, I’m just led back into the question ofhoware the two figures that meet able to meet in the first place? That is to say, the whole thing boils down to a problem Harman’s trying to constantly address: if subjects/objects are infinitely withdrawn/non-present (which I think they are), then how are the two objects able to interact at all, especially with the ethical call that’s supposed to somehow emanate from the other.

I know Harman’s solution to the problem is to pose some third object that’s able to situate the other two (his “vicarious causation” - a position I don’t fully understand yet, and don’t know if I agree with), it would seem to go against a Levinasian ethics, since the ‘Third’ is what interrupts the face-to-face encounter. And as Derrida put it in Adieu, the separation between ethics and politics is exactly this third figure: ethics is between two people, it comes from the extreme alterity of the other, while politics begins once this encounter is interrupted by a third figure. I can’t remember his exactly language right now, but he basically says that this is interruption is at the heart of law and politics and that, basically, they’re a disruption of ethics (especially as “first philosophy”).

Basically, I don’t know the medium in which the encounter with the other can occur for Levinas/Derrida, and thus I’m ambivalent about the possibility of an ethics/philosophy based upon such. At least, that’s where I’m at right now.