ABSTRACT
PREFIGURATION The reader of chapter 6 could be forgiven for thinking that home (oikos), is what that chapter left before it was properly lodged in its economy. But the experience of not being quite at home is induced too in the reader of Levinas’s own discussion of the home or dwelling. What he names the demeure, ‘where one stays’, appears to be where one never stays still. At least this is the impression one gets from the paragraphs of the subsection ‘The Dwelling’ that appear under the title ‘Habitation and the Feminine’. Although they occur in the section on ‘Interiority and Economy’ and this precedes the section on ‘Exteriority and the Face’, they give reason to suspect that one is already, already before reaching the face, well on the way to being beyond it, assuming that when one is beyond it one is not still face to face. But in order to understand how the feminine appears to lead one on it is necessary to follow how Levinas leads his reader up to the feminine from enjoyment.
