Using People

Using people, transforming others into a means for obtaining an end for oneself, is generally considered the very antithesis of ethical behavior. And with good reason. Faced with the violence of colonial, sexual, and even epistemological appropriation, ethical theorists have sought to replace domination with respect, knowledge with responsibility. But it sometimes seems as though a thought that begins in intersubjectivity or mutuality ends up sounding like a mere defense of the Other against the potential violence of the Subject. All too often, such theorists conclude, as does the following translator of Emmanuel Levinas, “Ontology becomes indebtedness to what is, a quiet listening vigilant against its own interference, cautious of its own interventions, careful not to disturb.” ¹ But if ethics is defined in relation to the potentially violent excesses of the subject’s power, then that power is in reality being presupposed and reinforced in the very attempt to undercut it. What is being denied from the outset is the subject’s lack of power, its vulnerability and dependence. Respect and distance are certainly better than violence and appropriation, but is ethics only a form of restraint? In this paper I take for granted the necessity of critiques of the imperial subject, but I would nevertheless like to question the model of intactness on which such critiques usually rely. Might there not, at least on the psychological level, be another way to use people?