!!" ! Those Who Aren't Counted Matt Rosen !. Introduction On the morning of the eighth of May !"#$, as the Nazis surrendered to the Allies toward the end of World War II, a day now celebrated as Victory in Europe Day, $,%%% Algerians paraded through the French Algerian city of Sétif. While celebrating the end of the war and paying tribute to their fallen, some of those marching also carried banners on which messages decrying the colonial rule of the French were written. &ese marchers clashed with the local gendarmerie - literally, "armed people," a facet of the French military tasked with local law enforcement - when the gendarmerie attempted to seize their anti-colonial placards. &ere is some debate about who 'red the 'rst shot, but what happened next is uncontroversial in its essentials. Both the police and the protesters, including those carrying banners and others, su(ered numerous casualties. Armed protesters captured and slaughtered Europeans in the streets. And on that same evening, a peaceful protest orchestrated by the Algerian People's Party in the nearby city of Guelma was suppressed with shocking violence. In the rural areas surrounding Sétif, news of police brutality led angry locals to attack pieds-noirs, a segment of the population comprised largely of ethnically French people born in Alge- !!# DISEASES OF THE HEAD ria and people whose ancestors had migrated to French Algeria in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. &e pieds-noirs overwhelmingly supported the colonial rule of the French, and this fact played a justi'catory role in the attacks against them which directly followed the violence in Sétif. &ese attacks led to the deaths of !%) Europeans, almost all of whom were civilians. &ere were, in addition, hundreds of non-fatal injuries, including systematic rape and corollary trauma. &e mutilation and desecration of corpses was widespread. &e French military quelled the rebellion a*er several days, with a great deal of damage already having been done. But the military didn't rest contented with having put down this resistance. &ey enacted a number of brutal reprisals on settlers and Algerian Muslims alike. In a ratissage or "raking-over" of the countryside near Sétif and Guelma, the military carried out summary executions, bombed villages entire, and shelled the town of Kherrata from a cruiser in the Gulf of Béjaïa. Pieds-noirs, reacting to assaults and seeking vengeance, lynched randomly selected Algerian Muslims who had been incarcerated in local prisons. Staking a bloody claim to vigilante justice, they shot whoever was seen wearing a white arm band - a symbol of the resistance - with no questions asked.! Perhaps it is unsurprising that most of the victims of this violence weren't involved in the original protests on the eighth of May. Altogether, the violence that followed the events in Sétif and Guelma is estimated to have led to between !,%)% and #$,%%% fatalities. &ere is of course a stark di(erence between the lower and upper limits of this estimate. &ere is not much reason to doubt that the violence which took place on the eighth of May and shortly therea*er brought about a great many avoidable deaths. Many of those who died in this unrest were horri'cally ! Like the violence perpetrated by the recently defeated Nazi regime, this violence was committed mit keine Fragen, extra-judicially and with no questions asked. For further information, the reader may "nd it helpful to refer to Mehana Amrani, Le ! mai "#$% en Algérie: Les discours français sur les massacres de Sétif, Kherrata et Guelma (Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, #$!$). !!$ THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED slaughtered, and many of those who survived were nevertheless condemned to lead lives warped from their having taken part in the violence or misshapen by the tremendous burden of mourning in the wake of this inhumanity. &ere's plenty of reason to 'nd these events tragic. But many of us, looking back at these events, will be more inclined to consider the violence a severer tragedy if it led to #$,%%% deaths rather than !,%)%, just as we would be inclined to 'nd an event that caused !%% deaths, while still tragic, even less severe. &e 'gure of !,%)% deaths was reported by the French government in the Tubert Report, shortly a*er the events that took place in Sétif and Guelma. &e 'gure of #$,%%% deaths was reported by Radio Cairo, also very soon a*er the violence subsided. Now, if we set aside the horri'c but non-fatal barbarity of the injuries that resulted from this con+ict - wounds no doubt physical, psychological, and social - and focus simply on the reported number of fatalities, which is o*en used to mark a con- +ict's severity, we'll notice a signi'cant narrative di(erence between the two reported 'gures: !,%)% deaths and #$,%%% deaths. Each 'gure tells, and 'ts into, a di(erent story about what went on in Sétif and Guelma on the eighth of May and soon a*er, and about what it means. Each 'gure conveys a di(erent sense of the magnitude of the tragedy. And each makes various attitudes in response to that tragedy seem more or less apt. If the number of fatalities was !,%)%, as the o,cial French report claims, then a certain attitude toward the violence might seem more appropriate: though we regret that anyone had to die in such a way, we might be willing to say that the death toll was the price that had to be paid for civil peace. Although it sounds crass, and maybe for good reason, we might be thankful that more people who might have perished were saved from this fate. &e con+ict might in this sense look less bad than it could have been, in virtue of a comparison between the number of fatalities that were its consequence and the number that might conceivably have resulted had things been only slightly di(erent. If the number of fatalities was #$,%%%, however, then we might take the violence to have been worse in degree than had it been !,%)%. We might !!% DISEASES OF THE HEAD 'nd the tragedy severer, the burden of mourning weightier, the horror of what went on in Sétif and Guelma more intense and less comprehensible. For even if all these deaths were the cost of the mitigation of unrest, even if there had been no imaginable alternative, it may yet seem to us that #$,%%% deaths are considerably costlier than !,%)% deaths, or any lesser number for that matter. We may feel that our reason to be saddened by this tragedy - to mourn, to seek in its light to prevent similar con+icts from escalating in this way in the future, to take the violence of Sétif and Guelma as a historical example of atrocity - is proportional to the number of the dead. &is is a common attitude when it comes to atrocities: the greater the number of the dead, the more tragic we say it was. &is attitude seems to me to be mistaken, since it rests on what I take to be a distorted picture of the real a-iction that those who perished in Sétif and Guelma underwent. A sense of atrocity, based in part on the fatality count that conveys an impression of its severity, stands in for the a!iction of those who, whatever the fatality count, were indeed downtrodden. We should, 'rst and foremost, attend to and mourn this a-iction when we are trying to understand historical tragedies and con+icts, wars and injustices. &e atrocity signi'ed by the number of a body count o*en obscures the genuine a-iction that real people experienced. It covers over the su(ering that in some cases characterized their lives and the lives of those who knew them. I believe that this has an enormously deleterious e(ect on our capacity to make sense of, mourn, and live in light of the horrors of our past. An ethical attitude toward these horrors, I will argue, demands attention to the a-iction su(ered by the injured and the dead, no matter the putative severity of the atrocity given meaning by the number of fatalities. In coming to terms with one's history - insofar as this is possible (I don't claim that the relevant mourning is ever necessarily completable, though I don't think this prevents it from being practicable) - the moral person keeps her eyes 'xed on a-iction rather than atrocity, on the su(ering of each person who !!& THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED endured tragic circumstances or died under them, rather than on the count of bodies or list of injuries. In the face of atrocity, the moral person turns her attention to a-iction. In the face of the impression of tragedy given by a body count, she turns her attention instead to those who aren't counted, to the su(ering that can never be counted. &is, I will contend, is the shape the moral person's attitude takes with regard to events such as those that went on in Sétif and Guelma. ". Analogy and Atrocity As is shown by the dissensus with respect to the number of fatalities that resulted from the violence of Sétif and Guelma, the number of a body count is implicated in a wider political narrative, within which this violence and its a*ermath are to be made sense of.) In the case I've been discussing, this is either the narrative of the French colonial government (!,%)% deaths) or that of the Algerian resistance (#$,%%% deaths). &e wide gap between the two estimates isn't merely the consequence of, say, hasty miscounting, misreporting, or confusion due to the ongoing con+ict and an attendant lack of cooperation and communication, though these are surely relevant. Rather, the divergent numbers 'nd their place, and are as such intelligible, in divergent worldviews. &ese numbers are, in this sense, given from # To put it another way, the number of a fatality count is, in a certain sense about which I'll try to get clear, politically theory-laden. As Paul Feyerabend writes, "Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be." %e fact of the number of the body count and its weight or signi"cance can't be neatly separated from the theoretical apparatus of what I'll call an "analogy." %is is the set of relations in and through which sense is made of a&iction as atrocity. %e fact of a body count of !,$#$ is intelligible as such to those who see a certain atrocity, who have a certain going theory or narrative about what went on in Sétif and Guelma. %e fact of a count of '(,$$$ is intelligible to those who see another atrocity, who have a different theory or narrative about what went on in Sétif and Guelma; they make di)erent sense of it. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, #$!$), (!. !!' DISEASES OF THE HEAD political stances, which lend them the credence of context. From the point of view of the French government, or for those who share a similar sense of things, the body count of !,%)% makes sense. It 'ts into a wider frame, without thereby calling that frame too much into question, and it then comes to have further application (justi'catory and otherwise) within that frame. Likewise, from the point of view of the Algerian resistance or its allies, the body count of #$,%%% is intelligible, and this 'ts into an operative frame, while the suggestion that the proper count is actually !,%)% looks - from this vantage point - jarring, deceitful, or senseless. If this suggestion is plausible, the pressure may lead one to adjust one's view of things accordingly (perhaps beyond the scope of this speci'c incident). If it isn't received as plausible, it may be dismissed on that account, and the pressure that would cause one to change one's view, or to have to invent a way to deny the plausibility of the suggestion, won't be felt.. It seems plausible that at least very many of those who inhabited each point of view took the number of fatalities asserted by the representative of that view - either the French government or Radio Cairo - to be accurate. &ey were sincere in asserting that either !,%)% or #$,%%% is the proper count, though both evidently couldn't have been right about this. But all the same, the numeric product that results from the count of bodies, the quanti'cation of the fallen, is the outcome of an operation that takes place within a certain sort of political or social structure. I will call this structure an "analogy." * %is simpli"es things to a certain extent. In some cases, the suggestion will be received as entirely implausible because an operative view is so strongly held or so resistant to information that con+icts with it; in such cases, the pressure that would cause one to change one's view won't be felt much at all. In other cases, the suggestion will be received as pretty implausible, as likely to be false, or as questionable, but it won't be dismissed outright. %is may lead one to change one's view in a minor way, or to repress or twist the information received, since that information won't be received as wholly worthy of dismissal. But the point stands: one's view a)ects the information one receives. We always acquire information in the midst of things, with a view already in place, more or less liable to change depending on what facts are received and how they're received. !!( THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED An analogy works like this. From the vantage point of a particular community or social position, within a certain frame of understanding by means of which particular sorts of people (who are o*en identi'ed as such by attributes of such-and-such a type) make sense of the world and their place in it, it is held as true and importantly meaningful that there's a speci'c correlation - an analogy - between those who have perished and the narrative of their a-iction. &e dead are tied to a certain story, seen from a certain view, and this analogy or correlation is what I mean by an "atrocity." An atrocity is this analogical link that unites the dead and a particular narrative about what they su(ered and how they died. It's a link that makes sense from a particular view of things and can be seen - depending on the narrative and how tightly it 'ts with the facts of the a-iction (insofar as these are known and open to public view) - to be more or less apt in relation to the wider perspective. In other words, an atrocity is the partial sense made of a-iction from a politically or socially speci'c view. It relies on, helps to explain, and is commonly furthered by particular answers (which have to be seen as more or less intelligible) to the questions: "How many people died there?" and "In what way did they die?" and "Who (what sort of person) killed them, and for what reason?" An atrocity is an analogical structure with two terms: those who perished, on the one hand, and the narrative of their af- +iction, on the other. It is the "third" that unites these terms in itself. As terms of the consequent atrocity, the dead and the story into which they 't can't be understood as extricable from their mutual relation, so far as those who see the atrocity as an atrocity are concerned. &e dead can't be stripped of their narrative signi'cance, which grants their deaths sense for a speci'c community of the living. Likewise, the narrative can't be understood apart from those who died, to whom it grants a particular meaning for the living. &e number of fatalities plays an important part in this analogy. &is number, intelligible as such from within a particular point of view, ties together the victims and the meaning given to what they su(ered. What results is an !)* DISEASES OF THE HEAD atrocity. &e number then signi'es and stands in for the atrocity, understood to look a certain way (to which the number of fatalities is to give voice) from a particular point of view. &e atrocity - from whatever perspective, whichever atrocity one sees - subsumes under it both those who have perished and the narrative of their a-iction. It's an analogy in which these terms are comprehensible only as indistinct. We can put it this way: those who have perished are always already those who have partaken in the narrative of their a-iction, and that narrative isn't separable from those who have perished. Where there was a-iction, where ordinary people were forced to undergo real horrors, the quanti'cation of the fallen produces an atrocity whose number crystallizes its sense. #. A$iction &e a-iction that was su(ered in Sétif and Guelma is, for each person who underwent it, one and the same, no matter whether the death toll was !,%)% or #$,%%%. A-iction isn't something that can be measured, weighed, or subject to comparison. It can't be counted. But the atrocity is radically di(erent in each case. It can be measured, weighed, or subject to comparison - in fact, it just is what can be so counted. It is crystallized by means of a speci'c number, and this number can in certain situations belie it or the wider view from which it is seen. &e a-iction of those who met their end in Sétif and Guelma or endured its violence precedes the analogical structure of the atrocity. From the view of the a-icted, their a-iction isn't yet atrocious. In the 'rst place, a-iction is without atrocity. When the French government made sense of the a-iction su(ered in Sétif and Guelma by means of the count of !,%)%, they dealt with atrocity. Radio Cairo too dealt with atrocity by way of the count of #$,%%%. In neither of these cases was the a-iction itself - prior to its transformation into atrocity - dealt with. A-iction is di(erent from atrocity in kind, while an atrocity with a signifying number of !,%)% is di(erent in degree from one that has a number of #$,%%%. &e former atrocity is like the latter !)! THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED in this way: each is a violent set of events - in many ways, the same set of events - that occurred in the context of the Nazi's surrender and the French colonial occupation of Algeria. We could conceivably add further details to our characterization of these events, some of which would 't into the identi'able narrative structures of both atrocities. (&is isn't of course true of all the major details, as is shown by the question of how many people died in the violence.) Even so, the former atrocity is unlike the latter atrocity in this way: we're likely to consider the latter atrocity less grave, and this picture of things meshes with a particular frame of social and political reference and understanding. So a-iction can't be more or less than what it is. But atrocity is always more or less than what it is; this intensive di(erence is given in large part by the atrocity's unique number - the product of the body count - in contrast to other plausible numbers in which one could put one's faith (or in which others put their faith). &e atrocity in which !,%)% people were killed di(ers in quantity from that in which #$,%%% people were killed. But it would be a mistake to see this as merely a di(erence in quantity. Each number tells a distinct story about what went on in Sétif and Guelma. Each paints a particular picture of the events, and each comes to light in a distinct worldview. Each number thus lends the atrocity a di(erent sense or weight (we might say, a di(erent atrociousness). And each comes to symbolize this sense or weight - in a way, to stand in for it. &e apparent di(erence in quantity between !,%)% and #$,%%% is an intensive or qualitative di(erence, and really a narrative di(erence. &e fatality count gives voice to the qualitative fabric of a particular point of view with respect to what happened in Sétif and Guelma and what it should be taken to mean. &e resultant number expresses and carries a speci'c - and generally communal - opening onto the world. It is an aperture onto the past and a symbol which then 'gures in mourning, with which one then tries to live going forward. !)) DISEASES OF THE HEAD Now the quality to which the number of the body count gives voice comes to life in an analogy. In this analogy, the self and the other - those who see atrocity and those who were af- +icted - are seen to be inextricable, tied together in a knot that is productive of sense. &e quality of the atrocity has a recognizable structure. I will call this the atrocity's "for-y" structure. &e self and the other are seen to be necessarily "for" each other (y), and each is in itself unthinkable without this "for" and the other term (y) to which it is tied by way of the "for." &e "for," however, isn't transitive. &e dead "for" those who see atrocity aren't those who see atrocity and have to live in the face of it. &at is, the analogical form of the atrocity is made up of two more basic analogies, of which it is the reticulation: the self "for" the other and the other "for" the self, the living who have to go forward in light of atrocity and the a-icted who are intelligible under a certain atrocious aspect for those who see their a-iction as atrocity. &e unique number of the atrocity, the result of the count of bodies, isn't merely quantitative, since it gives a condensed expression to the "for," the quality that unites the dead and the living in atrocity's analogical schema. &e number marks this "for." It symbolizes the analogical reticulation that gives the terms of the analogy their sense precisely insofar as they are its terms. &e result of the body count is the locution in number that stands in for the atrocity. It represents the analogical relation of the two more basic analogies, each of which involves a nontransitive "for-y" quality. So the quantity of the fatality count names, as it were, the quality of the given violence as an atrocity, helping to determine and serving to enunciate its apparent severity and its essence. %. Quantifying the Fallen I have been arguing that the unique number of a body count marks the quality - the dual "for-y" structure - of an atrocity. It 'ts into a particular view, and it comes to give expressive and symbolic weight to a vision of the atrociousness of a set of events !)" THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED (which then colors these events through and through). &e number of the fatality count both 'ts into and in part carries a wider view. But how is it given? I don't mean to ask about how a count of bodies is undertaken in its logistical details. Rather, I mean to ask about how it is seen from, and done by those who inhabit, a speci'c view of a set of events, a view through which this set of events takes a particular shape as an atrocity with an identi'able sense. &e unique number that stands in for the severity and meaning of an atrocity is given by a political or communal operation, a shared way of making sense of what has happened by condensing a joint understanding (thereby solidifying it) into a sort of crystal: the number of the body count. I'll call this operation the "count-as-x." For the French government, the violence of Sétif and Guelma was counted-as-!,%)%. For the Algerian resistance, it was counted-as-#$,%%%. Counting-as bestows sense. It folds seemingly senseless and o*en traumatic events into a narrative structure, and it compresses that structure into the potent symbol of a 'gure. As we will see, this operation's excess is real a-iction. &at is what is set aside - forgotten, fundamentally neglected - in the production of atrocity, done by means of the count-as-x. Now the count-as-x also counts its x as one in the end. For instance, the !,%)% or #$,%%% counts for one as "Sétif and Guelma," as "what happened there." A certain univocity is established, imposed on a series of discrete events, on the a-iction su(ered by each victim (each person who became a victim) beyond the frame of the atrocity. &is counting-as-one aids in the production of sense, and it is of especial importance if that sense is to be shared among the members of a polity or passed along within a social sphere. It's this counting-as-one that enables the lesson of Sétif and Guelma to be taught to children in a digestible way; it is this that 'nds its way into history textbooks. What is missed, though, is the a-iction - passed over in the count-as-x and neglected entirely in the x = one that solidi'es an atrocity made sensible in a-iction's place. !)# DISEASES OF THE HEAD &e singular people who su(ered in Sétif and Guelma thus come under a particular form of description - in e(ect, a formal order - which thematizes the a-iction as atrocity by means of a dual counting operation: the count-as-x and the x = one. Af- +iction is made sense of in terms of the particular analogical quality of the atrocity. It is only glimpsed, so to speak, through a decidedly atrocious lens.# In this way, it is distorted, rendered intelligible for those who inhabit a particular view of things (which itself isn't limited to retrospection). &e operation of the count-as-x produces a number, x, which is given analogically. &is number's sense is that of the analogy - the atrocity - which it marks. &e communal or political sphere, as we have seen, structures itself analogically around ' Reiner Schürmann writes that "[h]egemonies transform the singular into a particular. %ey serve to say what is, to classify and inscribe, to distribute proper and common nouns." Reiner Schürmann, Broken Hegemonies, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, #$$*), ,. %ere are, it seems to me, important similarities between Schürmann's hegemonies and the totalizing analogies I am considering here. Both transform the singular other person into a particular: the other "for" me, "for" us, "for" the living. Both classify and inscribe, rendering a&iction narrowly intelligible as atrocity. Now the question for us is this. Is there a way in which the particular, the realm of the hegemony, might no longer be seen as the "chief-represented" (-./012) but merely as the represented? Can we come to see the analogical as no longer hegemonic, as secondary to what's singular and, in this secondariness, as coexistent with the primacy of the singular? %at is: can we inhabit analogy without letting it become totalizing or hegemonic? %is question takes a number of forms across various subject matters in philosophy. Consider these examples. Can preferential love coexist with love for strangers? Can community coexist with genuine hospitality? Can ethics coexist with politics? %is form of question underlies much of my thinking here and elsewhere. It would not be inaccurate to put it this way. How can we keep the inherent partiality or inadequacy of analogy forefront in our minds while still inhabiting it, and what follows from doing so? How can we keep, in some sense, what hegemonic structures are while dissolving their hegemonic quality? I think that is o3en possible, though it requires, sometimes, changes to the structures themselves. One case in which it's possible is this: the sense made of a&iction as atrocity can be kept as non-totalizing insofar as one bears witness to the a&iction itself in its primacy. %is essay attempts to get clear about how that would work. !)$ THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED calamitous events. Hence, these events are understood as atrocities, made intelligible within a speci'c frame. &e atrocity is woven into a particular social fabric and in turn helps to support that fabric (or adds to it) by crystallizing a-iction in an atrocious number that makes it meaningful and thus more bearable. &rough the operation of the count-as-x and the analogical givenness of the atrocity, and especially through the countingas-one of x, those who inhabit the relevant social position or community can chart a course forward in the face of what has happened. &ey can make sense of the past, mourn in a way that seems more or less accomplishable, and 'gure out how best to live going forward. But in so doing, they have forgotten the a-iction of those whose su(ering has been rendered, always in hindsight, atrocious. &is a-iction comes under a qualifying description that makes it intelligible to those with a certain view; such is the movement from a-iction to atrocity. It is this attitude to the horrors of the past, which considers them atrocities, with which I want to take issue. &. 'e Topology of the 'ree-as-One It will be useful to try to get a sense of the topological form of the communal or political sphere as it functions here. &is sphere takes a speci'able shape in the analogical fashioning of atrocity, in making a-iction in this way intelligible. I now want to get clear about this shape. To get going, consider the structure of an analogy that I identi'ed in §). It comprises two terms - the self and the other, those who see an atrocity and those who were a-icted - and a dual set of non-transitive relations between them; these relations give rise to the analogy's "for-y" qualities. &ere's the self "for" the other (the living who must go forward in the face of past injustices) and the other "for" the self (the dead who are intelligible under an atrocious aspect for the living). Neither term can be understood as separable from the other. &eir relation is treated as primitive. &e other isn't really other here, not absolutely. &e two terms are thought under the aspect of a third: the !)% DISEASES OF THE HEAD analogy itself, the atrocity that ties them together. In our analysis, there appear to be three operative terms: the self, the other, and the atrocity. But all three have to be thought as one, within the bounds of the atrocity in which the 'rst two terms - self and other - are comprehensible as inextricable. &is topology, this shape of the community of the living and the dead, is what I will call "the three-as-one." For there are three terms, but all are, in essence, as one, under the aspect of the third: the atrocity itself. In the topology of the three-as-one, the self and the other are tied together in the introduction of a third term (the analogy itself) such that they can't be isolated from one another. So there exist three terms in the three-as-one, but they aren't distinct terms. &ey are as one. &e self isn't itself thinkable apart from the other, and the other isn't itself thinkable apart from the self. Moreover, neither of these basic relations can be thought without the other, for as we saw the analogy is the relationship between two non-transitive "for-y" relations. &e self and the other only exist intelligibly insofar as they exist within the limits of the third term. &ey must be thought within its frame. &e a-icted are the sense made of them for the living by way of the count-as-x. &e living are those who have to 'gure out how to go forward in view of history's atrocities. &ese terms - the self and the other, the living and the dead - are thinkable only in the relational schema, taken to be originary, of the analogy under which they have always already been subsumed. &e a-icted exist for the living. Within the analogy, then, they are di(erent from the living only in degree. &ey are not the living, to be sure, but they crucially go on living with the living - they are the sense the living make of them (in part, by counting them as x, and then as one). In the three-as-one, the dead and the living are unthinkable apart from the analogy as a whole. Atrocity functions in precisely this way. It takes the shape of a three-as-one. &ose who perished and the narrative of their a-iction can't be thought in separation from their conjoining in the third: the analogy itself qua atrocity. !)& THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED I say that an attitude toward the past's unjust deaths according to which they're to be seen under the aspect of atrocity is not ethical. A-iction is made intelligible as atrocity through the operation of the count-as-x and x = one. What's le* out is a-iction itself. &e idea that atrocity is su,cient, that we must turn our attention to atrocity if we wish to understand the cruelties of history and make a life in light of them, leads us to neglect the a-iction of real, ordinary people. I believe that this neglect prevents us from actually coming to terms with the past. It keeps us from really mourning, from leading lives in which we are attentive to what has happened in our history. It doesn't allow us to approach events such as those that went on in Sétif and Guelma in an ethical manner. Living well in view of such events means contending with a-iction, not forgetting this in contending with atrocity. I have described the attitude according to which past a-ictions are to be seen as atrocities, and so not as they really are, as not ethical. I don't say it is unethical. For I want to emphasize that this attitude doesn't involve a choice to conceive of a-ictions as atrocities (though particular choices may indeed follow from this conception); as if one knew full well, in conceiving of a-ictions as atrocities, that a transformation had gone on. &e person who sees an atrocity is not cognizant of having an immoral attitude, nor of seeing the world wrongly. Rather, she has simply forgotten a-iction. Her error consists in letting it slip from mind, thereby allowing for atrocity's constitution. &is forgetting makes room for atrocity. &e moral failure here is a failure to stay vigilant, to keep up a certain wakefulness regarding the past's a-ictions. Someone who sees an atrocity in a-iction's place has a forgetful attitude toward history's injustices. In this sense, it is not ethical, since an ethical attitude toward these injustices would involve the perception of a-iction and the vigilant maintenance, the remembering, of this perspicuous vision. &e person who sees atrocity needs to be woken up, and then needs to keep herself awake. !)' DISEASES OF THE HEAD An atrocity is a kind of totalizing construction; it tethers the dead to a certain narrative about their a-iction, and it forgets that a-iction itself. It renders the dead not really other than the living, for neither can be fully understood except through their analogical relation. In an atrocity, the dead are nothing but the sense the living make of them. &ey are said to be this and nothing besides. So an atrocity totalizes, under its own aspect, the af- +iction of those who perished. It takes what it speaks of to be all there is to speak of when it comes to history's calamitous events. It presumes to have no outside - or if it has one, it isn't thinkable; it isn't something to which one could attend in mourning. &is atrocious construction is generally retrospective: the a-icted don't themselves construct it, since it operates by means of a count-as-x that goes on in hindsight, and it is more or less completed, producing a largely closed sense of the atrocity and its constitutive events, in the count-as-one of x. An atrocity gives the impression of being su,cient with respect to what has happened. To those who inhabit the relevant point of view, it doesn't look as if it leaves behind any excess. &at this isn't the case is only shown when contrary points of view come on the scene. &e dissensus about the fatality count in Sétif and Guelma doesn't only show that there are two di(erent atrocities, one marked by the count-as-!,%)% and the other by the count-as-#$,%%%. It also shows that both of these atrocities have an outside - and indeed, a common outside. &is is the a-iction of those who perished in the violence which, one and the same, was su(ered by each a-icted person. Both atrocities endeavor to make this a-iction intelligible under an atrocious description or within the bounds of a formal order. But they do this through totalization and neglect, and it's in this sense that they stand in the way of an ethical attitude to the horrors of the past. For atrocity renders a genuine encounter with the other - the a-icted - unthinkable. &e three terms of the three-as-one, recall, are always as one, inextricable from one another. &e a-icted are only encountered as those who can be counted among the victims of atrocity, seen "for" those whose !)( THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED vision is of atrocity. Since the other would be beyond the analogy, within the analogy it is the unencounterable par excellence. &ere can be no other in the three-as-one; the "as-one" precludes this. &ere can't be anything di(erent in kind from what is within the atrocity, held fast by it. Any other is o( the table from the point of atrocity's constitution in the count-as-x. &e other can di(er only in degree from the self, as what's intelligible only in the sense in which it's "for" the self, made analogical. It may seem that I am making heavy weather over this. But there's a reason for that. &is is how the forgetting of a-iction characteristic of the three-as-one operates, and this forgetting is distinctive of the attitude with which I am taking issue. &e production of atrocity - in the count-as-x and x = one - essentially involves the neglect of a-iction. &e "for-y" quality of the analogy is imposed; the dead are seen to be fundamentally tied up with the sense made of them, and this forces them into a context or position that is the same as that of the living - a context that is not the a-icted's. To be sure, this doesn't appear to be an imposition from within the view of things that constitutes, and is then in part constituted by, the production of atrocity. But that is precisely the three-as-one's amnesia at work. &e position into which the other is put, under which they're in e(ect subsumed, is thought to be knowable by means of a sort of empathy. Since the other is already just what it is in relation to the self within the analogy, it is imagined that the self can step into the other's shoes, so to speak, without much of a problem. And having done this, the self can try them on for size. In this way, the living take themselves to be able to get a grip on those who died atrociously. Understanding seems to come easily. Yet the living can't empathetically get a handle on a-iction itself, because this very empathetic "getting a handle on..." relies on the neglect of a-iction. It operates only given a kind of lethargy. In this lethargy or forgetfulness, a supposedly easily acquirable understanding of analogy rids us of humility with respect to history's horrors. &e other and the self are each understood in their mutual indistinction. Empathy here turns on the introduction of a third !"* DISEASES OF THE HEAD term, an analogical bridge, which lets the self to some extent step into the other's place.$ At least, so far as the self is concerned. &e third term is a "like" or "unlike" relation that an other is seen to bear to oneself; the other is seen, in virtue of their similarity to or di(erence in degree from oneself, to have a relational property (being like or unlike oneself in such-and-such a way or to such-and-such an extent) by means of which they're intelligible to one as such. &e a-icted are perhaps like those who look back on them from the perspective of Radio Cairo, since both have dealt with the threat of European colonialism. Or maybe the a-icted are unlike those who look back from the perspective of the French government, since they don't share particular political beliefs. &is "like" or "unlike" term serves to bridge the gap between the self and the other. &is bridge is all that is needed to get analogical empathy going, even across great qualitative divides (as the manifest bridging ability of the "unlike" ( In his psychoanalytic self psychology, Heinz Kohut de"nes empathy as "vicarious introspection." When one empathizes, one vicariously introspects into the other; one tries the other's shoes on for size, by way of one's relation to the other and the qualities one sees the other to have. I compare this to Husserl's account of empathy in my "%e Givenness of Other People," forthcoming. Kohut's self psychological method of empathy is a clear example of the sort of analogical ethic - the conception of one's rightful relationship with other people - against which I am writing. It may be helpful to refer, when considering my talk of analogical empathy, to Kohut's essay "Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis: An Examination of the Relationship between Mode of Observation and %eory," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association ,, no. * (!4(4): '(4–5*, as well as to Heinz Kohut, Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, !4,4), !,6–,,. %ere seems to me to be something similar in Graham Harman's development of his object-oriented ontology in ethics. Harman claims that the relation between oneself (x) and the other (y) exists as a compound object, x–y, which is morality's locus. Indeed, Harman tells us that "ethics is about the compound of subject and object." Here, I would like to dissent. Ethics is about how the compound of subject and object is insu7cient with regard to the other; it is about how the other isn't merely an object for a subject. Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (London: Pelican Books, #$!5), !$,. !"! THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED term brings to bear)./ With the analogy in place, the seeming possibility of an empathetic grasp on the atrocious position of the dead leads us to further abandon the idea that atrocity has an outside. We take ourselves, within the three-as-one, to have come to terms with those who have died. And empathy makes it look as if we aren't missing anything in this. But of course, we have forgotten the actual a-iction of ordinary people. &e self and the other are seen to exist only within the bounds of their empathetic relationship, which is evidently geared toward the self who presumes to empathize with the af- +icted. &e self is set as the norm, the constituting center, in relation to which the other di(ers only by a given degree. &e other orbits the self, as it were. &e three-as-one doesn't admit of any genuine alterity that would precede the position of the analogy's terms as terms. It takes the relation between the terms, centered on the self or the living, to be primitive. And so, it forgets a-iction. &e topology of the three-as-one is the shape that the community of the living and the dead takes in neglecting a-iction and attending instead to atrocity. But I want to suggest that remembering a-iction doesn't mean merely negating the threeas-one, +ying out and into the void. It isn't an abdication of the task of coming to grips with history's horrors. Rather, the remembrance of a-iction leads to a community of the living and the dead (that is, an encounter between them) that has a di(erent, and to my mind morally preferable, shape. I will call this the topology of "the two." &is topology is prior to the three-asone, as a-iction is to atrocity, and it is foreclosed to those who inhabit the totalizing analogical schema that gives rise to and is carried by the vision of atrocity.0 6 %is being so, empathy may still be harder to start, and one may consequently be able to hold on to more humility, in cases where the other is seen to be very unlike - even if still di)erent in degree from - the self. But this isn't always the case; sometimes, great di)erences in degree seem to motivate pernicious forms of xenophobia and the like. , %ere are three distinctions, similar in a number of ways to the distinction I've drawn between a&iction and atrocity, that may be pro"table to !") DISEASES OF THE HEAD (. 'e Topology of the Two &e topology of the two is the space in which I encounter an other who isn't me or of me. It is the space in which I come up against an outside I cannot hope to assimilate or incorporate. &e two is the shape of an encounter in which transcendence comes to pass. In the two, the other is absolutely unrelated to me. My encounter with the other doesn't hang on empathy, for there isn't an analogical bridge between us across which I might empathize; there is no room for a "like" or "unlike" relation in the two. I can't try the other's shoes on for size; I can't even make out their shoes. In the three-as-one, there are three terms - the self, the other, and the analogy as a whole - which are countedas-one under the aspect of the third, the analogy or atrocity. In the two, there are two terms - the self and the other - which are di(erent in kind from one another yet nevertheless encounter each another. &ey do this directly in the space of the two. It is in this way that I, in the two, am exposed to the other in their very otherness, without their subsumption under my categories of understanding or what is familiar to me. &ere isn't a third under which the two terms could be counted-as-one, seen to be mere relata in a relationship taken to be primitive. &e other in the two is whatever it may be. It isn't "for" the self. Af- +iction is not transformed into atrocity, and we needn't give up the endeavor to come to terms with the violence of our history: the two is very much a topology of the encounter, but one that consider further: Levinas's distinction between the saying and the said (in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, !445]); Henry's distinction between the +esh and the body or self-a)ection and noetic-noematic givenness (e.g., in Incarnation); and Lacan's distinction between the real and reality. %is isn't the place to try to carefully articulate the similarities and di)erences between these distinctions, though I hope to do that in future work. But let me just say this. In regard to the relationship between a&iction and atrocity, it might be particularly interesting to think about how the former term in each of these distinctions undermines or undoes the latter term, while in one sense still preserving it as so undermined or undone. !"" THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED doesn't operate via analogy and empathy. &is is why inhabiting it by way of remembrance, calling it to mind moment a*er moment, makes possible vigilant attention to a-iction. In dwelling in the two, I respond to the other's call as whatever it may be. I don't seek to comprehend the other "for" me, as a term of the analogy centered on me. I abnegate to the other, and there's no symmetry between us. I don't demand reciprocity. I am responsible for the other in the two, called to be hospitable to that which is at an undecipherable height. I welcome an other whose sense isn't of an order with which I am acquainted or comfortable. &e two doesn't look like home. But the comfort and regularity of the three-as-one mask a certain angst. In seeing atrocity in a-iction's place, we miss something excessive - the a-iction itself - which nevertheless calls us to bear witness to it. So in the regularity of atrocity, in our forgetfulness of a-iction, we feel in some way unable to really get a grip on the suffering that +esh and blood people endured, the su(ering from which many of them perished. Seen in this light, our mourning appears to miss something. We feel an angst: this is the ache of our neglect. In attending to it, in following it and coming to see it as such, we can exit the three-as-one and inhabit the two, facing a-iction head on, encountering the a-icted in earnest in our open exposure to them. We can encounter them in our responsibility to bear witness to what they themselves underwent, not just to our vision of atrocity. An attitude to the past's calamities that sees them under the aspect of atrocity rests on the construction of an analogy relating those who perished and a speci'c narrative about their a-iction. &e a-iction of the ordinary people who su(ered in Sétif and Guelma is subjected to the operation of the count-asx, which produces the unique number of the death toll. &is number signi'es and helps to carry the sense of the atrocity under which the a-iction is, through this process, subsumed. A-iction is primordial in relation to atrocity. It precedes atrocity and is the material with which atrocity is built. And it is obscured - forgotten - in atrocity's construction. Atrocity is the original su(ering of those who died at Sétif and Guelma, outside !"# DISEASES OF THE HEAD any analogy, made analogical. It is their agony transformed into the qualitative intensity of a particular persecution situated in a social and political context. &at is to say, an atrocity is the apparatus within which those who aren't counted become simply what they are for those who count in the operation of the count-as-x, or for those who inherit this count and its sense. So atrocity is a-iction become more or less than what it is, no longer what it is in itself. It's a sort of horror produced analogically in relating a communal or political narrative to those who perished such that the two can't be understood in separation from one another. &is production goes on in a communal operation of quanti'cation: the count that quanti'es and houses a certain quali'cation in a given number. &is operation yields the correlation of the living's narrative and the dead, clothed in number, which comes to stand in for and gives sense to a-iction; the correlation permits no excess beyond what's countedas-x and then counted-as-one, beyond what has already been quali'ed under the banner of atrocity or has been given its adjectival mark, "atrocious." So we can say that atrocity is a-iction converted through the count-as-x into a number that admits of no excess, in which the meaning of some historical horror is to be de'nitively made out. &e a-icted other is ensnared, made into a sort of 'nite, totalized idol of itself. It is the sense made of it. &e other is transformed into only what is correlated with and inextricable from the narrative of the a-iction that has befallen them, and all this is within the overarching analogical structure of the atrocity. When this analogical structure, in which there are three terms (self, other, analogy), is taken to be prior to the two, the three-as-one is the result. &e three are then counted-as-one, and this involves the neglect of the two. &ere can't be a two in which one could dwell, for the three-as-one is taken to come 'rst, and it precludes the two from the start. &e forgetting of the two here is twofold: one forgets the two in taking the threeas-one to be primary, and then one forgets this forgetting; this is essential for the maintenance of this position. &e inhabiting of the three-as-one is in this sense a lethargy with respect to !"$ THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED the space in which the genuine other - who isn't determined by some identity perceived by me or attribute discerned by me - condemns me on pain of angst (that of leaving something out of my mourning) to a non-relational or asymmetrical abnegation. To live in the three-as-one is to look away.1 Communal attitudes with respect to the horri'c events of history take an analogical form. &eir topology is that of the three. &ere are two terms, the living and the dead. And then there is the dual bridge between them: !. the sense the living make of the dead, and ). the way in which the dead's su(ering a(ects how the living set out to live. Now the three, insofar as the two is neglected, is counted-asone. &e dead are taken to be inextricable from, and even identical to, the sense the living make of them. &e dead can't exceed this, at least not in being thought. But the three needn't be counted-as-one. Instead, it can admit of excess: namely, the excess of the two, which one can acknowledge as preceding the three. When this acknowledgment takes place, the two and the three - the topology of ethics and the topology of community - can conceivably coexist." But this coexistence can happen 5 %ere are two sets of remarks by Emmanuel Levinas worth considering in light of what I'm arguing here. First, those regarding the way in which the height of the other person, their in"nite distance from me and the fact that I'm irrecuperably responsible for them, is encountered in their hunger and poverty, their insu7ciency and nakedness. %is might be compared with the way in which the a&icted person's otherness reveals itself as a destitution, as an inadequacy, within the sphere of analogy. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (%e Hague: Martinus Nijho), !464), !!,, #$$. Second, it's worth considering those remarks made by Levinas about vigilance and insomnia, and their role in moral experience. See Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, 5,. On insomnia in particular, see Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death, and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, #$$$), #$,–!#. 4 %e relationship here between the topologies of the two and the threeas-one bears some resemblance to the relationship between nonstandard !"% DISEASES OF THE HEAD only when the two is taken to be the primordial topology. &at's the only way for the three to not be counted-as-one. When the two is acknowledged as preceding the three, the three isn't totalizing, which means that the two and the three can then coexist (since there's room for the two prior to the three). If the two and the three are considered simultaneous, or if the three is given primacy and thereby counted-as-one, the other is replaced by an analogical idol: the other who's "for" the self, and nothing besides. &e a-icted are taken to be nothing other than what they are under an atrocious description. If the two comes 'rst, however, the a-icted are 'rst what they really are, and only then are they - very partially, we'll acknowledge - the sense that's made of them. &is permits an apt humility regarding the sense we make of the past's horrors. We introduce the possibility of real fallibility so far as atrocity goes in introducing the impossibility of getting a complete handle on a-iction under an atrocious aspect. But this doesn't preclude a grip on a-iction itself, which is precisely what inhabiting the topology of the two, prior to the three, enables us to get. &e number generated in the operation of the count-asx traps the a-icted in a system - of sense, explanation, and mourning - in which they can di(er only in degree from those who are set as the norm of the analogy, the constituting center or mean of the atrocity: the living. For the French colonial government, those who perished at Sétif and Guelma were the !,%)%, just as they were the #$,%%% for Radio Cairo. But what are they themselves, as ordinary people who endured substantial trials and died in appalling violence? What are they besides these numbers, beyond the analogy? And how can we think the philosophy or non-philosophy and philosophy in the work of François Laruelle. See especially, François Laruelle, Principles of Non-Philosophy, trans. Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith (London: Bloomsbury Academic, #$!*). Similarly, it's somewhat comparable to Lacoste's distinction between being-before-God (or coram Deo) and Heidegger's being-inthe-world. See Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man, trans. Mark Raferty-Skehan (New York: Fordham University Press, #$$'). !"& THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED a-iction of these people without regard to what they're taken to be or to count as? How can we understand them in distinction from what they are for the apparatus of atrocity under which they've been subsumed and within which they've been numerically crystallized as the !,%)% or the #$,%%%? How can we unthink the distortion of the atrocity's count-as-x and x = one so as to come to terms with a-iction itself? ). Counting, Angst, and Christ's Cruci*xion Within the topology of the three-as-one, a-iction is understood as atrocity, with no outside. It is given sense by a body count, in which that sense is symbolically housed. &e count-asx introduces a third term or set of relations that conjoin those who aren't counted and those who count such that each term is indistinguishable from its sense within the greater milieu (the analogy itself). &e terms are only thinkable as parts within the whole, in view of the whole. &ere are a great many historical examples of this: a-iction is quali'ed as atrocity by way of an operation of counting. A number is introduced, which stands in for and serves to aid in making sense of a-iction. &e a-iction of the Shoah, for instance, is signi'ed numerically by the count-as-six-million. &e Shoah's a-iction itself is thus subsumed under its correlated numericity. Five million is the unique number of the &irty Years' War. &e Cambodian autogenocide is counted-as-two-million. And the Black Death, which took so many lives in Paris, is given analogically by the number $%,%%%. We see this pattern - the application of a count-as-x to the su(ering within a situation as it is seen from a speci'c point of view - just as much with pestilence and plague as with autos-da-fé, burnings at the stake, and drownings in the trials of witches. &e massacre that took place at Columbine High School is symbolized by the number !$, which stands in for it. &is is less what it is (an atrocity) than the Salem witch trials, symbolized by the number )%, which is still less what it is than the violence that took place in Sétif and Guelma - which, symbolized by the number !,%)% or #$,%%%, is !"' DISEASES OF THE HEAD therefore more what it is. Atrocity is the numbering and quali- 'cation of a-iction such that it can be more or less what it is. But this has a price: the resultant atrocity is only a shallow image of the a-iction, a hollow idol or statue. &e actual a-iction is reduced to what can be numbered and quali'ed, rendered intelligible. In failing to acknowledge the count's excess, and in failing to get a non-atrocious grip on that excess, we are le* with a sense of history's horrors as intelligible. But this sense is skindeep. Our understanding of these horrors is facile at best, and it is o*en much more seriously warped by the thought that our vision of atrocity is wholly adequate to the relevant a-iction. &e application of the count-as-x to the su(ering seen within a given situation is commonly a response to rather acute trauma, or to the memory of this trauma and how it a(ected one or those proximal to one. In this way, one attempts to cope with what has occurred. But it is a strategy for coping with pernicious repercussions.!% &e numbering that crystallizes the atrocity qua atrocity, such that it is at least to some degree more psychologically bearable, leads to a condition of angst in which that crystallization in number seems inescapable, exhaustive, and basic. Mourning comes to seem always incomplete. It looks always to be missing the real substance of what has happened, the a-iction itself. One is le* with a shallow number, a comprehensible but inevitably cursory sense of a set of violent events. &is sense always appears to lack depth. For despite the sense made of af- !$ To reiterate: I don't say that this strategy involves a choice to neglect af- +iction. For if one knew that one was forgetting a&iction (in so choosing) and instead focusing on atrocity, this forgetfulness and the resultant focus would be rather partial. %e coping strategy I have in mind here isn't so much a choice as a failure to see or remember, one that in fact makes sense in the wake of traumatic events. So we need to be reminded to attend to a&iction, and then we need to work to maintain our vision of it, to stay vigilant. One can't see a&iction and with it in view choose to see atrocity. %e strategy I have in mind, then, isn't something one decides to pursue with a full view of what it entails; it's only seen for what it is once one remembers a&iction, thereby coming to see what had previously gone on as neglect. !"( THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED +iction as atrocity, the +esh and blood people who were actually a-icted are nowhere to be found. &e coping strategy that simpli'es what has happened by making an analogical construction (the atrocity) look exhaustive of the sense to be made of some horri'c set of events (through neglect) leads to a kind of chronic angst: we can't 'gure out how to truly encounter the horrors of the past, or those who really su(ered them, and this a(ects how we're able to live in light of what has happened. We create atrocity in the count-as-x in part to endure our apparent exemption from tragedy, to relieve the disquiet of the time a*er a cataclysm that's not quite our own. &e count is an attempt to make atrocity as much our own as is possible. But we alleviate the fear and trembling of facing up to a-iction in this manner only at the cost of angst. &e dreadful stasis of the number of a body count, the 'xity of the atrocity and its narrative, seems to cure the fear that we too are merely pathetic +esh, or that the other's a-iction is ours too, since we are responsible and already exposed in the other's su(ering. But it does this by aiding us in forgetting both the self (the living) itself and the other (the dead), helping us to turn away from the two and toward the three. It makes it easier for us to take the three to be primary and so to totalize it as one. We trade the risk of having to come to terms with who we are and who the a-icted were, the risk of abnegation in the two, for what at 'rst glance looks to be the comfort of analogy. We trade this risk for what's de'nitively circumscribed. But really, we trade it for what turns out to be a condition of chronic, seemingly inexorable angst. &e view according to which there's nothing imaginable outside the atrocity, beyond the scope of the analogy, is certainly a cure (however short-term); but it has a price that proves to be disastrously high. As with auto'ction, the solipsism in which everything has to be related to oneself in order to be comfortably intelligible winds up being stale and angst-ridden. !#* DISEASES OF THE HEAD Once we've taken it on, it is something we try - without at 'rst knowing how - to escape.!! Consider the Shoah, a set of horrors we're o*en wisely counseled to never forget. &e a-iction of the Shoah, in the operation of the count-as-six-million, becomes something that is no longer the su(ering of ordinary people (whatever they may be) who are distinct from the sense the living make of them. It becomes an atrocity, in what I'll call the "as such" mode. &e Shoah is taken as such, in its entirety, to be the atrocity made of it. Nothing of the a-iction of the Shoah is seen to transcend the atrocity. &e a-iction becomes clothed in the numeric, which is the result of the count-as-x, and it is rendered univocally intelligible, which is the result of the x = one. &e number, x, is the totalization of the a-iction in quantity, by way of which it is quali'ed under an atrocious description (counted-as-one). Hence, it is a totalization of the a-icted as what they are "for" the living who look back on them from a particular point of view. &e a-icted are just the totality of what bears the relevant "for" relation (this can be made up of whatever set of "like" or "unlike" relations) to those who retrospect and see an atrocity. &e a-iction of ordinary people "as they are" becomes the atrocity of victims "as such." I will contrast the "as they are" mode of these people with !! For some criticisms of the contemporary trend of auto"ction, particularly in French literature, see Sandra Laugier's interview with Tristan Garcia in &'(& !!'. Auto"ction is a genre or style of writing that imagines that a writer should stay within their own context, or should write only about what they know, not going beyond the limits of the familiar or self-same. As a style of writing, I don't think that auto"ction is universally objectionable. But I "nd the idea that one can't or shouldn't seek to write about what one isn't personally acquainted with, that one can't or shouldn't want to write about others, profoundly objectionable, both because it turns "ction into solipsism, ruining much of what's absorbing and edifying in literature, and because it sets up a putative norm without any argument. One might compare what I say here, too, with Derrida's famous statement that "there is no outside-text." See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, #$!6), !(5. I develop the claim that a seeming lack of any outside leads to a condition of angst, and that this condition can be abrogated in abnegation, in my forthcoming Angst and Abnegation. !#! THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED their mode "as such," which is just to contrast the a-icted with those seen to be victims of atrocity while stressing that the same people are essentially at issue on both contrasting sides. From within the analogical structure of an atrocity, it doesn't seem sensible to so much as inquire as to whether the a-icted person as they are is in fact totalized, crystallized in the number of the fatality count. It doesn't seem to make sense, either, to ask whether they are beyond the analogy, themselves indi(erent to it. &e question of whether the person as they are, as a-icted, is totalized doesn't so much as come to mind. A*er all, the number of the person as such - one out of !,%)%, say - stands in for the person as they are; it is taken to be primary, originary. &e a-icted person's indi(erence to the atrocity's number, the distance between the real person who is a-icted and the person who is one out of !,%)%, can only be seen in the remembrance of the topology of the two. For in inhabiting the two, one can look toward the atrocity's number with a certain indi(erence, attending instead to the a-icted as they are. One catches sight of those who aren't counted in a recollection of the two, against the amnesia that enables and results in the three-as-one and the angst that manifests within the analogy counted-as-one. Indi(erence to the three-as-one is possible in connection with an attitude for which atrocity doesn't su,ce. One sees atrocity to be lacking, emphasizing the angst of the three-as-one, and one then follows this to the recollection of the two - the exit from analogy. &e remembrance of the a-icted person, against atrocity's angst and neglect, in a sense mirrors the a-icted person's own indi(erence to the atrocity's number (which will only be constituted in hindsight).!) !# In After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux writes that what is beyond the correlational circle - for us, beyond the topology of the three-as-one - in some sense resembles the "great outdoors" sought by pre-critical philosophy, that "outside which was not relative to us, and which was indifferent to its own givenness to be what it is, existing in itself regardless of whether we are thinking it or not." %e idea of indi)erence here is this. What is beyond the correlation between thinking and being, what exists whether or not we are thinking or positing it, is in a certain sense indi)erent to us, foreclosed !#) DISEASES OF THE HEAD I want now to turn to a particularly salient instance of the count-as-x, which is the root of much of its cultural and historical resilience as a method for comprehending great su(ering. I have in mind the cruci'xion of Christ, or the sense that was made of it by those who came a*er Christ. We can pull the a-iction apart from the atrocity quite easily in this case. On the one hand, there is Christ's su(ering itself. Christ, a +esh and blood person, bore the cross. On the other hand, there is the Pauline application of the count-as-x to this su(ering such that it is transformed into an atrocity. &is is the generative process through which the apparatus of Christianity as an analogical system (I'll come to this shortly) is produced. In this light, we can see the resurrection and ascension of Christ as the atrocious a*ere(ects of his a-iction. &ey are the resultant narrative events of the count-as-x's application to a cruci'xion which, as a-iction, stands beyond any narrative that might be attached to it by the living. &e count-as-x is applied by Paul to the a-iction of Christ, which yields a count-as-one; x = one, and this "one" is the identity of Christ - the univocal set of qualities given analogically ("for-y") - as he is "for" Christians, within the analogy as a whole (Christianity). In being applied to Christ's a-iction, the count-as-x yields the atrocious 'gure of Christ "for" Christians within Christianity. I will refer to this 'gure as "Christ-inChristianity." First, this 'gure is "Christ-for-Paul." Now the conversional road to Damascus that follows, and the spread of Christianity which follows that, is predicated on this primary conversion: that of the cruci'xion into the ascension, that of the a-iction of Christ himself (I will refer to him as to the determinations of thought. In being ourselves indi)erent to such determinations, in treating the analogical with a certain ascesis, and as I'll suggest in showing a particular sort of hospitality to the other person as an other, we can get a grip on what is beyond the three-as-one. As Meillassoux's outside stands apart from what's inextricable from thought, the a&icted person is, beyond the analogical, foreclosed to our attempts to make sense of the past through a count of bodies and atrocity's constitution. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (London: Continuum, #$$5), ,. !#" THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED "Christ-without-Christianity") into Christ-in-Christianity. For it is through this conversion that Christ the a-icted is counted-as-one, a conversion to which the events of the resurrection and ascension narratively attest. Christ is counted-as-one in the construction of the analogy we call "Christianity," an analogy in which Christ himself can't exist as distinct. &ere are three terms in it: Christ, the Christian, and the dual bridge between them (Christianity). Christ is "for" the Christian, made intelligible as Christ-in-Christianity under the aspect of a narrative of atrocity (and salvation). &e Christian is "for" Christ; she makes her life in the light of what happened to him and the sense she has made of this. Neither term can be thought in separation from the other; all are understood only within the analogy, Christianity itself. But this means that there is, to put it crudely, no Christ in Christianity. &ere's only Christ-in-Christianity in Christianity, and that isn't the same thing. Christ-without-Christianity, like the a-icted, is forgotten in the constitution of atrocity or Christ-in-Christianity. &e ascension, as the end to which the cruci'xion (understood atrociously) points, is the narrative result of the Pauline application of the count-as-one, which turns Christ as someone who su(ered a-iction into the primary symbol of a new analogical schema: Christianity. &e last is, as it were, made 'rst.!. Christ is then only what he is within Christianity's apparatus, from which he can't be separated. He is merely Christ-in-Christianity. &is 'gure, who is in the "as such" mode identi'ed above, gets in the way of an ethical impulse in humanity that I believe to be among our most admirable: attention to the a-icted, hospitality to them as they are - or to put it instead in somewhat apophatic terms, the welcoming of those who transcend atrocity. In our neglect, Christ-without-Christianity as an example of the +esh and blood a-icted person to whom we might attend (which could 'gure in moral education and practice) is replaced by Christ-in-Christianity. !* "So the last shall be "rst, and the "rst last: for many be called but few chosen." Matthew #$:!6 (King James Version). !## DISEASES OF THE HEAD &is is representative, in a historically and culturally formidable way, of the forgetting of the two in favor of the three, which is thereby counted-as-one. &e humility with which one answers the call of another, with which one welcomes a stranger at the door or faces the a-ictions of the deceased, is replaced with egoistic projection, empathy, and the gra*ing of analogical relational properties (or "likes" and "unlikes") onto the stranger whose face one doesn't recognize. &e ordinary person as they are, who can be a-icted and who isn't counted, who is foreclosed to analogy and indi(erent to their atrocious position, is forgotten in the movement from the two to the three-as-one. One potent example of this is the movement from the cruci- 'xion, the a-iction of Christ-without-Christianity, to the ascension, which is predicated on the atrocity in which Christ is intelligible as Christ-in-Christianity. &at atrocity is the product of the count-as-one, and it in turn makes possible the Pauline conversional project, since it constitutes the analogy - Christianity - within which the converted are to identify themselves as a term, as Christians. &e a-iction of the cruci'xion becomes an atrocity, which is the material cause of the ascension and for which the ascension is in some sense the 'nal cause. Once again, the last becomes the 'rst. Where there was an a-icted person, there is now a person inseparable from a narrative about their a-iction, inseparable from those who tell this narrative and pass it on. Christ-without-Christianity becomes Christ-in-Christianity. And Christ himself is set to one side, since he falls outside the bounds of the operative analogy. Christ is made into the 'rst principle of a new order, Christianity, and is thinkable only as positioned within that new order.!# It is an order that he himself !' Relatedly, Christ is o3en seen as the archetypal child, and thus as the seat of salvation insofar as the reproduction that brings about the next generation saves. His infancy is seen to represent deliverance. %is Irenaean Christianity involves a sort of reproductive futurism, which always puts deliverance beyond what's presently possible (this is characteristic of any eschatological ethic). Salvation is imagined to be a work of time, and morality consists in a project of hope in some distant advent whose very !#$ THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED didn't know - indeed, couldn't have known. For atrocity is always constituted in retrospection, in attending to the a-icted as they are "for" the living or in the "as such" mode.!$ Christ exists, having been counted-as-one, only as the source of Paul's novel analogy, as what he is "for" Paul. Paul can instigate the spread of Christianity only because this has taken place, only because Christ is no longer himself. &at Christ who isn't counted is tied to the Christian (or originally, Paul) who counts, constituting an apparatus in which neither Christ nor the Christian can be thought in distinction from one another. Outside this relation, there is no Christ. Nor is there a Christian. Outside the identi'cation of Christ and the Christian as terms, there is no relation (Christianity). Here, we can clearly see the prima facie aporetic structure of analogy. &e three of the three-as-one demands two terms - Christ and the Christian, say - themselves. It can't come into being without them. But the two terms demand the introduction of a third, without which they can't be thought. &ere is a way in which the two terms must be taken as primitive, and they then go on to be related. But, from the view on which their relation is primary, there's a way in which the terms couldn't be taken as primitive (or as non-terms). &e two terms seem, at least, to cry out for analogy such that they can be made possibility grants signi"cation to present action (including reproductive action). In §!$, I argue that, contrary to this eschatological sense of salvation, deliverance is always of the order of the presently possible. So far as reproductive futurism in Christianity goes, we might also consider the symbolic work of the ritual of baptism as spiritual rebirth. Cf. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, #$$'). !( What's crucial in this retrospection isn't temporal (or spatial) distance. Atrocity can be seen at whatever temporal distance and can even be projected onto future possibilities. Instead, what's crucial is the sort of distance from a&iction one "nds in its neglect, a kind of moral distance from which other people look assimilable and their su)ering quanti"able and comprehensible. When I say that atrocity is seen in "retrospection," I mean to suggest this distance: one sees atrocity essentially from afar, such that forgetfulness can come between one and one's perspicuous vision of a&iction. !#% DISEASES OF THE HEAD intelligible. &ey are thus counted-as-one. Yet the three-as-one, in its angst and aporia, enjoins us to inhabit a two that it requires (as the angst and aporia show) but cannot remember. +. No Matter What &e count-as-x forgets the two. In subjecting a-iction to it, one neglects the primacy of the space in which one welcomes the other as they are - not because of their given qualities, or because of their relation to one, nor despite their position or identity within the analogical schema. One forgets the space in which one is hospitable to the other without regard to what they are "for" one. I'll call the person who is forgotten, who is the other in the two, the person "no matter what." &at's just to say that they aren't what one makes of them. &ey aren't welcomed because one appreciates their qualities, nor despite what one takes their analogical position to be - but rather, no matter what. When one forgets the two, one forgets the person no matter what, and then this forgetting. I will call the mode of the other as they are, and not as they are "for" me or "as such," "the fashion of the no matter what." &e other in the fashion of the no matter what is whosoever they are, beyond the analogy. &ey are the one I welcome in the topology of the two, the one who makes a claim on me, for whom I'm responsible, the one whose a-iction I am to remember. &is person is secondarily enmeshed in an analogical milieu, as Christ qua Christ-in-Christianity is, and the secondariness of this is o*en forgotten (yielding a three-as-one, or atrocity). But 'rst, an ordinary person is no matter what. &ey are not placed in an analogy from the start, though this priority can be neglected. So the person who is a-icted is a person no matter what, while the person understood under the aspect of atrocity is a person who is more or less than what they are, a person "as such." Now the other person in the fashion of the no matter what is absolutely di(erent from me. &ey are beyond any analogical !#& THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED net I can cast. Recall that I can't relate to the other in the two. I am exposed to them directly, responsible, but without relation or reciprocity. I am here for the other, condemned to them. All I can say in the two is "here I am!"!/ Beckett tells us that we exist in the accusative case, for others, in the eyes of strangers or in responding to what they say.!0 But it is more than this. In the two, I exist in the dative case. I'm summoned by the other to be hospitable. I am not "for" the other in the sense of analogy's "for." Rather, I am this direct, non-analogical exposure to the other. I am, from the very start, an exposure to the other - who's sometimes a-icted, who sometimes calls out for help, to whose call I am always already commanded to respond. In the two, I exist in the presence of what isn't me, what isn't of me, to which I can't hope to relate. I abnegate, welcoming the other person no matter what, attending to them as they are. &is is the basis of any unsel'sh love.!1 &e two is a space characterized by a welcome o(ered no matter what. &e attitude that makes possible its inhabiting takes this shape: I remember the two and thus come to inhabit it with respect to others whom I no longer take to be totalized in whatever analogical schema. I thus see the others as they are, and I see a-iction and can bear witness to it, where before I saw only atrocity, always tied up with myself. In order to throw the axiom that structures the topology of the two into starker relief, an axiom I have been calling the "no matter what," we can consider the ethic in which it arises. I will call this the "generic ethic." We can think about the shape of a life dedicated to the hospitality that characterizes the two, a life in which one bears witness to a-iction rather than atrocity. And !6 Cf. ! Samuel *:'. See also Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. Seán Hand (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, !454), esp. !$', !66, !5#, !5', #$,. !, Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing (New York: Grove Press, !46,), 4!. !5 I discuss hospitality and love in more depth in "On Neighborly and Preferential Love in Kierkegaard's Works of Love," Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 5 (Summer #$!4). !#' DISEASES OF THE HEAD we can further ask about how a philosophical exploration of this sort of life, a theoretical consideration of it, might go. A philosophical system, a set of views and a manner of approaching philosophical questions, is perhaps best di(erentiated from other systems by the question of what is at stake for it. For Descartes, it is the possibility of knowledge that is most at stake: knowledge of the self, the external world, God, and other people. I think, I am. For Michel Henry, like Descartes, it is also this possibility, and that of the self-impressional life that precedes it and is its condition. I feel myself thinking, I am, and only then can I know about the world. For Simone Weil, it is because I can act - and thinking is a sort of activity - that I am. I constitute what I am to be in the moment of action. For Kant, the thing that's most at stake is the limit, the law of thinking in the 'rst instance (quid juris?), which prohibits the speculative diseases of the head and leads us toward a putatively preferable region of thinking. &e ontological question (about the nature of things-in-themselves) is put on the table only as an empty possibility. Instead of asking about what something is, the critical philosophy tells us that we must instead ask about the possibility conditions for a thing to appear to us as it does. For Heidegger, it is being as such, and one's relation to it as Dasein, that is at stake - especially, it is the question of being, which has for so long been obliviated. &ere's a sense in which this is a return to the question of ontology, for we are to inquire into being itself. But we can only do this, we're told, through an existential analytic of Dasein. So being and thinking, as in Kant, are correlated in our being-in-the-world. We can only think being by thinking of ourselves, proceeding from thought (and always from within thought outward). For Quentin Meillassoux, what's at stake is the perhaps, a sort of chance or chaos (the only necessity). Contingency is absolute, and it renders instability itself liable to change. For Alain Badiou, we are a*er a new conception of being or what is, a new conception of the event or what happens, and an understanding of the relationship between these. What's at stake is the subject and its relationship - of 'delity or betrayal - to evental truths. For each of these philosophers, !#( THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED there is something centrally at stake, and they approach their investigations, in posing questions and setting out views, with this in mind. &ere is something about which they endeavor to get clear, which structures the inquiries undertaken. Or to put it another way: there is some theme that gives their philosophical work a particular character and shapes the path it takes. For the generic ethic, which seeks to get clear about the topology of the two and the shape of the life of the person who inhabits it, what's at stake is abnegation. &e project is to o(er a new conception of allegiance, a sense of what it would mean to vigilantly recollect the two and to thereby avoid the angst of the three-as-one. O*en, this angst is produced in the following way. We take on an ontology that forbids the existence of genuine others, since those with whom we relate can only be made sense of (we come to believe) insofar as they're correlated with us. We can't hope to think things-in-themselves, so the alterity of other people is only ever conceivably relative to us. Yet our ethical sensibility demands the existence of real others. &e categorical imperative requires that, all else aside, we treat other people in a certain way. In Aquinas, one 'nds talk of virtuous relations to others. And in Bentham, one 'nds a clear concern with how one's actions a(ect other people. Our ethical sensibility (whatever framework for thinking about normative ethics is on o(er) seems to demand others who can't be thought, at least insofar as we inhabit a three-as-one. So it isn't surprising that this results in a condition of angst, as our sense of the good forces us to run up against the cage of the ontology we've taken on, in which other people aren't really other. &ose philosophical systems that operate with a three-as-one structure rule out the existence of any other, but very o*en they still demand that we treat the other in a given way, with reference to certain principles or maxims or virtues. &is generates a condition of angst, since in moving from ontology to ethics we seem to require others whose existence has already been called into question, and at the very best set to one side or bracketed, from the start. &e generic ethic instead proceeds from ethics, beginning with the two - the primordial ethical scene - and the welcoming of the !$* DISEASES OF THE HEAD other for whom one is called to responsibility. In remembering the two, one comes to inhabit it anew and again, and the angst of the mixture of a three-as-one with an ethical wish to treat supposedly nonexistent others a certain way is abrogated. A philosophical elaboration of the generic ethic involves, then, a new thought of devotion or welcoming, in some sense a new thought of piety.!" For it, the question at hand isn't about freedom but 'delity, not choice but commitment: the commitment to a hospitality to others that makes freedom in the social world then conceivable.)% It is in the three-as-one, a*er all, that one is unfree, tied always to the other, subsumed always under the operative analogy, identi'ed as a mere analogical term. &e generic ethic asks, what would it mean to welcome not just the old friend but also the absolute stranger? Would it be a sentimental vision in which one must capitulate one's self to the stranger's identity, giving in even when they, say, harm others? Or would it be a welcoming only of the non-qualitative stranger, the stranger beyond the analogy, and in that sense a non-capitulation to those present elements which, as qualitative or analogical, then impose qualities onto others?)! How can we !4 For as Simone Weil writes, "Today it is not nearly enough merely to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent." Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Perennial, #$$4), (!. We are in need of a new ethic for a new guard and a new age, which in truth is always a new way of remembering, of "xing one's eyes upon the good. #$ Cf. Levinas, The Levinas Reader, #!$n!$: "Freedom means, therefore, the hearing of a vocation which I am the only person able to answer - or even the power to answer right there, where I am called." See additionally Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, esp. !#*–#'. #! To be sure, abnegation to others no matter what o3en demands that we don't capitulate to the acts of analogical quality-imposition in which some other engages. Hospitality demands that we don't tolerate totalization, and in fact hospitality to the totalizing other demands that we reject his totalizing, that we take a stand against it. For example: if we are going to welcome a transphobe and someone who is transgender, we'll have to "ght in the name of the no matter what against the imposition of qualities (the transgender person "for" the transphobe, say) in which the transphobe engages in their hatred. Abnegation isn't a passivity opposed to taking a stand; it's not a weakness that would somehow prevail over force, or a !$! THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED abnegate to the stranger, welcoming them in a no matter what fashion, without regard to their relation to us or their place in some analogical schema? &ese are the questions that the generic ethic has to ask. Setting aside, for a moment, talk of qualities, topologies, and so on, the question for the generic ethic is altogether straightforward: what would it mean to live with allegiance to other people as others, to live hospitably and welcome in a no matter what fashion? To put it another way: what would it mean to live in steadfast devotion to +esh and blood strangers, who are in'nitely di(erent from oneself? &e main axiom of such an allegiance or devotion, of an abnegation that bears witness to ordinary people and their possible a-iction, is the "no matter what." Being in the fashion of the no matter what means being outside any analogy; being ordinary, +esh and blood, not "for" the other terms of an atrocity, not counted-as-x. In the topology of the two, I welcome another no matter what, without regard to the positions they occupy in whatever analogies. What I welcome no matter what is the other person no matter what, the person who isn't a term of an analogy. So the no matter what structures the topology of the two, de'ning how the self in the two relates, via a welcoming of absolute alterity, to the other. Welcoming no matter what is relating to what's utterly exterior; it is a relating that is wholly non-analogical (and so in a certain sense, non-relational). &e no matter what describes the piety of the space in which I enpathos that disavows power or strength. It o3en requires that, in showing a hospitality to the totalizing other, we don't capitulate to their totalization. Even St. Paul tells us that there's bene"cent combat. In the abnegation of the generic ethic, resistance to quality-imposition is the other side of responsibility and hospitality; non-capitulation is one's response to the particular situation of abnegation to another who engages in colonizing acts of quality-imposition onto their own others. Here, it is the imposition that is refused so that each other can be welcomed as they are. I discuss this at greater length in "To Not Lose Sight of the Good: Notes on the Zapatismo Ethic," Religious Theory, January #$#$, http://jcrt.org/religioustheory/#$#$/$!/!'/to-not-lose-sight-of-the-good-notes-on-the-zapatismoethic-part-!-matt-rosen/. !$) DISEASES OF THE HEAD counter an other who can't be assimilated to what's self-same, an other who isn't di(erent only in degree from the norm that I am. &is is an other for whom the addition of analogical qualities is a subtraction of alterity. In placing the other under an atrocious description, I take away their in'nite alterity - or I presume to do that. &is subtraction is a move from in'nity to 'nitude, from the real otherness of other people to the 'nite bundles of qualities under which I subsume them. &e resultant others "for" me are not others at all but of the same. In this way, I forget the other who is in the fashion of the no matter what, who precedes and is foreclosed to the other "for" me. Inhabiting the two consists in remembering this originary other and my abnegation to them, my responsibility to welcome them without regard to any analogy. &e generic ethic is generic in this sense: the other is not to be welcomed under the aspect of the particular, welcomed because of some quality deemed admirable or despite some attribute to be brushed aside. &e other is welcomed no matter what, generically - but that's to say, in their singularity, as whatever they really are. In the generic ethic, genericity and singularity come together. Now for the generic ethic, which welcomes without regard to qualities or analogical positions, the no matter what is the axiom that founds and structures the topology of the two. &is in turn makes possible a three, an analogy, that isn't totalizing or counted-as-one. &e axiom of the two, in being remembered as primary, makes possible the coexistence of the two and the topology of the three; this three acknowledges the priority of the two, and it therefore doesn't see analogy as exhaustive (it is the shape an ethical community takes). &ere is a sense in which the generic ethic is thus pre-communal, though it is required for a particular form of the communal, namely, the three that can coexist with the two. &e two of the consequent topology, a topology I'll call the "coexistent two-and-three," coexists as before, and then alongside, or as alongside because before, the three.)) ## %ere's a way in which the topology of the coexistent two-and-three that I'm elaborating could be understood as an attempt to resolve some of the !$" THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED &e generic ethic is the ground in the last instance of a community that is open to others, hospitable, non-totalizing. It is what, at the end of the day, renders any community that acknowledges its priority inhabitable - and not only for those who are proximal enough to the operative norms to 't in. &e no matter what functions as a razor that cuts from the three-as-one to the two. Welcoming no matter what means remembering the person who is in its fashion, which then permits the coexistence of the two with the three in the topology of the coexistent two-and-three. &e person no matter what is originary vis-à-vis the position of this person within an analogy, a position that becomes totalizing if it is taken to be primary or su,cient unto itself. So we can understand the operation of the count-as-x as an imagining of the three's self-su,ciency (counted-as-one), and as a condensation of this su,ciency in a number that gives voice to the atrocity and its meaning for the living. &e thought that atrocity su,ces for a-iction is given in a-iction's crystallization in the unique number of the fatality count. &e count-as-x is a twofold forgetting of the primacy of the two, the ethical, as the topology in which the axiom of the no matter what is at work. One forgets the topology in which the self (the living) abnegates to the unassimilable other (the a-icted, the dead) who is a person no matter what, and then one forgets this forgetting. Welcoming no matter what cuts from the person as aporetic tension in Leibniz's "Monadology." (Although, to be sure, this topology doesn't map neatly onto Leibniz's project.) %e two of the topology of the two-and-three is something like the Leibnizian monad, insofar as it is self-contained and not open to determination by what goes on in the three; it has "no windows" (though it is where transcendence comes to pass). %e three of this topology is the saturation of each monad with relations to all monads, which is total in the three counted-as-one but partial in the three of the two-and-three. %e three conceives of its monads as "all windows," or even as only windows to other monads. I have been arguing for the coexistence of the two and the three insofar as the two precedes the three and is foreclosed to it (i.e., insofar as the saturation is seen as partial in the remembrance of the two). Cf. G.W. Leibniz, "%e Principles of Philosophy, or, the Monadology (!,!')," in Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew and Dan Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett, !454), #!*–#(. !$# DISEASES OF THE HEAD such to the person as they are. One gets a grip on the a-icted themselves only by way of hospitality. Forgetting the person as they are leads to an understanding of the other under the aspect of the same, the analogical. &e no matter what leads back from this atrocity to a-iction. To inhabit the generic ethic is to keep this in mind, to vigilantly recollect the two and welcome the af- +icted in the fashion of the no matter what. ,. 'e Cruci*xion of Christ No Matter What Now that we have a better grasp of the generic ethic, I want to return to that culturally and historically signi'cant instance of the count-as-x which we've been considering: the cruci'xion of Christ himself, whose being counted-as-one, originally by Paul, was in some sense the precondition of the ascension and Christianity's spread. &e a-iction of Christ's cruci'xion is transformed into an atrocity such that the ascension can be made sense of. &is transformation happens by way of an understanding of Christ as Christ-in-Christianity or Christ as such, produced in the count-as-one. An understanding of the cruci'xion as atrocity follows this quanti'cation, the identi'cation of Christ as the atrocity's "one." So the count-as-x mediates between a-iction and atrocity, producing the "one" of the ascension's Christ. In a certain sense, Christ-without-Christianity, or Christ no matter what, is immediate. He is not mediated by the countas-x and x = one, turned into the Christ-in-Christianity of the atrocity. Christ no matter what thus underdetermines or undermines what transforms him into someone in an atrocious position - the analogical Christ - which isn't himself in the fashion of the no matter what. &e Christ who is just himself, who is a-icted without atrocity, is at an in'nite distance from his mediated posture; Christ-without-Christianity is an in'nity away from Christ-in-Christianity, since between these two is the gulf that divides the analogical from the non-analogical. Christ-without-Christianity is indi(erent to his intra-analogical position. And the recollection of the two roots, for us, an at- !$$ THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED tunement of indi(erence toward this position. &is recollection is the application of the razor of the no matter what, which in a sort of ascesis strips away the analogical qualities of an ordinary person so as to reveal their radical insu,ciency from within the perspective of analogy - so as to reveal, in some cases, the af- +icted as they are. &is razor of absolute hospitality cuts away the self-indulgence in which one's attributive or empathetic view of the other is taken to su,ce for the other as such. In the case we've been considering, that self-indulgent view is bound up with the analogical matrix of Christianity. It is a view of Christ as Christ-in-Christianity. &e cruci'xion as the a-iction of Christ no matter what is subject to the count-as-x by Paul. &is is the production of the Christ who is Christianity's subject, counted-as-one within its analogical schema. Only a*er this production of the Christ subject can the ascension of Christ and the conversional road to Damascus take place, insofar as they are analogical events predicated on the inextricable correlation of Christ no matter what (the originary, +esh and blood person in the two) and Paul (the counter) in a correlation that comes to be known, in being inhabited by more and more people, as "Christianity." It is "for" Paul that the a-iction of Christ becomes the atrocity at Christianity's heart. &e road to Damascus is in this sense the road of a-iction become atrocity. It involves the imposition of the analogical milieu of Christianity onto Christ such that there can be, for this analogy and its constitutive terms, no Christ himself. Christianity is, at bottom, the name given to the colonization of Christ by Paul and those who inherit and inhabit his construction. Now that we have Christianity's topological structure in view, can we theorize instead with the Christ of the cruci'xion, with that Christ whose a-iction is foreclosed to the determinations of atrocity? Can we set aside the operation of the count-as-x and the production of the atrocity of Christ-in-Christianity? Can we be allegiant in thought to Christ as he is, rather than to Christ as such? Can we, to put it plainly, refuse to put the analogical !$% DISEASES OF THE HEAD before the ethical, refuse to forget the a-iction of Christ in the neglect of the two and the inhabiting of the three-as-one? Christianity as constituted by Paul is the analogical result of the count-as-x that renders Christ himself Christ-in-Christianity and the Christian what they are merely "for" Christ. In the totalization of Christianity, the only existent sense of Christ no matter what is Christ as such. And the Christian as such can be the only existent sense of the Christian as they are. Christ-inChristianity and the Christian-in-Christianity can't be thought apart from their relationship. Neither term can be understood beyond the limit of the analogy of Christianity itself. &e atrocity of the mediated Christ is simply one of the correlate objects of an analogical construction built by a count. &is atrocity's sense is crystallized in the unique number of x; in the case of the cruci'xion, this number is one. &e twice forgetting of a-iction by those who count makes the position of a-iction as atrocity within the analogical milieu intelligible - and angst aside, somewhat sustainable. Christ himself, though, is at a distance from the analogical position into which he's put as part and parcel of the three-as-one. Recast against the three-as-one from the two, Christ no matter what is in'nitely other. We move from the three-as-one to the two by applying the ascetic razor of the no matter what, by recollecting the primacy of the two and our responsibility for the other in it. We thus move from Christ-inChristianity to Christ-without-Christianity, the latter of whom is in'nitely di(erent from the former. &e other in the two is absolutely other than what they are in the three-as-one. We see this in the recasting of Christ himself against his secondary (but forgotten as such and taken to be primary) position in the threeas-one. &e other is the organon of deliverance from atrocity, for the remembrance and witnessing of the analogical non-position of the a-icted Christ himself, who is indi(erent to his position in the atrocity, delivers us from the three-as-one to the two. &is is a deliverance from analogy and its angst. And in coming to remember the primacy of the two, we make possible the coexistent two-and-three (that is, the coexistence of the topologies !$& THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED of ethics and community), since the three can only coexist with the two in which there's a legitimate other, not di(erent from the self only in degree, if it's seen to be secondary to the two. &e messianic promise of Christ as a +esh and blood insu,ciency of qualities when seen from within the analogy is predicated on Christ in the fashion of the no matter what.). &is essentially undergirds the qualitative accident of Christ-in-Christianity's analogical position. And what is salvation if not from the totalization of this accident (the thought that it isn't accidental but originary)? Salvation - from the angst in which history's calamities appear unmournable, unthinkable in themselves - is nothing other than deliverance from the crystallization of the a-iction (and the a-icted person no matter what) in the atrocity's unique number. Bearing witness to the other's a-iction - not as atrocity - is the praxis that gets this deliverance going and keeps it alive. !-. Exodus and Deliverance In the Old Testament story of the exodus of the Israelites from out of their bondage in Egypt, we also 'nd that the other, in a #* To be clear: Christ isn't in the fashion of the no matter, in the two or the generic ethic, as Christ-in-Christianity is in the analogy of Christianity. To separate these two senses of "in," recall the distinction I made previously between people as they are (who are a&icted) and people as such (who are seen under an atrocious aspect). In the generic ethic, one thinks alongside - in responsibility for, in abnegation to - the generic and singular person, the person as they are. %e generic ethic isn't an analogy that contains, or claims to give exhaustive sense to, its terms (it doesn't have terms understood as terms). Christ is in the fashion of the no matter what in this weak sense of "in": when one welcomes Christ no matter what in the two, bearing witness to his a&iction, one thinks alongside him, without subsuming him under the qualities of an analogy. Christ-in-Christianity is in Christianity in a much stronger sense of "in": he is seen to be only what he is within the nexus of Christianity. To put it another way, there's nothing that is seen to transcend the three when it is counted-as-one; but the other transcends the three in being in the two. %is "being in" isn't the same thing as "being totalized by." It's a transcendence in and through an immanent topology. !$' DISEASES OF THE HEAD sense that's pivotal to the story, is the organon of deliverance. Moses has been called by God to go unto Pharaoh and to try to persuade him to release the Israelites from their servitude. He has been told that Pharaoh will deny this request, and that it will be necessary to do God's wonders in order to convince Pharaoh, however momentarily, that he can't keep the Israelites in bondage. It is essential, in order for Moses to be able to relay the word of God to Pharaoh and demand the deliverance of the Israelites, that he be seen as other by Pharaoh.)# Moses, who had been reared among the Egyptians, who had not known of his own ancestry, had to leave Egypt and go out into the desert in order to come back to Pharaoh as a stranger - not as an Egyptian. In Exodus, we read that God tells Moses: "Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, &us saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.")$ Having been raised alongside Pharaoh, Moses must undergo his own exodus and return only years later, when he is truly exterior to Pharaoh and the whole Egyptian milieu. And even when he does return, he must - through enacting God's wonders - continuously separate himself from that milieu, continuously demonstrate that he is an outsider. He must not be like Pharaoh or of Pharaoh, #' %e remembrance of the two is, in part, a remembering of that encounter with the other I am to myself (it may "rst of all be this). It's an encounter with transcendence that happens, as it were, in my very immanence. I am a stranger even to myself, and I welcome the stranger that I am to myself in a no matter what fashion in the two. I can forget this, and then forget this forgetting, failing to show myself hospitality and inhabiting a threeas-one with respect to myself. In this way, I can totalize myself and see my own a&iction as atrocity. Or I can remember, welcome myself, and inhabit a coexistent two-and-three with respect to myself. %is is the case in my relationship with myself, just as it is in my relations with others. Consider Christ's moment of kenosis: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Psalm ##:! (King James Version). %is moment of kenosis is one of abnegation, the response to the call of a stranger. But who's the stranger? It's Christ, of course. In abnegation to myself, I greet what, within me, is other than what I am. In this hospitality, in the two of himself in which transcendence passes through immanence, Christ can then say, "into thy hands I commend my spirit." Luke #*:'6 (King James Version). #( Exodus 4:! (King James Version). !$( THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED assimilable, but present as another, as a new face. He can return, to put it in the terms I have been suggesting in this essay, only when he is outside the analogical schema of the operative Egyptian three-as-one, beyond what's "like" or "unlike" Pharaoh and di(erent only in degree. &en, and only then, is deliverance presently possible. And Moses, as the other - indeed, the other of Pharaoh (qua Israelite, a doer of God's wonders) and the other of the Israelites he intends to work to save (qua Egyptian-reared, qua bringer of salvation) - is this deliverance's organon. In this case, as in the messianic case of Christ, it is what's 'rst no matter what (Moses himself, Christ himself, the a-icted of Sétif and Guelma themselves), and then recast against its analogical position (against Moses "for" Pharaoh or "for" the Israelites, Christin-Christianity, those who su(ered an atrocity) as other to it, that makes possible deliverance from analogy. And because the other is always present, because I can always remember the two in listening to the other's call and so inhabit it from out of the three-as-one, abnegation to the other precedes even my beingin-the-world or dwelling in analogies. I can remember the two's primacy and thereby inhabit a coexistent two-and-three. Deliverance from the view of the Israelites' bondage in Egypt on which it's seen as an atrocity happens in the remembrance of the Israelites' a-iction. Each year at Passover, Jews around the world don't say of the Israelites, "when they were slaves in Egypt," but rather, "when we were slaves in Egypt." &e use of the 'rst person here doesn't signify the empathy of analogy. It isn't that we are to step into the shoes of those who were slaves in Egypt, for this would just be to bridge the third person (they) and the 'rst person (we) by means of constructing an atrocity: the Israelites "for" us, as it were. &is isn't what's going on when it is said that we were slaves in Egypt. Rather, in bearing witness to the a-iction of the +esh and blood people who were slaves in Egypt, we recollect our place in the topology of the two and see that it is our burden to bear. We don't empathize but abnegate. We disavow the notion of an atrocity that went on many years ago, that a(ected only our ancestors, and take up an a-iction that is always very much alive: the a-iction of ordinary people !%* DISEASES OF THE HEAD who can't be counted or rendered intelligible and thereby set aside, granted a 'nal meaning. We recollect the a-iction that happened in Egypt, and we are thus delivered from the atrocity. We recollect the two in which we, condemned to abnegation, welcome the other no matter what, without regard to their position in some analogy. We recollect that we, like Christwithout-Christianity, are in the fashion of the no matter what, that we're 'rst not analogical creatures, even if we secondarily assume analogical positions. We annul the condition of angst that characterizes the three-as-one in the remembrance of what really went on in Egypt, the remembrance of what really goes on today. And so, we treat the unique number of the count-as-x with a certain ascesis. In the remembrance of a-iction in the two, we recognize that just as the cruci'xion's Christ is foreclosed to his position as the Christ of the ascension and conversion, so a-iction is foreclosed to atrocity and stands apart from it. In moving from atrocity to a-iction via an application of the razor of the no matter what, against the unique number of the count-as-x and x = one, we recall the secondary nature of the atrocity and the number in which it is crystallized. &e recollected two is an ethical space in which the self commends itself into the hands of the other, the victim of a-iction whosoever they are, no matter what they are. For they are the organon of deliverance from atrocity, to whom one attends in remembering the two. &is is a remembering of the self 's abnegation to those who aren't counted, those who can't be counted because they are a-icted without atrocity. !%! THOSE WHO AREN'T COUNTED Bibliography Althusser, Louis. 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