From What Position Do You Speak And In The Name Of What Or Whom?
Sonya Lacey >

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After You
Written by Cherie Lacey

To begin, let me confide in you. There is here, already, a relation between myself and someone else. To whom am I speaking when I address ‘you’, the you of the heading (‘heading’, in the sense also of where one might be heading, moving towards or crossing a space: where are you heading?), and in the way that this is phrased as a direct response, a straightforward address to another. The title poses a question. From what position do you speak and in the name of what or whom? Every question, it has been said, pre-empts a desired response. When I ask you a question, so this idea goes, it is not out of the desire to learn something new, but because I would like a certain answer returned to me, not from within myself, but from the speech of another. I want to hear the other person say it back to me. But, already, you can see where this is heading: this other person can never return to me what I am looking for, the answer already contained in my question. And this is one of the problems of communication.

To this particular question, how can I respond, and in a responsible way, to the one who asks it, and in the presence of the other. This made me think about the connection between response and responsibility, both clearly derived from the same linguistic root (in Old French, from responder: ‘to answer’, which itself comes from the Latin, respondere: ‘to pledge’). The two actions seem bound, ethically, to the notion of care or consideration of the other. They both move towards (heading in the direction of) the other, in the sense of crossing a space, of filling a silence, of acting out of consideration. Maybe, then, in my response, you are already there, I am responding not to the question, but to you. When I give you my answer, I cannot break this historic and linguistic link between giving you a response, and taking responsibility for how you might, in turn, react.

I like the way these words are also connected with this other one: pledge. I make a promise to you to act in a certain way, a surety of myself for you, the other. And also, a token of love, a promise of loyalty. In this way, my words, how I provide you with an answer, are also a sign of love, as a gift from myself to you. This raises another question since, for some time, we have known that when we give something to another, we ourselves gain something. This is in the sense of sacrifice, to obtain satisfaction not from possessing something, but the greater satisfaction of seeing someone else have it. Here, contained in the notion of pledge, as it is with a gift, there is a dimension of anticipation: like the way one pledges a donation to a charity, this word contains a reference to the future, to a future action. I will give you something more, but for now, take this small token as a promise. Or, I give you a gift, with the unspoken expectation that, at some point in the future, I will receive something in return.

In thinking of response in terms of the pledge or the gift, what might be exchanged? It might not be thought of so much in terms of information, but rather in the order of acknowledgement, recognition of the other person, as they also recognise me as one like themselves. To fill an awkward silence. To make small talk. Words that appear emptied of meaning, which seem as if they don’t carry much weight. But they carry one across the space that separate us.

Again, it is moving towards something, attempting to traverse the gap between now and the future, and also, between myself and another, with the promise of a thing returned. The response as an offering, and in some sense an obligation – that which is designed to bridge the space between the one and the other.

Architects use the word ‘response’ to describe a pillar that supports a building. To what we have already said, then, we can add this notion of support. A response should provide support to a structure, without which it would collapse. To keep hold of this notion of architecture for a moment longer, in a linguistic structure (can we still call it that?), the response lends support, or strength, to communication. Levinas described death, the death that we meet in the face of the other, as a state of non-response, to be without-response. Between myself and the other: to respond to you, in a responsible way, is to give you my support, to keep upright (and alive) that which links me to you. (And you start to wonder, how to traverse the space in those moments that we find ourselves lacking the words…).

You posed a question, called out for a response. In this act of calling out, of reaching towards an other, there is a responsibility to act, an obligation to return something to you, to be entrusted with a reply, to show oneself, to express oneself, to return to you something that you, in the past, have given to me.