Reading Blindly: Literature, Otherness, and the Possibility of an ...

Since reading is an event of ethicity, it interdicts any preconditioned determination of the encounter. As such, it cannot be conceived as a phenomenal event. This is due to the fact that a phenomenal event is what appears to the senses—a theory of appearances—and is determined by its correspondence to an existing conception; the event is subsumed under the self's “knowledge.” What the reader encounters may only be encountered before any phenomenon—or at least, the point of encountering is always already beyond the reader's knowing. Hence, reading occurs as a nonphenomenal event, or, more precisely, as the event that undoes any possible theory of phenomenality. The scene of Saul's blinding demonstrates this, as it is not a blinding by a phenomenon but rather by the very source of phenomenality itself, which remains invisible, undecipherable, and ultimately unknowable, irreducible to any concept of understanding or reason. Hence, it is the blinding not only of the subject of cognition—Saul—but also of the object of cognition; it is the event of a double blinding, an encounter that is completely beyond cognition, that is unknowable, that is in exception of everything that is known. As such, at every encounter, each reading is an event of full potentiality, where nothing can be known except the fact that it is the event of an encounter.

It is this potentiality that Saul saw when he was blind; it is this potentiality that was embodied in the new name of Paul. However, in order for the movement from Saul to Paul—in order for Saul to become Paul—there is a necessary gap, a space, a blind spot (whether it is three days or three years is irrelevant) in the narrative; it is this gap, this unknown, that opens up the space for the becoming, for the Christian. It is not possible to say what this site of negotiation, this third that lies between the Pharisee Saul and Paul, is. The gesture of imagination, this leap that is required to move from Saul to Paul—a transubstantiated Saul, exactly the