Original Sins

One should therefore assume the risk of countering Levinas’s position with a more radical one: others are primordially an (ethically) indifferent multitude, and love is a violent gesture of cutting into this multitude and privileging a One as the neighbor, thus introducing a radical imbalance into the whole. In contrast to love, justice begins when I remember the faceless many left in shadow in this privileging of the One. Justice and love are thus structurally incompatible: justice, not love, has to be blind, it has to disregard the privileged One whom I “really understand.” What this means is that the Third is not secondary: it is always-already here, and the primordial ethical obligation is towards this Third who is NOT here in the face to face relationship, the one in shadow, like the absent child of a love-couple. This not simply the Derridean-Kierkegaardian point that I always betray the Other because toute autre est un autre, because I have to make a CHOICE to SELECT who my neighbor is from the mass of the Thirds, and this is the original sin-choice of love. The structure is similar to the one described by Emile Benveniste apropos verbs: the primordial couple is not active-passive, to which the neutral form is then added, but active and neutral (along the axis of engaged-disengaged). The primordial couple is Neutral and Evil (the choice which disturbs the neutral balance), or, grammatically, impersonal Other and me – “you” is a secondary addition.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Smashing the Neighbors Face"

Universality by "Exception" - The Masculine Position