Northwestern Books

Ms. Alcala has created a compelling and informative novel. I was sucked in from page one. It will transport you straight into the tumultuous political climate of late 19th century Mexico under the oppressive rule of Dictator Porfirio Diaz. I think you will appreciate this book for its harsh beauty, its rich characters and its multi -layered story of loss and survival. A book that is this entertaining and at the same time educational is a rare find. I only hope that Ms. Alcala will write another book so that I can learn more about Beto and Estela and all of her other memorable characters. I recommend this book without reservation.

You can't get any better than this: a great story about a woman asserting her independence during the early 1900s in Mexico City--a time of social and political revolutions. To those of you who have read Alcala's earlier works, this is truly a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. To those who have not read the earlier works, you will only have your interest piqued. Alcala writes with authority about pre-revolutionary Mexico and the tales she spins are unforgettable accounts of strong women who persevere against personal and social challenges. This author's best achievement is the way she dispels the myth of the passive Mexican woman repeatedly in her compelling body of work.

For those of you in Washington or Oregon, or even if you plan on traveling to the Northwest, this book is a must-have. It lists farmer's markets, organic stores, and all the restaurants that are vegan/vegetarian or have good vegetarian menus. Not only that, but it has several articles in the back about general vegetarian health and can be used as a quick reference guide for on the road. I highly reccommend it!

Veg-Feasting in the Pacific Northwest does an great job bringing all of Washington's and Oregon's vegetarian/vegan/veg-friendly establishments in one book. It is divided into 3 sections: Dining (restaurant reviews/listings), Shopping (natural food stores and farmers market listings), and Living (articles about nutrition and other topics relating to a vegetarian diet). I'll break down my review to each of these 3 sections...

Dining Section: I have lived in Seattle my entire life and therefore I thought I knew of practically every vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurant in the area -- nonetheless I found plenty of new restaurants I am now looking forward to trying! And when I'm getting hungry during my next road trip, it will be nice to know where the veg-friendly places are when I pass through unfamiliar cities. While they did overlook a few of my favorite veg-friendly restaurants in Seattle, they do ask for feedback to make future editions even more comprehensive -- so I'm not going to penalize the book a star for that.

Shopping Section: While I have long known all of the the natural food stores close to my house, new vegetarians will certainly find the listings useful to find the stores closest to where they live. Like the Dining section, this section will be especially handy when I'm travelling through or visiting unfamiliar cities. Including the region's farmers markets along with the natural food stores is a nice idea as well.

Living Section: While the articles in this section are interesting and well-researched, many long-time vegetarians/vegans (like myself) will already be aware of the nutritional, environmental, ethical, etc., aspects of eating a more plant-based diet. But beginning and aspiring vegetarians should find this section extremely useful, as it covers all of the usual concerns and questions people have about how and why to eat a vegetarian diet.

Summary:
Strongly recommended for anyone interested in fully exploring Washington and Oregon's many vegetarian-friendly, vegetarian, and vegan establishments.
Experienced vegetarians/vegans living in (or visiting) Washington or Oregon should own this book solely for the comprehensive restaurant and store listings.
For new or aspiring vegetarians living in WA/OR, this book is a must-have -- it contains all of the basic information they'll need to start exploring vegetarianism. (I wish this book existed when I first became a vegetarian!)

After years of predictable cliches from the likes of Bartov and Goldenhagen,finally a work that does away with overused preconceived notions.A courageous work

The German-occupied Soviet Union suffered horribly during World War Two. Its population was subjected to the mass murder of Jews, politicals and other groups, to the ruthless exploitation of economic resources for the Nazi war effort, and to often extremely terroristic security measures in the name of "necessary" anti-partisan warfare. Alexander Hill's book seeks to explain the activities of both Soviet partisans and German occupiers in the occupation zone of the Army Group North Rear Area between 1941 and 1944. It is one of a growing array of studies of the complexities of life at the lower levels of Nazi occupied Europe, and makes an important contribution towards understanding the Soviet partisan war on the ground. It also benefits greatly from a range of heplful tables and maps, photographs, and a clear and engaging writing style.
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Hill certainly does not play down the suffering which ruthless German anti-partisan measures inflicted, upon parties often entirely innocent of any anti-German activity. Actions such as mass reprisals and the shooting of partisan prisoners and "suspect elements" receive proper attention. But he does go against the widely held view that ruthless German terror methods were entirely unprovoked and simply drove the population into the
arms of the partisans. German anti-partisan measures in the Army Group North Rear Area, whilst often brutal, were frequently responding, in part at least, to the real fear and damage the partisans inflicted - against German supply, occupation administration, and morale. The partisans were after all wide-ranging, numerous, and, amongst both the civilian population and the swamps and forests that covered the region, difficult to detect. Moreover, harrowing though their human impact so often was, the threat of ruthless German reprisal measures did, for a long time at least, genuinely deter the region's population from aiding the partisans.
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Hill challenges other accepted views in the predominant focus of the book, the partisans themselves. He does not participate in the eulogizing of the partisans which post-war Soviet historians so often engaged in. The partisans described here could sometimes be as ruthless as their German opponents in their efforts to dragoon the population into aiding their cause. Yet until early 1943, their hit-and-run attacks on supply routes, administrative centres, lone German sentries and other targets were never able to cause the levels of disruption the Soviet leadership had hoped
for. The partisans' ongoing supply and organizational problems saw to this. So too, even more importantly, did a lack of essential popular support from the occupied population. This was caused by the population's fear of German terror, greater in 1941 and 1942 than their fear of the partisans, and by its belief that the Germans might still win the war.
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Nor, however, does Hill fully endorse the view that the partisans made no impact on the German war machine. From late 1943 onwards, they became an effective force, benefiting as they did from greater supply of men, training and equipment and, above all, from a new anti-German mood amongst the occupied population. This mood was fuelled by the population's now growing belief that Germany would lose the war, and by the now ever more excessively brutal and exploitative nature of German occupation policy. Nevertheless, even at this point partisan success was qualified at best. For in Hill's own words, "the damage done by partisans at this time was damage done to an opponent already critically wounded."

Senkbeil is well read, provacative in his thoughts, and concise and eloquent in his writing.

This wordsmith here provides seventy meditations based on Scripture (indexed which is most helpful) and also indexed in a "topical reference".

These are seasoned with salt, laced with grace and the theology of the cross meals for the soul to feast on. To the point, Senkbeil exhibits (with the excellent editing) a pithy style which grabs you and won't let go till devouring what God has to give. It's a devotional equivalent to Jacob's wrestling with the angel of the lord until he would give a blessing.

Blessings abound from the reading, re-reading and pondering the wonderful Law and Gospel from Scriptures which pour forth in this small devotional resource. Only complaint: too short, one wnats more!

And there is! Senkbeil's new book: Triumph at the Cross. Also, if you haven't check out his: "Dying to Live."

This book is a collection of sermons by Harold Senkbeil, a Lutheran pastor who was once enamored by the "church growth" movement but has reclaimed his orthodox, confessional roots. In this book, such orthodoxy shines forth in all its glory, for God's very doctrines blaze from its pages.

Readers of this book will be brought to God's Law, hammered into a realization of whom they are in relation to God--but such is a reminder, which makes the Gospel more sweet and refreshing! Yet Senkbeil writes in such everyday language, maybe too everyday, that it is very easy for the reader to know Scriptural truths that apply to his life on this earth.

These devotions are such a superb harvest of Pr. Senkbeil's sermons. In an existence where no person can find something sure and true on his own, these devotions extol the God in flesh, the Person of Jesus Christ. The devotions comfort because they declare God's Gospel, His good news and, thus, they are treasures indeed.

This tasty book covers wild mushrooms from Apps to Entrees. Cynthia's passion for local ingredients and fun recipes comes through in every word. If your a mushroom lover this book is a "must add" to your cookbook collection.

I love this little cookbook- and not only for the wild mushroom recipes, but also for Cynthia Nims care and delicacy in food handling and preparation. I seldom find recipe books that take 'delicacy' into consideration-- she notes the ways that the mushrooms interlace with other ingredients, like the way that brie slices are infused with the taste of the truffle slices. I particularly love the Buckwheat Crepes with Wild Mushrooms, Ham and Gruyere.

The whole book is beautiful- it may sound odd, but the paper quality is excellent. The cover has that high quality paperback flap that fold over, making the cover thicker and more durable than regular soft cover books. The illustrations are beautiful.

There is great information on finding societies that take you on wild mushroom hunts, buying wild mushrooms, and care and handling of wild mushrooms.

I bought it for my daughter, who is a chef, after seeing it in Homer, AK. Will give it to her for Christmas and I know she'll love it.

I had the good fortune to stay at Winterlake Lodge this past summer. Kirsten and Carl Dixon have built, literally with their own hands, a slice of heaven in the wilderness. Kirsten's new book captures the majic and majesty of their home on Finger Lake Alaska. Her recipes and narratives make you feel you are there. Actually, I had a chance to see the publisher's proof of the new cookbook during my stay. I even had a chance to join Kirsten in her kitchen to prepare her recipe for Gruyere cheese puffs. I couldn't wait for the book to finally go to press. After reading it again, I definitely plan to go back to Winterlake Lodge. But, in the meantime, I'll have a chance to relive my experience by trying some of Kirsten's simple, yet outstanding, recipes. This is a great book for cooking afficionado's and for those who just want to learn more about the Alaska experience.

This is a treasure house, containing one of Witkacy's best short plays (The New Deliverance), one of his best long ones (Janulka, Daughter of Fizdejko), plus extracts from the novels, from critical and theoretical documents (notably on Pure Form, Bruno Schulz and the various drugs with which the author experimented); letters to his friend Malinowski; and the hilarious Rules of the S I Witkiewicz Portrait-Painting Firm, which constitute an object lesson for any artist wracked by the horrors of commercial compromise. The book is conveniently divided into segments according to the progress of Witkacy's career, and each segment has a good biographical chapter by the excellent Daniel Gerould, who seems to have done more to get Witkiewicz known and appreciated in the English-speaking world than most writers can manage to do for themselves. The Witkiewicz reader is both an ideal introduction and a great addition to this reviewer's still-too-small library of Witkacy-in-English. More, please...

The Witkiewicz Reader is an indispensable collection of plays, personal letters, critical writings, fragments, and biographical information from the life of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. It contains his darkly surreal plays; his touching letters to his friend Bronislaw Malinowski, the anthropologist; and his innovative critical writing regarding his Pure Form theory of art. This is a well-deserved tribute to a criminally under-appreciated genius whose tragic suicide as the Nazis invaded Poland took from the world a truly gifted playwright, painter, and philosopher.

Albahari's work is and will be a complex simplicity, a work wich will always make you think about the words: the power of words. Most of his work has not been translated yet. I hope that somebody will start doing it. If not, I will not be surprised, if Albahari will start to write in English - in that way the Ballkan will have the first Joseph Conrad! His stories are awesome, you will have a feeling that you are reading through a microscope, you will reveal thinks that you see but that you never percieved them before, you will start to be possesed by inner ideas how life is such a complex world (especially in Ballkan (sic!)), and with all it's tragic ingredients how terrible can it be when nationalism, hate and historical revenege starts to rise and to controll you ... If the Second WW was over the memories still remain.Albahari writes about it. He writes through his father or mother. But, what shall Albahari do now when the civil war in Yugoslavia destroyed the whole new generations! He still writes about his father and mother: the history will be rewinded again! There will be nothing new! The time in Ballkan doesen't exist, and if it does , then it exist differently. Serbs & Croats, Serbs & Muslims, Muslims& Croats, Serbs & Albanians ...they will slaughter each other and there will be nothing new under the Sun ... except the family saga of one Jewish family.

the mystery of the word, the tricks of the mind, the lunacy of the everyday is the stuff of Europe's master short short story writer. this is the first translation of david albahari's work into English. he has published 10 collections of short stories and novellas to date and is considered one of the prime writers from the former Yugoslavia. He currently lives in Calgary, Canada, where he came from Belgrade to be Markin-Flanagan distinguished writer in residence in 1995. Of Jewish background, albahari is concerned with the depth and shallowness of human identity and the role that chance plays in survival. with a dark sense of humour and a light sense of tragedy he captures the pain of 20th century existence

This book is part of a series from Concordia Publishing House called, the People's Bible Commentary. It is a fine way to complement daily scripture reading. This author takes several verses at a time and provides additional historical info, helpful explanations and points the reader to his own sin and need for the forgiveness that has been bought by Christ on the cross for you. Thank you Reverend Toppe and CPH!

We should never underestimate the significance of scandal. Whether as an effacement of religious strictures or simple bad manners, the scandal shocks the given and proper. In this wide-ranging and interesting collection of essays, the fact of being addressed - the scandal of a Saying that exceeds and disrupts the Said - is operative in pathos and vigor. The editors open the volume with a seemingly innocuous question: how should `readers address Emmanuel Levinas' and his work? (p. ix). As the preface and introduction venture into this question, the editors effectively deploy its aporetic complexity. These essays take up the necessary Levinasian task of `[...] deepening articulations, criticisms, and extensions of his thought' (p. xi). These gestures of depth, extension, and critique suggest that Levinas's writings move beyond themselves. As the editors announce, the varied contents and disciplines traversed throughout this book not only speak to the breadth of Levinas's work, but also to the necessity of bringing his themes to bear on issues he left unsaid. This disturbing yet necessary labor runs the risk of doing him an injustice. As we deepen, extend, and critique, as we follow Levinas even in holding him to account for his own areas of hypocrisy and injustice, we risk effacing the Saying which overflows his Said. Indeed, in reading this volume one feels that the problematic of justice which haunts Levinas's underdeveloped politics structures the very approach to his texts. Because we are shocked by his sayings, we labor with Levinas beyond or against Levinas.

These essays circulate within the tertiary fields of fidelity, prospectus, and evasion. In my view, the manner of address to a large extent circumscribes the salience of the analyses, suggestions, and encounters presented in these papers. With David Wood, we might invoke Heidegger's distinction: `In What is Called Thinking? Heidegger distinguishes between two ways of reading another thinker: going to them (through critique, polemic), and "going to their encounter"' (p. 153). It is in this manner of encounter that the scandal becomes decisive. Do we let Levinas disturb us? Do we allow the scandalous shock to operate through us even as we interrogate him? Do we take up his challenge in such a way that we can justly offer it back to him? This shock impressed itself upon me as I read this volume and will serve as the critical thread of this review. Indeed, it is the degree that each essay manifests disturbance, taking seriously the scandal of Levinas' Saying, that constitutes the measure of its fidelity, or at the very least, a viable critical prospectus that requires a more extensive address. In the essays I will term evasive, one gropes to even find real criticism. A number of essays fail to even rise to the level of a reading, let alone a critical `encounter.' It is here the question of justice becomes decisive. Whether or not one buys into Levinas's wager, we ought, at the very least, seek to hear him rather than simply using the name `Levinas' as a placeholder, as a mirror to reflect our own projects back to ourselves. The evasive responses to the Levinasian scandal either liquidate his particular themes in the author's own preferred topos, or knock down their own confused constructions of what Levinas is saying in the gesture of `moving beyond' him.
Rather than offer a gloss of each of the nineteen essays in this volume, I will proceed by discussing a few essays which exemplify the deepening, extension, and critique noted above. After briefly reviewing essays of the first two types, I want to tarry with the critical essays for a while. For as I hinted above, the manner in which these critical essays address Levinas dramatically illustrates the issue of justice in reading, and the justice of the reading suggested to me the manner in which the authors are disturbed by him, that is, how they take up the scandal.

The essays which open this book consider Levinas's philosophical work in relation to various biblical and Talmudic verses. In his essay, `Beyond Outrage: The Delirium of Responsibility in Levinas's Scene of Persecution', James Hatley takes up Levinas's controversial description of ethics as obsession, persecution, and so forth. Rather than seeking to assuage the controversy, Hatley intensifies and defends it in a moving reading of the Cain narrative. Rather than simply opposing the delirium of ethics to the orthodoxy of politically correct critics, Hatley brilliantly shows how the delirium operates within the persecutor, with one who seeks to evade responsibility as illustrated in the figure of Cain. In extending the ethical persecution to the persecutor, and then comparing the Cainic and Abrahamic responses to it, Hatley traces an interesting equivocity in its operation. In identifying and distinguishing the madness of ethics and the madness of Cain - of the faithful Abrahamic response and of the malicious ressentiment of the murderer - Hatley asks: `Would not Cain, in his state of mind, see the very call to which Abraham submits as a curse?' (p. 45). Abraham and Cain both see each other as cursed. Both are, in their own ways, dispossessed. Hatley intimates that the manner of response to the other determines this expropriating movement. While Abraham is disturbed to faithful attendance, Cain's evasion ossifies into the madness of forgetting and oblivion. Though he suggests that this evasion terminates in a forgetful celebration of the void, Hatley's reading opens the possibility of even Cain's redemption. Is not Abrahamic faithfulness, in its way, a search for Cain, the lost and guilty one? Is not the Abrahamic exodus - in all its madness and pathos - the redeeming movement where Cain is sought in the patience of God? Here, Cain's outrageous suffering is irreducible to simple retribution, but operates to open him to a responsibility which could redeem him. This beautiful essay exemplifies a deepening of Levinasian reflection, of successfully extending his concerns to regions left unsaid, and in manner which manifests a deep fidelity to his corpus.

In `The Responsibility of Irresponsibility: Taking Yet Another Look at the Akedah', Claire Elise Katz compares Kierkegaard's and Levinas's reading of the Akedah, the story of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac. Katz promises to take their respective readings seriously as she attempts to `[...] synthesiz[e] Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Judaism' (p. 19). For those of us interested in bringing Kierkegaard and Levinas into contact, this prospect is intriguing. One often gets the feeling that Levinas's critique of Kierkegaard's readings is somewhat blunt and a bit anachronistic, even if one is sympathetic to the thrust of that critique. It is almost as if there were a gap between Kierkegaard's reading and Levinas's rejoinder. This gap operates in Katz's framing of the relation between their readings: `Kierkegaard's drama ends where for Levinas [...] the climax begins' (p. 29). Though Katz hints that she ultimately affirms Levinas's interpretation, she implores us, with Kierkegaard, to `read the story slowly and carefully,' (p. 25) to imagine with Kierkegaard the psychological turmoil, the fear and trembling Abraham experiences preparing for the terrible moment. She suggests that this turmoil lends force to where Levinas picks up: the hineni, the `here I am' of ethical election, as the decisive moment of the story. At this point the gap asserts itself all the more strongly: if Abraham is already an ethical subject, why go through the drama of preparation? In other words, to take Kierkegaard's reading seriously one must leave open the possibility of teleological suspension. If one closes this possibility, then the Akedah is simply a moral tale that illustrates the drama of Levinasian ethics. Katz must, then, mediate - must fill in the gap where Kierkegaard leaves off and Levinas begins. How does she do it? Katz claims that:
`[...] Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his child, and his receptiveness not to continue with the action, depict a necessary moment in the genesis of the ethical itself. Even if Levinas does not want to locate the ethical in an archē, [...] there is none the less the sense in which the ethical calls for its own explanation.' (p. 28)
What began as an intriguing prospect comes to a rather disappointing climax. Either Katz is not aware of the implications of her synthesis or it is a calculated attempt at onto-theological reductionism. In either case, her suggestion simply regresses to a type of rationalist valorization of the righteous self. Statements like the following seem to confirm this diagnosis:
`It is only through Abraham's bodily actions, through his preparation to sacrifice Isaac, that he has the epiphany of the ethical. And just as Abraham comes to understand through his actions, so too must we understand through the act of reading and reflection.' (p. 26)
The singularizing ordeal of faith and the singularizing hineni of ethical election evaporate in the auto-didactic movement of reflection. Katz's synthesis reinscribes precisely what Kierkegaard and Levinas rebel against. Her attempt to secure a `genesis' of the ethical, an ethics which `calls for its own explanation,' would reinscribe ethics back into the very universalism Levinas rescued it from. The site of this `genesis,' for Katz, is Abraham's own reflexive auto-affection. Thus, it is neither the ordeal of faith nor the face of Isaac that inscribes Abrahamic singularity, it is his own self-constitutive action. This Abrahamic in-and-for-itself would inaugurate the very violence Levinas contests as he thematizes the an-archic responsibility of ethics and it is against such a movement that Kierkegaard summons his teleological suspension.
One even questions whether Katz is aware of the onto-theological implications of her `synthesis.' In that the `test' for her Abraham is to `irresponsibly' defy God's unethical command, she intensifies Levinas's injunction to love the Torah more than God. She does so, however, in an inflection that is decidedly un-Levinasian. Levinas presents this injunction with a certain amount of fear and trembling: the God whom one defies is the God for Whom one may die. The defiance is for-the-other, a resolve to never allow religious pathos to terminate in violence. Katz admits that the `irresponsible' moment in her heroic responsibility is precisely being responsible to God. Yet is this the God of the Book, the God with whom Kierkegaard and Levinas wrestle? Or is it the self-constitutive archē, the in-and-for-itself of the onto-theological tradition, a placebo for bad conscience? Katz's essay illustrates how the gesture of productive extension can lead to a reversal of Levinas's most important themes. If we approach Levinas with too much familiarity, if we don't allow the scandal to disrupt our synthetic projects in a `slow and careful reading,' we run the risk of repeating the very violence he contests in the name of extending his insights.

I will now turn to discussing essays with a more explicit critical prospectus. As I hinted earlier, these essays differentiate in the manner in which they take up the scandal of Levinas. I will first tarry with the evasionary essays in that they manifest the scandal in such a way that allows us to appreciate and to be challenged by the decisive critical encounters that take place in this volume. In contrasting these critical approaches, I hope to underline some general trajectories they suggest for future Levinasian research.
There are a number of strategic resemblances in the following essays that constitute a type of orbit of evasion, they: 1) take a pedantic, patronizing tone, 2) insinuate a crypto-onto-theology and, 3) assimilate Levinas's themes to their own preferred topos. David Wood wants to ask `a more complex question,' a question that will instruct Levinas, will `provide a better model' of reading which might open upon `an ethical dimension that may have escaped Levinas' (p. 153). François Raffoul wants to take up the `injustices' in Levinas's reading of Heidegger, and does so `with an aim of deepening our understanding of the relation between ontology and ethics' (p. 144). Raffoul moves beyond instructing Levinas to teaching us all. Bernhard Waldenfels, after `correcting' Levinas's notion of Saying, cautions us to `read Levinas's text more cautiously' (p. 95). The irony in all these exhortations is that their authors fail to treat Levinas's texts with the justice and caution they prescribe. Wood, Raffoul, and Waldenfels all deploy the strategy noted above. First, they insinuate a crypto-ontotheology, suggesting that Levinas simply reinscribes pre-Heideggerian, indeed pre-critical, presuppositions (e.g. Hinterwelt). They then take the posture of elaborating, contra Levinas, the `proper' account of ethics and relation to alterity. This `proper' elaboration amounts to collapsing Levinas into other topoi, namely, Foucault (Waldenfels) and Heidegger (Wood and Raffoul). The common misunderstanding of these three essays is that they fail to grasp ethics as excess, as irreducible to ontological relatedness. Levinas explicitly says that the other is not another region to be `conquered'. Ethics and Being are indeed irreducible to one another, yet in a manner where they operate together. The accusative and imperative indicate how the relation is ordered, in that I may never approach the other with empty hands. This is the manner in which ethics is prior to and commands ontological relatedness. This indeed is a scandal to any thinking which locates transcendence primarily in self-constitutive activity. Such thinking is shocked by the command of the naked, the hurting, and the hungry. The alterity in ethics is precisely that which escapes and accuses one's spontaneity, more radical than the otherness which manifests in the Seyn relation. Indeed, if the other were another `region,' Levinas would be open to the charge of onto-theology, Hinterwelt, and so forth. This precisely highlights Levinas's qualm with Heidegger, if the other is considered as another region, or even another openness secondary to the negativity of being-toward-death, the other would not be other in that, in principle, she could be brought to manifestation/concealment in the play of Seyn.
Waldenfels, Raffoul, and Wood betray an evasive reading of Levinas in considering ontology and ethics as two separate and pure `regions.' They read Cartesian assumptions into Levinas, insinuate onto-theology, only in order to muddy the waters for opposing their own projects. They ignore entire tracts of Levinas's writing that are themselves anti-Cartesian. Such insinuations intentionally forget Levinas's explicit themes on such issues: the atheism of the I, the violence of the sacred, embodiment, the ethical an-archē, and so forth. This forgetting is not surprising, and in some cases not even intentional, in that these essays do not seriously read Levinas. They betray an interesting penchant for propriety, for the hegemony of correctness that follows when granting constitutive status to a logy or to an encompassing third term. The most violent of these insinuations ironically come from essays which both parrot and defend the Heideggerian mystique. These essays are indeed scandalized by Levinas. Yet their response amounts to a defense of propriety.

To close this review, I want to draw brief attention to a few essays which engage in genuine critical interaction. Robert Bernasconi raises the serious question of Levinas's Euro-centrism. Bettina Bergo brings Levinas and Freud into a fascinating and fruitful contact, raising interesting questions that warrant further address. Tina Chanter's essay, `Conditions: The Politics of Ontology and Temporality of the Feminine', displays a rigorous and sustained reflection on the problematic of the feminine in Levinas. Her essay most dramatically displays an honest critical engagement. As she scrupulously sojourns through the problematic and complex moments of the feminine in Levinas's architecture, she suggestively announces that: `The question we are confronting here cannot be divorced from the question of how politics stands in relation to Levinas's philosophy in general' (p. 331). She hints that Levinas's diachronic temporality may evoke a moment from which to theorize a politics of resistance. She confronts Levinas with Levinas as she writes:
`Feminism cannot claim a safe place, free of challenge, nor should it. It must take responsibility, however, for thinking about which others it exploits, and how and why it does so, in making a claim for itself. [...] A feminism that takes account of Levinas's diachronic notion of temporality should recognize both the need to maintain a disruptive effect in the refusal of the feminine to accommodate the categories of being, totality, or ontology, of never simply being a subject of knowledge, mastery, and recognition; and the need to assert that women must be recognized and thematized as subjects in the register of the said, taken account of by history that, while covering over alterity, has also afforded its subjects the privilege of recognition.' (p. 331)
If one would elaborate a Levinasian notion of authenticity, Chanter would exemplify it. She allows herself to be challenged by the scandal, to be disturbed by the other, to not absence herself and her own necessary project from the challenge Levinas presents. She leaves herself no alibi, no placebo for bad conscience, and in just this way manifests Levinasian responsibility. In her critical engagement she does justice to Levinas, both to his Said and to his Saying, in confronting his Said with his Saying! At the very moment she is animated against a history of oppression, a history which Levinas's feminine may unwittingly repeat, she invokes the Levinasian scandal within her project. She I think underlines for us, along with Bernasconi and Drabinski, the urgent task of contemporary Levinas scholarship: `the question of how politics stands in relation to Levinas's philosophy in general' (p. 331). Can there be a notion of recognition, institution, and so forth that would not be violent in the manner Levinas and Chanter hint? Are there ways in which institutions perpetrate violence which Levinas never thematized? This volume displays some promising gestures in these directions. Indeed, as a compendium of critical trajectories in English language Levinas scholarship, this book is a must read.