The face that is impossible to figure - An unknown language in Levinas andBlanchot

In the confrontation which invests me with a radical responsibility, the fa ce of the other escapes all representation, it defies any phenomenological description according to Levinas. It is beyond experience-an "abstraction." Could the face of my neighbour be said impossible to figure, its proximity being best described as an approach, an ethical relation? Any representati on, any thematisation of the face would actually disfigure it and would pre vent the approach. "The mode in which the face shows its own absence under my responsibility, requires a kind of description, which can only be ethica l." It is this "strange" and "unknown" language which the present article s tudies on the basis of the constant and friendly dialogue which Maurice Bla nchot and Emmanuel Levinas had together, in margins of their respective wor ks.