Abstract

I argue in this paper that habits of moral attention, such as those that sustain racism and xenophobia, should be understood as attempts to deflect responsibility as Levinas describes it. The provocation to responsibility is fragile in the face of these moral habits, which separate the morally considerable from the morally inconsiderable. But in its traumatic quality, responsibility cannot be deflected entirely—it impacts the self prior to and outside of our attempts to manage our obligations. Levinas’s description of the interaction between the conatus and responsibility should thus be read as a supplement to critical race theory, as an account that recognizes the power of moral habits but also the constant possibility of their interruption.