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

In the confrontation which invests me with a radical responsibility, the face 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 representation, any thematisation of the face would actually disfigure it and would prevent the approach. "The mode in which the face shows its own absence under my responsibility, requires a kind of description, which can only be ethical." It is this "strange" and "unknown" language which the present article studies on the basis of the constant and friendly dialogue which Maurice Blanchot and Emmanuel Levinas had together, in margins of their respective works.