On the face of it, Levinasian time is masculine. Emmanuel Levinas 's claim that the locus of time is found in the relationships formed between the individuals is closely tied to his interpretation of fecundity. The theme of fecundity provides a framework for characterizing the ethical relations between the subject and the Other, which from Levinas 's viewpoint, are required for the constitution of time. But when discussing fecundity, Levinas adopts an expUcit male perspective and vocabulary - fecundity is a masculine product produced via the father's fecund relationship with his son. Levinas claims that time is constituted according to the category of the father,1 and paternity is "the way of being other while being oneself."2 The ego becomes other to itself, since it involves a relationship with a son who is both Other and Same - the father both is and is not his son; the son is part of the father, but is also separate and independent of him. The familial context of paternity incorporates fecundity the son opens up for the father possibiUties that both are and are not his. These possibiUties reveal a future that is the father's but also the son's - it both is and is not the father's future.3 Apparently, only the father, through his relation with his son, is fecund, and as a result we might conclude that the feminine is merely the means for fecundity and in itself is not fecund. As discussed by thinkers such as Luce Irigaray and Tina Chanter, this way of understanding fecundity raises problems regarding the role of the feminine in Levinas's thought. Luce Irigaray criticizes Levinas and claims that in his thought the female is deprived of subjectivity, of a face, and only supports the temporal becoming of the male, in producing a son who, in being both Same and Other, allows the male subject to become Other to himself.4 Tina Chanter claims that in privileging the father and his relation to the son, and subordinating the feminine to the properly ethical and infinite relation, for Levinas the feminine serves as the ground and condition of ethics, but is itself excluded from the ethical.5 Nevertheless, one of the two aims of this essay is to offer an interpretation of Levinas's concept of fecundity that allows a fecund and ethical feminine. The view of fecundity as embedded in paternity also generates a difficulty regarding Levinas's interpretation of time as fecundity. It appears that for Levinas time is meaningful to and relevant only for the male. Such a view may entail that women are not part of Levinas's veritable time, and as Donna Brody claims, that the feminine cannot enter the infinite time of sociality.6 Kelly OUver, too, believes that Levinas's thought does not leave room for the possibility that the trans-substantiation7 of the father will take place in relation to a daughter, and concludes that the future produced by paternity is masculine.8 The difficulty here is that the understanding of fecund time as formed only through paternal relationships engenders a narrow structure of time, which is constituted through limited forms of relationships. Consequently, Levinas's assertions such as "the relationship with the other is time,"9 and "is not sociality something more than the source of our representation of time: is it not time itself?"10 seem less forceful. From this perspective, Levinas's view of time as neither exterior to the subject nor entirely contained in the subject, but rather constituted by one's relationship with the Other person, appears not as compelling. However, by focusing mainly on Totality and Infinity, the second aim of this essay is to offer an interpretation of Levinas's view of fecundity that enables us to consider time beyond the limiting perspective of father-son relationships. Levinas's choice of language in presenting the relationship of fecundity begs the following question - why does Levinas use terms such as "paternity" and "son" rather than "maternity" and "daughter," or non-gendered terms such as "parent," "child" or "offspring"? …
