This paper addresses Buffy in regards to her relationship with what can be called the Slayer within her. I am using the idea of the "Other" and Buffy's relationship to it. The Slayer in her literally being her immemorial Other.

This relationship is expounded using the concepts of Emmanuel Levinas’ “immemorial other” and Maurice Blanchot’s “disaster.” The importance of Buffy’s relationship to the Slayer part of her as immemorial has been noted by Buffy critics (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, Fighting the Forces­) in their recognition of the dream sequences in the BtVS series involving the spirit of the First Slayer.

In Otherwise than Being: Beyond Essence, Levinas states

The Present is a beginning in my freedom, whereas the Good is not presented to freedom; it has chosen me before I have chosen it. No one is good voluntarily. We can see the formal structure of nonfreedom in a subjectivity which does not have time to choose the Good and thus is penetrated with its rays unbeknownst to itself. But subjectivity sees this nonfreedom redeemed, exceptionally, by the goodness of the Good. The exception is unique. And if no one is good voluntarily, no one is enslaved to the Good.

 

Immemorial, unrepresentable, invisible, the past that by passes the present, the pluperfect past, falls into a past that is gratuitous lapse. It cannot be recuperated by reminiscence not because of its remoteness, but because of its incommensurability with the present. The present is essence that begins and ends, beginning and end assembled in a thematizable conjunction; it is the finite in correlation with a freedom. Diachrony is the refusal of conjunction, the non-totalizable, and in this sense, infinite. But the responsibility for the Other, for another freedom, the negativity of this anarchy, this refusal of the present, of appearing, of the immemorial, commands me and ordains me to the other, to the first one on the scene, and make me approach him, makes me his neighbour. It thus diverges from nothingness as well as from being. It provokes this responsibility against my will, that is, by substituting me for the other as hostage. All my inwardness is invested in the form of despite-me, for-another. Despite-me, for-another, is signification par excellence. And it is the sense of ‘oneself,’ that accusative that derives from the nominative; it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself.

 

What is exceptional in this way of being signaled is that I am ordered toward the face of the other (11).

These thoughts are so relevant to Buffy’s continual struggle to understand what it means to be the Slayer, and to fulfil the duties of the Slayer; one could almost imagine they were written with her in mind. Buffy’s relationship with the “Slayer” also affects her relationship with others around her. There can be no denying the fact that Buffy assumes her responsibility to others as the Slayer; she often acts despite herself for another.

Throughout the series Buffy comes to a realization of what this relationship is to her. She discovers that as Buffy, she must find a coming-to-terms with the Slayer to find herself. This is a discovery that is extremely fatiguing for Buffy. As subject, ordained, chosen, commanded; infinite responsibility and horror of the Other. As “il y a,” as “disaster,” as “immemorial.”

The specific BtVS episodes being discussed are: “Restless” (4x22), “Intervention” (5x18) and “Get It Done” (7x15).