 in its temporal unity (OBBE: 124–125). Consequently, vulnerability and sensitivity to trauma not only provoke retreat into self but heighten our awareness, however tenuous, of our connection with the other(s), and they motivate our bearing witness. Thus the affective in-habitation of my self by others precedes speech-acts and speech-communities. If the reverse were the case; that is, if a de facto community were posited as prior to the event of words addressed, then this would presuppose what it was meant to show: the genesis of speech-acts (OBBE: 92). Instead, ‘beneath’ words proffered lies a fundamental vulnerability that psychology might interpret as a predisposition to witnessing, from oneself to the other. Levinas calls this vulnerability the “Saying” (OBBE: 149–152). It is both precursive to words uttered in the form of address (i.e., pre-linguistic), and it would accompany communication like its affective horizon. The duality of Saying and Said is a new concept in Levinas’ late work.