influential formulation of postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition.
Despite its popularity, however, this book is in fact one of his more
minor works. Lyotard's writings cover a large range of topics in
philosophy, politics, and aesthetics, and experiment with a wide
variety of styles. His works can be roughly divided into three
categories: early writings on phenomenology, politics, and the
critique of structuralism, the intermediate libidinal philosophy, and
later work on postmodernism and the "differend." The majority of his
work, however, is unified by a consistent view that reality consists
of singular events which cannot be represented accurately by rational
theory. For Lyotard, this fact has a deep political import, since
politics claims to be based on accurate representations of reality.
Lyotard's philosophy exhibits many of the major themes common to
post-structuralist and postmodernist thought. He calls into question
the powers of reason, asserts the importance of nonrational forces
such as sensations and emotions, rejects humanism and the traditional
philosophical notion of the human being as the central subject of
knowledge, champions heterogeneity and difference, and suggests that
the understanding of society in terms of "progress" has been made
obsolete by the scientific, technological, political and cultural
changes of the late twentieth century. Lyotard deals with these common
themes in a highly original way, and his work exceeds many popular
conceptions of postmodernism in its depth, imagination, and rigor. His
thought remains pivotal in contemporary debates surrounding
philosophy, politics, social theory, cultural studies, art and
aesthetics.
1. Biography
Jean-François Lyotard was born in Vincennes, France, on August 10,
1924. His father, Jean-Pierre Lyotard, was a sales representative. His
mother's maiden name was Madeleine Cavalli. He was schooled at the
Paris Lycées Buffon and Louis-le-Grand, and his youthful aspirations
to be a Dominican monk, a painter, an historian, or a novelist
eventually gave way to a career in philosophy. He studied philosophy
and literature at the Sorbonne (after twice failing the entrance exam
to the Ecole Normale Supérieure), where he became friends with Gilles
Deleuze. His early interest in philosophies of indifference resulted
in his M.A. dissertation Indifference as an Ethical Notion. Lyotard
describes his existence up until the Second World War as a 'poetic,
introspective and solitary way of thinking and living.' The war
disrupted both his way of life and his thought; he acted as a
first-aid volunteer in the fight for liberation in the Paris streets
in August 1944, and gave up the idea of indifference for a commitment
to the investigation of reality in terms of social interactions.
Lyotard became a husband and father at a young age, marrying Andrée
May in 1948 and subsequently having two children, Corinne and
Laurence. Lyotard passed the agrégation (the examination required in
order to teach in France) and took up a position teaching philosophy
at a boy's lycée (school) in Constantine in French-occupied East
Algeria in 1950. From 1952-59 he taught at a school for the sons of
military personnel at La Flèche. In Constantine Lyotard read Marx and
became acquainted with the Algerian political situation, which he
believed was ripe for socialist revolution. In 1954 Lyotard joined the
socialist revolutionary organisation Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism
or Barbarism). Other members of the organisation included Cornelius
Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, and Pierre Souyris. Lyotard had met
Souyris at a union meeting late in 1950, and they had a long and close
friendship, eventually troubled by political and theoretical
differences.
Lyotard became an intellectual militant, and asserts that for fifteen
years he was so dedicated to the cause of socialist revolution that no
other aspect of life (with the sole exception of love) diverted him
from this task. His writings in this period are solely concerned with
ultra-left revolutionary politics, with a sharp focus on the Algerian
situation (the war of independence had broken out in 1954). He
contributed to and edited the Socialisme ou Barbarie journal, and
wrote pamphlets to distribute to workers at protests and at factory
gates. In 1964 a schism erupted in Socialisme ou Barbarie over
Castoriadis' new theoretical direction for the group. Lyotard, along
with Souyris, became a member of the splinter group Pouvoir Ouvrier
(Worker's Power), but resigned in 1966. He had lost belief in the
legitimacy of Marxism as a totalising theory, and returned to the
study and writing of philosophy. From 1959 to 1966 Lyotard was
maître-assistant at the Sorbonne, and then gained a position in the
philosophy department at the University of Paris X, Nanterre. There he
took part in the May 1968 political actions, organising demonstrations
for the "March 22 Movement."
Lyotard attended the radical psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's seminars in
the mid-60s, and his reaction to Lacan's theories resulted in
Discours, figure, for which he received the degree of doctorat d'état.
From 1968 to 1970 Lyotard was chargé de recherches at the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique. In the early 1970s Lyotard was
appointed to the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes, where he was a
popular teacher and a prolific writer. In 1972 he was made maître de
conferences, and in 1987 he became Professor Emeritus at Vincennes.
The 1979 publication of The Postmodern Condition brought Lyotard
worldwide fame, and in the 1980s and 90s he lectured widely outside of
France. Lyotard was professor of French and Italian at the University
of California, Irvine, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of French at Emory
University, and a founding member and sometime president of the
Collège International de Philosophie. Lyotard was a visiting professor
at numerous universities, including John Hopkins, the University of
California, Berkeley and San Diego, the University of Minnesota, the
Université de Montréal, Canada, the Universität Siegen, West Germany,
and the University of Saõ Paulo, Brazil. Lyotard married his second
wife Dolorès Djidzek in 1993 and had a son, David. Lyotard died of
leukaemia in Paris on April 21, 1998.
2. Early Works
a. Phenomenology
Lyotard's first book, published in 1954, is a short introduction to
and examination of phenomenology. The first part introduces
phenomenology through the work of Edmund Husserl, and the second part
evaluates phenomenology's relation to the human sciences (particularly
psychology, sociology, and history). In the second part the focus
shifts from Husserl to the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Throughout,
Lyotard is concerned with phenomenology's attempt to find a "third
way" between subjectivism and objectivism, avoiding the problems of
each. In particular, he is interested in the bearing this problem has
on the question of whether phenomenology can think history
politically, thus potentially contributing to Marxism. This theme (the
relation of phenomenology to Marxism) was a prime concern for French
thinkers of the fifties, and Lyotard's book is a useful documentation
of the issues at stake. Much of his exposition and discussion is
positive, and Lyotard argues that phenomenology can make valuable
contributions to the social sciences, where it should serve two
functions: firstly, to define the object of the science eidetically
(i.e. in its essence) prior to all experimentation, and secondly, to
philosophically reassess the results of experimentation. Lyotard
argues, for example, that sociology has need of a phenomenological
definition of the essence of the social before it can proceed
effectively as a science. While he sees the usefulness of
phenomenology in many disciplines, however, Lyotard's conclusions
about the usefulness of phenomenology to Marxism are largely negative.
He argues that phenomenology does not represent progress on Marxism,
but is in fact a step backwards. For Lyotard phenomenology cannot
properly formulate a materialist worldview and the objective nature of
the relations of production; it ends up interpreting class struggle as
taking place in consciousness. Lyotard rejects phenomenology's attempt
to find a third way between subjectivism and objectivism, and asserts
Marxism's superiority in viewing subjectivity as already contained in
objectivity.
b. Algeria
In the fifteen years between his first two books of philosophy,
Lyotard devoted all his writing efforts to the cause of revolutionary
politics. His most substantial writings of this time were his
contributions to the Socialisme ou Barbarie journal on the political
situation in Algeria [many of which are collected in Political
Writings]. The project of Socialisme ou Barbarie was to provide
theoretical resources to contribute to socialist revolution,
critiquing other existing socialist strands (particularly Stalinism
and the French communist party) as a hindrance to revolution, and with
a particular emphasis on the critique of bureaucracy. In the essays on
Algeria, Lyotard applies this project to the French occupation, trying
to determine the potential for socialist revolution arising from this
situation. He pays close attention to the economic forces at work in
occupied Algeria, arguing that it is in the economic interests of
France to keep Algerians in a state of underdevelopment and poverty.
Furthermore, Lyotard introduces a notion of 'terror' that he develops
more fully in his later works, indicating the suppression of Algerian
culture by the imposition of foreign (French) cultural forms. The
conclusion Lyotard comes to is that the occupation must end if the
Algerian people are to prosper, but he remains ambivalent about the
possibility of revolution. He surmises that a nationalist, democratic
revolution will only lead to new forms of social inequality and
domination, and insists that a socialist revolution is necessary. This
ambivalence was reflected in Socialisme ou Barbarie's debate about
whether or not to support the Algerian war of independence, fearing
that its democratic and nationalistic leanings would not bring about
the result they desired. In "Algeria Evacuated," written after the end
of the occupation, Lyotard regretfully asks why a socialist revolution
did not take place, concluding that the social and political upheavals
resulted in an opportunistic struggle for power rather than a
class-based action. The end result of Lyotard's work on Algeria and
the disappointment at the failure of socialist revolution to take
place led him to an abandonment of revolutionary socialism and
traditional Marxism on the grounds that social reality is too complex
to describe accurately with any master-discourse.
c. Discourse, figure
Lyotard's second book of philosophy is long and difficult. It covers a
wide variety of topics, including phenomenology, psychoanalysis,
structuralism, poetry and art, Hegelian dialectics, semiotics, and
philosophy of language. The main thrust of this work, however, is a
critique of structuralism, particularly as it manifests itself in
Lacan's psychoanalysis. The book is divided into two parts: the first
uses Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to undermine structuralism, and the
second uses Freudian psychoanalysis to undermine both Lacanian
psychoanalysis and certain aspects of phenomenology. Lyotard begins
with an opposition between discourse, related to structuralism and
written text, and figure (a visual image), related to phenomenology
and seeing. He suggests that structured, abstract conceptual thought
has dominated philosophy since Plato, denigrating sensual experience.
The written text and the experience of reading are associated with the
former, and figures, images and the experience of seeing with the
latter. Part of Lyotard's aim is to defend the importance of the
figural and sensual experience such as seeing. He proceeds to
deconstruct this opposition, however, and attempts to show that
discourse and figure are mutually implicated. Discourse contains
elements of the figural (poetry and illuminated texts are good
examples), and visual space can be structured like discourse (when it
is broken up into ordered elements in order for the world to be
recognisable and navigable by the seeing subject). He develops an idea
of the figural as a disruptive force which works to interrupt
established structures in the realms of both reading and seeing.
Ultimately, the point is not to privilege the figural over the
discursive, but to show how these elements must negotiate with each
other. The mistake of structuralism is to interpret the figural in
entirely discursive terms, ignoring the different ways in which these
elements operate. In the second part of Discours, figure, structure
and transgression are related to Freudian libidinal forces, paving the
way for the libidinal philosophy developed in Libidinal Economy.
3. Libidinal Philosophy
In the early 1970s Lyotard developed a philosophy based around Sigmund
Freud's theory of the libido. For Lyotard, libidinal energy can be
used as a "theoretical fiction" to describe the transformations that
take place in society. After his break with Marxism and rejection of
totalising theory, he sought to develop a theory that will take
account of multiple and different forces and desires at work in any
political or social situation, from the writing of theory to
revolutionary politics to global economics. Lyotard's libidinal
philosophy is developed in the major work Libidinal Economy and in two
sets of essays, Dérive à partir de Marx et Freud [some of which is
translated in Driftworks] and Des Dispositifs Pulsionnels. Libidinal
Economy is an unusual and difficult work, and encompasses a complex
set of theories concerning politics, economics, theory, academic
style, and readings of Marx and Freud. It is written in a bewildering
combination of styles (at times reading more like an avant-garde novel
than a philosophical text), a method Lyotard uses in an attempt to
overcome the limitations he sees in traditional academic theory.
The libidinal philosophy begins Lyotard's general commitment to an
ontology of events, which also underlies his later postmodern
philosophy. Lyotard sees reality in terms of unpredictable happenings
(events), rather than structured regularities. These events can be
interpreted in different ways, and no single interpretation will
capture events accurately. Events always exceed interpretation; there
is always something "left over" that an interpretation does not
account for. In the libidinal philosophy Lyotard uses the idea of
libidinal energy to describe events and the way they are interpreted
or exploited, and he develops a philosophy of society and theory in
terms of the economy of libidinal energies. Lyotard uses the terms
"libidinal intensities," and "affects" to refer to events. These
intensities and affects are, in more common terminology, feelings and
desires. In the terms of Freudian psychoanalysis, they are the
"primary processes" of the libido, the forces that exist in the body
on a more basic level than the "secondary processes" of the conscious
mind. In particular, Lyotard focuses on sexual desire. He uses these
terms metaphorically, however, to describe the workings of reality and
society as a whole, divorcing them from their usual attachments to
human beings. Lyotard describes the wholly impersonal as well as the
personal in terms of feelings and desires, and paints a picture of the
world that moves and is moved in the ways that feelings move people.
Lyotard admits that this description of everything in libidinal terms
is a "theoretical fiction," merely a way of speaking which gives us
useful terms for theorizing about what happens in the world.
Metaphysically, Lyotard is a materialist, and for him affects must be
understood as concrete material entities. An affect might be a sound,
a color, a smile or a caress: anything which has an ability to "move,"
to produce feelings and desires. Affects are structured and
interpreted in systems made up of dispositifs, libidinal dispositions
or set-ups, and society is composed of multitudes of different
dispositions that compete to exploit the energies of libidinal events.
Lyotard develops a complex set of figures to describe how this process
takes place.
Libidinal Economy begins with the figure of a body (ambivalently
sexed), being cut open and spread out to form a flat, band-like
surface. Lyotard is here beginning to describe a region on which
libidinal intensities take place and on which they meet with the
dispositifs that channel libidinal energy. This region is material
like the body, but it is not yet organized, thus the figure of
dismemberment. The flat band that the body has become is then given a
twist and joined end to end, forming a moebius strip (a circular
figure which has only one surface due to the twist it contains; a line
traced along one side of the strip will end up on the other side
without breaking contact with the surface). This strip is then set in
motion, circulating so fast it glows red with heat. This is the
libidinal band (sometimes called the libidinal skin). It represents
the "primary processes" of desire and libidinal intensity in which
libidinal energy circulates in an aleatory fashion, not yet investing
anything. Because the libidinal band is a moebius strip, desire
circulates on only one surface; there is no inside or outside. In time
the band begins to slow and cool, and forms what Lyotard calls "the
(disjunctive) bar."
As the bar slows, sometimes it invests this region, sometimes that. It
becomes disjunctive, distinguishing this from not-this. This stage in
the transformation of the libidinal band represents the formation of
rational thought, dominated by binary logic and the law of
noncontradiction. Finally the bar stops and forms a stable
disjunction. Lyotard describes the bar as then turning around on
itself and creating an enclosed space, a theatrical volume. This is
the particular transformation of the libidinal band – or the
particular dispositif on the libidinal band – that gives rise to
representation and theory. The theatrical space has an inside and an
outside, a clear disjunction between this and not-this. Lyotard's
image of theory as theatre is based on the etymological relationship
between the two terms; they are both derived from the Greek theasthai,
meaning to look at, contemplate, or behold. The theorist is like a
spectator who views the representation of the world (outside the
theatre) on the stage (inside the theatre).
Lyotard's description of the transformations of the libidinal band is
a theoretical fiction which provides an account of how the world works
through the interplay of intense, excited libidinal energies and the
stable structures which exploit them and dampen their intensity. The
band is the space on which libidinal intensities meet dispositifs, or
libidinal set-ups. These set-ups channel energy into more or less
stable systems and structures, and therefore all dispositifs, all
systems and structures, can be described in terms of the slowing and
cooling of the band. An example would be the way political
institutions channel desires to change society away from violent,
disruptive eruptions towards more moderate, less disruptive modes of
action. Systems exploit libidinal intensities by channeling them into
stable structures. And yet, these systems deny their own origins in
intense and aleatory libidinal energy, taking themselves to be
permanent and stable. Systems hide, or dissimulate, affects (libidinal
intensities). Conversely, however, affects dissimulate systems.
Systems and affects dissimulate each other. This means that systems
contain and hide affects, and that affects contain and hide the
possibility for forming systems. Dissimulation is a concept that
allows us to see the elements of the libidinal economy as duplicitous.
That is, they have more than one possibility. It is always possible
for intensities to channel into a stable system, or to disrupt a
system by destabilising it through intense investment.
Lyotard develops a critical but nuanced approach towards theory,
politics and economics within the terms of the libidinal philosophy.
His prime concern is that the structures that exploit libidinal
intensities tend to become hegemonic. That is, they tend to claim sole
right to the exploitation or interpretation of intensities. At the
same time, they often deny libidinal intensities themselves, taking
themselves to be primary and stable structures. Lyotard sees these
tendencies as limiting and nihilistic, in the sense that they deny the
full possibilities of the expression of intensities. In theory,
politics, and cultural conventions, structured dispositions take
themselves to be the actual structures of reality or "correct"
interpretations, thus limiting the possibilities of change. For
Lyotard change is life affirming, whereas the stable structures that
inhibit change are nihilistic and life denying. However, Lyotard does
not simply assert libidinal intensity as an affirmative "other" to
nihilism. For Lyotard, there is no affirmative region, no pure outside
to nihilism. Lyotard does not propose that we champion affects,
singularities, intensities and libidinal energy over systems,
structures, theory, concepts and representation. This is because the
only way libidinal energies can exist is within structures. Lyotard
does not advocate a simple liberation of desire and does not attempt
to set up a place beyond representation which would be immune to the
effects of nihilism. Lyotard presents us, rather, with a metaphysical
system in which intensities and structures are both essential elements
of the libidinal economy.
Lyotard's response to the nihilism of structure takes place through
the concept of dissimulation, which suggests that libidinal energy
must work within structures. All structures contain libidinal energy
as an under-exploited potentiality, waiting to be released and to flow
into new structures. This libidinal energy is the event, which always
contains more possibilities for interpretation and exploitation than
any single structure can give it. Lyotard's libidinal philosophy
prescribes a "freeing up" of structures, so that events may be allowed
their maximum potentiality of expression in competing interpretations
and dispositions. Releasing the energy in structures in turn creates
new events, with their own energetic potentialities. Because the event
is unpredictable, we cannot actively control the way it will be
released and form new structures. However, we can "act passively" so
as to encourage the maximum release of intensity within structures.
Lyotard's own style of writing in Libidinal Economy is one attempt to
do this: by multiplying genres of discourse, there is no overall
dominant structure in the text and it is open to several competing
modes of reading, interpretation and application. Ultimately,
libidinal philosophy suggests a method of subversion from within
existing structures through experimentation with the forms of those
structures.
4. Postmodernism
Lyotard abandoned his libidinal philosophy in the later years of the
seventies, beginning a philosophy of paganism that developed, by the
eighties, into his unique version of postmodernism. The turn from the
libidinal to the pagan and the postmodern continued a concern with
events and the limits of representation, but concerned two key
changes: 1. A change in the mode of analysis from libidinal forces to
language, and 2. a new focus on justice. Whereas in the libidinal
philosophy the focus was to see that a single interpretation of an
event did not become hegemonic, in Lyotard's later philosophy he is
primarily concerned with the problems of justice that arise between
competing interpretations of events. Lyotard's philosophy of language
and justice is most fully developed through the concept of the
differend, in the book of the same name.
a. Paganism
Lyotard develops the notion of paganism in "Lessons in Paganism"
(reprinted in The Lyotard Reader), Just Gaming and various other short
works of the late seventies. The term "paganism" refers to a way of
thinking that takes into account and strives to do justice to
incommensurable differences. Just as pagan religions believe in a
number of different gods rather than just one God, Lyotard's pagan
philosophy represents a concern for pluralism and multiplicity (terms
he uses synonymously to oppose the idea of universality). This concern
for difference, multiplicity and pluralism is related to Lyotard's
basic commitment to an ontology of singular events: if reality is
constituted by unique happenings, then there will be no universal law
of judgement which will be able to take account of each and every
event in a way which does them all justice. Paganism suggests that
there are irreducible differences in the order of things, and that we
must take things on their own terms without attempting to reduce them
to universals. In his writings on paganism, Lyotard analyses politics
in the form of a justice of rhetoric. In "Lessons in Paganism" he
claims that all discourse is narrative; all theory, all politics, all
law, are merely a collection of stories. In Just Gaming, he analyses
situations where questions of justice and judgement arise in terms of
language games. Lyotard rejects the claims of any discourse to be
grounded in truth. He rejects the idea of a master-discourse (later
called a metanarrative) that is thought to provide the basis for
judgement in all situations. (Marxism, Hegelian philosophy, and Kant's
ideal of unity or totality as regulating justice are examples of
master-discourses that have dominated the philosophical tradition.)
Instead, Lyotard suggests that paganism is the most appropriate
response to the desire for justice. Paganism is godless politics; it
is the abandonment of universal judgement for specific, plural
judgements. This means giving up the idea of a single, law-like
theoretical schema which could be applied to any situation in which
judgment is required. Lyotard asserts that a justice of multiplicities
requires a multiplicity of justices. Paganism is the attempt to judge
without pre-existing criteria, in matters of truth, beauty, politics
and ethics.
Paganism rejects any universal criteria for judgement, yet Lyotard
claims that we must judge, that justice demands this of us. So how do
we judge, without criteria? Lyotard invokes both Kant and Nietzsche in
his answer. In Kantian terms, we judge through the constitutive
imagination. For Kant, this ability to judge, and to invent criteria,
is mysterious, and there is little we can say about it. In Nietzschean
terms, Lyotard says that judgement is an expression of the will to
power. It is perhaps misleading of Lyotard to say that paganism is
judgement without criteria; for it is judgement only without universal
criteria. What he is denying is the possibility of a discourse that
will give us adequate criteria for judgement in each and every case.
Instead, what we must do (as pagans) is meet every circumstance that
requires judgement anew, and create criteria specific to that case by
an affirmative act of the imaginative will. Thus we will get a
plurality of criteria, a plurality of judgements, a plurality of
justices. In this sense, paganism can be thought of as a plurality of
rules of judgement (gods), as opposed to belief in just one rule or
set of rules (God). Somewhat paradoxically, perhaps (as Lyotard
himself admits), the justice of this pluralism is assured by a
prescriptive of universal value – the prescriptive that the rules of
individual language games be respected; that they are not subsumed
under a single criterion of judgement.
b. The Postmodern Condition
Lyotard soon abandoned the term 'paganism' in favour of
'postmodernism.' He presents his initial and highly influential
formulation of postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, commissioned by the government of Quebec and published in
1979. Lyotard famously defines the postmodern as 'incredulity towards
metanarratives,' where metanarratives are understood as totalising
stories about history and the goals of the human race that ground and
legitimise knowledges and cultural practises. The two metanarratives
that Lyotard sees as having been most important in the past are (1)
history as progressing towards social enlightenment and emancipation,
and (2) knowledge as progressing towards totalisation. Modernity is
defined as the age of metanarrative legitimation, and postmodernity as
the age in which metanarratives have become bankrupt. Through his
theory of the end of metanarratives, Lyotard develops his own version
of what tends to be a consensus among theorists of the postmodern –
postmodernity as an age of fragmentation and pluralism.
The Postmodern Condition is a study of the status of knowledge in
computerized societies. It is Lyotard's view that certain technical
and technological advancements have taken place since the Second World
War (his historical pin-pointing of the beginning of postmodernity)
which have had and are still having a radical effect on the status of
knowledge in the world's most advanced countries. As a defining
element with which to characterise these technical and technological
advancements, Lyotard chooses computerization. Lyotard identifies the
problem with which he is dealing – the variable in the status of
knowledge – as one of legitimation. For Lyotard, this is a question of
both knowledge and power. Knowledge and power are simply two sides of
the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what
needs to be decided? According to Lyotard, in the computer age the
question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government.
With vast amounts of knowledge stored digitally in databases, who
decides what knowledge is worth storing (what is legitimate knowledge)
and who has access to these databases? Lyotard points a suspicious
finger at multinational corporations. Using IBM as an example, he
suggests a hypothetical in which the corporation owns a certain belt
in the Earth's orbital field in which circulate satellites for
communication and/or for storing data banks. Lyotard then asks, 'who
will have access to them? Who will determine which channels or data
are forbidden? The State? Or will the State simply be one user among
others?'
The method Lyotard chooses to use in his investigations is that of
language games. Lyotard writes that the developments in postmodernity
he is dealing with have been largely concerned with language:
'phonology and theories of linguistics, problems of communication and
cybernetics, modern theories of algebra and informatics, computers and
their languages, problems of translation and the search for areas of
compatibility among computer languages, problems of information
storage and data banks, telematics and the perfection of intelligent
terminals, paradoxology.' Lyotard's use of language games is derived
from Ludwig Wittgenstein. The theory of language games means that each
of the various categories of utterance can be defined in terms of
rules specifying their properties and the uses to which they can be
put. Lyotard makes three particularly important observations about
language games. Firstly, the rules of language games do not carry
within themselves their own legitimation, but are subject to a
"contract" between "players" (interlocutors). Secondly, if there are
no rules there is no game and even a small change in the rules changes
the game. Thirdly, every utterance should be thought of as a "move" in
a game. Different types of utterances, as identified by Wittgenstein,
pertain to different types of language games. Lyotard gives us a few
examples of types of utterances. The "denotative" is an utterance
which attempts to correctly identify the object or referent to which
it refers (such as "Snow is white"). The "performative" is an
utterance which is itself a performance of an act to which it refers
(such as "I promise"). The "prescriptive" is an utterance which
instructs, recommends, requests, or commands (such as "Give me
money"). For both Wittgenstein and Lyotard, language games are
incommensurable, and moves in one language game cannot be translated
into moves in another language game. For example, we cannot judge what
ought to be the case (a prescriptive) from what is the case (a
denotative.)
Lyotard's choice of language games is primarily political in
motivation, and relates to the close links between knowledge and
power. In examining the status of knowledge in postmodernity, Lyotard
is examining the political as well as epistemological aspects of
knowledge (legitimation), and he sees the basic social bond – the
minimum relation required for society to exist – as moves within
language games. Lyotard needs a methodological representation to apply
to society in order to examine the status of knowledge in postmodern
societies. He presents us with two alternative views of society that
have been popular in this century: society as a unitary whole
("traditional" theory) or society as a binary division ("critical"
theory). Lyotard rejects both of these alternatives on the grounds
that the choice seems difficult or arbitrary, and also rejects a third
alternative – that we might distinguish two kinds of equally
legitimate knowledge, one based on the view of society as unitary and
the other on the view of society as binary. This division of knowledge
is caught within a type of oppositional thinking that Lyotard believes
is out of step with postmodern modes of knowledge.
Instead of the recently popular or "modern" models of society, Lyotard
argues that even as the status of knowledge has changed in
postmodernity, so has the nature of the social bond, particularly as
it is evident in society's institutions of knowledge. Lyotard presents
a postmodern methodological representation of society as composed of
multifarious and fragmented language games, but games which strictly
(but not rigidly – the rules of a game can change) control the moves
which can be made within them by reference to narratives of
legitimation which are deemed appropriate by their respective
institutions. Thus one follows orders in the army, prays in church,
questions in philosophy, etc., etc. In his analysis of the state of
knowledge in postmodernity, Lyotard firstly distinguishes between two
types of knowledge – "narrative" knowledge and "scientific" knowledge.
Narrative knowledge is the kind of knowledge prevalent in "primitive"
or "traditional' societies, and is based on storytelling, sometimes in
the form of ritual, music and dance. Narrative knowledge has no
recourse to legitimation – its legitimation is immediate within the
narrative itself, in the "timelessness" of the narrative as an
enduring tradition – it is told by people who once heard it to
listeners who will one day tell it themselves. There is no question of
questioning it. Indeed, Lyotard suggests that there is an
incommensurability between the question of legitimation itself and the
authority of narrative knowledge.
In scientific knowledge, however, the question of legitimation always
arises. Lyotard says that one of the most striking features of
scientific knowledge is that it includes only denotative statements,
to the exclusion of all other kinds (narrative knowledge includes
other kinds of statements, such as prescriptives). According to the
"narrative" of science, however, only knowledge which is legitimated
is legitimate – i.e. is knowledge at all. Scientific knowledge is
legitimated by certain scientific criteria – the repeatability of
experiments, etc. If the entire project of science needs a
metalegitimation, however (and the criteria for scientific knowledge
would itself seem to demand that it does) then science has no recourse
but to narrative knowledge (which according to scientific criteria is
no knowledge at all). This narrative has usually taken the form of a
heroic epic of some kind, with the scientist as a "hero of knowledge"
who discovers scientific truths. The distinction between narrative and
scientific knowledge is a crucial point in Lyotard's theory of
postmodernism, and one of the defining features of postmodernity, on
his account, is the dominance of scientific knowledge over narrative
knowledge. The pragmatics of scientific knowledge do not allow the
recognition of narrative knowledge as legitimate, since it is not
restricted to denotative statements). Lyotard sees a danger in this
dominance, since it follows from his view that reality cannot be
captured within one genre of discourse or representation of events
that science will miss aspects of events which narrative knowledge
will capture. In other words, Lyotard does not believe that science
has any justification in claiming to be a more legitimate form of
knowledge than narrative. Part of his work in The Postmodern Condition
can be read as a defence of narrative knowledge from the increasing
dominance of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, Lyotard sees a danger
to the future of academic research which stems from the way scientific
knowledge has come to be legitimated in postmodernity (as opposed to
the way it was legitimated in modernity).
In modernity the narrative of science was legitimated by one of a
number of metanarratives, the two principal ones being respectively
Hegelian and Marxist in nature. The Hegelian metanarrative speculates
on the eventual totality and unity of all knowledge; scientific
advancement is legitimated by the story that it will one day lead us
to that goal. The Marxist metanarrative gives science a role in the
emancipation of humanity. According to Lyotard, postmodernity is
characterised by the end of metanarratives. So what legitimates
science now? Lyotard's answer is – performativity. This is what
Lyotard calls the "technological criterion" – the most efficient
input/output ratio. The technical and technological changes over the
last few decades – as well as the development of capitalism – have
caused the production of knowledge to become increasingly influenced
by a technological model. It was during the industrial revolution,
Lyotard suggests, that knowledge entered into the economic equation
and became a force for production, but it is in postmodernity that
knowledge is becoming the central force for production. Lyotard
believes that knowledge is becoming so important an economic factor,
in fact, that he suggests that one day wars will be waged over the
control of information.
Lyotard calls the change that has taken place in the status of
knowledge due to the rise of the performativity criterion the
mercantilization of knowledge. In postmodernity, knowledge has become
primarily a saleable commodity. Knowledge is produced in order to be
sold, and is consumed in order to fuel a new production. According to
Lyotard knowledge in postmodernity has largely lost its truth-value,
or rather, the production of knowledge is no longer an aspiration to
produce truth. Today students no longer ask if something is true, but
what use it is to them. Lyotard believes that computerization and the
legitimation of knowledge by the performativity criterion is doing
away with the idea that the absorption of knowledge is inseparable
from the training of minds. In the near future, he predicts, education
will no longer be given "en bloc" to people in their youth as a
preparation for life. Rather, it will be an ongoing process of
learning updated technical information that will be essential for
their functioning in their respective professions.
Lyotard does not believe that the innovations he predicts in
postmodern education will necessarily have a detrimental effect on
erudition. He does, however, see a problem with the legitimation of
knowledge by performativity. This problem lies in the area of
research. Legitimation by performativity lends itself to what Lyotard
calls "terror" – the exclusion of players from language games or the
exclusion of certain games entirely. Most true "discoveries," Lyotard
argues, are discoveries by virtue of the fact that they are so radical
that they change the rules of the game – they cannot even be
articulated within the rules of the "dominant" game (which is dominant
because it draws the consensus of opinions). Many discoveries are not
found to have a use until quite some time after they are made;
therefore they seem to be of little value by the performativity
criterion. Furthermore, for economic reasons, legitimation by
performativity tends to follow the consensus opinion – that which is
perceived by the majority of experts to have the most efficient
input/output ratio is considered most likely in fact to be most
performatively efficient, and hence the safest investment.
Lyotard argues that legitimation by performativity is against the
interests of research. He does not claim that research should be aimed
at production of "the truth"; he does not try to re-invoke the
metanarratives of modernity to legitimate research. Rather, he sees
the role of research as the production of ideas. Legitimation of
knowledge by performativity terrorises the production of ideas. What,
then, is the alternative? Lyotard proposes that a better form of
legitimation would be legitimation by paralogy. The etymology of this
word resides in the Greek words para – beside, past, beyond – and
logos in its sense as "reason." Thus paralogy is the movement beyond
or against reason. Lyotard sees reason not as a universal and
immutable human faculty or principle but as a specific and variable
human production; "paralogy" for him means the movement against an
established way of reasoning. In relation to research, this means the
production of new ideas by going against or outside of established
norms, of making new moves in language games, changing the rules of
language games and inventing new games. Lyotard argues that this is in
fact what takes place in scientific research, despite the imposition
of the performativity criterion of legitimation. This is particularly
evident in what Lyotard calls "postmodern science" – the search for
instabilities [see Science and Technology]. For Lyotard, knowledge is
not only the known but also the "revelation" or "articulation" of the
unknown. Thus he advocates the legitimation of knowledge by paralogy
as a form of legitimation that would satisfy both the desire for
justice and the desire for the unknown.
c. The Differend
Lyotard develops the philosophy of language that underlies his work on
paganism and postmodernism most fully in The Differend: Phrases in
Dispute. This book is, by Lyotard's own estimation, both his most
philosophical and most important. Here he analyses how injustices take
place in the context of language. A differend is a case of conflict
between parties that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule
of judgement applicable to both. In the case of a differend, the
parties cannot agree on a rule or criterion by which their dispute
might be decided. A differend is opposed to a litigation – a dispute
which can be equitably resolved because the parties involved can agree
on a rule of judgement. Lyotard distinguishes the victim from the
plaintiff. The later is the wronged party in a litigation; the former,
the wronged party in a differend. In a litigation, the plaintiff's
wrong can be presented. In a differend, the victim's wrong cannot be
presented. A victim, for Lyotard, is not just someone who has been
wronged, but someone who has also lost the power to present this
wrong. This disempowerment can occur in several ways: it may quite
literally be a silencing; the victim may be threatened into silence or
in some other way disallowed to speak. Alternatively, the victim may
be able to speak, but that speech is unable to present the wrong done
in the discourse of the rule of judgement. The victim may not be
believed, may be thought to be mad, or not be understood. The
discourse of the rule of judgement may be such that the victim's wrong
cannot be translated into its terms; the wrong may not be presentable
as a wrong.
Lyotard presents various examples of the differend, the most important
of which is Auschwitz. He uses the example of the revisionist
historian Faurisson's demands for proof of the Holocaust to show how
the differend operates as a sort of double bind or "catch-22."
Faurisson will only accept proof of the existence of gas chambers from
eyewitnesses who were themselves victims of the gas chambers. But of
course, any such eyewitnesses are dead and are not able to testify.
Faurisson concludes from this that there were no gas chambers. The
situation is this: either there were no gas chambers, in which case
there would be no eyewitnesses to produce evidence, or there were gas
chambers, in which case there would still be no eyewitnesses to
produce evidence (since they would be dead). Since Faurisson will
accept no evidence for the existence of gas chambers except the
testimony of actual victims, he will conclude from both possibilities
(i.e. gas chambers existed; gas chambers didn't exist) that gas
chambers didn't exist. The situation is a double bind because there
are two alternatives – either there were gas chambers or there were
not – which lead to the same conclusion: there were no gas chambers
(and no Final Solution). The case is a differend because the harm done
to the victims cannot be presented in the standard of judgment upheld
by Faurisson. Lyotard presents the logic of the double bind involved
in the differend in general as follows: either p or not p; if not-p,
then Fp; if p, then not-p, then Fp. The two possibilities (p or not-p)
both lead to the same conclusion (Fp). Lyotard gives a further example
of the logic of the double bind: it is like saying both either it is
white, or it is not white; and if it is white it is not white.
Another example of the differend which commentators on Lyotard often
invoke is that of indigenous peoples' claims to land rights in
colonised countries. This example shows the relevance of Lyotard's
work for practical problems of justice in the contemporary world. Let
us take Australian Aborigines as an example. Many tribal groups claim
that land which they traditionally inhabited is now owned and
controlled by the descendants of European colonists. They claim that
the land was taken from them wrongfully, and that it should be given
back to them. There is a differend in this case because Aboriginal
land rights are established by tribal law, and evidence for such
rights may not be presentable in the law of the Australian government.
The court of appeal in which claims to land rights are heard functions
entirely according to government law, and tribal law is not considered
a valid system of judgment. In the case of a dispute over a certain
area of land by farmers who are descendants of colonists on the one
hand, and a tribe of Aborigines on the other hand, the court of appeal
will be the one which involves the law that the farmers recognise
(government law), while the law that the Aborigines recognise (tribal
law) will not be considered valid. It may be the case that the only
evidence for the claim to land rights that the Aborigines have will
not be admissible as evidence in the court of government law (though
it is perfectly acceptable in tribal law). Hence, we have a case of a
wrong which cannot be presented as a wrong; a differend.
Lyotard develops the theory of the differend through a complex
analysis of language, drawing heavily on analytic philosophers as well
as ancients and early moderns. Lyotard's ontology of events is
developed here in terms of the phrase as event, and the limits of
representation are seen in the indeterminacy involved in the linking
of phrases. Phrases, on Lyotard's account, may be extralinguistic, and
can include signs, gestures, or anything that happens. Every event is
to be understood as a phrase in the philosophy of the differend. This
characterisation of events as phrases may be understood as a
theoretical fiction or "a way of speaking" which allows Lyotard to
develop a theory of events through the analysis of language, just as
the libidinal philosophy does using libidinal energy. Lyotard calls
the way phrases are linked together in series, one after the other,
the concatenation of phrases. The law of concatenation states that
these linkages must be made – that is, a phrase must be followed by
another phrase – but that how to link is never determinate. There are
many possible ways of linking on to a phrase, and no way is the right
way.
In order to characterise phrases as events which are beyond full
understanding and accurate representation, Lyotard undermines the
common view that the meanings of phrases can be determined by what
they refer to (the referent). That is, for Lyotard the meaning of a
phrase as event (something happens) cannot be fixed by appealing to
reality (what actually happened). He develops this view of language by
appealing to Saul Kripke's concept of the proper name as a "rigid
designator" and by defining "reality" in an original way. Proper names
pick our referents in a way that is rigid and consistent but,
according to Lyotard, empty of sense. For example, the name Fred may
consistently pick out a particular person, but there are many
different senses or meanings which may be attached to this person.
Only phrases carry sense (i.e. tell us something meaningful about
Fred). The proper name may fix reference, but does nothing to fix
sense. The name acts as a point which links the referent and the many
senses which may be attached to it. Lyotard then defines reality as
this complex of possible senses attached to a referent through a name.
The correct sense of a phrase cannot be determined by a reference to
reality, since the referent itself does not fix sense and reality
itself is defined as the complex of competing senses attached to a
referent. The phrase event remains indeterminate.
Lyotard uses the concepts of a phrase universe and of the difference
between presentation and situation in order to show how phases can
carry meanings and yet be indeterminate. Every phrase presents a
universe, composed of the following four elements or, as Lyotard calls
them, instances:
1.The sense (the possible meanings of the phrase)
2.The referent (the thing to which the phrase refers)
3.The addressor (that from which the phrase comes)
4.The addressee (that to which the phrase is sent)
In the initial presentation of the phrase, the instances of the
universe are equivocal. That is, there are many possible ways in which
the instances may be situated in relation to each other. Who or what
uttered the phrase, and to whom? To what does the phrase refer? What
sense of the phrase is meant? This equivocation means that the meaning
of the phrase is not fixed in the initial presentation, and only
becomes fixed through what Lyotard calls situation. Situation takes
place when the instances of the phrase universe are fixed through the
concatenation of phrases. That is, when the phrase is followed by
another phrase. When phrases are concatenated, they follow rules for
linking called phrase regimens. Phrase regimens fix the instances of
the phrase universe within a concatenation; these regimens are
syntactic types of phrases such as the cognitive, the descriptive, the
prescriptive, the interrogative, the evaluative, and so on. Any
situation of a phrase within a concatenation will only be one possible
situation of the initial presentation of the phrase, however. It is
always possible to situate the phrase in a different way by
concatenating with a different phrase regimen. In other words, the
presentation of the phrase event is not able to be accurately
represented by any particular situation. This also means that there is
no "correct" way of concatenating a phrase, no correct phrase regimen
to be employed in following one phrase with another.
Lyotard insists that phrase regimens are heterogenous and
incommensurable. That is, they are of radically different types and
cannot be meaningfully compared through an initial presentation of the
phrase event of which they are situations. However, different phrase
regimens can be brought together through genres. Genres supply rules
for the linking of phrases, but rather than being syntactic rules as
phrase regimens are, genres direct how to concatenate through ends,
goals, or stakes. What is at stake in the genre of comedy, for
example, is to be humorous, to make people laugh. This goal directs
how phrases are linked on from one to another. As an example, Lyotard
suggests that the phrase "To arms!" might be followed by the phrase
"You have just formulated a prescription" if the goal is to make
people laugh, but not if the goal implied by the genre is to inspire
direct action (such as may be the case if it is uttered by a military
commander on a battlefield). Genres of discourse can bring
heterogenous phrase regimens together in a concatenation, but genres
themselves are heterogenous and incommensurable. This means that there
is no "correct" genre in which to situate the initial phrase which is
presented, and no genre has more validity than others. The differend
arises on this level of genres when the phrase event gives rise to
different genres, but one genre claims validity over the others. That
is, one genre claims the exclusive right to impose rules of
concatenation from the initial phrase.
How do we know when a differend has occurred? Lyotard says that it is
signalled by the difficulty of linking on from one phrase to another.
A differend occurs when a discourse does not allow the linkages which
would enable the presentation of a wrong. Lyotard insists that phrases
must, of necessity, follow other phrases – even silence is a kind of
phrase, with its own generic effects. A silent phrase in the context
of a dispute may be covering four possible states of affairs,
corresponding to each of the instances in the phrase universe:
1. The sense: The meaning of the referent cannot be signified.
2. The referent: The referent (the wrong, etc.) did not take place.
3. The addressor: The addressor does not believe that the referent
falls within the competence of him/her self to present.
4. The addressee: The addressor does not believe that the referent
(the wrong, etc.) falls within the competence (to hear, to understand,
to judge, etc.) of the addressee.
In order for the referent to be expressed, these four silent negations
must be withdrawn. The referent must have reality, must be presentable
in the rules of the discourse, and the addressor must have confidence
in the competence of both him/her self and the addressee. Through the
idea of the differend, Lyotard has drawn particular attention to the
problems of the presentability of the referent when the parties in
dispute cannot agree on a common discourse, or rule of judgement (i.e.
cannot agree on the genre(s) of phrase linkage). Justice demands,
however, that wrongs be presented – we must at least try to "present
the unpresentable." How is this possible? Lyotard does not believe
that there is any easy answer. But for the sake of justice, we must
try. We must identify differends as best we can – sometimes, no more
than vague feelings attest to the existence of a differend. It may be
the feeling of "not being able to find the words." Lyotard associates
the identification of a differend with the feeling of the sublime, the
mixture of pleasure and pain which accompanies the attempt to present
the unpresentable. He privileges art as the realm which is best able
to provide testimony to differends through its sublime effects [see
Reason and Representation; Politics; Art and Aesthetics].
5. Reason and Representation
Lyotard's philosophy frequently calls into question the powers of
reason, rejecting many of the claims that have been made about it in
the history of philosophy. The limitations of reason are particularly
evident for Lyotard in regard to the problems of representation. Since
Descartes, the dominant model of rational thought in Western
philosophy has been that of the human subject representing the
objective world to its self. It has frequently been claimed that in
this way complete and certain knowledge is possible, at least in
theory. Lyotard calls such claims into doubt through his thesis that
events exceed representation. Furthermore, Lyotard draws attention to
the fact that reason tends to operate with structured systems of
concepts which exclude the sensual and emotional, but that these
exclusions can never be entirely maintained. On the one hand, any
representation will miss something of the event, and on the other,
non-rational forces such as feelings and desires will arise to disrupt
rational schemas of thought.
Lyotard's analysis of the limits of reason and representation is
played out in Discours, figure through the terms of the discursive and
the figural. The discursive is the term used for reason and
representation here; it is the rational system of representation by
concepts that forms a system of oppositions. The figural is what
exceeds rational representation; it appeals to sensual experience,
emotions and desires. Lyotard uses the metaphors of flatness and depth
to refer to discourse and figure, respectively. The opposition between
discourse and figure is deconstructed, however, since to maintain it
as an opposition would be to remain within the logic of discourse (and
to retain discourse as primary). Lyotard introduces a distinction
between opposition and difference to account for the differing ways in
which the discursive and the figural function. Difference corresponds
to figure, and the distinction between discourse and figure itself is
said to be one of difference rather than opposition. In opposition,
two terms are rigidly opposed and quite distinct; in difference, the
two terms are mutually implicated, yet ultimately irreconcilable.
Difference is a disruptive force at the limits of discourse,
indicating that no rational system of representation can ever be
closed or complete, but is always opened up to forces (sensual,
emotional, figural) that it cannot enclose within itself.
In Discours, figure, Lyotard takes structuralism (still a dominant
intellectual trend in France in the early seventies when the book was
written) as an example of the excesses of reason and representation.
Structuralism seeks to explain everything in terms of underlying,
conditioning structures that take the form of rigid systems of
oppositions. His aim is to show that structuralism ignores the figural
elements at work both outside and within representational structures.
Lyotard shows that discourse and figure are mutually implicated (thus
deconstructing the opposition) by examining the relationship of
Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.
For Saussure, language is a "flat" system of opposing terms that gain
meaning from each other, rather than from referents outside the
system. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology suggests that we experience the
world on a pre-cognitive level as ambiguous and somewhat chaotic sense
data which must be synthesized by the perceiving subject in order to
structure the world in a meaningful way. Saussure's linguistics
suggests that our understanding of the world is given as a structure
to begin with, while Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology suggests that we
first encounter an unstructured world, which we must work to
structure. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of the
depth of the visual field, Lyotard posits an interruption of the
supposedly flat system of language by this depth. This takes place
through the deictic terms in language (such as here, now, I, you,
this) which gain meaning by referring to temporal and spatial
specificities in the world of the language-user. The discursive
structure of language, therefore, needs reference at some points to
sensual experience. The opposition is further deconstructed by
Lyotard's insistence that our experience of space may also be
structured in a discursive fashion. Space can be broken into ordered
elements related to each other in a structured and organised way, such
as by mapping it with a three dimensional grid. A rigid theory of how
the body interacts with space, as Merleau-Ponty may arguably be
accused of developing, also exhibits structuralist tendencies. This
leads Lyotard to a criticism of phenomenology as well, on the grounds
that its descriptions of the body in the world are also too structural
and do not account for the disruptive force of the figural. Lyotard
sees Lacan's application of Saussurean linguistics to psychoanalysis
as particularly worrisome. He attacks Lacan's famous dictum that 'the
unconscious is structured like a language' on the grounds that it is
an over-rationalisation that posits representational structures to the
exclusion of the figural. Returning to Freud, Lyotard develops a
theory of libidinal forces as figural, as disruptive of reason and
representation.
Reason and representation are further "critiqued" in the libidinal
philosophy of Libidinal Economy and the related essays, although here
the very idea of critique itself is called into question, since
insofar as it remains theory, it remains within the oppositional logic
of representational rationality. Rather than opposing the libidinal to
the rational, then, Lyotard develops his theory of dissimulation, the
mutual enfoldment of the libidinal and the rational which is similar
to the deconstructive logic of difference worked out in Discours,
figure. Lyotard's main criticism of representation in the libidinal
philosophy is that it is nihilistic. He draws an analogy between
representational structures and Friedrich Nietzsche's characterisation
of religion and transcendental philosophy as forms of nihilism. For
Nietzsche religion is nihilistic because it places the highest values
(as the ground for all values) in a transcendent realm which cannot be
accessed, thereby cutting us off from the highest values and devaluing
the realm of our actual experience. According to Lyotard,
representational theory follows this model by placing the reality that
representation refers to in a transcendent realm. Lyotard expresses
this nihilism in terms of what he calls "the Great zero." This zero is
the divide between representation and what it represents.
Representation is nihilistic because it can never close the divide
between representation and reality, effectively cutting off
representational thought from access to reality. What is represented
is constantly deferred. For Lyotard semiotics is a prime example of
representational nihilism, because the definition of the sign is that
it replaces something (negating that which it replaces).
In the libidinal philosophy Lyotard does not reject theory and
representation itself as necessarily nihilistic; rather, it is
representational theory's own understanding of itself – how it
represents itself – that is the focus of Lyotard's attack. Instead of
opposing theory with alternative practises which are more libidinal,
Lyotard asserts that theory itself is a libidinal practice which
denies that it is libidinal. The nihilistic aspect of representational
theory is this denial of the libidinal. Theory attempts to be detached
and "cold," and takes itself to be a stable and consistent structure
which represents stable structures in the world. Lyotard's response to
the nihilism of representational theory is not to propose an "other"
to it (which he believes is impossible), but to inscribe theory itself
into the libidinal economy. It is the concept of dissimulation which
makes this possible. Systems dissimulate affects. Representational
theory is itself a libidinal dispositif, and Lyotard accentuates the
libidinal aspects of theory in order to combat its nihilistic
tendencies. Against the nihilism of the semiotic sign Lyotard proposes
a reinterpretation of the sign: the tensor. The tensor is a
duplicitous sign. One of its sides (or potentialities) is the semiotic
sign; this side is the potential to be inscribed in an existing
structure of meaning. The other side of the tensor contains residual
potentialities for other meanings. This side of the tensor disrupts
and escapes the system, flowing into new systems and structures. The
tensor expresses the theory of dissimulation at work in the sign. We
might think of the tensor as the semiotic sign dissimulating affects
which might disrupt its meaning and flow into new systems.
The critique of reason and representation shift in Lyotard's
postmodern philosophy from a focus on the figurative and libidinal
forces which disrupt systems to an analysis of incommensurability in
language and the limits of the rational faculty. Lyotard uses
Wittgenstein's idea of language games to show that reason and
representation cannot be totalizing. The end of metanarratives means
that no single overarching theory can pretend to account for
everything. Rather, the postmodern condition is composed of fragmented
language games attached to incommensurable forms of life. For Lyotard
language is composed of a multiplicity of phrase regimes which cannot
be translated into each other. Some are descriptive, some
prescriptive, etc. These phrase regimes have no outside criteria for
comparison. Between them lies the differend, an absolute difference
which cannot be reconciled. In Lyotard's postmodern philosophy, then,
reason and representation are set limits by the incommensurability of
language games; it is not possible for reason to understand everything
through a representational system. In the postmodern philosophy events
are analyzed as phrases, and again Lyotard asserts that events exceed
representation in that no representational system can account for all
phrases.
Furthermore, Lyotard's postmodernism draws attention to the limits of
reason through its focus on the sublime. The differend is experienced
as a feeling of not being able to find the words to express something;
it signals the limits of one language game or phrase regime and the
attempt to move on to another one. Lyotard analyses this experience in
terms of Kant's idea of the sublime, which is itself an experience of
the limits of reason. In Kant's philosophy, the sublime is the mixed
feeling of pleasure and pain that we feel in the face of something of
great magnitude and grandeur. We can have an idea of such things, but
we cannot match up that idea with a direct sensory intuition since
sublime objects surpass our sensory abilities. An example of a sublime
object for Kant would be a mountain; we can have an idea of a
mountain, but not a sensory intuition of it as a whole. We feel pain
at the frustration of our faculties to fully grasp the sublime object,
but a pleasure as well in the attempt to do so. Lyotard extends the
notion of the sublime from that which is absolutely great to all
things which confound our abilities to synthesize them into knowledge.
Thus the sublime is situated at the differend between language games
and phrase regimes; we feel a mixture of pleasure and pain in the
frustration of not knowing how to follow on from a phrase but feeling
that there is something important that must be put into words. In
Lyotard's postmodern philosophy the sublime is the feeling that
indicates the limits of reason and representation.
6. The Subject and the Inhuman
Like many other prominent French thinkers of his generation (such as
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze), Lyotard develops
critiques of the subject and of humanism. Lyotard's misgivings about
the subject as a central epistemological category can be understood in
terms of his concern for difference, multiplicity, and the limits of
organisational systems. For Lyotard the subject as traditionally
understood in philosophy acts as a central point for the organisation
of knowledge, eliminating difference and disorderly elements. Lyotard
seeks to dethrone the subject from this organisational role, which in
effect means decentring it as a philosophical category. He sees the
subject not as primary, foundational, and central, but as one element
among others which should be examined by thought. Furthermore, he does
not see the subject as a transcendent and immutable entity, but as
produced by wider social and political forces. In the libidinal
philosophy, the subject is construed as one organisational structure
or dispositif which channels and exploits libidinal energies. Like
other structures which threaten to be hegemonic, Lyotard proposes its
disruption through the release of the libidinal forces it contains
which are not consistent with it. That is, the opening of the subject
to forces which are deemed irrational, such as feelings and desires.
Furthermore, Lyotard's insistence that the freeing of dissimulated
libidinal forces can only be passively done and not actively
controlled is motivated by his identification of wilful acts with the
organisational subject.
In Lyotard's postmodern philosophy, the fragmentation of language
games also means the social subject fragments and seems to dissolve.
The subject cannot be seen as a master of language games, a unifying
power, but is rather a node at which different incommensurable
language games intersect. Lyotard furthermore asserts that avant-garde
art works of the twentieth century do not reinforce the subject, but
call it into question through the unsettling effect of the sublime.
Humanism is also called into question in Lyotard's later philosophy
through the term "Inhuman." Lyotard objects to humanism on the grounds
that it depends upon a definition of the human which is exclusionary
of difference. He asks why, if humanism is correct that there is a
human nature, we are not born human but rather have to go through a
terroristic education in order to become acceptably human. The term
"Inhuman" has two meanings for Lyotard. Firstly, it refers to the
dehumanising effects of science and technology in society. Secondly,
it refers to those potentially positive forces that the idea of the
human tries to repress or exclude, but which inevitably return with
disruptive effects. Lyotard tries to show the limit of the humanistic
ideal by imagining a science-fiction-like scenario in which, in 4.5
billion years time when our sun explodes, the human race will have
developed the ability to survive without the Earth. In one sense this
survival is the humanist dream (since survival is essential for the
central importance of the human race in the universe), but in another
sense it might constitute the end of the human, since the changes
required to survive in space would be so radical as to erase anything
we currently recognise as human. On the one hand Lyotard criticises
the dehumanising effects of the progress of science and technology
that are themselves bound up with the idea of human progress, and on
the other he affirms the dehumanising forces that open up our thinking
to more than a simple definition of the human.
7. Science and Technology
Lyotard develops some reflections on science and technology within the
scope of his postmodern philosophy [see The Postmodern Condition]. The
changing status of science and technology is a primary feature of the
postmodern condition, and Lyotard calls certain new forms of science
postmodern. His concern with an ontology of events and a politics of
competing representations of those events underlies his theorization
of science and technology in postmodernity, in which the collapse of
metanarratives has meant the proliferation of multiple,
incommensurable language games (of which science is only one). We
should interpret Lyotard as taking this to be a good thing, since such
a proliferation more accurately reflects his general ontological view
of the world as composed of events which give rise to multiple
interpretations, and which can never be accurately captured by a
single narrative. Metanarratives do violence to alternative
representations of events that are valid in their own right. Lyotard
sees the rise of capital, science and technology linked through
legitimation by performativity as a similar threat, however. He calls
this threat "terrorism": the threat of exclusion from playing a
language game.
The principle of legitimation functioning in capitalism is efficiency
or performativity [see The Postmodern Condition], and this principle
attempts to be hegemonic. Science and technology are prime candidates
for this attempted hegemony, since they contribute to the growth of
capital. Lyotard accepts that performativity is a legitimate criterion
for technology, but argues that it is not proper to science. He
develops his argument around what he calls postmodern science, by
which he means recent sciences such as Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal
theory and Rene Thom's catastrophe theory that search for
instabilities rather than regularities in systems. Following to some
extent philosophers of science Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend,
Lyotard argues that the performativity criterion does not accurately
capture the kind of knowledge developed in the sciences nor the way
such knowledge develops. For Lyotard, science is a language game to
which legitimation by performativity is not proper. Such
performativity merely subordinates science to capital. According to
Lyotard, it is the idea of a deterministic system that allows
performativity in science, since determinism allows the prediction and
calculation of input/output values.
Postmodern science, however, does not function according to a
legitimation by performativity precisely because it undermines
determinism. Postmodern science searches for instabilities in systems,
undermining predictability. Lyotard cites thermodynamics as the
beginning of performativity in terms of determinism, and suggests that
quantum mechanics and atomic physics have limited the applicability of
this principle. Postmodern sciences, which concern themselves with
undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized
by incomplete information, "fracta," catastrophes, and pragmatic
paradoxes, continue to undermine performativity in the form of
determinism. Furthermore, postmodern science is undermining
legitimation by performativity by retheorizing the way science itself
develops: science does not develop in a progressive fashion and
towards a unified knowledge, but in a discontinuous and paradoxical
manner, undermining previous paradigms by the development of new ones.
This is what Lyotard calls legitimation by paralogy. He suggests that
science may be undergoing a paradigm shift from deterministic
performativity to the paralogy of instabilities. Yet this is only a
possibility: performativity still looms large on the horizon. Lyotard
suggests science could go either way. He champions paralogy over
performativity, since it contributes to healthy research in the
sciences and undermines the hegemonic control capital attempts to
have. Postmodern science is about the generation of new ideas rather
than the efficient application of existing knowledge.
Lyotard is also concerned about the social impact of science and
technology in postmodernity. He sees the performativity criterion as
applying not just to science, technology, and capital, but to the
State as well. According to the performativity criterion, society is
seen as a system which must aim for efficient functioning, and this
efficiency is a kind of terror which threatens to exclude inefficient
elements. Furthermore, in post-industrial society information has
become a primary mode of production, and Lyotard is concerned that in
the interests of maximising profits information will become
increasingly privatised by corporations. He proposes the possibility
of IBM having exclusive control of databases and satellites. In
response to these threats, Lyotard proposes that the public be given
free access to memory and data banks. This will allow computerization
to contribute to knowledge functioning by paralogy rather than by
performativity, and to the free functioning of society as a set of
heterogenous elements rather than an efficient system, removing the
threat of terror.
8. Politics
Lyotard's early political commitments were to revolutionary socialism
and a relatively orthodox Marxism (see Biography and Early Works (b)
Algeria). Despite his radical disillusion with these early political
commitments, however, a strong political concern remains a central
feature of all of Lyotard's mature works. Lyotard's notion of the
political, however, must be understood as quite distinct from that
employed in much traditional and contemporary politics and political
theory. Having rejected the possibility of a politics based on a
single theory that will accurately capture the truth of all social
events (such as Marxism), Lyotard's later concern is to do justice to
multiple social realities. He is concerned with the free proliferation
of heterogenous elements in society, and for him the institutions of
politics and traditional political theory limit multiplicities and
differences. Lyotard's politics can be traced back to his general
concern for events and the limits of representation. There is a strong
correlation between his concern that events are not done justice by
any one theoretical, representational system, and his concern that
events of political import are not done justice by the way any
particular political party or philosophy represents them.
The politics of the libidinal philosophy revolves around a nuanced
reading of Marx and a duplicitous relation to capitalism. While
Lyotard has given up on the possibility and desirability of a
socialist revolution, he is still interested in the deployment of
revolutionary desires. Libidinal Economy contains a reading of Marx's
texts as works of art, an emphasis which seeks to release the
libidinal aspects of Marx, the desire for revolution. Lyotard's
interpretation of capitalism in the libidinal economy sees two
possibilities inherent in capitalism, each entwined and inextricable.
On the one hand, capitalism is a good system for the circulation of
libidinal energies; it encourages enterprising explorations of and
investments in new areas. On the other hand, capitalism tends to hoard
up libidinal energy into structured and regulated systems, restricting
its flow. This latter tendency is at work in the capitalist
exploitation that Marx rallied against. Lyotard interprets these two
tendencies of capitalism in terms of the theory of dissimulation. For
Lyotard, there is no possible society that is not open to the desire
to exploit and hoard libidinal energy in the way the capitalist does.
This means that there is no utopian society free from exploitation,
either pre-capitalist or post-revolutionary. Lyotard's libidinal
politics is not aimed at overthrowing capitalism, then, but of working
within it to release the libidinal energies dissimulated within its
structures. Practically, this also means working within existing
political institutions, but "passively," so as to release as much
desire dissimulated within those institutions as possible, without
constraining desires through planned outcomes.
Lyotard's postmodern politics involves the attempt to rethink the
political after the death of metanarratives such as Marxism and
liberalism. Lyotard rejects all dominant political ideologies as
master-narratives which exclude minorities and do violence to the
heterogenous nature of social reality. This rejection is manifested in
the philosophy of paganism that preceded Lyotard's postmodernism.
Here, the notion of "impiety" associated with the pagan is a rejection
of "pious" political ideologies which unquestioningly assert
principles and values as universally and unquestioningly true. In its
mature form, Lyotard's postmodern politics deals with the concern for
justice and the need to bear witness to the differend. In the case of
a differend, a wrong is done to a party who cannot phrase their hurt
(See Postmodernism (c) The Differend). For Lyotard, no just resolution
of a differend is possible. Because of the radical incommensurability
of phrase regimes in the case of a differend, any "resolution" would
only assert the legitimacy of one phrase regime at the cost of
silencing the other, thus deepening the wrong. Justice demands a
witnessing and a remembering of the fact that there is a differend.
This means presenting the fact that a wrong has been done which cannot
itself be presented. This is then the contradictory task of presenting
the unpresentable, a task Lyotard sees as best accomplished in the
arena of art.
9. Art and Aesthetics
Lyotard was a prolific writer on both art and philosophical
aesthetics. An aesthetic theory focusing on the avant-garde deeply
informs both major phases of his philosophical thought (the libidinal
and the postmodern). Examples from particular movements in art and
individual artists and writers are common in his philosophical works,
and in addition he wrote a number of books on individual artists,
including Georges Guiffrey, Albert Ayme, Gian-franco Baruchello,
Jacques Monory, Valerio Adami, Shusaku Arakawa, and Daniel Buren.
Lyotard also organised an art exhibition, Les immatériaux, at the
Centre Georges Pompidou in 1985. The exhibition collected works which
explored connections between the media, art, space, and matter.
Art has a privileged place in Lyotard's philosophy of events, since it
calls attention to the limits of representation. In the earlier phase
of his work, art is celebrated for its figural and libidinal aspects
that oppose and deregulate systems of discourse and rational thought.
In Lyotard's postmodern period, art is privileged for its sublime
effects and the attention it calls to the differend. It is not all
kinds of art that Lyotard celebrates; he is particularly interested in
the avant-garde. Some forms of art can reinforce structured systems of
meaning, but the special feature of avant-garde art is to disrupt
expectations, conventions, and established orders of reception. In
Discours, figure, visual arts are associated with the figural and the
process of seeing. However, poetry is also privileged as a
manifestation of the figural in the way it upsets established orders
of meaning, following Lyotard's move from the figural as simply
sensuous to the figural as disruptive force in any system. The
libidinal philosophy engages with art on the level of its affective
force: shapes and colours act as tensors within the system of
signification that the artwork forms, and unlike more rigidly
structured systems, artworks more readily release their affective
energy into different systems of interpretation, reception, and
influence. Furthermore, the process of painting exemplifies the
ambiguously passive yet active way in which Lyotard sees the release
of libidinal energies as most effective. A painting is not a rigidly
pre-planned structured piece of work in which the outcome is
determined beforehand, but a process of experimentation. In this
process, affects are inscribed on a surface without being strictly
controlled by an actively willing and organising subject. The most
important artists for Lyotard in this period include Paul Cézanne,
Marcel Duchamp, and Robert Delaunay.
In Lyotard's philosophy of postmodernism and the differend, he
develops an aesthetic theory of postmodern art. It is essential to
distinguish Lyotard's concept of postmodern art from other ideas of
postmodern art. There are many theories of postmodernism in the arts,
literature, architecture, and other areas of cultural practise. Other
theorists (such as Jean Baudrillard) have also proposed aesthetic
theories of postmodernism which differ from Lyotard's understanding of
postmodernism in the arts. In particular, Lyotard's postmodern art
must be distinguished from the stylistic trends often called
postmodern in the art world (such as the anti-modern return to
representational realism or the simulationism of Peter Halley, Sherrie
Levine, Jeff Koons and others). Lyotard's concept of postmodernism in
the arts relates more to what is usually called modernism in the arts.
It focuses on the experimentation of the avant-garde, and Lyotard
takes as privileged examples Abstract Expressionism and particularly
the work of Barnett Newman. Lyotard makes his own distinction between
the categories of modern and postmodern in art, however, in a couple
of ways. Firstly, postmodernism is said to be the avant-garde movement
always at work within modernism itself. It is that which is so new and
different it can only be called modern in retrospect. In this sense,
postmodernism is the spirit of experimentation that drives modernism
into ever-changing forms; it is the disruptive force that unsettles
accepted rules for reception and meaning. For Lyotard something must
be postmodern before it can become modern. That is, it must be
unsettling before it becomes an accepted norm.
Secondly, however, according to Lyotard postmodern avant-garde art
never entirely loses its ability to disturb. This power of disturbance
is related to the feeling of the sublime, and it is an indication of
the differend. In this context, modern and postmodern art can be
distinguished in the following way. Both are concerned with the
unpresentable: that which cannot be presented (or represented) in art.
Modern art, however, presents the fact that there is an unpresentable,
while postmodern art attempts to present the unpresentable. This is a
paradoxical task, and arouses in the viewer the mixture of pleasure
and pain that is the sublime. Lyotard takes Barnett Newman's work as a
paragon of postmodern, avant-garde art. Newman consciously seeks to
achieve the sublime in his paintings, and Lyotard believes he achieves
this by making his viewers feel that something profound and important
is going on in his works, but without being able to identify what this
is. Postmodern art has a political importance for Lyotard, since it
can call attention to differends through the feeling of the sublime,
showing us that a wrong has been done. Bearing witness to the
differend is the primary focus of Lyotard's postmodern politics, and
art is the privileged arena in which this witnessing takes place.
10. Late Works
a. Malraux
Two of Lyotard's latest works were on the French writer, activist, and
politician, André Malraux. Signed, Malraux is an unconventional
autobiography. Lyotard's philosophical commitments distance him from
the presuppositions underlying the traditional genre of biography,
where the subject is assumed to be unified and the text is taken to
represent the truth about that subject. Lyotard instead takes Malraux
as a set of heterogenous elements (texts, political activities,
personal relationships, etc), which he, as author, consciously unifies
through the creation of a fictional character. Lyotard's interest in
Malraux may be explained through the commonalities they share, in
particular a problematic relation to the political and an attempted
solution to this problem through art. Soundproof Room: Malraux's
Anti-Aesthetics situates Malraux's work in a nihilist and abjectivist
tradition of writers that includes Louis Céline, Georges Bataille,
Antonin Artaud, and Albert Camus. What these writers share is a
concern with the decline of belief in objective values (the "death of
God") and the strangeness and nausea of the human body.
b. Augustine
The Confession of Augustine was incomplete at the time of Lyotard's
death, and has been published posthumously in partial form, with
working notes appended. At first glance this somewhat cryptic, poetic,
and quasi-religious work seems to bear little resemblance to any other
piece in Lyotard's oeuvre. On closer inspection, however, the themes
Lyotard works through in his reading of Augustine's Confessions can be
recognised as those already touched on in earlier works. The
discussion of signs recalls Lyotard's analysis of the nihilism of
semiotics in Libidinal Economy, where he refers to Augustine, and what
is perhaps the main theme of this work – Augustine's writing as a
study in the phenomenology of time – is referred to in the earlier
paper "The Sublime and the Avant-Garde." Lyotard reads Augustine as
the precursor to the phenomenological studies of time developed by
Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. This study
problematises the temporal mode of the 'now', the present, in its
relations to the past and the future. The problematic of time is a
recurring feature in Lyotard's work, and thus The Confession of
Augustine can be seen as a further investigation into one of Lyotard's
ongoing concerns.
11. References and Further Reading
The following is a list of books by and about Lyotard available in
English. For further bibliographical references, including original
French editions, journal articles, and contributions by and about
Lyotard, see Lyotard's Peregrinations and Joan Nordquist's
Jean-François Lyotard: A Bibliography.
Books by Lyotard
Driftworks. (New York: Semiotext(e), 1984).
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1984).
Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzick (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1985).
The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).
Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
Heidegger and "The Jews", trans. Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts
(Minneaplis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
Duchamp's Trans/formers, trans. Ian McLeod (Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1990).
Pacific Wall (Venice: Lapis Press, 1990).
The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and
Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
Phenomenology, trans. Brian Beakley (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1991).
The Postmodern Explained to Children, ed. Julian Pefanis and Morgan
Thomas (Sydney: Power Publications, 1992).
Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: Athlone, 1993).
Political Writings, trans. and ed. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman
(London: UCL, 1993).
Toward the Postmodern, ed. Robert Harvey and Mark S. Roberts (New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993).
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime: Kant's Critique of Judgment,
23-29, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1994).
Postmodern Fables, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
The Assassination of Experience by Painting, Monory = L'assassinate de
l'experience par la peinture, Monory, trans. Rachel Bowlby and Jeanne
Bouniort, ed. Sarah Wilson (London: Black Dog, 1998).
Signed Malraux, trans. Robert Harvey (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999).
The Confession of Augustine, trans. Richard Beardsworth (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000).
Soundproof Room: Malraux's Anti-aesthetics, trans. Robert Harvey
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
Discourse, figure, trans. Mary Lydon (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).
Books about Lyotard
Art and Philosophy: Baudrillard, Gadamer, Jameson, Kristeva, Lyotard,
Marin, Perniola, Sloterdijk, Sollers, Virilio, West (Milan: Giancarlo
Politi Editore, 1991).
Benjamin, Andrew (ed.), Judging Lyotard (London: Routledge, 1992).
Bennington, Geoffrey, Lyotard: Writing the Event (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1988).
Browning, Gary K, Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2000).
Carrol, David, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida (London:
Routledge, 1987).
Curtis, Neal, Against Autonomy: Lyotard, Judgement and Action
(Aldershot, Hants & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001).
Dhillon, Pradeep A. and Paul Standish, eds., Lyotard: Just Education
(London & New York: Routledge, 2000).
Haber, Honi Fern, Beyond Postmodern Politics : Lyotard, Rorty,
Foucault (New York : Routledge, 1994).
Harvey, Robert, ed., Afterwords: Essays in Memory of Jean-François
Lyotard (Stony Brook, NY: Humanities Institute, 2000).
Harvey, Robert and Lawrence R. Schehr, eds., Jean-François: Time and
Judgment (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001).
Kearney, Richard, Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard
(London: HarperCollins Academic, 1991).
Kilian, Monika, Modern and Postmodern Strategies: Gaming and the
Question of Morality: Adorno, Rorty, Lyotard, and Enzensberger (New
York: Lang, 1998).
Nordquist, Joan, Jean-François Lyotard: A Bibliography (Santa Cruz,
CA: Reference and Research Services, 1991).
Pefanis, Julian, Heterology and the Postmodern Bataille, Baudrillard,
and Lyotard (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).
Peters, Michael (ed.), Education and the Postmodern Condition
(Wesport, Connecticut & London: Bergin & Garvey, 1995).
Raffel, Stanley, Habermas, Lyotard and the Concept of Justice (London:
Macmillan Press, 1992).
Readings, Bill, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics (London: Routledge, 1991).
Rojeck, Chris and Turner, Bryan S. (ed.) The Politics of Jean-François
Lyotard. (London: Routledge, 1998).
Sim, Stuart, Jean-François Lyotard (New York: Prentice Hall/Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1995).
Sim, Stuart, Lyotard and the Inhuman (Cambridge: Icon/Totem, 2000).
Steuerman, Emilia, The Bounds of Reason: Habermas, Lyotard, and
Melanie Klein on Rationality (London & New York: Routledge, 2000).
Williams, James, Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1998).
Williams, James, Lyotard and the Political (London: Routledge, 2000).
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