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LateLyotard

GeoffreyBennington

LateLyotard
























Late Lyotard
First published 2005
Copyright Geoffrey Bennington 2005
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-9754996-5-3 (pdf format)
ISBN-13 978-0-9754996-5-8 (pdf format)

Contents

AbouttheAuthor.................................................. vii

Introduction............................................................ ix

ChildishThings ...................................................... 1
TheSame,Even,Itself..................................... 43
Lyotardandthejews...................................... 65
TimeAfterTime ................................................... 81

August:DoubleJustice...................................... 105

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR

GeoffreyBenningtonisAsaG.CandlerProfessorof
ModernFrenchThoughtatEmoryUniversity.

Hispreviouspublicationsinclude:

SententiousnessandtheNovel:LayingDowntheLawinEighteenth
CenturyFrenchFiction(CambridgeUniversityPress,1986)
Lyotard:WritingtheEvent(ManchesterUniversityPress:1988)
Dudding:desnomsdeRousseau(Paris:EditionsGalile,1991)
JacquesDerrida(Paris:EditionsduSeuil,1991;tr.Universityof
ChicagoPress,1993),incollaborationwithJacquesDerrida
Legislations:ThePoliticsofDeconstruction(London:Verso,1994)
InterruptingDerrida(London:Routledge,2000)
Frontireskantiennes(Paris:Galile,2000)
Frontiers:Kant,Hegel,Frege,Wittgenstein(Ebook,2003)
OtherAnalyses(Ebook,2004)
OpenBook/Livreouvert(Ebook,2005)
DeconstructionisNotWhatYouThink(Ebook,2005)

INTRODUCTION

The first four essays collected in this volume form a


kindofsequeltomyearliermonographLyotard:Writ
ing the Event (Manchester University Press, 1988, re
issued as an ebook in 2005). That book attempted a
generalpresentationofLyotardsthoughtupto,anda
little beyond, his book of philosophy Le diffrend
(1983),inacontextwheretheEnglishspeakingrecep
tion of Lyotard, limited by the paucity of translations
at that time, was dominated by discussion of post
modernism.Since1988,manymoretranslationshave
appeared,butmoreimportantly,Lyotardcontinuedto
produce a good deal of work up to his death in 1998.
This work was in many ways surprising enough to
make me reconsider some of the positions taken in
WritingtheEvent,andtheessaysgatheredhereareall
indifferentwaysattemptstoregisterthatsurpriseand
to record that reconsideration. All were written in re
sponse to specific invitations, and reflect that
specificity in a variety of ways. Unlike Writing the
Event, this volume has no particular pretensions to
generality: each essay attempts to bring out one or
more events in Lyotards thought, and to present
thoseeventsbothontheirownterms,andintheways
in which they might encourage rereading of the ear
lierwork.
ix

I also include by way of an appendix a previously


uncollectedearlieressayonLyotardsbookAujuste.

Atlanta
April2005
x

CHILDISHTHINGS

(ChildishThings:notonlythatIwilltalkaboutchild
ish things in Lyotard, taking that as a theme for my
supposedlymatureoradultgaze;butalsothatIwhatI
say will not escape being childish, shot through with
all the uncomfortable naivety and violence of a child
coming to what Lyotard calls a great uncertainty
1

about childhood, and therefore about adulthood, pa


ternity, the place of the father, the dead father, the
father as always already dead, before the surviving
child. These childish things are also, then, an autobi
ography,aconfession.)
2

1
La Mainmise, in Niels Brgger, Finn Frandsen and Do
minique Pirotte, eds., Lyotard: les dplacements
philosophiques (Brussels: De Boeck, 1993), pp. 12536 (p.
131); translated in JF. Lyotard and E. Gruber, The Hy
phen:BetweenJudaismandChristianity,tr.PA.Braultand
M.Naas(Amherst:HumanityBooks,1999),p.7.
2
ThefirstversionofthispaperwaswritteninFrenchunder
the title Avant, presented to the Lyotard memorial con
ference in Paris, March 1999 and subsequently pubished
in the proceedings of that conference (Tmoigner du dif
frend (Paris: PUF, 2001). An earlier English version,
entitledBeforewaspresentedtotheSUNYStonyBrook
Remembering Lyotard conference in April 1999, and
published in the proceedings (Robert Harvey, ed., SUNY
1

WhateverbecameofJeanFranoisLyotard?
Lyotardgoesonbefore.

Before: i.e. what precedes in time, with respect to a


given reference point, some nowpoint, be it current
ornot.Beforeissaid,inacurrentsentence,ofatime
prior to that current sentence; or is said, in a current
sentence,ofatimepositionedaspriortoagivenrefer
encetime, itself positioned by the current sentence as
prior or subsequent to it. In the phenomenological
analysis of time, around which Lyotard turns a good
deal inthelatteryearsofhislife,andwhichseemsto
call from long ago the posthumously published work
on Augustine, before makes sense only in correlation
withafter,theturnstileofbeforeandafterpivotingon
the peg of the now, and the possible displacement of
thatnowfromthetimeofthecurrentsentenceallow
ingnarrativerepresentationsofallsorts.

Already in this current, all too current conception of


time, before divides and takes its distances, because
what precedes us in time is just as well behind us in
thespatialisingrepresentationoftimewecouldnever
managewithout(andwhichispartofthatconception
of time, a last resort that is also no doubt its best, its
firstresource).Behindus,alreadypast,sothatweare

Stony Brook Occasional Publications, 2000). The current


version was first presented to the October 1999 Emory
UniversityLyotardconference,andpublishedinNouvet,
StahuljakandStill,eds.,Minimamoralia:EssaysintheWake
ofJeanFranoisLyotard(StanfordUP,2006).
2

in front of it, before it; we are before before which has


gonebeforeus,gotaheadofus,incitingustorunafter
it,catchitup,makeupourdelay,ourbelatedness,ac
cording to the most insistent motif in La Confession
dAugustin.(And,Iconfess,howbelatedIhadbecome
in the last ten years with respect to Lyotard! Books I
hadscarcelyread:Lecturesdenfance;Moralitspostmod
ernesforastart,thenthetwobooksonMalraux(Sign
MalrauxandChambresourde),whoseexistenceIfound
so hard to motivate in terms of my previous under
standing of his work, finally the posthumous
ConfessiondAugustin.Iconfessithere:indeedthispa
per is nothing but that confession, a necessarily
belated attempt to catch up on that delay, and to un
derstand something of this work since the late
1980sand this confession involves, as I hope will
become clear, measuring up to a complex thought of
childhood which entails an irreducible biographical
questionwhichcannotavoidacertaintroublingsexual
element. I offer those three themes as a way of find
ing some orientation in a zone of thought where
orientation itself may be the least available, and least
appropriate gesture, and where a certain disorder is
nottobeavoided.)Beforeisawordformybelatedness
orprematurity;before,gonebeforeus,isstillbeforeus,
yettocome.Beforeprecedesme,Irunonbefore,after
before. And the one who went on before, forever be
fore us now here today, by the cruel definition of
death, JeanFranois Lyotard, is still before us, here
andnow,stilltocome.

This paradox of before goes on to affect any temporal


expression that refers more or less directly to it: for
3

example, the concepts younger and older, which


are clearly dependent on before/after, are struck by
the paradox of before. My age has with the age of the
otherarelationshipthatneverstopsflippingover:the
elder is the one who was already there before me,
when he was younger; as the younger, I arrive later
thanmyelder,heandtheworldhaveaged,Ibearthe
weight of this time past, I am already old, while he,
the elder, and even the elders elder, is as young as
canbe,fromtheworldsinfancy.Itisalwaystheelder
whobearstheyoungestinfancy.Thefirstmanwould
thus be both the youngest and the eldest. The elder
the father, if you wish, and thats always what one
wisheswill always give lessons in childhood, read
ings in childhood, Lectures denfance, to the child, will
explain childhood to the child, and thats why we do
not really know what a child isnor, for that very
reason, what a father is. If, as Lyotards biography of
Malraux remarks, the son makes himself the fathers
father,
3
andtherefore hisowngrandfather,according
toaschemathatisquiteclassical,dowenotalsohave
to read this formula in reverse?
4
If we think we can

3
JeanFranois Lyotard, Sign Malraux (Paris: Grasset,
1996),p.25.
4
Retour, in Lectures denfance (Paris: Galile, 1991), 1133
(p. 23): filiation obeys the general principle that it is
reversible. The father is thus his sons son, as the son is
his fathers father. They engender each other. One might
saythattheyarethesameengenderingitself.Cf.tooOn
aHyphen,inJF.LyotardandE.Gruber,TheHyphen,op.
cit., p. 16, on St. Paul: Pauls suffering, his own passion,
consistsinhavingtokillthefatherofhisowntradition,or
atleastinhavingtopronouncehimdead.Andtoengen
4

understand reasonably easily what a son does in try


ing to become the father, and even the fathers father
(even if the son becomes a father always too early, as
he says of himself on the opening page of Peregrina
tions, or too late, as he intimates later in that text, as
weshallsee),whataboutthefatherwhobecomesthe
son,orthesonsson,hisowngrandson?Orwho,per
haps more radically, claims to be younger than the
son,withoutevenbeingthesonsson?Whatwoulda
fatherbewhowasnolongerhissonsson?
In the introduction Lyotard wrote for The Lyotard
Reader,wefindthefollowing:
[Thewords]haveretreated,helpingeachotherout,
alreadywoundedinawaralreadyover,inmany
wars.Asmanywarsastexts.Woundedbecausethey
rarelydie.Theyareintatters,butthetattersofwords
aregood.Liketheirchildhoodgivenbacktothemaf
tertheypretendedtoobey,tobegrownupandgo
offtowar.Thatshowyoufindthem,alreadyread
andorderedbythewarlords(writers,scribblers,
translators),madeillegiblebydefeat(foreverytextis
adefeat),lefttotheirowndevices,hobblingalongon
crutches,gatheringintogroupsofidlesurvivors,sav
ingtheirskin.Thatsyourfamousbaggage.Your
past,theonethatisntyours,but,asitshouldbe,
olderandotherthanyou.Thepastthatisneither
yoursonnoryourfather.Whohasnothinginpar
ticulartodowithyou.
5

derthetruefatherrevealedbyJesus.Thisisthesuffering
of a son who must become the father of his father, and
Lamainmise,pp.132ff.(p. 7ff.).
5
Foreword, in Andrew Benjamin, ed., The Lyotard Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. xiii; here retranslated from
5

Apastwhichcan,then,stillberead,todayandinthe
future,afterhisdeath,older(andother)thanheand
thereforealwaysyounger(andother)thanhe.Thetat
ters of Lyotards words, childhood and old age, birth
and death of Lyotard, still before us, still here, us,
gathered into an us as indebted survivors in mourn
ing, readers who read because we do not know how
toread.
6
IwouldhavelikedtocallthistextLyotards
Childhood in homage to his admirable youthfulness
thatalwaysseemedexemplaryformeand,Iimagine,
all his more or less youthful friends and colleagues.
Theelderis,then,inasensealwaysyoungerthanthe
youngertheyounger,survivingwitness,nonplussed
to find himself growing older, finding himself later
before the enigma of this turnaround or aboutface,
the younger one, trying here to hold back his tears
and to behave likeagrownup,properly,andfinding
himself obliged in spite of himself to subtitle his text:
my childhood. This paradox of the older/younger is
what allows Lyotard to write, at the beginning of
what he calls his hypobiography of Malraux, that
Malraux was growing in childhood, at the end that
he grew old in childhood, and, a little later, The

the French version, Directions to Servants, in Moralits


postmodernes (Paris: Galile, 1993), 13141 (p.140). See too
DomusetlamgapoleinLinhumain:causeriessurletemps
(Paris:Galile,1988),203215(p.209):Thoughtwakesup
inthemiddle,themilieu,ofwordsthatareveryold,laden
withathousanddomesticitiesThinking,whichiswrit
ing, means awakening in them a childhood that these
oldies have not yet had One advances, but the past in
wordsiswaitingthereahead.
6
LaconfessiondAugustin(Paris:Galile,1998),p.63.
6

childisold?Somuchthebetter,or,aroundaremark
ofMalrauxsaboutGoya:Whatgeniusdoesnotsave
his childhood? Well, the one who has not aged
enough.
7

***
Whatcanbetherelationshipbetweenchildhoodinthe
apparently transcendental sense of a radical before,
and empirical or biological childhood? That tran
scendental childhood is the survival of biological
childhood:inthesenseboththatitsurvivesbiological
childhood,andthatitisnothingotherthanbiological
childhood surviving or outliving itself. There are very
many invocations and descriptions of childhood in
Lyotards writings from the mideighties onwards (I
wastemptedtousethetextonKafkacollectedinLec
tures denfance as simply Prescription, but first
delivered in 1989 under the title Avant la loi, open
ing a complex space for debate with Derridas 1982
textonLyotardandKafka,calledDevantlaloi
8
the
relationship between Lyotard and Derrida, which
would, beyond the crossing points enumerated by
Derrida at the beginning of that paper, more recently
alsogoviaAugustineandPaul,beingtosaytheleast
a complex question which I shall not open here) but
the clearest derivation of this sense of childhood is
probably the one given in a text on Hannah Arendt,

7
SignMalraux,pp.42,335,340,341.
8
Prjugsdevantlaloi,inDerrida,Descombes,et.al.,La
facultdejuger(Paris:Minuit,1985).
7

Survivor, from which I will need to cite a long and


densepassage:
Nowwhatisthisevent,strippedofitsscientificor
cognitivedenomination?[Letmeleaveinsuspense
fornowthereferenceofthiseventintheimmedi
atelyprecedingparagraphoftheessay.]Itisthe
enigmathattherebearelationwithwhathasnorela
tion:thatknowingthatitisbornanddies,thesoul
[] testifies thatthere isnotonlywhat is, what it is,
butalsotheotherofwhatis.Andthisrelationobvi
ouslydoesnothappenwhenithappens,ithappens
anditwillhappen,then,allatonce,itwillhavehap
pened,appearedtoolate,disappearedtoosoon,
becauseitisonlyandalwaysrecounted.Mybirthre
countedbyothers,andmydeaththatistoldmeby
narrativesofothersdeath,mynarrativeandthoseof
others.Sothat,itbeingessentialtothisrelationwith
nothingness(whenceIcomeandwhereIamgoing)
thatitbeitselfrecountedtome,therelationwithoth
ersisalsoessentialtothepresenceofabsence,from
whomitreturnstome.Andessentialtoothefabula
thatgivesitsrhythmtothepulsationofbeginning
andend.
[Therefollowsadevelopmentinwhichheargues
thattheabilitytoformcomplexities,tobegin
wouldjustasmuchbethesenseofsurvivalasthe
melancholysenseofthetruthofnothingnessalone
wearealldeadchildren,asChristopherFynskmight
say,butwhatsurvivesinthisdeathischildhood.]
Perhapswemustgotothebottomofnihilismwith
thelastman,whoknowsthebanalityofevil,who
suffersoradministersit,orboth,inordertodiscover
ajoyImdeliberatelypickingupthiswordfrom
Pascal,thewordofthespiritualthesombrejoyofa
8

demandthatisallthestrongerforbeingimprobable,
andthereforethemorethreatenedbyannihilation
andthemoreopenlyaffrontingthetruthofnothing
ness.[]Thespiritplungedinthetrialofnihilism,
inthepassagetodespairandscepticism(whichis
permanent),thespiritwhichknowsthatthereis
nothingtobedoneorsaid,noentityworthitsname,
orthatevenis,behavesasthoughitwasanyway.
TheeffectofthisclauseisinnowaycynicismNei
therisitseffectludism
Theeffectischildhood,whichknowsallaboutasif,
allaboutthepainduetoimpotenceandthecom
plaintofbeingtoolittle,aboutbeingtherelate
(comparedtotheothers)andhavingarrivedtoo
early,prematurely(foritsstrength),whoknowsall
aboutbrokenpromises,bitterdisappointments,fail
ings,abandonmentbutalsodaydreaming,
memory,question,invention,obstinacy,listening
withtheheart,love,trulylisteningtostories.Child
hoodisthestateofthesoulinhabitedbysomething
towhichnoresponseisevermade,itisledinitsen
terprisesbyanarrogantfidelitytothisunknown
guestwhosehostageitfeelsitselftobe.Childhoodof
Antigone.Iunderstandchildhoodheretobeobedi
encetoadebt,thatonecancalladebtoflife,oftime
orevent,adebtofbeingthereinspiteofevery
thingonlythepersistentfeelingofthis,i.e.respect,
cansavetheadultfrombeingonlyasurvivor,aliv
ingbeingonstayofannihilation.
Itistruethatonelearnsquicklythatdeathwillpre
ventonefromacquittingoneselfofonesdebt,thatit
willcomealwaystoosoonButchildhoodconsists
inthefactofbeingandbehavingasifthepointwas
9

toacquitoneselfoftheenigmaofbeingthere,to
makefructifytheinheritanceofbirth,ofthecomplex,
oftheevent,notinordertoenjoyit,buttotransmitit
andthatitbepassedon.(LE,656)
9
Is it by chance that Lyotard talks so much about
childhood in these late texts? The child is old? So
much the better. What underlies everything is that
therearenogrownupshelikesquotingfromMalraux,
10

himselfquotingisitacoincidence?afatherconfes
sor.

God, before whom the confession is made, would be


the one who confirms the childhood of man while
markingitslimit.So,inLaconfessiondAugustin:
Theeventcomesaboutbeforewritingbearswitness,
anditsdepositionisthenthatitispast.Theconfes
sionreiteratesthisconditionofchildhoodmeasured

9
Lectures denfance, pp. 656. Cf. too La mainmise, p. 127,
which links childhood more obviously to the question of
the jews, an issue I am sidestepping here (but see my
Lyotard and the Jews, in Brian Cheyette and Laura
Marcus,eds.,Modernity,CultureandtheJew(Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1998), pp. 18896): By childhood, I under
stand not only, like the rationalists, an age deprived of
reason.Iunderstandthatconditionofbeingaffectedwhen
we do not have the meanslanguage and representa
tionto name, identify, reproduce and recognise what
affectsus.Iunderstandbychildhoodthatwearebornbe
fore being born to ourselves. And therefore born of
others,butalsoborntoothers,givenoverdefencelesslyto
others.
10
SignMalraux,p.38;Chambresourde(Paris:Galile,1998),
p.30.
10

bythestandardoffullpresence:Iwillalwayshave
beenlittlecomparedtoThygrandeur.Youhadno
childhood,youarenotcarriedoffinthecrisscrossof
thetooearlyandthetoolate.Andthusisformedthe
infantileimagooftheperfectlyerect,pureact,Verb
absolvedfromantecedentsandconsequents.Thelit
tleonehonourstheverygreatwithtinylittlenames;
hoc,id,idipsum,thisthat,thatverything:thatthe
deicticwithoutanobjectwhichinontologystandsin
asanameforwhathasnoname,anonymousepo
nym.(CA,47)
Is childhood, before God, as it were, anything other
thanwhathesometimescalls,withterribleambiguity,
accepted as such, against everybody, the jews: A
people unprepared for the revelation of the alliance,
alwaystooyoungforit.Andbythatveryfacttooold
(HJ, 68). Always too old because too young. And this
wouldbeaprincipleofcomplicationinthehistoryof
hisanalysisoftheJewsandthejews,whichofcourse
traversesthewholeofhisuvre:howcouldwerecon
ciletheoverevaluationofthefather,accordingtothe
analysis in Figure forclose with the complication
broughttothisconceptoffatherbythethemeofradi
cal childhood developed in the texts from the 90s, a
theme which clearly bears a relation to that of the
jews, even if the nature of the relationship remains
obscure,forgoodreason.
WhenIwas achild,Ispakeasachild,Iunderstood
asachild,Ithoughtasachild:butwhenIbecamea
man,Iputawaychildishthings.(ICorinthians,
13:11).
Inhislaterwritings,Lyotardsevidentanimusagainst
St Paul never leads him to quote this famous verse.
11

And yet could it not reasonably be said to sum up


everything Lyotard comes to loath about Christianity
and what we might call its extensions through the
tradition? Put brutally, childish here easily assimi
lates to Jewish; putting away childish things means
putting away Jewish things (the law, works, inPauls
understanding) in the gesture of Christian repression
denounced in the Hyphen text, and elsewhere; and
the childhood or infancy that is the major focus of
muchofLyotardsthinkinginthelasttenyearsofhis
life has an essential, though only allusively thema
tised, relation with Jewishness. In La mainmise, for
example,theproximityofthesetwomotifsispatent:
Bychildhood,Iamreferringnotsimplytoanage
thatis,astherationalistswouldhaveit,lackingin
reason.Iamspeakingofthisconditionofbeingaf
fectedandnothavingthemeanslanguage,
representationtoname,identify,reproduce,and
recognizewhatisaffectingus.BychildhoodImean
thatwearebornbeforebeingborntoourselves.We
arebornfromothers,butalsotoothers,givenover
defencelesstothem.Subjecttotheirmancipium,and
toanextentthattheydonotevenrecognize.Forthey
themselvesarealsochildren,betheyfathersor
mothers.Theyarenotemancipatedfromtheirown
childhood,fromtheirwoundofchildhood,norfrom
thecallthatarisesoutofit.Theythusdonotknow,
andindeedwillneverknowhoweverhardthey
mighttryjusthowmuchtheyaffectus.Eventheir
loveforasonordaughtermayhavebeenacalamity.
Imeanthatitmayhaveengenderedsuchamainmise
overthechildssoulthatthemainmiseitselfremains
unknowntothechildasanadult.Thechildwillthus
beaffectedtosuchadegreethatitwillnotevenoc
12

curtohimtorebel,norwillhehaveevenrecieved
thegiftorgracetopraythathismainmisebelifted.I
amnotjusttalkingaboutsevereneurosesorpsycho
ses.Forthechild,everythingisawound,thewound
ofapleasurethatisgoingtobeforbiddenandtaken
away.Thesufferingthatresultsandthesearchfor
theobject,somethinganalogous,inshort,toemanci
pation,ariseoutofthiswound.TheflightfromEgypt
isalsocalledavocation.Wehavebeencalledbyour
nametobethisname;wedidnotknowwhoorwhat
calledus,andwedonotknowtowhatwearecalled.
Weknowonlythatitisimpossiblenottoheedthis
callandthatfidelitytothisdemandcannotbe
avoided,nomatterwhatwedoandevenifwetry
nottoheedit.
11
Could we say that the concept of childhood in these
late writings provides the mediation for the passage
from Jew to jew that seemed so brutal and even
shocking around the timeofHeideggeretlesjuifs?Not
if we take that concept seriously, because childhood
orjewhereisjustwhat,accordingtoLyotard,resists
all mediation, dialectization and sublation. And, as I
shall try to show, what I have previously called the
terribleambiguityoftheconceptofthejewsisin
many ways exacerbated and obscured by the concept
ofchildhood,sothatthespecificityoftheJew,already
opened up by the descriptions of the jew, is in
creasingly lost in the apparent generality or
generalisability of childhood. That generality, which
contains, as I shall show in a moment, an insistent
metaphorics of violent anal penetration, allows what
are,formallyspeaking,predicatesofjewishnesstobe

11
LaMainmise,p.127[23].
13

exemplarily attached, in the posthumous book, to St


Augustine. What are we to make of this final turn? Is
it to show that even the Christian tradition would be
profoundly infiltrated by jewish structures, and that
its attempt to forget them would be doomed to fail
ure? Or else is there here a softening, or an inflection
of what often pushes Lyotard into reserving a singu
larityfortheJew?Thispossibilityissuchthatthetype
ofseparationpostulatedbetweenJewandChristianin
the Hyphen text should not really be possible at all.
Fordoesthisgesturenotintroduceaprincipleofcon
fusion into the distinction he still appears to want to
exacerbate,theblankhewantstomaintainagainstits
hyphenated crossing in The Hyphen?
12
To put this
more polemically, we might want to say that main
taining the type of marked difference Lyotard often
seems to want to make between Jew and Christian is
itselfessentiallyaChristiangesture,orcannotfailto
inviteaccusationsofcomplicitywithaChristianview

12
But compare an early remark from the opening of Dis
cours, figure (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971): In its radicality,
this return to Scripture understood as allocution of the
Other and as promise, in which jewish thought and de
mythologised Christian thought come together, even
gives up on the eye listening. Master of illusion, slave of
illustrations, always the evil eye. First and last philoso
phyis,asE.Lvinassays,morality,thefacetofaceofthe
face because the face is presence of the absolutely Other,
theonlyGegenstandworthyofthenameThisbookisa
defenceoftheeyethereisnoabsolutlyOther(DF,10
11).
14

of the Jew,
13
whereas recognising the infiltration of
Christian structures by Jewish features would be
more Jewish. To refer this rapidly to the thematic of
childhood,thiswouldbelikesayingthatchildhoodin
Lyotards sense is eminently a quality of the adult.
Such a gesture would not eradicate what I have been
rather mildly calling ambiguity, but would tend to
exacerbateitbeyondthegraspoftheconceptofambi
guity itself. Which of course would not necessarily
make Lyotards gestures any the more acceptable to
Jew(orevenjew)orChristian.Andperhapswhatisa
morepowerfuloperatorthanambiguityhereisalogic
of witness as treachery: a priori false witness, betray
ing that for which it bears witness: Witness to the
extentthatheisnotawitnessandthattherecanbeno
witness (CA,24);Thewitnessisatraitor(I,215;the
lastsentenceofthebook).

Ifchildhoodissuchaprivilegedfigure,though,might
we not expect to find it already there, or its anticipa
tory childhood, childhoods childhood, from the
beginningofLyotardsuvre,akeytowritinghisphi
losophical or intellectual biography? Following the
paradox of the younger/older that will not stop tor
menting us here, we could, for example, take up the
little book on Phenomenology, both his youngest and
his oldest book,
14
and be more or less navely sur

13
This was the burden of Elisabeth de Fontenays assess
ment in her paper at the Lyotard conference in Paris in
March1999.
14
Especially in English, perhaps, given its late translation
date.
15

prised to find many themes and motifs that return in


later work (especially, perhaps, a remark on the con
stitutive contradiction of phenomenology: the
originary, once described,isnolongeroriginaryinso
far as it has been described).
15
Would we then be
fallingintotheretrospectivisttrapofintellectualbiog
raphy, finding everything already there in embryo at
the beginning, and which would then see only devel
opments and resultsat best dialectical onesin
everythingthatfollows,whichcaninthiscaselookso
discontinuous, an intellectual trajectory made up es
pecially of breaks? If we find before already there in
the first texts, already there before, in a sort of child
hood, are we not just doing banal and classical
biographical work, that he would certainly have re
pudiated? Does bringing everything down to before,
finding the truth always before, not amount to a pro
motion of biography (and therefore, as he said to
journalists come to interview him about the Malraux
project, stupidity, or, in the words of Chambre Sourde,
repetition [la redite], like biography itself: you will
havebeenwhatyouweretobe,couldnotfailtobe
16
)
into a transcendental position, happily rolling out
classical plots and narratives, in which the end is al
ways already in the beginningthe whole narrative
webthatbeforewas,weassumed,supposedtoprecede
andundo?Canweavoidconstitutingasanuvre,the

15
Laphnomnologie(Paris:PUF,1953),p.43.
16
Chambre sourde, p. 45. For an interesting translators re
flection on the problems of this motif of la redite, see
Robert Harvey, Lyotard in Passing, October 86 (Fall
1998),1923(p.21).
16

uvre of a life, these more or less dispersed writings,


bindingtheireventsbymakingthemintoastorytobe
told here and now, gathered around an inaugural se
cret?Isthisnotpreciselythesortofarcheoteleological
setup he would have denounced? Before, he mildly
reproached me for claiming in my book Writing the
Event
17
that what underlay this intellectual life was
alwaysthethoughtoftheevent(hisworkthereforein
my account culminating triumphantly in Le diffrend):
here,Iamapparentlyclaimingthatbeforetheeventor
the differend as truth of the event there would have
been beforebut the gesture would be the same, that
ofperverselysavingabeautifultotalityfacedwithade
facto dispersion which also affirms dispersion (for ex
ample under the name dissentiment in The Postmodern
Condition, or in the interesting and problematic figure
of the archipelago of discursive genres in Le dif
frend).
18

But, no more than, for example, figure, desire,


postmodern, sublime, event, presentation, dif
frend (and many others), beforewillnotbepresented
here as the proper name of some thing (and indeed
at one moment which is not just any moment, at the

17
Geoffrey Bennington, Lyotard: Writing the Event (Man
chester:ManchesterUniversityPress,1988);seeLyotards
comments in Lyotard: les dplacements philosophiques, p.
138. See too the interview with Richard Beardsworth,
'Nietzsche and the Inhuman: an Interview with Jean
Franois Lyotard, in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 7 (1994),
p.89.
18
Cf.Laconditionpostmoderne,pp.8,99,106;Lediffrend,No
ticeKant3.
17

end of the 80s, he nicknamed it Thing, after Lacan,


this thing that is no thing), the proper name of one
same thing that he would supposedly have striven to
name,andfailedtoname,fromoneendofhisworkto
theother,accordingtothelogicstatedinthebookon
Phenomenology,wherehesaysthatthedefeatofthe
philosopher is certain,
19
repeated in the language of
defeat we saw in the Foreword to the Lyotard Reader.
Beforeisnotthename,couldneverenterintotheplay
of nomination and ostension that is the subject of
thosewonderfulanalysesinLediffrend,forexample.I
amnottellingastoryhere,norsketchingabiography:
rather picking out bits of text, tatters, as he said ear
lier, cuttings or coupons, as he might have said, as I
once heard him say, in which the question among
otherthingsisthatofwhatmakessuchabiographical
project untellable. Given what we have said aboutbe
fore, and what we could have seen differently with
respecttoeventorpresentation,thesecuttingsorcou
pons do not allow themselves to be bound by
narrative form. Before is neither the beginning nor the
end of a story, nor even the sort of in medias res that
always still needs beginnings and ends, and that he
discusses at the beginning of Chambre sourde. We are
not reading before in the early texts as a seed or em
bryo of what was to come next: rather the contrary.
The before that comes after allows us to read in the
earlytextswhatwasnotsimplyinthem,beforethe
event of before in his texts, its childhood, is itself al
waysaftertheevent,tooearlyortoolate.

19
LaPhnomnologie,p.43.
18

This is what will allow Sign Malraux to propose a


wholediscontinuousmeditationonthegenreofbiog
raphy,allthetimereinscribingthequestionoflifeand
its writing in the life to be written, that of Malraux.
What Lyotard calls the roots of the Malraux equa
tion would already have to do with biography as
relation between bios and graph. The bios whose
graph Lyotard is doing is already split between bios
and graph. This equation would, apparently, make
thisrelationessentiallyoneoftherelationbetweenthe
sexes:lifewouldbeessentiallythereturnofdeath,the
rotting engendered by engendering itself, against
whichgraphwouldprovidethepossibilityofasaving
virilefiliation:afather,whateverhebeinthebiologi
cal order, is he who attempts the gesture of resigning
(from) this order and who transmits the trace of this
gesture(SM,105).Rsignercetordre:notonlytowith
draw from it, but to measure up to itresign is also,
following one of the books most insistent motifs, in
deed the one that gives it its title, to resign, to
countersign, to sign against dead life and the female
matrix. Which means that life must already make it
selfwritinginlife(awordhethereforeputsinquote
marks), so that mythopoiesis fictions socalled life
(SM, 19), and will lead not only to the secret of Mal
rauxs life, not only solve the Malraux equation, but
leadalsotothesecretofbiographyaccordingtoMal
raux:itisinnowaythefaithfulnarrativeofalife,itis,
right on this life [ mme cette vie], the legend that fic
tions itself there in actu one is still writing, one is
onlywriting,whenonesignsagesturerightonbanal
ity, when one metamorphises a fact into an event by
thisgesture(SM,1189).Sowhatshouldwedoabout
19

biography in the current sense? How can one write


the life of one whose life was already a passion of
writingrightinthatlife?Isitnotimpossible?Malraux,
asLyotardrecounts,givesuponhisprojectofwriting
abiographyofLawrenceofArabia:Themostsubtle
parts of Lawrences adventure would be rendered
much more intelligible by fiction than by the analysis
Im doing, says Malraux quoted by Lyotard, who
continues, Now fabulating was not the law of the
biographicalgenre.Whydidheventureintoit?Tosee
if one could write without imagination? (SM, 274).
How can we avoid asking the same question of Lyo
tard:whydidheventureintoit,atagivenmomentin
his more or less legendary and mythopoietic life? As
often in Sign Malraux, it is difficult to work out here
what belongs to Malraux, what to Lyotard. The sys
tematic use of free indirect discourse often renders
undecidable the signature we were trying to identify:
Sign Malraux is signed Lyotard, according to a logic
ofcountersignaturethatdoesnotstoptheretheuse
Itoohavebeenmaking,fromthestart,offreeindirect
discourse, follows this troubling of the play of signa
tures: signed Malraux, signed Lyotard, signed
Bennington, and so on. But is it by chance that the
only reflection on free indirect discourse in the book
should turn around sexual difference: Thanks to free
indirect discourse, Malraux mixes the womans voice
into the mans soliloquy (SM, 243), which will not
stop both feeding and troubling the fantasy of virile
filiationyouwillnotfailtosuspecthere.

So before is not the name. Unnameable, then. But not


necessarilyunnameableinthesenseofdisgustorhor
20

ror, which would only be a determined figure of it,


like those of putrefaction and decay which according
to Sign Malraux and Chambre sourde, are at work in
Malraux. Beware of the pathos of horrorand this
was always Lyotards reservation about Bataille.
Namingwhatprecedesallnamingasunnameable,or
even qualifying it as unnameable lets one off too
lightly,withasupplementofvirilityfromhavingbeen
uptofacingandthusmasteringthehorror,thehorror.
Thisisthedangerthatliesinwaitforanyproposalof
theformlessasaformadequatetothecommunication
of before, as its representation in extremis. Beware pa
thos, when the pathos is determined or fixed: what
Lyotard is looking for in Kants third Critique in the
eightiesisanasyetindeterminablepathos,apathosof
pathein in general, before any determination, what he
comestocallanunconsciousaffectatthetimeofhis
rereadingofFreudattheendofthe80s,unconscious
affect linked to socalled originary repression, close
tothesublimewhich,hesays,cannotbelocatedtem
porally
20
(HJ,61).

Couldtherebeheretheprincipleofanobjectiontobe
levelled at Lyotards immense early work Discours,
figure? In that book, the deepest level of the figure,
afterthefigureimage,whichoccursinthespaceofrep
resentation, after the figureforme, which works at the
levelofthatspaceitself,theconstitutionofthatspace,
we get to the most inaccessible level (in fact radically
inaccessible as such), the mysterious figurematrice,

20
Heideggeretlesjuifs(Paris:Galile,1988),p.61.
21

which, while being difference itself


21
is also appar
ently none other than the originary phantasy of a
given subject: The works of a man are only ever the
offspring of this matrix; it can perhaps be glimpsed
through their superimposition, in depth.
22
Swarming
putrefaction would thus bring us close to Malrauxs
matrixfigure, and we could set off looking for such
figures in others too, as for example in Lyotards
strangetextinDispositifispulsionnels,aboutBachelard:
Onecanassumethatthisformwhichorganisesthe
problematicistheconstantfactorinthework:asort
ofrepresentationalmachine,anapparatusforpro
ducingphantasy,madefromasoftmediumwitha
hardsurface,oranocturnalelementcappedbyan
overexposedshot,oradiffusewarmthinterrupted
byaburningflash,oraflowingliquidityontowhich
isbrandishedtheenergyofawave,oraregionof
immanenceincontactwitharegionoftranscen
dence,orAndthewholequestionofBachelards
desirebearsonthecontactbetweenthesetwospaces.
Therecurrenceofadoctrineofcontactandthedis
placementofthepartition[laparoi
23
]ofthecontacts
acrosshisuvreattesttothefactthatdesireandin

21
Discours,figure,p.278.
22
Discours,figure,pp. 2789.
23
Any attempted symptomatic reading of Lyotard himself
wouldhavetopursuethismotifoftheparoi,whichinthe
plural gives a subtitle to a section of the book on
Duchamp, Les transformateurs Duchamp (Paris: Galile,
1977), 4358, where sexual difference is again the issue.
See too Lassassinat de lexprience par la peinture, Monory
(Paris:LeCastorAstral,1984),pp12ff.
22

terdictionareespeciallyinvestedinthedramaof
sexualdifference.
24

What of Lyotard himself? Is not that what I am pro


posing here: a still ultimatelyif not narratively
biographical hypothesis as to his originary phantasy
anditsavatarsthroughouthistexts?Onthishypothe
sis,willwesaythatLyotardsmatrixfigure,figuredin
his late texts by childhood, is not other that the ma
trixfigure itself, difference itself, on which Discours,
figure dreams of getting its hands,
25
pure before, the
absent of all phantasy, childhood absent from all
childhood, something absolutely early finally arrived
at only late on? A phantasy of phantasy overcome by
critical or philosophical work? Which would still
really be in line with Discours, figure itself, and other
texts of the same period, which are constantly extol
lingthecriticalfunctionofthework,hereitsoperation
of retournement [turnaround, turning inside out]
(rather than simple reversal [renversement]) on what
would otherwise be control by phantasy.
26
Discours,

24
Leauprendleciel:propositiondecollagepourfigurer
ledsirbachelardien,Desdispositifspulsionnels(1973;2nd
ed.,Paris:Bourgois,1980),14969(p.156).
25
Discours,figure,p.328.
26
The symptomatic reading would have to follow too this
motif of retournement, and no doubt link it to the almost
equallypersistentmotifofarotationthrough90degrees.
SeeforexampleDiscours,figure,pp.23,70,94,100,1178;
Drive partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union Gnrale
dEdition,1973),pp.83,91,109,113,1289,156,307;Rcits
tremblants (Paris: Galile, 1977), p. 59. This motif is par
tially thematised in La place de lalination dans le
retournementmarxiste,inDrive,78166(pp.845;978;
23

figure follows the birth of this critical function in the


workofKlee,fromamoreorlessdirectexpressionof
phantasy (a clinical rather than a critical matter, in a
then common distinction), to a critical working
through which, as he will repeatedly say of the sub
lime or the postmodern later in his work, ends with
the invisible to be made visible, and no longer the
phantasy to be recognised
27
this should obviously
be placed alongside the present that there is the un
presentable of the texts on the postmodern: is it a
coincidence that this process in Klee (as in Bachelard,
as in Malraux) should pass throughamythologyora
haunting of sexual difference which is maintained
through the critical moment as its truth? And is the
very term matrixfigure [matrice in French signalling
more clearly that matrix in English to the womb, the
maternal, mater]is thistermnotalreadythediscreet
index of the existence of a similar mythology or
hauntinginLyotardhimself?).

But if we should not rush towards the imaginary ful


filment of the phantasy of finding and exhibiting the
matrixfigure or the primal phantasy of Lyotard him
selfnor indeed of anyone else, on pain of falling
ourselvesintoabanalphantasyabouttheprimalphan
tasy, of getting into the clinical just when the point is
to keep a watch that is criticalwe will nonetheless

1057; 10910), and explicitly linked to the 90 degree or


rightangle motif, but the symptomatic reading would
have to follow it further, up to and including the cul de
charogneretourninLaconfessiondAugustin(p.45).
27
Discours,figure,p.229.
24

not escape for all that the contingency of something


like the singularity of the matrixfigure that will have
marked Lyotards texts with a singular seal, a proper
name (the proper name was always for him the best
mark of singularity),
28
or a signature. Andjust this is
the sense of childhood surviving. My debt to child
hood, which is irreducible, will always somewhere
inscribe me, my lifeassurvival, in my texts. So I am
not trying to save Lyotard from himself, or from his
phantasies,hissignature,hisuvre,bysimplyturning
him into a transcendental philosopher after all, sup
posedly escaping from his matrixfigure by thinking
thematrixfigureingeneral.Andindeedanotheraspect
ofDiscours,figurewouldalreadydiscourageusfromso
doing,inthatitputsforwardaconceptoftruthasab
errant with respect to philosophy,
29
and exhibits a
suspicion of the order of the concept that translates

28
Cf. the remark made at the 1972 Cerisy conference
Nietzsche aujourdhui?, p. 177: Les noms propres, cest le
vraipluriel:lesingulierindclinable.
29
Truth shows up as an aberration measured by the stan
dards of meaning and knowledge. It clashes if truth
doesnotappearwhereitisexpected,andifnodiscourse
can exhibit it as a rounded meaning because it does not
belong to its field, then this book is not true, insofar as
this book obviously tries to produce articulate mean
ings A good book, in order to let truth be in its
aberration,wouldbeabookinwhichlinguistictime()
would itself be deconstructed This book is not that
good book, it still stands in meaning, it is not an artists
book, deconstruction doesnt operate in it directly, it is
signified. It is still a book of philosophy, by that fact. (p.
18)
25

across Lyotards work as a whole into the admiration


heshowsforalltypesofartisticpractices.InLyotard,
critiquedoesnotgiverisetodoctrine,andthisiswhy
he very early turns against the critical motifalready
intheprefacetoDrivepartirdeMarxetFreud(pp.14
ff.),beforeEconomielibidinaleandRudimentspaens
30

and, despite appearances, does not really come back


toitaroundthetimeofLediffrend,wherethecritical
watchman is no longer the agent of the transcenden
tal. The biographical is thus ineluctably inscribed in
theworkwhichalsotriestomeasureuptoit,toliber
ate itself from it, or to ruse with it, as in the figure of
the Greek metis that Lyotard likes to quote from
Vernant and VidalNacquet, which is an integral part
of what he used to call paganism (Thats paganism.
You do not know to whom you are speaking, you
have to be very prudent, you need negotiation and
ruse.
31
), and which dictates the work in the 70s on
rhetoricanditscapacitytoturnsituationsaround,for
exampletomaketheweakerpartyintothestronger.
32

The work can be an event, and thereby a work, on


condition of turning itself inside out like the fishfox
describedinLemurdupacifique,
33
orturninginsideout

30
Cf. Economie libidinale (Paris: Minuit, 1974), p. 165; Rudi
ments paens (Paris: Union gnrale ddition, 1977), pp.
29,77,103,115,234.
31
Aujuste(Paris:Bourgois,1979),p.83.
32
See especially Expdient dans la dcadence, in Rudi
ments paens, 11556, and Sur la force des faibles, LArc,
64(1976).
33
The Greeks and their doxographers recount the ruse of
the foxfish:"It unfolds its internal organs, turns them
out, taking off its body like a shirt." The labyrinth is
26

itsphantasythatisneverforallthatsimplyabsentor
simplysublated:exposed,rather,confessed.Thisexpo
sure can be more or less direct and even
confrontational, more or less discreet and secret, but
even the transcendental philosopher will on this ac
count make his work from desire, in a state or figure
ofdesirewhichisnotanabsenceofdesire,butwhich
isclosetoabsoluteorpuredesire.
34

Before, before the name, then, names nothing. (The


thing is never inthename,underthenameonegives
it. (SM, 337)) Saying before here, I am neither naming
norcalling.Idonotcallbefore:itisbeforethatcallsme.
From before, before calls me fromitstimebeforetime.
Fromthedepthsoftime,ashesometimeswrites,and
even the depths of the depths of time, like Durass
main ngative that cries out on the wall of the cave
fromthedepthsoftime,beforecallsandcallsme.This

not a complicated building in which one gets lost, but a


powerofthebodytoundoitsapparentvoluminosityand
evaginate itself: what exactly occupies the place of the
foxfishsheartwhenithasaccomplisheditsruseandall
its entrails are outside? (pp. 456: this should evidently
becomparedtothememorableopeningofEconomielibid
inale.)
34
This absolute or pure desire is perhaps best described in
terms of the apathy that Lyotard discusses often, in
Economie libidinale and Rudiments paens, and that Peregri
nations reveals to have been, in the form of the theme of
indifference,thesubjectofhismastersthesis(cf.Prgrina
tions (Paris: Galile, 1990), p. 27, where the link between
thisthematicandthelaterquestionofmelancholiaisalso
raised.)
27

callorcrygivessomethingtoberead,evenifassuch
it is unreadable. Which is why one reads texts rather
than deciphering messages, why the philosophers of
communication provoke his anger and consternation.
And what infiltrates an element of biography into
every piece of writing. So we must read to wonder
why, at a given moment of his life, Lyotard launched
himself, to my surprise and I imagine to everybodys
surprise (noone would have expected it says the
books covernote) into the project of a biography of
Malraux, finding in it the material for an intermittent
but insistent reflection on the biographical in general.
Before calls me, always ahead of me perhaps, but al
ways behind me, more or less secretly, quietly, even
shiftily,andthecallthatcomesfrombehindme,back
ofme,pushesmeforward,surprised.

Like in that example given in the Differend, which is


no doubt more than an example, because it is an ex
ample his readers quote to each other, recall like a
watchword or a sign of recognition in humour: The
officer shouts Charge! [Avanti!] and jumps out of the
trench; the soldiers, impressed, shout Bravo! without
moving (D, 43). Memorable example perhaps be
causewewouldliketothinkofhimasthebraveone,
he whose intellectual and political courage never
failed,towhomperhapstoooftenweweretemptedto
sayBravo!,toapplaudinsteadoffollowing,towatch
insteadofacting.
But of course it is not simply a matter of following.
Lyotard managed fairly well to avoid all institution
alisationofhisnameunlessIammistaken,therewill
notreallyhavebeenanyLyotardians,exceptperhaps
28

for thoseespecially in England, maybewho


thought they could use Economie libidinale as the gos
pelhethoughtheddoneeverythingtoavoidwriting,
orperhapsthesocalledpostmodernswhoreadThe
PostmodernConditionmuchtooquicklyandwerethen
astonished by what came later (that is, according to
that after, before). But writing and reading are slow,
advancingbackwardsinthedirectionoftheunknown
thing inside (I, 1011); One advances, but the past
inwordsiswaitingthereahead(I,209).

Before thus lodges the (auto)biographical in writing.


This can be more or less explicit, as in Peregrinations,
whereLyotardgivesanexamplewhichistransparent
toonewithamodicumofknowledgeofhislifeatthat
time: To love a woman, for example, to want her to
give you the child she wants to give you, to make a
newlifeforyourselfsothatalifesharedbetweenher
and the child is possible, is also a way of phrasing
(p. 19). But insofar as even this type of surface expo
sureofthebiographicalisincontinuitywiththemore
mysterious thematic of before, here via the figure of a
childhoodwhichsurvives,andwhosetrueeventhood
is in its survival or repetition beyond its time, in a
time out of joint, then this very biographical element,
which I am suggesting is irreducible, will also sooner
orlaterupsetanyattempttowriteabiography(which
does not mean one should not even try: on the con
trary). In La Confession dAugustin, which can always
alsoberead(andwhichitisdifficultnottoread)also
asLyotardsconfessiontoo,heexplainsthattheevent
of the Other, the overturning brought about by the
visit of what Augustine supposedly calls God only
29

because thats the custom (pp. 567this raises a


host of questions about how such a custom might
have started, but also about the relationship of Lyo
tards thought to monotheism on the one hand, and
thepolytheismvaunted(againstAugustine,precisely)
in, for example, Economie libidinale)he explains that
such an event prevents any dating and even any rela
tion:
Whatcouldthesoulplacedoutsideitselfinitsown
home,outofplaceandoutoftime,intrinsically
whatcoulditlocalise,fix,havememorisedofanava
tarwhichabolishesthenaturalconditionsof
perceptionandcannotthereforebeperceivedasan
event?Howwouldthesoulknowwhetherthesyn
copetakesplaceonceorisrepeated,giventhatthe
syncopedeprivesitofthepowertogatherthediver
sityofinstancesintoonetemporality[dure]?Where
tosituateanabsolutevisit,placeitinrelation,ina
biography?Relateit?Thecourseofreallife,biog
raphy,resistsdurablytheimprobableeventofyour
coming.(pp.22,31).
So that, on the one hand, the event cannot really be lo
cated,andcertainlynotinthepresent(Theassaultof
your eternity scarcely signs itself, with a syncope,
nothing really, in the calendar of days. A tiny wing
comefromelsewherebrushesthatcalendarwithyour
presence,anddoesnotwithdrawitfromthepreoccu
pations of its dead life. Your visitation is almost
indiscernable from the slow routine of habit and the
dissipations of desire (pp. 334)), and on the other it
cannot but dissimulate itself (dissimilate itself, as he
said in Economie libidinale), and so one therefore al
ways runs the risk of being wrong about it: before is
30

almost indiscernableits event has a chance of being


readonlyafterthefact,beforeus,neverestablished,at
most, to use one of his favourite words, alleged in our
readingsstilltocome.

Let us beware, though, of slogans, and therefore stu


pidity. Before as childhood is perhaps always before
us, still to come, an infinite task or unpayable debt.
And it will of course call us to what he sometimes
callsaworkingthroughorataskofanamnesiswhich
is neither forgetting nor forgetful memorialising (cf.
Linhumain,pp.647;Heideggeretlesjuifs,passim).But
thisschemaevidentlyrunstheriskoffallingbackinto
the old metaphysical assurances that before undoes.
The point is that, even though it is before us, before is
neverproperlyandfranklyinfrontofus,asanobject
overagainst, nor even as the horizon of a continuous
asymptoticapproach.
35
Itistheobjectneitherofacon
cept nor of an Idea in the Kantian sense. Before does
not mean in front, available to the subject I am sup
posed to be or to have become on leaving childhood.
On the contrary, before befalls me like an eventbut
not, as might have been supposed, from on high, in
the dimension of height, from the most high, but in
much more dubious fashion, from behind. Before may
wellbebeforeme,tocome,butjustaswewerefeeling

35
Cf. Prgrinations, 41: It is tempting to imagine an event
as a facetoface with nothingness. A sort of presence to
death.Butthingsarenotsosimple.Manyeventshappen
without ones being able to look the in the face [dvis
ager] They come to us hidden in the externals of the
everyday.
31

brave and uplifted by that prospect, before turns out


rathertomeanbehind.Asweshallsee,beforecomesat
mefrombehind.Beforeisinterminablybeforeonlyby
being always already behind. HoweverquicklyIturn
round,beforeisneverinfrontofme,neverfacingme,
neverfaceon.Theoriginarydelaythatmeansthatwe
alwaysrunafterbeforealsomeansnotonlythatweare
always behind it, but that before is also behind us, the
Otherneverpresentsitselffaceon,butwillrathertake
usfrombehind.
36
Anditisthismoretroubleddimen
sionthatcomplicatesthefigureofchildhoodwiththat
of sexual difference, which always in Lyotard shows
up as violence and extreme disorder. If we now look
to the passage that comes just before, or just behind,
the long derivation of childhood I took from the text
on Hannah Arendt, then we find that the event I
placedinsuspenseisTheeventofsexedreproduction
in the history of living beings. And in individual on
togenesis, the echo of sexual difference, which is the
event whose savagery the entire life of the individual
is taken up with sorting out [rgler]. (Lectures

36
Already the preface to Discours, figure casts doubt on
Lvinass thematic of the Other presenting itself in the
facetoface: the claim there that il ny a pas
dabsolument Autre, which is hardly worked out with
respecttoLvinas,isstillatworkinthemorerecentwrit
ing we are examining. See too in Peregrinations: : the
great forgetting that Hlderlin detected: God and man
divided intheirconjunction,eachcutfromtheotherand
turninghisbackonhimthereisnomonkwhodoesnot
wonderifGodisturningtohim,tous,hisfrontorhisbe
hind.(p.18).
32

denfance, p. 64).
37
This event of sexual difference and
its disorder generates a good deal of disorder in Lyo
tards writing. For example, La Confession dAugustin
speaks
ofwhatjouissancetherapeperpetratedbytheotheris
theact.Whatismore,thisravishingisundergoneby
surprise,theresnoneedtostandup,toaffrontthe
Otherfaceononthecontrarytoexperiencethe
delicioustorture.
Tothebeinginitselfrecumbentinitsconsuetude,
nothingcanhappenexceptfrombehind.(pp.423)
Nothing can happen except from behind: for it is also
frombehindthatcomealltheresistancestotheevent
oftheOther:vanitytoo,concupiscencemurmursoftly
inonesear,frombehindonesback:
Slyprovocationsadorsomussitantes,whisperedfrom
behind.Asthough,hepretendstothink,theywanted
himtoturnroundtowardsthem.Notso:theyandhe
areusedtobeingtakenbackwards,tobeingoneself
onlybysurprise,thedirtyhabititselfhasnoneedof
acontract,itiscontractedatergo(p.43)

How, then, are we to distinguish between the dirty


habit and the true visitation of the Other? Love story
ordirtystory:histoiredamourorhistoiredecul?

It is a variation on the same figure that he finds in


Malraux,inthedepthsofMalraux:

37
See too the derivation in La Mainmise, pp. 1312 [78],
which moves directlyfromchildhoodtothethemeofin
fantileseduction.
33

Thehorrorofremainingagirlamongwomenand
onedaytohavetobeimpregnated,byamanlostin
advance,ofasonlostinadvance,andtohaveto
weepforthissonattheedgeofaholeinthemud.
Mendonothavechildren.Ananguishclenchedin
thechildwithouthisrealisingit,inthesesocalled
womensphobias,aboutspidersandsquid,insects,
snakesandrats.Everythingthatembracesyouand
penetratesyoushadilyfrombehind,figuresofso
sweetarape.(SignMalraux,p.13)
To what extent is this figure of a penetration a tergo
merely a phantasy of the subject Malraux? To the ex
tentthatitis,itwouldbeoneofthefigures,alongside
thedisgustingseethingrot,ofanindividuality,amore
or less secret key that it would be the biographers
task to pick up and bring out, what Discours, figure
called the matrixfigure, and what the biography of
Malraux calls, glossing Malraux himself, a scarcely
conscious matrix which obstinately moulds the im
pressions and expressions of a writer and which give
his writing its secret singularity. The more so in that
in Malrauxs case the biographer has at his disposal
theexplicitnarrative,inthenovelLesconqurants,ofa
sceneofanalrape,recountedbytheMalrauxcharac
ter,andlinkedtoajuridicalexperiencelikeMalrauxs
own in Indochina, and an admission of obsession on
this subject (This trial has got to him in his phantasy
of a penetration a tergo (pp. 1534: if I am before the
law,thelawisrightbehindme)).Aphantasyofsym
bolic penetration (this time assented to) is also
discreetlyinvokedaroundtherelationshipofMalraux
and De Gaulle (p. 303). But, like any figure of before,
thisonemusthaveacertaingeneralisingvirtue,must
34

escapefromthepurelyidiomatic,ifonlyinordertobe
recognised by the reader or biographer (and allow, for
example, the massive and sustained use of free indi
rect discourse in Sign Malraux, and more still in La
Confession dAugustin, so that sign Malraux can be
reappliedtothebookthatisalsosignLyotard,and,
as the French allows, sing Malrauxits worth point
ing out that the single explicit reflection on free
indirectdiscourseinthebookbearsontheinfilitration
of a womans voice into a mans voice)so that we
should not be surprised tofindtraces,andmorethan
traces, of this elsewhere in Lyotards work, in Econo
mie libidinale, for example, and, as we have just seen,
around Augustine. And this generalisability of the
figuremeansthatittendstoescapefromitsidiomatic
localisation, and so can figure in Lyotard something
more general, for example what he calls the sexual,
or sexual difference, itself often assimilated to onto
logical difference,
38
from which point it can tend to
dominateallotherfiguresofbefore.

For if before had seemed, with its irreducible bio


graphical moment, to find its privileged figure in
childhood in the complex sense we have laid out, we
must now find that privilege threatened with dis
placementbythesexual,sexualdifference,alwaysin
Lyotard referred to violence and savagery, to the
event of castration. Sign Malraux refers (perhaps re
ferring this view to Malraux, undecidably because of
thefreeindirectdiscoursewehavementioned)toThe
sexual diffrend, which is the ultimate driving force of

38
SeeespeciallyLecturesdenfance,pp.3031.
35

everydrama(p.227),andthereby,onemightsuspect,
ofeverydiffrendingeneral,theforcewhichturnsdif
ference into diffrend, the force which remains
nameless in Le diffrend itself.
39
Is this why, in La con
fession dAugustin, he says so elliptically and
mysteriously that time is bound up with the sexual,
and that Augustine, beneath the phenomenology of
internal timeconsciousness, sketched out a libidinal
ontological constitution of temporality (p. 38). Now,
whatdoesthesexualdo?
Thesexualcontinuouslysurprises,takesfrombe
hind,worksbehindonesback.Itletsright
resolutions,probityandfacetofacepromiseshave
theirsay,theywillpass.(p.38)
To take from behind is, then, not simply a more or
lessidiomaticphantasyofMalrauxoranyoneelse,but
a figure of the sexual, and therefore of before in gen
eral: no surprise, then, to find in this motif the
dominant figure of sexuality in Lyotards work more
generally, from at least Economie libidinale onwards.
We could follow this via the analysis of the Schreber
case,ofSchrebersvertigoofanaleroticism,hissolar
anus or mad anus (pp. 767), through the section
called Use me, in which we find, for example, the
erectmemberabovetheloins(p.80),buttocks,anus,
passage offered by the woman bent double (EL, 81).
And further on, the anal ring is the dominant feature

39
SeeExamenoralanditsdiscussionoftheexpressionle
diffrend mme (Lyotard: les dplacements philosophiques,
pp.140ff).Isitacoincidencethatthisiscalledupbyref
erence to a paper by Jacob Rogozinski, first husband of
Lyotardssecondwife?
36

of the analysis of the Greek city (and by extension of


politics more generally) in its homoerotic economy,
its annulatory perversion: annulling through move
mentonthering[lanneau]ofthecity.Circumversion
(p.194;cf.tooRudimentspaens,pp.219,228;Desdispo
sitifs pulsionnels, pp. 2567, etc.):thisisinsistenttothe
point at which we might suspect that everything in
Economielibidinalethatcomesdowntotheformofthe
circleandeventhedominantfigureoftheZerothus
tracedoutwouldbehauntedbytheringoftheanus.
The philosophy were doing is one of sodomists [en
culs: faggots] and women (p. 307), says the end of
Economie libidinale, and it would be easy to show that
the figure of a tergo penetration recurs every time the
pointistoaffirmacertainanonymityofthesexual.The
dramaofsexualdifferenceisplayedoutfrombehind,
and this dorsal perspective is what troubles any cer
tain identification of the sexes involved.
40
Before gets
me from behind, penetrates and unseats me from
whatEconomielibidinalecallsthedespoticphantasyof
themaster,ofplacinghimselfinthesupposedplaceof
the central zero and thus to identify himself with the
matricial Nothing (p.254). Despotic phantasy of see
ingonlyaholetofill,
41
anusmatrix,supposedlyvirile
filiation,obviouslydoomedtofail,hauntedbywhatis

40
See for example Economie libidinale, pp.1734, and Rcits
tremblants,pp.54,978,103.
41
See too the reference to the horrors contained in Mal
rauxs Lawrence biography, Sign Malraux, p. 273:
assassinations, scalpings, Lawrences murder of the
Arab,theblockedassholeoftheSassaniankings.
37

aroundit,initsborderlands,itspagus,placingthecen
treinquestion:
TheVoiceattheVirilecentrespeaksonlyofthese
limitsoftheEmpire(i.e.women)andwehavecease
lesslytocombattheirexteriority.Ifthisisthecase,is
itnotbecausethisobjectisunconsciouslyendowed
withwhatwecallactivity?Anddoesnotthepoten
tialforruseweallowitbetraythesecretoverturning
ofourrolebytheirs?(Istherenotadesireonthepart
ofWesternMantogethimselfsodomisedbythe
woman?)Isnottheoutsideofmenstheatrethemost
important,includingformen?Isthatnotwherehe
findshisorigin?Andisitnotnecessarythatthis
originbefemale?Isthemothernottheoriginary
woman?I.e.thewaytheexternalsexisrepresented
intheory:ground,itselfungrounded,inwhichmean
ingisengendered?MeaninglessBeing?
42

So what inscribes the biographical in the work, inef


faceably,isnotbeforeinanabstractsense,butbeforeas
event of birth, as a childhood which resolves into the
existenceofasexedbody,markedbytheeventofcas
tration, the fact that there are men and women, and
notMan.ThisisdulywhatinpartmotivatesHerob
jectionstotheideathatthoughtcouldgoonwithouta
body (See Linhumain, pp. 2831): one is and therefore
thinks on the basis of an existence that is aesthetic in
thebroadestsense,affective,inprimarypassivity,one
is and so one has a body: and this body is constitu
tivelymarkedbysexualdifference.

42
Fminitdanslamtalangue,inRudimentspaens,21332
(pp.22021).
38

Behindchildhood,then(beforeisalwaysbehind),there
is the sexual as the essential feature of bodily exis
tence. In love, as Sign Malraux says again, the
enemydoesnotadvancefaceforwardThesexualis
unnameable, the unnameable, perhaps (p. 245). The
sexualarrivesessentiallyfrombehind,aspenetrationa
tergo.Andthiscouldbeareasonfornotcompletinga
biographyofamanalreadyabiographer:
Whatwerethesegentlemenwritersaskingfor,the
Drieus,MartinduGards,Gides,Lawrences,
Montherlants,intermsof[sexualdifference?]An
ideaoffemininitythatwouldnotupsetthemisogy
noushomosexuality,beitconcealedordeclared?
Impossiblebiographynodoubt,butacompromising
onetoo:theindecentpropensityhiddenunderthe
virilefraternitywouldhavebeentoovisible.(p.
279).
Beforechildhood, unnameable, sexual, inscribes the
biographical into the life that thereby becomes more
orlesslegendary,throughwriting,aphantasyofvirile
filiation through the signature on a workand
therebyimproperforthebiographyitalsocallsupbe
causeofthatverygesture.Impossiblebiographyfrom
the moment graph is the very gesture of defiance
(hopeless defiance, at best in the as if attributed to
childhood in the text on Hannah Arendt) against the
murderous bios that condemns me to death and rot
ting.Iwriteabiographytoshowthatitspossibilityis
none other than its impossibility, that the work I sign
againstmydeadlife,forthesakeofmylegend,istorn
bythesignaturefromthematrixofthefemalematrix.
ButIwriteabiography(andLyotard,unlikeMalraux,
finished his), a compromising biography, at the price
39

of the affirmation of an impossible, more or less


shamefully or joyously perverse virility, dissimulated
ordissimilated,perhapshomosexual,letssaymoreor
less gay. It is possible, he says that from the mo
mentyouwrite,youareobligedtobeaman.Writing
is perhaps a thing of virility. Even if you write about
femininity.Evenifyouwritefemininely(Rudiments
paens,p.213).Butthisobligation,obligationitself,is
endlesslyambiguous:canonebeamanandwillone
ever have finished confessing it, that is exposing one
self to the surprise of what always might arrive from
behind,fromtheother?
Thisiswhatmeansthatamanisnotman,andthat
man is not mankind, not the human. Human sex is
nonhuman, inhuman, says Discours, figure already,
commenting on Marx, against the Hegelian dialectic
(Discours,figure,pp.13841),alreadyininfancytheen
tiretyofwhatwehavebeentryingtosay:
Thequestionofthisdifference[i.e.sexualdifference]is
thequestionofcastration,andeveryreligion,ascul
turalfact,aimedattheabsorptionofcastrationinthe
adventoftheconditionoftheson,i.e.therecuperation
ofmeaningandviolenceintosignification.Sothatby
imaginingrealdifferenceasthedifferencebetweena
humansexandnonhumansex,Marxgetsveryclose
towhatwillbetheobjectofFreudsresearch,sincehe
refusestoscaroverthedifferenceofthesexesintoa
masculine/feminineopposition,sinceheimagines,if
onlyforamoment,thatthereis,inthefactofhuman
sex(masculineaswellasfeminine)anirremissiblevio
lence,areferencetoanexteriority,nonhumansex,
whichcannotfinditsplaceintheconsciousorderof
whatislegitimate,since,finally,headmitsthatthe
questionofsexisnotatallthatofthepolarisationbe
40

tweenthesexes,butonthecontrarythatoftheirnon
attractionandtheirnonthinkableseparation.
[Lyotardsnote:TheFreudianthemeofNach
trglichkeitmustbeattachedtothisconceptofa
differenceoutsidethesystem.Ifthesceneofseduction
forexample(totheextentthatitexists)actsafterthe
fact,thisisnotbecausewearealwaysinthegap
[cart],butbecausehumansexisnonhuman.](DF,
14041)
Bear witness to this, or confess it, in writing which
condemns one to the obligation of being a man, of
putting childish things behind one. Bear witness
badly,naturally.Endlessly.Iconfess.Lastsentenceof
The Inhuman: the witness is a traitor (p. 215).
41
42

THESAME,EVEN,ITSELF

Ladiffrencememe

In his monumental, and still perhaps largely unread


Discours,figure,
43
Lyotarddistinguishesthreelevelsof
the eponymous concept of the figure. The highest
level, that of the figureimage, is to do with something
visible, an image possibly in the sense of a figurative
or representational picture, potentially introducing
something of the order of a perception of depth into
what is described as the flat space of discourse; the
second level, that of the figureforme, is to do with the
conditionsofvisibilityofthefigureimage,forexample
the invisibile but powerfully organising principles of
perspective in the costruzzione legitima of post
renaissancepainting,butthesortofthingthatcanalso
be brought out into visibility in modernist painting,
insofar as it tries not so much to paint the world, but
to paint the conditions of visibility of a world (or in
deed of a painting). The third and deepest level is
whatLyotardcallsthefigurematrice,thematrixfigure,
which in the French resonates much more strongly
than in English with a sense of maternity, of the

43
JeanFranoisLyotard,Discours,figure(Paris:Klinckseick,
1971).
43

womb. This level, which in a sense escapes figurality


as such (whereas the figureforme can at least try to
represent the conditions of representation of the fig
ureimage), is related by Lyotard to a psychoanalytic
conceptofprimaryfantasy,whatever,inagivenartist
for example, produces or dictates or provokes the ac
tualworks(betheyfigurativeornot).Theworksofa
man, says Lyotard, with a perhaps not insignificant
specificityabouttheassumedgenderoftheartist,are
only ever the offspring of this matrix; it can perhaps
be halfglimpsed through their superimposition, in
depth(p.2789).
ThislevelofthefigurematriceisrelatedbyLyotard
todifference,andeventodifferenceitself,ladiffrence
mme(Discours,figure.InLyotard:WritingtheEvent,
44

IcriticizedLyotardforapparentlydoingtwothingsat
this point and for not making clear the relationship
between them. On the one hand, I suggested that the
figurematricehadtobereadinaformalway,related
to Derridas notion of diffrance, a sort of anarchic
principle of figuralityasdifference that was at the
rootofLyotardsperceptionofthefigureingeneralas
disruptive or transgressive of the legalities of the or
der of discourse, a principle of disorder or
differentiationthatmadetheotherlevelsofthefigure
possible, but which they, even in their transgressivity
with respect to discourse, were already binding and
taming;andontheotherhand,Isuggestedthatthere
was a problem in Lyotards associating the figure
matrice with the primal fantasy of an artist, a sort of

44
Lyotard: Writing the Event (Manchester: Manchester Uni
versityPress,1988).
44

generator of the singularities that the works were,


something that gave them a signature, in that this
view could too easily lend itself to a sort of clinicism
thatwouldreadtheworksassymptoms.
The most acute moment in Lyotards analysis, in
troducing his long analysis of the Child is Being
Beaten fantasy from Freud, leads him to the most
ambitiousclaimaboutdifference:
Analysing, we therefore finally meet with a thick
ness, an opacity. I shall suppose the figural to be
there, deconstructing not only discourse, but the fig
ure as recognisable image or good form. And under
the figural, difference, not simply the trace, not sim
ply presenceabsence, indifferently discourse or
figure, but the primary process, the principle of dis
order, the push to jouissance; not any interval
separatingtwotermsinthesameorder,butanabso
lutebreakingofbalancebetweenanorderandanon
order. Excavating this depth of the pseudarch, we
shall perhaps get our hands on the truth of differ
ence,alreadyfeltinthesensoryorder,intheorderof
the visual field, but where it is only metaphor: the
pseudarchic field is its proper field, the one it needs
to try to install itself. (DF, 328, quoted in Lyotard:
WritingtheEvent,1012)
My reading of Lyotard was, in spite of itself, organ
ised teleologically: Le diffrend provided me with a
pointofarrivalfromwhichIthoughtitpossibletode
tect some fundamental continuity through the earlier,
apparentlyverydifferentwork(especiallyEconomieli
bidinale), and which allowed me to construct a
narrative of which Le diffrend was the triumphant
outcome. This meant that I felt able to accept quite
45

readily the psychoanalytical critique of phenomenol


ogy that informed Discours, figure, but then to follow
that critique to the point where its need for psycho
analytical underpinnings fell away in the face of
differenceitself,whichIunderstoodtobeaprinciple
(a pseudoprinciple) of such generality or formality
thatithadtobetakenindependentlyofanyparticular
embodiment or enactment at any particular level of
being(forexample,apsychiclevel).Ifeltthenthatthe
philosophicalforceofLyotardsworkdependedonits
abandoning at some point the psychoanalytical con
ceptualitythathadhelpeditalong.
My criticism of Lyotard on this point depends,
however, on a certain sleight of hand: for on the one
hand I wanted to complain about Lyotards wanting
togethishandsondifferenceitself,butontheother
wantedtodojustthatonhisbehalf,byreadingitina
sort of pure formality that allowed a calm conceptual
grasp, whereas the point would be that difference it
self only ever could be grasped in difference from
itself, and so never as purely formal. Another way of
putting this is that where I wanted to praise Lyotard
forcomingtotheviewthatthelanguageofdesireand
more generally of energetics, of libidinal economy,
was no more than a faon de parler, and for then
proceedingwithLediffrendtoageneralanalysisoffa
onsdeparlerofwhichthatwouldbeonlyone,Ifailed
to give due weight to the consequence that talk of fa
ons de parler is itself only a faon de parler, that the
languagegamegameisnotsimplythelimpidconcep
tual ether in which philosophy can henceforth take
place free of all illusion (including phenomenological
orpsychoanalyticalillusion),but,bybeingpotentially
46

itsownobject,isalreadyinexcessofitself,generating
obscurities that strictly exceed its own conceptual
grasp.Ifthelanguagegamegameisitselfa(language)
game, then far from confirming the ability of that
game to explain everything including itself, it should
give rise to asituationofexcess,afailureofcomplete
reflexive transparency which in principle opens the
necessary possibility that the languagegame game
find itself again speechless at some point. It would, I
think,bepossibletopursuethisthought,whichiscer
tainly not absent from the text of Le diffrend, in
differentways:forexample,viathesuggestionImade
in a review of Just Gaming that the concept of rule
was undecidable in terms of its regimen (or genre, as
Lyotardwasstillcallingitatthatpoint,concentrating
on the distinction between descriptives and prescrip
tives),
45
or via the momentary doubt I raised in
WritingtheEventastothestatusofthereferent.
ThewayLyotardhimselfmovedon,however,isto
developthisexcessviatheparadoxicalstatusofsilence
in Le diffrend, as a constitutive component of that
books eponymous concept: and this move leads him
to rethink differently the psychoanalytical and more
generally affective and aesthetic dimensions I took
that book to have triumphantly overcome. Just as an
attempt to think la diffrence mme generated a crisis
point in Discours, figure, so the attempt to think le dif
frend mme, the differend itself or the differend, even,
produces a crisis in the languagegame game, and
leadsLyotardintoarichlateveinofworkaroundthe
theme of an inarticulate infancy which, I think, tends

45
August:DoubleJustice,Diacritics,14:3(1984),6471.
47

to exceed the transcriptive possibilities provided by


the conceptual apparatus of Le diffrend, and which
marksacertainreturntopsychoanalysisonLyotards
part. This work opens the difficult prospect of an un
translatableattentiontolemmemme,thesamesame,
the same itself, the itself itself, the same, even, the it
self,even,theeven,even,andsoon.

Lediffrendmme

InLediffrend,adifferendwastheresultofanincom
patibility between discursive genres, and gave rise to
the thought of a wrong, a tort, inflicted by one genre
onanother,bytheimpositionofitsrulesonthoseap
propriate to the other genre. This situation involves a
certainsilencingoftheothergenre,
46
whichisdeprived
ofthemeanstoestablishtheverytortitissuffering(if
it could establish the wrong, that wrong would cease
tobeawrongandbecomeameredommage,adamage
in principle reparable within the terms of the discur
siverules).Thissilencesignalsthediffrendbutcannot
strictly articulate it, and manifests itself as a sentiment
or an affect. In his later paper Linarticul ou le dif
frendmme,
47
Lyotardpointsoutanequivocationin

46
AlreadyinLaconditionpostmodernesilencewasassociated
withacertainexerciseofterror,andinLediffrendispart
ofadefinitionofevil.
47
LInarticul,oulediffrendmme,inMichelMeyerand
Alain Lempereur, eds., Figures et conflits rhtoriques
(Bruxelles:UniversitdeBruxelles,1990),pp.201207;see
tootheinterviewtranscribedasExamenoralininNiels
48

the books analysis of silence, as it appears for exam


plein22and105:
It is not clearwhethersentimentisanonsentence,a
negative sentence or a particular sort of sentence.
Norisitclearwhetherthesentimentresultsfroman
impossibilityofphrasinganeventorwhetheronthe
contraryitisthecauseofthatfailure.Isonesilentbe
causeoneistoomoved,orelseisonemovedbecause
wordsarelackingandoneisobligedtobesilent?
This new text wants to argue that sentiment is a sen
tence, but, as we shall see, a sentence of a very
particularsort,thatstrainstheconceptualresourcesof
the languagegame game to the limit, by pushing to
wards le diffrend mme, the beingdifferend of the
differend. For attempting to focus on the sentimental
or affectphrase as such produces a sort of meta
damage and metatort that the languagegame game
appearstoinflictonitself.
The argument here is that the affectphrase is inar
ticulate, meaning that, unlike all the other sorts of
sentenceanalysedinLediffrend,itdoesnotpresenta
universe organised according to the four familiar
polesintheirtwofamiliaraxesofaddressoraddressee
andreferentmeaning(sothatinpresentingauniverse
a sentence typically positions someone as saying
somethingaboutsomethingtosomeone).Asthepres
entationofauniverseistheconditionforthelinkings
of phrase to phrasewhichgiverisetodiscursivegen
res (linking picking up on one or other of the poles

Brgger,FinnFrandsenandDominiquePirotte,eds.,Lyo
tard: les dplacements philosophiques (Brussels: De Boeck,
1993).
49

presentedintheprevioussentencesuniverse),thein
articulacy of the affectphrase seems to pose a threat
to the possibility of continuing to analyse in those
terms:
Fromthefactthattheaffectphraseisinarticulate,
severalnoteworthyfeaturesappeartofollow.Here
arethreeofthem:1)Theaffectphraseappearsnotto
allowitselftobelinkedontoaccordingtotherulesof
anydiscursivegenre;itappearsonthecontrarytobe
ableonlytosuspendorinterruptlinkings,whatever
theyare;2)theaffectphraseinjurestherulesofthe
discursivegenres;itcreatesadamage;3)thisdamage
givesriseinturntoawrong.Forthedamagesuf
feredbydiscoursecanbearguedwithintherules,
butthisargumentationisinappropriatetotheaffect
phraseineverycase,ifitistruethatthatphrasedoes
notgiverisetoagenreandcannotbeargued.The
damagethattheaffectphrasecausesthediscursive
genresisthustransformedintoawrongsufferedby
theaffectphrase.Articulatedphraseandaffect
phrasecanonlymeetbymissingeachother.From
theirdifferendresultsawrong.Ifarticulationandin
articulationareirreducibletoeachother,thiswrong
canbesaidtoberadical.(5)
The radical nature of this tort is such that it is omni
present, and thereby potentially out of reach of the
terms of that book, in that a sentence that does not
presentauniverseishardtocallasentenceatall.
If the affectphrase is inarticulate and fails to pre
sent a universe, it nonetheless has a minimal point of
connection with the way in which other phrases and
universes are described in the book, and that is
aroundthe(alreadyratherobsure)poleofmeaningor
sense.Lyotardinsiststhattheaffectphrasehasnoref
50

erentandisnotaddressedatall(soneitheraddressor
nor addressee appear here): rather than presenting a
universe, it signals a sense which is monotonous in
that it is always only a sense of pleasure and/or pain.
The natureofthissignaliscomplex,andLyotard,us
ing a term that he makes much use of in his analyses
of Kants aesthetic judgement, calls it tautegorical,
meaning that it is both an affective state (pleasure or
pain)andthesignofthatstate(6):andthisstatusis
explicitly related here too to Freuds account of affect
asnonrepresentational,asopposedtowordorthing
presentations:theyarewitnessesbutdonotrepresent
anything to anybody (Ibid.) This minimal complicity
of the affectphrase with the analytic of sentences
moregenerallydoesallowothersentencestolinkonto
it, but only in an attempt to domesticate it or make it
theobjectofacognitivediscourse.Ingeneral,Lyotard
seemstodeplore(oratleasttoregret)thisstateofaf
fairs, presenting the affectphrase as something of a
scandal from the point of view of articulated dis
course, something it would be important to respect
without reducing it to cognitive referentiality. But
sometimes an ambiguity surfaces, according to which
the affectphrase seems not so much to want its inar
ticulacyassuch,butrathertowanttobearticulated:
Itseemsthatthistranscription[intocognitivedis
course]isinevitable,ifonlybecausetheaffectphrase
isinopportune,unseemly,andevenworryinginthe
orderofdiscourses.Itwillbeshownthatyourgaiety
oryoursufferingcameinspiteofeverythingattheir
appointedtime,thattheyhadtheirlegitimacy,that
theyweredisturbingonlybecauseonedidnotun
derstandtheirlogic.Onewouldalmostsaythatthe
51

affectphraseaskstobearticulatedinthismanner,
andevenarguedasifthescandalitbringstodis
coursewasnottolerable.Discourseappearsnottobe
abletosufferforlongthataninarticulatedandunar
guedremainderremainoutsideitsgrasp.(7)
The suspicion of circularity in the presentation here
(theaffectphraseaskstobearticulatedjustbecauseits
inarticulacyisintolerabletothearticulate)helpsbring
out a tension that was already at work in Le diffrend
itself.There,atleastonoccasion,thedifferendingen
eral, le diffrend mme, is presented as wanting to
express itself in the form of litigation, but failing; the
wrong would like to become a mere damage and
thereby be reparable (cf. 213). But the book also,
like this later text, often presents a sort of dignity of
thedifferendassuch,adignitywhichcannotfailtobe
betrayed by any attempt to transform it into a litiga
tion, and the associated wrong into a damage.
Bearing witness to the differend, in oneofLyotards
favourite formulations, seems struck by this ambigu
ity: does that bearing witness, and the associated
creativity or inventivity it calls for, involve an injunc
tion to invent idioms so that the differend be
expressedaslitigationandthewrongrighted,ordoes
it involve inventing idioms that express the differend
as itself, as the differend itself, le diffrend mme? This
tension,inoneformoranother,runsthroughallLyo
tardssubsequentwork.
In the short text we are reading, for example, this
tension appears around the further elaboration of the
affectphrase in terms of phon as opposed to logos.
Drawing on Aristotle, Lyotard associates phon with
the (supposedly) inarticulate cries of animals, (sup
52

posedly) merely signalling affects: this is banished or


repressed from logos by the operations and demands
ofarticulatediscourseviaanoperationwhichappears
identical with those regularly brought out in Le dif
frendasgeneratingdifferendsandtorts:
Theprocedureofexclusionisclassicallythatofthe
dilemma:ifphonbelongstolanguage,itisarticu
lable;ifitclaimsnottobearticulable(myfeelingis
inexpressible),itarguesatleastthatclaim(pretty
muchwhatwearedoinghere),andtherebyplacesit
selfundertheruleofthedialektos.(15)
This apparent concession, whereby the discourse try
ingtobearwitnessandperhapsdojusticetothephon
bythatveryfactbringsitundertheswayoflogosand
thereby confirms its exclusion, opens up the zone of
infancythatcomestodominateLyotardslaterwork.
This infancy has a curious status (as does the animal
ity with which it is associated here and elsewhere),
whichshowsupasanexplicitquestionoftherelation
between the empirical (anthropological) and the tran
scendental:
Phonandlogoscanonlyencounteroneanother,and
notlinkontooneanother.Thisencountergivesrise
todifferend.Forthehumananimalatleast,thisdif
ferendcannotbedealtwithasalitigation[which
appearstoansweroneofthequestionswewerejust
raising].Thehumanisindeedborn,likeanyanimal,
equippedwithaisthesisandphon.Butcontraryto
otheranimals,exceptdomesticanimals,itisborn
rightinthemiddleofcountlessdiscourses,intothe
worldofarticulatedsentences,andcontrarytodo
mesticanimals,itisgiventothehumantophrasein
anarticulatemanner,afteracertaintime.Thistime
53

beforethelogosiscalledinfantia.Itisthetimeofa
phonwhichsignifiesonlyaffections,pathmata,the
pleasuresandpainsofnow[Lyotardhasspentsome
timeshowingthatthetimeofaffectisnow,abso
lutely,nowratherthanthenow,likethetimeofa
sentence(oritspresentation)moregenerallyinLedif
frend,suggestingaconvergencenotherepursuedat
all],withoutreferringthemtoanobjecttakenasa
referentnortoanaddressoraddresseecouple.Pleas
ureandpainaresignalledbyvocalisations(andI
wouldadd:bygestures(Lediffrend,110[sophon
shouldapparentlynotbetakenliterallyhere])onthe
occasionofobjectswhicharenotknown,underthe
regimenofanarcissismpriortoanyego.Thisis
whatFreuddescribedunderthedoubleheadingof
polymorphousperversityandprimarynarcissism.
Butthisdescription(minehere,oftenthatofFreud)
remainsanthropological.Thepointwouldbeto
elaboratethetranscendentalstatusofinfantia.(18)
This elaboration is scarcely begun in this text, though
itcanbetrackedthroughlaterwork(especiallyinLec
tures denfance). Whether that elaboration can strictly
be called transcendental, however, is a question: in
this text, Lyotard remarks in passing that Freud can
persistincallinginfantileaffectivitysexuality,butitis
certain that it is completely ignorant of the polarisa
tion linked to sexual difference (19), but later
remarks consistently link infancy in this supposedly
transcendentalsensewithpreciselythesavageevent
of castration and sexual difference, and as Lyotards
efforts to track le diffrend mme continue, right up to
an including the posthumous Confession dAugustin,
this insistence on the sexual consistently casts doubt
54

onthepossibilityofachievingastrictlytranscendental
account.

LetuspausehereoverthereferencetoFreud(notably
absent from Le diffrend itself, of course). One of the
things that Lyotards account here leaves unexplored
is the transition, for the human, from phon to logos.
How, we might ask, is it given to the human to
phraseinanarticulateway,afteracertaintime?This
is an important question, because if the claim is that
there is such a radical differend between the affect
phraseandallotherphrases,suchthatlinkingitselfis
strictly impossible (phon and logos, it will be remem
bered,canencountereachother,butnotlinkontoeach
other), then the fact that, even anthropologically
speaking,humansdoinfactmovefromtheonetothe
otherisaninterestingissue.
In the early Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud
sketches an answer to just this question. Towards the
end of his manuscript, Freud is struggling to extend
the rudimentary account of memory that he has pro
vided (an account of memory being the crucial
component of Freuds theory
48
) from perceptual (ex
ogenous) processes to thought (endogenous)
processes.Thegeneralaccountofmemoryrelies,asis
wellknown,onthethesisofadistinctionbetween(or
moreproperlyabecomingdistinctof)permeableor
perceptionneurones,andrelativelyimpermeableor
memory neurones. The facilitations forced through

48
A psychological theory deserving any consideration
must furnish an explanation of memory. Standard Edi
tion,I,p.299.
55

the latter class of neurones by the passage of energy


from either endogenous or exogenous sources, or
more precisely the differences between those facilita
tions, allow in principle for a representation of
memory.Suchamemoryallowsforanaccountofan
organism more complex than one simply devoted to
theimmediatedischargeofenergyalongthemodelof
the reflexarc, and provides for the distinction be
tween primary and secondary processes, memory
allowing in principle for the deferral or avoidance of
potentially lethal discharge, and providing for the
specific action required by reality or the exigencies
of life. Much later, in Part III of the Project, Freud is
attempting to account for what he calls normal psy
chological. Here theinitialdescriptioniscomplicated,
on the one hand by the place of the mysterious and
troublesomeneurones,supposedtocapturepercep
tual qualities by receiving excitation from the
periodicity of stimuli, and on the other by the ap
pearance of language as an issue. However difficult
the place of the neurones (Freud notoriously re
situatedthembetweenandinlatercorrespondence
with Fliess), they in principle allow for a quite differ
entiated memorystructure on the side of perception
(exogenousstimuli),byallowingthebeginningsofan
account of attention. But a difficulty arises in that the
ability to recathect mnemic images from the side of
thought(intheabsenceoftheperceptualimageofthe
sameobject)requiresthatthereabeamechanismfor
directingtheendogeneouscathexestotherightplace.
On the side of perception, it is the neurones that
provideforthisviatheirindicationsofquality:butin
principle these neurones are not cathected in the case
56

ofthought,whichworksdirectlyatthelevelof.But,
rememberingthebasicreflexarcmodelofthepsyche,
excitation in general ends in some form of motor dis
charge.Bymeansofasortoforiginaryfeedbackloop,
such a discharge generates a perception of itself, duly
accompanied by indications of quality in the neu
rones.Andthisistheoriginoflanguage,noless:
Indicationsofqualitycomeaboutnormallyonly
fromperceptions;itisthusaquestionofobtaininga
perceptionfromthepassageofQ.Ifadischarge
werelinkedtothepassageofQ(inadditiontothe
[mere]circulation),then,likeeverymovement,it[the
discharge]wouldfurnishinformationofthemove
ment[p.318].Afterall,indicationsofquality
themselvesareonlyinformationofdischarge[p.325]
(ofwhatkind[wemaylearn]laterperhaps).Nowit
mayhappenthatduringthepassageofQamotor
neuroneiscathectedaswell,whichthendischarges
Qandfurnishesanindicationofquality.Itisa
question,however,ofreceivingdischargesofthis
kindfromallcathexes.Theyarenotallmotor,and
forthispurpose,therefore,theymustbebroughtinto
asecurefacilitationwithmotorneurones.
Thispurposeisfulfilledbyspeechassociation.This
consistsinthelinkingofneuroneswithneurones
whichservesoundpresentationsandthemselves
havetheclosestassociationwithmotorspeech
images.Theseassociationshaveanadvantageoftwo
characteristicsovertheothers:theyarelimited(few
innumber)andexclusive.Inanycase,fromthe
soundimagetheexcitationreachesthewordimage
andfromitreachesdischarge.Thus,ifthemnemic
imagesareofsuchakindthatapartcurrentcango
fromthemtothesoundimagesandmotorword
57

images,thenthecathexisofthemnemicimagesisac
companiedbyinformationofdischarge,whichisan
indicationofqualityandalsoaccordinglyanindica
tionoftheconsciousnessofthememory.(pp.3645)
This mechanism (which Freud describes as allowing
for nothing less than cognition and conscious observ
ing thought), in fact alone accounts for the possibility
of memory in any stronger sense that the basic
mechanism of leaving traces in the semipermeable
neurones.Thatmechanismgivesabasisformemoryin
the stronger sense of conscious retrieval through the
entailment, familiar from Derridas reading, of origi
nary repetition or repeatability, but only the speech
associations here adumbrated allow memory of
thoughtprocesses themselves (endogeneous
cathexes),andtherebyconsciousmemoryassuch:
Asweknow,thefacilitationsbetweentheneurones
constitutememory,therepresentationofallthein
fluenceswhichhasexperiencedfromtheexternal
world.Nowweobservethattheegoitselfputsin
handcathexesoftheneuronesaswell,andsetsgo
ingpassages[ofquantity]whichmustcertainlyalso
leavefacilitationsbehindthemastraces.,however,
hasnomeansofdistinguishingtheseresultsof
thoughtprocessesfromtheresultsofperceptual
processes.Itmayperhapsbepossibletocognizeand
reproduceperceptualprocessesbytheirassociation
withdischarges;butallthatremainsofthefacilita
tionsmadebythoughtistheoutcome,notamemory.
Thesamethoughtfacilitationsmayhavecomeabout
owingtooneintenseprocessortenlessforcibleones.
Theindicationsofspeechdischargehelp,however,to
makegoodthislack;theyputthoughtprocessesona
58

levelwithperceptualprocesses,lendthemreality
andmakememoryofthempossible.(pp.3656)
Thought, then, achieves reality, and thereby memory,
by being externalised as speech and then recognised
perceptually: the endogenous stimuli need supple
mentation by this loop that transforms them, via
speech, into exogenous stimuli (speechdischarges)
which are then afforded the qualitative supplement
affordedallperceptualstimulibytheoperationofthe
neurones. This turning of the inside out so that it
can come back in again is the function of language,
which to that extent is a condition of memory insofar
as memory involves consciousness. As will regularly
be the case throughout Freuds work, consciousness
(and what he a little later calls the preconscious) is
boundupwithlanguage.
These normal operations of the psyche are of
course presupposing speech in the sense of logos
rather than phon, in Lyotards distinction. But Freud
alsohasanattemptataratherbreezygeneticaccount
of the passage from the one to the other, which fur
thermoreconnectsupwiththeearlieraccountofpain
as in some sense constitutive of the psyche (all
cathexes, to the extent that they involve a certain vio
lent battering down of resistance in the contact
barriers,canbesaidtoinvolvesomethingoftheorder
ofpain;whatwilllaterbecalledthepleasureprinciple
isoriginarilyacompromisewithpain,whichisbyex
tension what justifies Derridas description of life in
thiscontextasaneconomyofdeath),andrelatesthat
totheessentiallydistressedconditionofinfancy:
59

Speechinnervationisoriginallyapathofdischarge
for,operatinglikeasafetyvalve,forregulatingos
cillationsinQ[i.e.accordingtothemechanismof
theprimaryprocessseekingdischargeofenergyac
cordingtothereflexarcmodelG.B.];itisaportion
ofthepathtointernalchange,whichrepresentsthe
onlydischargetillthespecificactionhasbeenfound.
Thispathacquiresasecondaryfunctionfromthefact
thatitdrawstheattentionofthehelpfulperson(usu
allythewishedforobjectitself)tothechildslonging
anddistressfulstate;andthereafteritservesforcom
municationandisthusdrawnintothespecific
action.
49
Inthefirstplace,thereareobjects
perceptionsthatmakeonescream,becausethey
arousepain;anditturnsoutasanimmenselyimpor
tantfactthatthisassociationofasound(which
arousesmotorimagesofonesownaswell)witha
perceptual[image],whichiscompositeapartfrom
this,emphasizesthatobjectasahostileoneand
servestodirectattentiontotheperceptual[image].
Whenotherwise,owingtopain,onehasreceivedno
goodindicationofthequalityoftheobject,theinfor
mationofonesownscreamservestocharacterizethe
object.Thusthisassociationisameansofmaking
memoriesthatarouseunpleasureconsciousandob
jectsofattention:thefirstclassofconsciousmemories
hasbeencreated.Notmuchisnowneededinorderto
inventspeech[myemphasisG.B.].Thereareother
objects,whichconstantlyproducecertainsoundsin

49
Earlier, Freud has said this path of discharge [i.e. the
path of internal change, associated by Freud here with
screaming] acquires a secondary function of the highest
importance, that of communication, and the initial help
lessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral
motives.(I,318)
60

whoseperceptualcomplex,thatis,asoundplaysa
part.Invirtueofthetrendtowardsimitation,which
emergesduringjudging[Freudhasearlierpostu
latedaprimaryjudgingbasedonimitationG.B.],
itispossibletofindtheinformationofmovementat
tachingtothissoundimage.Thisclassofmemories,
too,cannowbecomeconscious.Itnowstillremains
toassociateintentionalsoundswiththeperceptions;
afterthat,thememorieswhentheindicationsof
sounddischargeareobservedbecomeconsciouslike
perceptionsandcanbecathectedfrom.(pp.3667)
This possibility of accounting for memory via the re
internalised perception of the externalised discharge
of scream and, eventually, speech, provides in princi
ple for the passage from phon to logos, and from
infancy to speech (and also, perhaps, to temporality).
It does not, however, give any easy sense of how to
distinguish,say,theanimalfromthehuman,and,just
likeLyotardinthepassagequotedabove,reliesonthe
sense that human infants just happen to find them
selves surrounded by alreadyspeaking animals (i.e.
other humans). The ontogenetic account of the origin
of language begs a phylogenetic (and even, beyond
any such anthropologicalbiological explanation, tran
scendental)accountofthatdifference.
Lyotardsshorttextendswithtwobriefparagraphs
that provide some preliminary indications as to the
directiontheelaborationofthetranscendentalstatus
of infancy might go. The first associates phon with a
sortofprecorporealstate:infantsandanimalsdonot
have a body, for such having presupposes the ref
erential axis of logos: in a movement of thought very
close to that of Economie libidinale, the pleasures and
61

painstheinfanshappenstoexperienceareonlyattrib
utedtotheexcitationofthisorthaterogenouszoneby
thearticulateddiscourseofadults,whichtakesthein
fantile organism as its reference (19). And Lyotard
goes on, in duly transcendental style, to demand that
we elaborate the status of the world or the incorpo
real chaos associated with affect, the status of the
thing (Ibid.).
50
And having briefly suggested that
phons lack of the addressoraddressee axis means
that it gives rise to no community, but only a com
municabilityofaffects,Lyotardendsthispenultimate
paragraphofhistextwiththetrenchantremarkIhave
already cited: Freud may stubbornly call infantile af
fectivitysexuality,butitiscertainthatitiscompletely
ignorant of the polarisation linked to sexual differ
ence(Ibid.)
Thiscertainty,linkednodoubttothedifficultyof
reconciling a transcendental perspective with the
apparently irreducibly anthropological issue of sex
ual difference, and even to the possibility that sexual
difference be the ruin of the distinction between the
transcendental and the anthropological altogether,
will be radically complicated in Lyotards subsequent

50
It is not immediately clear whether Lyotard is already
here gesturing towards his exploitation of Lacans con
cept of the Thing (as it is mobilised, for example, in
Heidegger et les juifs (Paris: Galile, 1988)). In the Project,
Freud has an account of how a primary form of judge
ment might, in conjunction with memory, divide up a
perceptionintoapartthatremainsconstant(i.e.identical
to apreviouscathexis),andapartthatvaries:thefirstof
these associated with the thing, the second with its
predicates.Cf.pp.328and3301.
62

investigations of the motif of infancy. In these later


developments,infancyisnotsomuchdefinedasigno
rance of sexual difference as an effect of it. A text on
Hannah Arendt, for example, derives infancy from
Theeventofsexedreproductioninthehistoryofliv
ingbeings.Andinindividualontogenesis,theechoof
sexual difference, which is the event whose savagery
theentirelifeoftheindividualistakenupwithsort
ingout[rgler].
51
Theeffectsofthisshiftarehugein
Lyotardslatethought.Iflediffrendmmeturnsout,in
itsendlessfailuretoachievesamenessoritselfness,to
have an essential relation to sexual difference and its
constitutiveNachtrglichkeit,
52
thenitstranscendental
status, and with it that of infancy, is complicated be
yondthegraspofthephilosophicalgenreassuch.To
the extent that infancy survives (and it would not be
difficulttoshowthatinfancyinlateLyotardisnevera
state present to itself, but always its own survival in
dislocationfromitself,alwaysbothearlyandlate),and
survivesastheendless,endlesslyfailing,sortingout
oftheeventofsexualdifference,thenitisinfactquite
consistent for Lyotards apparently disconcerting last
work to move towards the biographical (Sign Mal
raux) and even autobiographical/confessional (La
Confession dAugustin) in an attempt to invent generic
possibilities for both describing and working through
that sorting out. This complex folding of transcen
dentalanalysis(sothat,forexample,Augustinecanbe

51
Lecturesdenfance(Paris:Galile,1991),p.64.
52
Lyotard provides an important reading of Freuds ac
count of this in the Project, in Emma, Nouvelle Revue de
Psychanalyse(Spring1989),39:4370.
63

saidtohaveproposedalibidinalontologicalconstitu
tion of temporality (CA, p. 38)) into (auto)bio
graphical detail (because such a constitution of
temporality entails a thought of radically singular
events as the occasions of its arrival) prompts an at
tempt to reread Lyotards whole corpus that would
trytoholdtogether,intheirdiffrend,thetwoaspectsof
thefigurematricefromwhichwebegan,andforwhich
rereading no discursive genre, as yet, appears avail
able.
53

53
Imakeaverypreliminaryattemptatsucharereadingin
ChildishThings(see above).
64

LYOTARDANDTHEJEWS

I would have liked to talk about quotation marks.


54

Around the words the Jew in the title of this confer
ence and here and there through its programme,
down to and including my own title, which is in fact
quoting another title which already uses quotation
marks. I would have liked to try to analyse whether
these marks really are there to signal quotation or at
least mere mention (from somebody elses discourse:
Other people, not me, say the Jew, its not one of
my words, but one of theirs), or whether they are
scarequotes (words which themselves I place in
(scare)quotes):(Imnotsurethatstherightword,or
at least Id rather not fully accept responsability for it
orrecommendittoothers,ifanyoneobjectstoitthats
fine, Im not committed to it, call it something else if
youlikeletsfindanotherwordforit),analysewhy

54
Paper delivered to Culture, Modernity and the
Jewconference, Birkbeck College, University of Lon
don, May 1994. First published in Cheyette and Marcus,
eds., Modernity, Culture and the Jew (Cambridge: Polity
Press,1998),pp.18896.Althoughthispaperwaswritten
before the conference, it was written as a talk. I have
madenoefforttominimizeitsspokencharacter.
65

we (or some of us) might indeed be scared, and why


theresorttoanapparentprudenceorpolitenessinthe
use of quotemarks seems such an obvious, but per
hapsrathershabby(oratleastlazy),wayofhandling
that fear. I would have liked to show that given the
essentially graphic character of these marks, there is
somethingsingularlyappropriateorironicintheobvi
ousness with which they are used to surround just
thesewords(theJew,withhissupposedlyessentially
written culture): but also how, once quotationmarks
begin, there is no stopping them, that once they are
doubled,astheyareinmytitlewhichisalreadyquot
ing a use of quotation marks, but as they in fact
always already are, then the ghostings of use and
mention, mentioned uses and used mentions,become
strictly undecidable. Which would lead (or have led)
tothesuggestionthatthesesamewordsinquotation
marks, these simple words, the Jew, concentrate a
wholesetofphilosophicalproblemsaroundreference
andsingularitywhichareabyssalandprobablyintrac
table.

Failing that, Ill be giving a much less ambitious ac


countofsomeaspectsofLyotardsinterestintheJew
or the Jews. It could plausibly be claimed that all of
Lyotards thinking is enthralled by questions of Juda
ismandJewishness.Fromhisearliestpublishedwork
justafterthewar,throughtextsonFreudandMosesin
the sixties and seventies, via Le diffrend and its guid
ing questions formulated around Auschwitz, to
Heideggerandthejews,whichgivesthispaperitstitle,
and beyond, Lyotard has been haunted byafigureof
historyandafigureofthought,orperhapsafigureof
66

history he would like to be able to figure in or as


thought. But far from being a unitary or consistent
themeofanalysisforLyotard,Jews,JudaismandJew
ishness figure in an apparently disconcerting variety
of ways. For example, an essay from the 60s (Figure
foreclose, first published much more recently, with a
newprefacewhichsaysthatAtthetimepeoplemade
me say that this text was antisemitic),
55
appears to
think that Judaism can be understood and classified
according to an essentially Freudian typology, and
duly argues that where Freud analyses religion in
general as a neurotic compromise formation, Judaism
wouldhavetobethoughtofaspsychotic,characterised
by a forclosure of the maternal figure (of figures and
figurationsingeneralasmaternal)andanoverestima
tion of the written law, i.e. the word of the dead
father, or the word of the father as essentially dead.
But if this paper seems to rely on a Freudian concep
tuality to understand Judaism, it also suggests that
that very conceptuality is not fully freed from reli
gious[herespecificallyJudaic]illness(FF,66),insofar
as, although the discovery of the Oedipus complex is
presented as a scientific conquest by Freud over a
JudaismstillsupposedtobeentirelyunderOedipuss
thumb in a way it cannot understandthis conquest
here looking straightforwardly Greek in its invoca
tion of Oedipus in this way
56
psychoanalysis

55
Figureforclose,LEcritdutemps,5(1984),63105.
56
JustasinHegel(bothintheAestheticsandthePhilosophy
ofHistory),OedipusisthepointoftransitionintoGreece,
thoughinHegelscasethattransitionmovesfromEgypt.
Later on, in Just Gaming, Lyotard will invoke Oedipus as
67

remainsJudaicinitsfundamentalcommitmenttothe
formulation and transmission of a written truth and
law. Freud on the one hand escapes from Judaism by
understandingandconstructingMosesscientifically,
like a good Greek should, and thus transgresses the
Judaicpaternal law which demands not understand
ing but obedience, but on the other hand Freud
constructs himself as the new Moses, gaining a sort of
phantasmatic superpaternal priority over the Biblical
Moses, and is thus still faithful to Judaism even as he
apparently transgresses it. Which would explain cer
tainpeculiaritiesoftheinstitutionofpsychoanalysis.
But if Judaism in this paper is thought to be an
swerable to an essentially psychoanalytic description,
elsewhere, at about the same time, most notably in a
paper called Sur une figure du discours, but also in
hisreviewofDeleuzeandGuattarisAntiOedipus,the
converse appears to be the case: Lyotard presents the
dispositif of psychoanalysis (at least as curative prac
tice) as itself answerable to a sort of Judaic analysis,
wheretheessentialfeatureofthecomparisonrelieson
the paradox Lyotard takes to characterize Judaism,
namely that what Europe (or philosophy, or the
Greeks, or maybe even Christianity) thinks of as the
subject or the ego, the I who speaks, is here placed in
thepositionofyou,ofaddressee,seizedbeforechoiceor
comprehension,
57
andoutsideanypossibilityofrecip

acomicfigure,insofarasheisaGreekcaughtinaJewish
situation(underthethumbofalawhecannotunderstand
anddoesnothavethewittooutwit).
57
Itwouldonlybeaslightexaggerationtosuggestthatthe
importance of Levinas in Lyotards work is reducible to
68

rocity, by the absolutely imperative but (thereby) in


comprehensible address of Jahv or the unconscious,
withMosesappearingastheanalyst:
OnecouldsaythatthepatientisthepeopleofIsrael:
s/hewantsimages,replies,enjoyment,s/heconfuses
egoandmeaning;s/hecanthearJahv,becauses/he
cantseehim.ThepsychoanalystislikeMoses:he
doesnotrespondtoIsraelsdemand,buttotheorderor
grasp[saisie]ofJahv...FinallyId,theunconscious,is
Jahv:itseizesIsraelthepatientbeforeanydemand,
beforeanyI/thousplit,itmultipliesscreensandme
diationswhicheffaceitspresence,itspeaksinthe
imperative,itgivesimperiously,itseizesandunset
tles[il(des)saisit].
58
Thisdiagnosis,ifIcanusethatterm,coulditself(orat
least this is my hypothesis today) be used as a diag
nostic aid in reading Lyotards own work. For
example, the notion of the diffrend, which can easily
appear to be a new departure dating from the early
80s, and signalling the new concern for ethics sup
posed to come about with Au juste in 1979 (a book
whichofcoursemakesextensiveuseofananalysisof
Judaism), is rigorously prescribed in this same text
from1972,wherethedescriptionoftheJudaicdisposi
tifstressestheassymmetryandnonsustitutabilityofI

Levinass second Lecture talmudique (Paris: Editions de


Minuit, 1968), pp. 67109. A reading of a good deal of
French philosophy since the 60s could be organised on
the basis of this Levinas text, and more especially of its
finalthreepages.
58
Des dispositifs pulsionnels [1973], 2nd Ed (Paris: Christian
Bourgois,1980),pp.1434.
69

and thou by quoting from the book of Job what is al


readyadefinitionofthediffrend:
theabsolutelyjudaicfeatureisthatthereisnopossible
reversingofthisrelation,thattheIandthoupositions
cannotbeexchanged.Thisabsenceofreversalade
quatelycharacterisesthepositionoftheJewishGod.
Itexcludesanymediation(Christ,Hegel)
59
,anywe
madeupofIandthou.Thereisnoarbiterbetween
meandyou(Job9,1935,andespecially324:Forhe
isnotaman,asIam,thatIshouldanswerhim,and
weshouldcometogetherinjudgement./Neitheris
thereanydaysman[arbiter]betwixtus,thatmight
layhishanduponusboth.)(DP,138)

59
Thedescriptionofthespeculative(andevenMarxist)dia
lectic as essentially a Christian dispositif is a leitmotif in
texts of this period. Figure foreclose grafts onto this the
Freudianneurotic description too: The dialectic is the
developedformoftheneuroticsymptomascompromise.
Asdialecticalthinkingsandpractices,Christianity,Hege
lianism and Marxism must be classified among the
attempts at compromise, among the (useless) efforts to
movetheWestfrompsychosistoneurosis.(p.93).
70

Thepersistenceofthisfigure
60
provokesmetosuggest
thefollowing:justasJahvinJudaismandtheuncon
scious in psychoanalysis occupy, according to
Lyotard,apositionofincomprehensibleandunidenti
fiable but imperative alterity, so Judaism (or
jewishness,orthejewsinscarequotes,buttheprob
lemwillbetosortouthowequivalentthesethingsare
supposedtobe)occupiesjustthatpositioninLyotards
own work. The jews have Jahv: Lyotards Jahv is
simply the jews. This sort of secondlevel setup im
plies, quite correctly, that Lyotard is not jewish,
though he would think of himselfasajew(thequo
tationmarks duly signalling the shift to this second
level), and is not very interested in what Jahv might
sayorhavesaidtothejews.WhatmattersforLyotard
is that there is (or perhaps that there be) an alterity of
thissort,andthisiswhathecallsthejews.

Lyotard wants to understand, or at least think, the


event, or set of events, which he tends to refer to by
using the proper name Auschwitz. For reasons and
with implications that are not simple, Auschwitz

60
IamawareoftwomildcomplaintsfromLyotardthatmy
WritingtheEventundulypresentedhimasalwayssaying
thesamething(therepresentedintermsoftheevent),so
IimagineImightbeopentocriticismfordoingthesame
again here (this time in terms of Judaism). Cf. Examen
oral:entretienavecJeanFranoisLyotard,inN.Brgger,
F. Frandsen, D. Pirotte, eds., Lyotard: les dplacements phi
losophiques (Bruxelles: De Boeck, 1993), p. 138, and
Nietzsche and the Inhuman: an Interview with Jean
Franois Lyotard, in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 7 (1994),
p.89.
71

does not refer uniquely and unambiguously, but


stands metonymically as the privileged proper name
of what is often also called the Holocaust, the Shoah,
theFinalSolutionandsoon.
61
Thispropernameisthe
site,inLediffrend,ofavarietyofproperlyandrecog
nisably philosophical questions, especially around
realityandreference,andarounddialecticsandethics.
More than once in his work, Lyotard invokes Ausch
witz as the proper name of what refutes (his word)
the Hegelian dialectic. After Auschwitz (even more
than the postmodern) will arguably have been the
formulation in his view best describing the times we
livein.
Whatever After Auschwitz means, it seems to in
volve an engagement not only with the event or
events named therein (or at least with what those
events might make philosophy think), but with the
thought associated with the victims of those events.
Lyotard is interested not only in the philosophical
meaning,orlackofmeaning,oftheeventsdesignated
by Auschwitz, but in the philosophical meaning or
lack of meaning of something like Jewish thought.
This double concern means that Lyotard is pursuing
whatlookasthoughtheyought tobeatleasttwore
lated but distinct questions: 1) What does it mean for

61
See Derridas complaint about this use of the name
Auschwitz in Il faut bien manger..., (Points de suspen
sion,Paris,Galile,1992),p.301,andespecially...allthat
would be less serious if one began by saying rigorously
what is being called Auschwitz and what is being
thought about it, if anything is being thought about it.
Whatisthereferenthere?Isametonymicusebeingmade
ofthispropername?Ifso,whatrulegovernsthatuse?
72

(partof)Europe(ortheWest,orhumanity)tohaveat
temptedtheexterminationoftheJews?2)Whatdothe
Jews mean, for Europe (the West, humanity) to have
attempted to exterminate them? And this second
questionagainsubdividesinto2a)Whatisitaboutthe
European construction of the Jews that made them the
objectofattemptedannihilation?,2b)Whatisitabout
theJewsthemselvesthatmadethemtheobjectofat
temptedannihilationby(partof)Europe?
Itiseasytoseethatitwillbedifficulttoformulate
questions such as these satisfactorily, and, especially
perhaps, that it will be difficult to keep them apart.
One way of reading Heidegger and the jews is as a
statement(orasymptom)ofthatdifficulty:thediffer
encebetweentheJewsandthejewsisimportantbut,
inLyotardsanalysis,evanescent.
LetuslookbrieflyattheopeningpageofHeidegger
andthejews
62
totrytoclarifythetitleIhavehalf(and
halfparodically) borrowed for this paper. The first
sentence of the book is typically combative and af
firmative:Iwritethejewsthus,anditsneitherout
of prudence nor for want of something better. This
graphicconvention,whichLyotardisabouttounpack
forusintermsofthelowercaseinitialletter,theplu
rality of the noun, and the quotemarks, is presented
as adequate and appropriate to the task in hand. This
the jews is the right formulation for what Lyotard
is doing in the book, and that rightness cashes out in
the following sentences, where the only explanation
attachestotheuseofthequotationmarks:

62
Paris:Galile,1988.Alltranslationsaremyown.
73

LowercasetosaythatIamnotthinkingofanation.
Pluraltosignifythatitisnotapoliticalfigureorsub
ject(Zionism),norareligiousone(Judaism),nora
philosophicalone(Hebraicthought)thatIaminvok
ingwiththisname.Quotemarkstoavoidconfusion
ofthesejewswiththerealjews.Whatismostreal
abouttherealjewsisthatEurope,atleast,doesnot
knowwhattodowiththem:ChristianEuropede
mandsthattheybeconverted,MonarchicalEurope
expelsthem,RepublicanEuropeintegratesthem,
NaziEuropeexterminatesthem.Thejewsarethe
objectofanonlieuwithwhichthejews,inparticular,
arereallystruck.(p.13)
Thisnonlieucarriesalotofweightinthebook:anon
lieu is literally a nonplace or a noplace, and this is of
course familiar and exploited in the bookthe jews
have no place, cannot find their place, are originally
marked by an Exodus, are condemned to endless
wandering in the desert, and so on. But the most im
mediatesenseofnonlieuinFrenchisajuridicalsense:
a nonlieu amounts to having ones case dismissed
without a verdict being reached, and this seems to be
the sense ofLyotardsdoesntknowwhattodowith
them: the various actions carried outbyEuropewith
thejewsasobjectarenottheresultoftrialandverdict,
butmorelikethevariousoutcomesofnonverdicts,an
inabilitytoreachaverdict.Thedismissalofthecaseis
not, here at least, something from which the accused
benefits, but something which allows and even con
sists in persecution, as Lyotard says one page later,
and one way of describing that persecution would
seemtobebyinvokingtheother,moreliteralsenseof
nonlieu: the jews have their case dismissed and this
74

condemns them to placelessness, to no place and to


quotationmarks.
The least one can say about this opening page is
that it does not leave us with a very clearly defined
object. The jews names something which is not the
(real)jews,butwhichretainsarelationwiththosereal
jews which is not immediately perspicuous. I am not
talkingaboutthejewsintheformofanyidentity,says
Lyotard (neither nation nor subject), but the jews I
amtalkingaboutmaybebestexemplifiedbythereal
jews I am not talking about, or (for the notion of ex
ampleisnodoubtpartoftheproblemhere)thejews
I am therefore talking about nevertheless are in some
sensecontinuouswiththerealjews.Thejewsarenot
real jews, but it looks as though real jews may form
part of what is named by the jews. All I shall really
betryingtodohere,toobrieflybutitwouldalways
be too briefis to outline the endless ambiguity, the
terribleambiguity,ofthisgesture.
Let me take another example from a text of the
same period, Time Today, from the collection
Linhumain:
Thoughtandwriting,totheextentthattheydonot
allowthemselvestobesubordinatedtotelegraphy
[roughly,toanideologyofcommunicationalinfor
mationcontent]areisolatedandplacedintheghetto,
inthesensethatKafkasworkdeploysthattheme.
Butthenameghettoisnotheresimplyametaphor.
TheWarsawJewswerenotonlydoomedtodeath,
theyalsohadtopayfortheprotectionmeasures
takenagainstthem,startingwiththewallthatthe
nazisdecidedtoerectagainstthesupposedthreatof
atyphoidepidemic.Thesameistrueofwritersand
75

thinkers:iftheyresistthepredominantuseoftime
today,theyarenotonlypredestinedtodisappear,
theymustalsocontributetomakingasanitarycor
dontoisolatethem.Behindthiscordon,their
destructionissupposedtobeabletobedelayed.But
theybuythisperiodofsurvival,whichisbriefand
vain,bymodifyingtheirwayofthinkingandwriting
sothattheirworksbecomemoreorlesscommunica
ble,exchangeableinaword,saleable.
63
Notjustametaphor,butsomethingclosertoaniden
titythanthat:realJewsontheonehand(inthereallest
sense of real Jews as defined in the Heidegger book
and elsewhere, i.e. the dead at Auschwitz), writers
and thinkers on the other are in some sense (what
herelooksratherlikeatragicsense)thesame,andthis
samenessjustifies,forLyotard,anevenmorecommit
tal rapprochement in his next sentence, where he says
that this compromise of writing and thinking with
demands of communication and saleability contrib
utes to the Final Solution to the questions how to
write and how to think by reinforcing the hegemony
ofcontrolledtime.
In this type of setup, then, the jews are not the
jews, though there seems to be an essential relation
ship between them and the jews: but on the other
hand it looks as though the sense Lyotard is able to
makeoftherealjewsisprovidedbythepossibilityof
their jewishness not being confined to them,
uniquelyidentifiedwiththem,asrealjews,butsome

63
LInhumain: causeries sur le temps (Paris: Galile, 1988), p.
88. My emphasis.
76

thingmorelikeastructuralfeaturethatcouldbe,and
is, shared by others, notably writers and thinkers. To
formulatethisalittlemorebrutally,thereisanagency
of exclusion or persecution called Europe, or maybe
philosophy (or maybe metaphysics), and there is an
excluded term (excluded on the inside, as it were),
calledthejews,ofwhichtherealjewsareaparticu
larinstance.
The possibly terrible ambiguity of this analysis is
notdifficulttoformulate:ontheonehand,therealjews,
thedeadatAuschwitz,thevictims,aregivenorlenta
voiceoraprivilegebybeingmadetheindexofatruth
which Western thought has systematically repressed
or persecuted, so that Auschwitz remains in a pre
sentable logic of which Hegel always provides
Lyotard with the best example, but with which Hei
deggeriscomplicittoo.Thisfirstpartoftheambiguity
is already itself ambiguous: on the one hand Ausch
witz shows up a certain truth about the West and its
relations with the jews, and can to that extent be in
scribed inarecognisable(alltoorecognisable)history
ofthought;ontheother,Auschwitzisthenameofan
absolutesingularitythemostobviousfeatureofwhich
isthatitbreaksthepossibilityofanysuchinscription.
Auschwitz both refutes the speculative dialectic, as
wehaveseen,andremainsinasensecontinuouswith
Hegel and partially explicable via Hegel. On the other
hand, this voice or privilege given or lent to the jews
evaporates immediately insofar as the real jews are
alsoperhapsnomorethananinstanceofamoregeneral
thejews(alreadymarkedbysomethinglikequota
tionmarks, then), according to which the real jews
doomed to death in the Warsaw ghetto can be in
77

voked simply to exemplify or clarify the situation of


writersandthinkerstoday.Theabsoluteandsingular
privilege accorded the jews in the first aspect of this
dispositif immediately collapses into its second aspect
inwhich,astheysaidinthatproperlyshockingslogan
from1968,weareallPolishJews.
64
Thisaspectofthe
analysis,wherebyLyotardpositionshimselfasableto
speak for jews and jews, tends towards what else
where he condemns as the position of the
intellectual.
65
Insofar as Lyotard can at all meaning
fully refer to the jews as the jews (and not, for
example, thinkers, writers, or by some invented
name),thenheis(inallsensesoftheterm)provoking
a strictly untenable situation where the (real) jews
are both identified and dissolved, where philosophy
can both ingurgitate them and spit them out again,
whereHegelhasalwaysbeenrightandwherehewill
always be wrong. The ambiguity of Figure forclose,
which made some readers find it antisemitic, is here
repeated at a more general level, where Heidegger and
thejewscanbedescribedas(onthe)offensiveforthe
jews.

This situation, which I have somewhat simplified by


calling it an ambiguity, generates in turn an endless
ambiguityinitsreadings,wherebywecannothelpbut
approve and condemn it at the same time. It is diffi
cult to see how this could not be the case, and this
simultaneouscondemnationandapprovalistherefore

64
See the analysis of this slogan in Annie Leclerc, Origines
(Paris:Grasset,1988).
65
SeeLetombeaudelintellectuel(Paris:Galile,1984).
78

neither really condemnation nor approval, but some


thing more like an uncomfortable necessity. Lyotard
formulates this more recently by saying in an inter
view with Richard Beardsworth that what he is
attempting to think in this way is the mutual entail
ment of the Law and an irreducible resistance to it
(whichhisveryrecentworklinkstothefiguresofthe
body and childhood). His quick way of saying this is
One cannot be a good Jew!
66
If this is true, then it
would follow that one cannot be a good jew either,
andthattherelationshipofjewandjewwillbeirre
ducible and irreducibly ambiguous. One cannot on
this logic bearealjeworarealjew,arealjewora
realjew.(Thisisalsowhy,inHeideggerandthejews,
LyotardisquiteconvincinglyabletodescribeHegels
comments on the Jews as on the one hand straight
forwardly antisemitic, and on the other as telling a
certaintruthaboutthejews,forexampleintheirinac
cessibility to analysis in terms of tragedy.) Being
affirmative about that ambiguity does not necessarily
involveeitherthepathosortheselfrighteousnessthat
at least occasionally mark Heidegger and the jews, nor
doesitentailendorsementofallthedetailofthebook.
Beingaffirmativeaboutitcannotleadtoatriumphant
casting off of the quotation marks I would have liked
to talk about, in favour of an apparently more honest
or frank usage (the sort of authenticity Sartre pre
scribesinhis1954essay,forexample,anditsessential
continuity with Marxs early claim that the emancipa
tion of the Jews is in the last analysis the emancipation

66
JournalofNietzscheStudies,7(1994),p.117:notethequota
tionmarks.
79

ofmankindfromJudaism)
67
,norofcourseasimplere
lianceontheirefficacyinoperatingthetransitionfrom
the unthinkable reality of Auschwitz to the more se
renerealmoftheconcept.Rather,thequotationmarks
mustmaintainontheonehandareferencetothereal
ity to which they will never allow unique reference,
and on the other to the necessary undecidability of
reference in general, against which Auschwitz is the
nolessnecessaryperpetualprotest.

67
Sartre, Rflexions sur la question juive; Marx, On the Jewish
Question.
80

TIMEAFTERTIME

Whenthephilosopherannouncesadis
courseontime,wecanexpecttheworst.
68

Lyotards enigmatic posthumous text La Confession


dAugustin suggests that, under the phenomenology
of internal timeconsciousness that Husserl reads in
Book XI of the Confessions, Augustine sketchesa li
bidinalontological constitution of temporality (pp.
378).
69
Thissuggestion,anditsfurtherelaborationin
the book, implicitly invite the reader of Lyotards
worktoreconsiderallhispreviouswritinginaneffort
tobringtogetheritsapparentlydisparateperiodsand
concerns: here, it would appear, is an opening to the
thought that the early phenomenological Lyotard
andthemidperiodlibidinaleconomymightberead
together again, after the linguistic turn of the 1980s,
in the late childhood writings of the 90s. Such a re
consideration, the broad lines of which I can do no

68
JeanFranois Lyotard, Emma, in Misre de la philosophie
(Paris:Galile,2000),5795(p.68).
69
FirstpublishedinJournaloftheBritishSocietyforPhenome
nology,Vol.32,No.3(2001),300311.
81

morethansketchouthere,willtosomeextentconfirm
my earlier contention that Lyotards thinking can be
centred around the motifoftheevent,
70
butwillques
tion the confidence which that earlier presentation
showed in the power of the sentencebased philoso
phy of Le diffrend (1983) to produce an adequate
analysisof,amongotherquestions,time.
Augustines famous comment, which analyses of
time seem always destined to quote (Si nemo a me
quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio (If
nooneasksme,Iknow;butifIamaskedandwantto
explain it, I do not know; Confessions, XI, 14) should
perhapsbetakenlessasapreliminarygesture,recog
nising a difficulty that philosophy will then confront
and resolve (so that the natural telos of any philoso
phical explanation of time is to overcome that not
knowingandreplaceitwithclearandexplicitknowl
edge), and more as a positive claim: perhaps time is
such that my knowledge of it can only ever be of the
orderofnonknowledge,oraknowledgethatdisap
pearswhenquestionedorcalledtopresentitselfinthe
form of a theory or a thesis. If time is such that I
knowwhatitisonlywhennotcalledupontothema
tiseorexplainit,andseethatknowledgedissolveor
disappear when I attempt to articulate it, then it
would bear some resemblance to the problem of lat
eralvisionasdiscussedbyLyotardinDiscours,figure:
the attempt to bring lateral vision into focus immedi
atelylosestheobjectweweretryingtoinvestigatejust
by transforming it into the focal vision thatbydefini

70
SeemyLyotard:WritingtheEvent(ManchesterUniversity
Press,1988).
82

tionitisnot.
71
Thisanalogysuggeststhattimemaybe
of a similar order, simply lost (or at least distorted
back into shape) in any thematic or thetic presenta
tion, and therefore calling for modes of indirection in
writing that philosophy traditionally finds difficult to
admit. On this view, the problem of time would re
quire philosophy to accept and even affirm the
unknowledgeable knowledge suggested by
Augustine, not in a gesture of renunciation (simply
giving up the question as beyond the reach of phi
losophy, to be left to the implicit knowledge
Augustine suggests), but in an effort of writing (not
necessarily of a recognisably literary nature, nor
simply giving up traditional philosophical demands
for consistency and rigour) that would attempt to en
gageotherwisewiththisessentialobliquityoftime,to
respecttheknowledgeIhaveofitwhennooneasks
me, without forcing it into the nonknowledge that
emerges when I am called upon to give a philosophi
calaccount.
72
The analyses of time as presentation in Le Dif
frend are in this respect helpful not so much in that
theywouldprovideadefinitivephilosophicalaccount
of time, but in that they show up the formal impossi
bility of any such account, and to that extent already
call for the more allusive and oblique treatment pro
duced by Lyotard in the texts of the 90s, culminating

71
Discours, figure (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971), p. 159; see Lyo
tard:WritingtheEvent,pp.734.
72
AlthoughrarelythematisedinLyotard,itseemsclearthat
this effort of writing also entails an inventive effort of
reading,asweshallsee.
83

in the Confession dAugustin itself. Le Diffrend and


other associated texts in the 80s suggest that a sen
tencepresentsauniversenow,absolutelynow,inan
event of presentation that constitutively escapes pres
entation in the universe thus presented. Time can be
presented in the form of various temporal markers
andrelations(deicticsand/ordateandtimenames)in
the universe presented, but the event of presentation
itself can only ever be presented in a subsequent sen
tence which takes as its referent the event of
presentation of the first sentence. But that subse
quent sentence itself always again involves a
presentationthatitcannotitselfpresent,andsoon.
This argument is helpfully summarised at the be
ginningofa1987textentitledTimeToday:
Asanoccurrence,eachsentenceisanow.Itpre
sents,now,ameaning,areferent,asenderandan
addressee.Withrespecttopresentation,wemust
imaginethetimeofanoccurrenceasandonlyas
present.Thispresentcannotbegraspedassuch,itis
absolute.Itcannotbesynthesizeddirectlywithother
presents.Theotherpresentswithwhichitcanbe
placedinrelationarenecessarilyandimmediately
changedintopresentedpresents,i.e.past.
When the time of presentation is glossed and we
reach the conclusion that each sentence appears at
each time, we omit the inevitable transformation of
present into past, and we place all the moments to
getheronasinglediachronicline.
We thus let ourselves slip from the presenting
time implied in each occurrence, to the presented
time it has become or, better, from time as now
[nun]totimeconsideredasthistime[diesesMal],an
84

expression which presupposes that one time [ein


Mal] is equivalent to that time [das andere Mal].
Whatisforgotteninthisobjectifyingsynthesisisthat
it takes place now, in the presenting occurrence that
effectsthesynthesis,andthatthisnowisnotyetone
ofthetimesitpresentsalongthediachronicline.
Becauseitisabsolute,thepresentingpresentcan
not be grasped: it is not yet or no longer present. It is
alwaystosoonortoolatetograsppresentationitself
and present it. Such is the specific and paradoxical
constitution of the event. That something happens,
the occurrence, means that the mind is disappropri
ated. The expression it happens that is the
formula of nonmastery of self over self. The event
makes the self incapable of taking possession and
control of what it is. It testifies that the self is essen
tiallypassibletoarecurrentalterity.
73
(70[59]).

This structure, then, is not offered as a definitive ac


count of time, but as an account of how time must in
partescapeanydefinitiveaccount,theeventoroccur
rence of presentation as such being rigorously
unpresentable(havingnoassuch).Thisiswhy,inLe
Diffrend, Lyotard can reasonably claim that his insis
tence on now (absolute now, not yet bound and

73
Le Temps aujourdhui, in Linhumain: causeries sur le
temps (Paris: Galile, 1988), 6988 (p. 70) (The Inhuman:
Talks on Time, tr. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby (Cam
bridge: Polity Press, 1991), 5877 (p. 59). I am grateful to
ElissaMarderforpointingoutthetranslingualresonance
betweentheuseoftheGermanMalinthispassageand
the later thematic of le mal (evil) that we encounter be
lowintheConfessiondAugustin.
85

situated)asthetimeoftheeventdoesnotamounttoa
revivalofthemetaphysicsofpresence,
74
andwhyhe
can confidently assign as a paradoxical task, to phi
losophers and others, to present that there is some
unpresentable
75
, the unpresentability of presentation

74
See Le Diffrend (Paris: Minuit, 1983), p. 114. The remark
occurs in the course of a dense Notice Aristote inserted
into the chapter on Presentation I have been summaris
ing. In the same Notice, Lyotard distinguishes his
thinking about time from the later Heidegger of the Er
eignis on the grounds that the latter still thinks time in
terms of gift and destination, i.e. in terms of instances
situatedwithinapresentedphraseuniverse,ratherthanas
the bare occurrence of the event of presentation of that
universe: [Heidegger] persists in making of man the
addresseeofthedonationthatgivesandgivesitselfinre
serving itself in the Ereignis, and in particular he persists
inseeingtheonewhoacceptsthisdonationasmanfulfill
ing his human destination by hearing the authenticity of
time. Destination, addressee, addressor [destination, desti
nataire,destinateur],man,arehereinstancesorrelationsin
universes presented by sentences, they are situated, to
logo.TheThereistakesplace,itisanoccurrence(Ereignis),
but it does not present anything to anybody, it does not
present itself, and is not the present or presence. Insofar
as a presentation is phrasable (thinkable) it is missed as
anoccurrence.(Ibid.,p.115)
75
This almost ungrammatical slogan first appeared in the
polemical article Rponse la question: Questce que le
postmoderne? (Critique, 419 (1982), pp. 35767 (p. 364),
reprinted with slight modifications in Le postmoderne ex
pliqu aux enfants (Paris: Galile, 1986), 1334 (p. 27)),
where it is in fact used to characterise modern, rather
thanpostmodernart.ButLyotardgoesonsaythatThe
86

itself giving the resource for inevitably failing at


temptstopresentitinitsunpresentability,orasmore
positively put, to bearwitnesstothatunpresentabil
ity, such bearing witness then being the task (in a
quasiKantian sense) of philosophers as well as writ
ersandartists.
76
We might reasonably wonder to what extent this
formal description differs from the classical phe
nomenological descriptions of time that draw
essentially on Husserls Lectures. Lyotard had himself
offeredapedagogicalaccountofthesedescriptionsin
hisfirstbook.
77
Althoughwecanfindheresomething
thatlooksafterthefactliketheopeningforthetypeof
analysis we have summarised from the period of Le
Diffrend, in a passing remark to the effect that the
present is not posited as such (p. 95), this early ac
count remains, true to its object, onthegroundofthe
subjectofconsciousness,evenas,withsomehelpfrom
Heidegger, that ground is opening, via the motifs of
becoming and of freedom, towards something of the
alterity that the later work will be concerned to radi
calise:
Wedonot,then,havetoexplaintheunityofinner
time;eachnowtakesupthepresenceofanolonger

postmodernwouldbethatinthemodernthatallegesthe
unpresentableinpresentationitself(Ibid.,p.366(32)).
76
I cannot here discuss Lyotards extensive artwriting: in
thiscontext,seeespeciallySurlaConstitutiondutempspar
lacouleurdanslesuvresrcentesdAlbertAyme(Paris:Edi
tionTraversire,1980),andQuePeindre?Adami,Arakawa,
Buren(Paris:EditionsdelaDiffrence,1987).
77
Laphnomnologie(Paris:PUF,1954),pp.959.
87

thatitchasesintothepast,andanticipatesthepres
enceofanotyetthatwillchaseitthereinturn;the
presentisnotclosed,ittranscendsitselftowardsafu
tureandapast,mynowis,asHeideggersays,notan
insistence,abeingcontainedinaworld,butanex
istenceoranekstasis,anditisfinallybecauseIam
anopenintentionalitythatIamatemporality.(p.98)
But this I is still being thought of in essentially sub
jective terms: if we ask whether time is intrinsically
subjective,andthereisnoobjectivetime,
Wecanreplybothyesandnotothisquestion:yes,
timeissubjective,becausetimehasasense[unsens,a
direction],thatifithasoneitisbecausewearetime,
justastheworldhassenseforusonlybecauseweare
worldthroughourbody,etc.,andsuchisindeedone
ofthemainlessonsofphenomenology.Butsimulta
neouslytimeisobjectivesincewedonotconstituteit
bytheactofathoughtthatwoulditselfbyexempt
fromit;time,liketheworld,isalwaysanalreadyfor
consciousness,andthisiswhytime,anymorethan
theworld,isnottransparentforus;justaswehave
toexploretheworld,wehavetorunthroughtime,
i.e.developourtemporalitybydevelopingourselves:
wearenotsubjectivitiesclosedonthemselves,thees
senceofwhichwouldbedefinedordefinableapriori,
inshortmonadsforwhombecomingwouldbean
inexplicableandmonstrousaccident,butwebecome
whatweareandwearewhatwebecome,wehave
nomeaningthatcouldbeassignedonceandforall,
butsomeongoingmeaning[delasignificationen
cours],andthatiswhyourfutureisrelativelyinde
terminate,whyourbehaviourisrelatively
unpredictableforthepsychologist,whywearefree.
(pp.989)
88

This description still remains essentially within the


parameters of the Husserlian account, with its funda
mentalandirreduciblymetaphoricalpictureoftimeas
flowing and continuous. Already by the time of Dis
cours, figure, Lyotard is interested in a more
discontinuous representation of time (there figured
phenomenologicallyintheexperiencesoforgasmand
sleep
78
), and it is this discontinuity that has become
the salient feature of the later descriptions that we
have summarised. Once time is thought of on the ba
sis of unpresentable presentation and the absolute
now that any act of temporalisation or thematisation
presupposes,binds,andtherebyforgets(transforming
nowintothenow),thenthepresyntheticrhythmof
presentation becomes the nonsubjective ground for
all(evenpassive)syntheses,explainingtheclaimwe
saw from Time Today about the self being essen
tially passible to a recurrent alterity. This allows
Lyotard to analyse the Cartesian cogito, for example,
asnonfoundationalinthatitreliesonthesynthesisof
twodistinctoccurrencesofthepronounI(inIthink
andIam)acrosstwodistinctsentenceevents(LeDif
frend, 72). This redescription would also complicate
the rather breezy sense of freedom operative in the
Phenomenology book with the sense that any freedom
towhichwemightlayclaimishostagetothedispos
session occurring in the each time of each
presentation.
Although the description given in Le Diffrend and
Time Today is formal, and to that extent disallows

78
Discours, figure, p. 138; see Lyotard: Writing the Event, pp.
712.
89

any particular content being ascribed to the event of


presentation,itisstrikingthatLyotard(here,asoften,
closer to Derrida than either might acknowledge),
both before and after (but not during) Le Diffrend,
seeks help from psychoanalysis to complicate the
phenomenological picture with which he begins.
79
In
Lavoixetlephnomnein1967,Derridahadbrieflyin
voked Freud in the context of his own reading of
Husserls Lectures, and more specifically suggested
that the temporal configuration named by Freud as
Nachtrglichkeitwouldexceedthedescriptivepossibili
ties of Husserls account (a little earlier, in 1966,
Derrida had suggested that Nachtrglichkeit was
Freuds true discovery, and stressed the rhythmic
discontinuity of the temporality implied by Freuds
MysticWritingPad
80
)byintroducingintotheflowof
Husserliantimearadicaldiscontinuityunaccountable
in terms of the Husserlian concepts of retention and
protention, representation and imagination.
81
And

79
As confirmed in Dolors Lyotards Avantpropos to the
posthumous collection Misre de la philosophie (Paris:
Galile, 2000), Lyotard always envisaged writing a Sup
plment au Diffrend which would extend its analyses.
Lyotard himself says as much in Emma (ibid., 5795):
Butwhatislackingin[Lediffrend]ispreciselywhatmat
terstoushereandthatIamseeking(asaphilosopher)to
supply:quidoftheunconsciousintermsofsentences?
80
Freudetlascnedelcriture,inLcritureetladiffrence
(Paris:Seuil,1967),p.337.
81
La voix et le phnomne (Paris: PUF, 1967), pp. 7071, also
quoting the 9
th
supplement to Husserls Lectures on the
absurdity of a belated becoming conscious of an un
consciouscontent.
90

Lyotard himself comes to make massive use of this


Freudian figure in his late work, often centred on the
motifofinfancy.
82
Nachtrglichkeitcanitselfbegivenaformaldescrip
tion, in the sense that in it the Husserlian flow of
instants is interrupted by a time which jumps discon
tinuously from a past with which the present has no
consciousretentionalorrememorativelink.According
to Freud, as early as the Project for a Scientific Psychol
ogy (1895), a traumatic childhood experience is
repeated in later life with an experience of uncontrol
lable and incomprehensible affect: the temporality
here is one in which the original experience was not
really experienced as such at the time of its occur
rence,andisinasenseexperiencedforthefirsttimeinits
repetition long after the event: but this second experi
ence, with the affective charge carried from its first
time, appears as a disruption of ability of the later
timeconsciousnesss ability to process it, and is cer
tainly not simply a memory of the first event. In the
perhaps unexpected context of Heidegger and the
jews, Lyotard makes abundant use of this structure
(alongside an account of the Kantian sublime), espe
cially in its Lacanian elaboration, in an attempt to
specify the position of the jews
83
in Western cul

82
IgiveafulleraccountofthismotifofinfancyinBefore,
in Afterwards: Essays in Memory of JeanFranois Lyotard,
ed.RobertHarvey,TheOccasionalPapersoftheHumani
tiesInstituteatStonyBrook,No.1(2000),pp.328.
83
Ihaveattemptedelsewheretobringoutsomeoftheprob
lems and ambiguities involved in Lyotards various
analyses of Judaism: see my Lyotard and the jews, in
91

ture, likening it to the Proustian theme of temps


perduasunderstoodbyDeleuze:
thissortofpastthatispreoccupyingus,whichis
beneaththeforgotten,muchclosertoactualitythan
anypast,atthesametimeasitcannotbecalledup
byvoluntary,consciousmemory[]
Itsufficestoimaginethatanexcitation,i.e.a
shakingupofthesystemofforcesconstitutedbythe
psychicapparatusaffectsthesystemwhenithas
nomeansofdealingwithit:onentry,within,onexit.
Noteventheprotectionagainstexcitationofbanal
temporality.Anexcitationthatisnotintroduced,in
thesensethatitaffects,butdoesnotenter,andinthe
sensethatithasnotbeenintroducedandremains
unpresented.
84
Itis,then,ashock,sinceitaffectsa
system,butoneofwhichtheobjectoftheshockcan
notaccountfor,ofwhichtheapparatus(themind)
cannottakeaccountaccordingtoitsinternalphysics.
Thisshock,thisexcitationwillnothavetobeforgot
ten,repressed,accordingtotheprocedureof
representation,northatofactingout.Itsexcess(of
quantity,ofintensity)exceedstheexcessthatgives
material(presence,placeandtime)totheuncon
sciousandthepreconscious.Itisinexcesslikeair
andearthareinexcessforthelifeofafish.(pp.29
30)
85

Brian Cheyette and Laura Marcus, eds., Modernity, Cul


tureandtheJew(Cambridge:PolityPress,1998),18896.
84
LyotardrefersheretoFreudsarticleonRepression.
85
Compare the very similar description in Emma, pp.69
73,whichexplicitlyspellsoutthedifficultyofpresenting
thetemporalityofNachtrglichkeitinHusserianterms.
92

The claim, as in Derrida, is that this configuration es


capes in principle the type of account of temporality
that Husserl is able to provide, and generates para
doxes for phenomenological description, in that the
affect (and even the event) involved cannot confi
dentlybesituatedasanywheresimplypresent.
Lyotards favourite example is the first that Freud
gives, in the Project for a Scientific Psychology, and in
deed he provides a detailed reading of that case in a
text entitled Emma, taking its title from the name
Freudgiveshispatient.
86
InHeideggerandthejews,its
structureissummarisedasfollows:
Afirstblow,thefirstexcitation,shakesuptheappa
ratussoexcessivelythatitisnotregistered.Awhistle
atafrequencyinaudibletothehumanear(butthe
dogcanhearit),aninfraredorultravioletcolour.In
termsofgeneralmechanics,theforceoftheexcitation
cannotbebound,composed,neutralisedorfixedby
otherforceswithintheapparatus,andassuchdoes
notgiverisetorepresentation.Thisforceisnotputto
workinthemindsmachine.Itisdepositedthere

86
This 1989 text is reprinted in Misre de la philosophie, pp.
5795,andbeginswithsomegeneralreflectionsonthere
lationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis, and
suggestsawayofthinkingaboutthenotnecessarilyliter
aryeffortofwritingmentionedabove:Iattempthereto
maintainthephilosophicalambition[prtention]:toarticu
late in intelligible fashion on the subject of something
beneatharticulation[lendedelarticulable],thatisaNi
hil, which is also what excites this very ambition. (p. 60)
This is evidently to be read as a version of the earlier
prsenter quil y a de limprsentable in its specifically
philosophicalinflection.
93

Thefirstblow,then,strikestheapparatuswithno
perceptible internal effect, without affecting it. A
shock without affect. At the second blow there takes
place an affect without shock: I am buying linen in
theshop,anxietyovercomesme,Iflee,andyetnoth
ing had happened And it is this flight, and the
sentiment that accompanies it, that teaches con
sciousness that there is something there, without its
being able to know what it is. Informed of the quod,
but not of the quid. This is the essence of the event,
thatthereisbeforewhatthereis.(pp.345)
Itlooks,then,asthoughLyotardishereappealingtoa
specific Freudian example to support his general,
formal descriptions in Le diffrend. What Freud pre
sents as a specific, and indeed explicitly abnormal
temporal configuration (that of neurosis) is taken up
and generalised to the structure of time itself, in
which events of presentation essentially occur pre
ontologically (the that of the event before its what,
the quod prior to the quid) and are taken up an pre
sented as events only after the fact in a subsequent
presentation.
But Lyotard is taking more from Freud than some
incidental confirmation of the formal structures we
have laid out. Freud, from his earliest descriptions of
this configuration in the Project for a Scientific Psychol
ogy, grounds it in what he refers to as the sexual
prematuration (Versptung) of human beings. In other
words, the kind of temporal structure referred to as
Nachtrglichkeitis,infact,notjustformal,butessentially
bound up with questions of what Lyotard often calls
justthesexual,andmoreespeciallywiththeissueof
94

sexual difference, as marked in the psychoanalytical


accountofcastration.
It is extraordinarily difficult to come to a satisfac
tory description of the relation between what I was
callingaboveaformalaccountoftime,andthecon
tent given to that description once this
psychoanalyticalmaterialisintroduced.Thisextraor
dinarydifficulty,whichLyotardcanhardlybesaidto
havesolved,mayindeeditselfbeofthesameorderas
that we began with from Augustine, where the spe
cific nonknowledge of time might, I suggested, be
taken less as a provisional statement of a confusion
later to be triumphantly cleared up by philosophical
reflection, and more as a positive characterisation of
the problem of time itself. Lyotard himself regularly
suggests that the question of the sexual results from
an unmasterable violence, for example in one of the
key texts around the notion of infancy, referring to
Theeventofsexedreproductioninthehistoryofliv
ingbeings.Andinindividualontogenesis,theechoof
sexual difference, which is the event whose savagery
theentirelifeoftheindividualistakenupwithsort
ing out [rgler].
87
On this apparently de
transcendentalised account, then, philosophy itself
(forexampleinitsattemptstocometotermswiththe
question of temporality), would be part of that at
tempted working out, and this would perhaps give
us the means to return, in conclusion, to the claim in
the Confession dAugustin, that Augustine might be
said to be elaborating a libidinalontological account
of time. For where Heidegger and the jews claims that

87
Lecturesdenfance(Paris:Galile,1991),p.64.
95

the temporality implied by Nachtrglichkeit has noth


ingtodowiththetemporalitythatcanbethematised
by the phenomenology of consciousness (even that of
Augustine)(p.33),theposthumousbook,aswehave
seen, seems to ascribe to Augustine himself, under
the phenomenological description, the kind of libidi
nalontological constitution of temporality we have
been brought to via Freud. The problem Lyotard has
here is one that has been haunting all the infancy
textsthroughthe90s,andconcernsthestatustobeac
corded to the specific detail of the psychoanalytical
material which appears essentialhere:broadlyspeak
ing, we can formulate the problem as concerning the
relationship between what one of the earliest Sup
plment au diffrend texts
88
refers to as the
transcendental status of infantia (p. 54), and the ap
parently more anthropological issue of the event of
sexualdifference.Thetemptation,whichLyotardap
pearsbothtorecogniseandtoresist,wouldbetorefer
the description of time itself, and the positive non
knowledge that seems to characterise it, to a specific
moment in the Freudian description (the recognition
of the symbolic structure of castration as constitutive
ofhumanityasdividedintomaleandfemale):onthis
reading, the structure of the event itself, the disloca
tionofpresentationfromitselfastheformalbasisof

88
This 1990 text was originally entitled Linarticul ou le
diffrend mme, and is reprinted in Misre de la philoso
phie, pp. 4554 as La phraseaffect (Dun supplment au
Diffrend). I have discussed this text in some detail in
TheSame,Even,Itself,inParallax,Vol.6,No.4(2000),
8898. See above.
96

time, the priority of quod over quid, would find a


foundational moment that it would always in a sense
berepeating,withinthestructureofNachtrglichkeitit
self,andthateventwouldbesimultaneouslythebirth
oftemporalityandofsexualdifference
But in fact this is not the case. Lyotards effort in
these late texts is not, in spite of some tempting ap
pearances, to ground the account of time as originary
dislocation or dispossession in an originary diffrend
between the sexes, but in a diffrend between adult
hood and infancy (articulacy and the inarticulate)
that certainly involves the sexual, but does not ac
cord foundational status to castration and sexual
difference.
89
The primary diffrend, which seems, an

89
Emma ends as follows: In the perspective traced out
here,thedifferencebetweenthesexesisshocking,hasan
effect [fait coup] only secondarily to the diffrend between
childaffect and adult affect. The classical thesis is that it
isconstitutiveofthedisorderofadultaffectivity.Thereis,
of course, an aporia intrinsic to sexual difference, as it is
articulatedasanadultsentence:thefeminineisanobject
quite different from the masculine, and conversely; and
yet,theiralterityissupposedtoorienttheiraffectivedes
tination.Theirrespectiveobjectivityissupposedtodirect
their reciprocal objectality. It emerges from what I have
suggested that the aporia does not reside in this contra
diction of an alterity devoted to complementarity. It
resides in the untranslatability of infant passibility into
adultarticulation.Moreover,ifthedifferencebetweenthe
sexes can be overcome, or thinks itself overcome, this is
only to the extent that one or other of the two parties, or
both, has recourse to this undifferentiated passibility.
There is love only to the extent that adults accept them
selvesaschildren.(pp.945)
97

thropologically speaking, always to pass in fact


through that of sexual difference, remains transcen
dental in that it takes place not between two distinct
and incompatible ways of articulating time (male
and female), but between articulation itself and the
nonnegative inarticulateness that Lyotard calls in
fancyorpureaffectivity.
Lyotards point here is not to celebrate childhood
orinfancyitselfinsomenostalgicoridealisingspirit,
nor even simply to regret the imposition of adult ar
ticulation on childhood affectivity or socalled
polymorphousperversity.Nor,asisperhapsthecase
in Economie libidinale, to extol the virtues of some un
differentiated libidinal energy or force prior to its
various bindings and articulations. As its name im
plies, a diffrend entails difference and polemical
encounter,andnothingoftheorderofpurepresence.
Justastheformalaccountofpresentationsuggesteda
fundamental noncoincidence or dislocation as the
originoftime,andjustasthepassagethroughNach
trglichkeit radicalised that dislocation beyond the
graspofconceptssuchasretentionandevenekstasis,
sotheAugustinebook,towhichwecanfinallyreturn
inconclusion,willstressanirreduciblebelatednessin
the experience of the event as the very object of con
fession.
90

90
Cf. La Confession dAugustin, p. 17. Again, this motif
wouldmarkapointofarticulationwithDerridasappar
ently very different reading of the Confessions, for
example in Un ver soie (in H. Cixous and J. Derrida,
Voiles (Paris: Galile, 1998), tr. G. Bennington in The Ox
fordLiteraryReview,Vol.18(1996),365.
98

Thismotifofbelatedness,however,canbemislead
ing if it ever implies an eventual catching up with an
earlier event. Just as in the analyses we summarised
from Le Diffrend, where the apparent ability of a sec
ondsentencetopresenttheeventofpresentationofa
first sentence does not mean that any sentence ever
catches up with presentation itself, but, through its
ownoccurrence,confirmsthenonpresenceingeneral
ofpresentation,sotheabsoluteeventofGodsvisita
tion in Augustine cannot ever become the object of a
successful (however belated and confessional) presen
tation. The absolute character of Gods visitation is
absolute just to the extent that it disrupts temporal
linearity: How would the soul know if the syncope
happens once or if it is repeated, when the syncope
deprives it of the power to gather the diversity of in
stantsintoasingleduration?Wheretosituateorplace
in relation, in a biography, an absolute visit? Relate
it? (p. 22); or, more radically, The delay that brings
despair to the confessant is not due to a failing of his
chronology; chronos immediately and as a whole de
lays.Fromthefactthateventheoverpoweringvisitof
theOther,eventheincarnationofgrace,ifeverittruly
arrives,subvertsthespacetimeofthecreature,itdoes
not at all follow that it withdraws that creature from
theordinaryconcernsoflife(pp.356).
It is at this point that Lyotard makes the remark,
fromwhichwebegan,aboutthelibidinalontological
constitution of temporality. The point here seems to
bethatthesexualsharesits(a)temporalstructure,as
developed through the reading of Nachtrglichkeit,
with divine visitation, to the extent that they are po
tentially indiscernible, or at least of equal force:
99

Augustine struggles to distinguish lascivious dreams


from those sent by God (p. 39), lacking any sure sign
that would separate them out or clarify them in the
orderofdesire:
Twoattractions,twoappetites,ofalmostequalforce:
whatislackingforoneofthemtowinoutoverthe
other?Anuance,anaccent,achildhummingatune?
Whostalkingtranscendenceherewhendivinegrace
isplacedonthesamelevelasalure?Evilisperhaps
notsubstantial,astheManicheansthink,justamat
terofwill,affirmstherepentant,thatis,ofdesire.But
thetrouble[lemal]isthatonedesiresthegoodlike
onedesiresevil[lemal].(p.41)
And this infiltration of the possibility of evil, via de
sire, into temporality, would be confirmed in the
discussion of memory: through memory, the I can in
deed try to gather up the constitutive distension of
time inordertogatheritselfupasI,butinsodoing
merely confirms the temporal disorder it is trying to
overcome:
Thecontentsofmemoryquiverwithachaoticdy
namicthatcondenses,displaces,tipstheirimages
overintoeachother,endlesslydisfiguresthem.Be
hindtheguardianoftime,supposedtokeepwatch
overitsorder,underitscover,theworkofthedrives
obstinatelyinsistsonmakingthegraspofeventslan
guish.Theclearphenomenologyofinternal
temporalityhidesastrangemechanism,thegrammar
ofwaysinwhichconcupiscenceconjugatesthees
sentialdeception.(p.51)
And this would be why Augustine is able to figure
Gods visit in the very erotic terms that characterise
the deceptive concupiscence that that visit is so radi
100

cally to overcome.
91
The phenomenological account
oftimeisinscribedintothismorepervasivelibidinal
time,andtothatextentitselfbecomespartofthecon
fessional structure of Augustines writing, something
to be confessed (rather than just professed as a phi
losophical doctrine), and that structure itself draws
out,inthefactofwritingitself,atemporalityofdesire
and concupiscence, complicit with guilty belated
ness.
92
On this reading, then, Augustine already
anticipates the Freudian structures we saw Lyotard
earliersettingagainsttheHusserliananalysesoftime.
Nodoubtthismodeofanticipationwoulditselfhave
to be analyses in terms of the Nachtrglichkeit it also
thematises, andwouldtothatextentescapefromany

91
The first part of La confession dAugustin (which Dolors
Lyotards note describes as the beginningofwhatwould
have been the definitive version of the text) opens with
this scene of divine violation. (I discuss this motif (and
especially its insistence on the figure of a tergo penetra
tion) in more detail in relation to this and other late
Lyotard texts in Before (see note 82 above), especially
pp. 1823. The second part (an earlier draft which uses
someofthesamematerial)ishereclearerastothearticu
lations I am bringing out (see pp. 757), at risk, perhaps,
of losing some of the performative effects of disruption
Lyotardseffortofwritingisattemptingtoproduce.
92
The confession is written posthumously in search of the
anthumous, in distentio, then And distentio repeats its
offence at the heart of confessional writing. It cannot
catch up on the delay that it tries to fill, to make up by
running after you, after the act The confession aggra
vatesthedelayingofthetimeittakestowritetoproclaim
the instant of your actuality, the time spent making up
thedelaythistimewastedgainingtimeontime(p.48).
101

standard account of philosophical history and de


mand a rethinking of the temporality and historicity
of reading itself.
93
Just this structure, revealed by the
confessional complicity of temporality itself and the
order of the sexual, dominates and undermines the
phenomenology of temporality under the name of
God himself: the experience of Gods visitation or
revelation is itself of the order of an event which dis
rupts all temporal grasp and management, including
that of the confessional mode itself, which is caught
up in the libidinal lure of concupiscence under the
pretext of restoring and celebrating the absolute
event of God: the sexual tricks and denounces the
appearanceofphenomenologicalormoregeneralphi
losophical mastery, but itself gives rise to no more
reliable knowledge claim, so that replacing the word

93
In Emma, Lyotard has some allusive remarks about a
philosophy of philosophical reading. Although the
context here is one of an apparently polemical stance
against a generalised concept of text, Lyotard is again
clearly close to a deconstructive understanding of a tex
tual temporality which is disruptive of any history of
thoughtmodel.Ihaveattemptedtoelaboratesomething
of a philosophy of philosophical reading in the section
Le fil conducteur (de la lecture philosphique) of my
Frontires kantiennes (Paris: Galile, 2000), pp. 10930. See
too Michel Lisse, Lexprience de la lecture, I: La soumission
(Paris:Galile,1998).Itisstrikingthatthesecondpartof
La Confession dAugustin (see previous note) opens pre
ciselyonthequestionofreading.Inthiscontext,itwould
alsobenecessarytoanalyseLyotardswritingitselfinthe
book, and notably the abundant (and all but untranslat
able)useofpostponedsyntacticresolution.
102

God in Augustine with the sexual does not finally


provide the true knowledge about time we thought
wewereseeking:
Dissidio, dissensio, dissipatio, distentio, in spite of the
fact that it wants to say everything, the I infatuated
with remembering its life remains split, separated
from it. The subject of the confessional work, the
firstpersonauthorforgetsthatheistheworkofwrit
ing. He is the work of time: he waits on himself,
believes he is acting himself and catching up with
himself, but he is duped by the repeated disap
pointment that the sexual plots, right in writing, by
putting off the instant of presence in all times and
tenses.
Thou, the Other, pure Verb in act, life without
remainder, are silent. If it encounter you, the I ex
plodes, and time too, without trace. He calls it god
because thats the custom, for theology too is the
work of consuetude. And here the diffrend is such,
betweenyourvertiginousvisitationandthought,that
itwouldbeasfoolishastheology,asfalseanddecep
tivetoexplainthat,notthenamegod,butthething
itself, id ipsum, above and beyond I, mad joy, pro
ceedsfromthesexual.Forwhocantakethecommon
measure of what is incommensurable? A knowledge
that claims to do so, by stepping overtheabyss,for
getsitandreoffends.Thecutisprimal.(pp.567)
Thecomplexpassagefromtheformalanalysesofthe
diffrend, via the explicitly Freudian formulations
around Nachtrglichkeit, to Augustine, do not, then,
simply represent an attempt to reduce the transcen
dental structure of time to the anthropological
concerns of human sexuality. Paradoxically, pulling
the formal description of essentially unpresentable
103

presentation back through psychoanalysis appears


here to give rise to a kind of ultra (or perhaps radi
cally infra) transcendental claim (the cut is primal),
whichisscarcelyevenoftheorderofaclaim,bearing
witness, rather, to the unavailability of what is here
brought out to the order of philosophical clarity. This
primal cut, referred by Augustine to the absolute
visitation of the absolutely other, does not propose
any positive knowledge about time at all, and to that
extentparadoxicallyconfirmsourpositivereadingof
Augustines own preliminary profession of non
knowledgeabouttime.Tothatextent,itbothconfirms
the formal analysis we took from Le Diffrend, and
performatively suggests the necessity of that formal
itys repeated collapse, time after time, into the
contingency of events which is all the time we have
left.

104

AUGUST:DOUBLEJUSTICE

Au juste is not a book.


94
JFL explains: writing is irre
sponsible; it answers no question or request; it
happens in the radical absence of its addressee; it has
nodebttoanyreader[19];booksaresentoutlikebot
tlesthrownintothesea;theaddresserdoesnotknow
who the addressee will be. Economie libidinale [Paris:
Minuit,1974]wasabook.
Aujusteisnotabook.Thebook(Economielibidinale)
went out across the sea, found (at least) one ad
dressee, JeanLoup Thbaud, who came to talk about
it, in the conviction that JeanFranois Lyotard had
written Economie libidinale in such a way that any dis
cussion with him about it would be extremely
difficultthe writing seems willfully to discourage
dialogue. More importantly, although the two points
are related, the affirmation of intensity as value in
Economie libidinale seems to evacuate the problem of
justice, which begins its return with JLT, his tape re
corder,andtheconversationswhichmakeupAujuste.
This arrival of the question (of justice) seems to mark
the end of irresponsibility and debtlessness: now JFL

94
ReviewingJeanFranoisLyotardandJeanLoup Thbaud,
AuJuste(Paris:ChristianBourgois,1979).Firstpublished
inDiacritics,Fall 1984,64-71.
105

isanswerabletoJLTsquestions,whichpositionhimas
their addressee, place him in their debt [17], finalize
hisremarks[19].JFLsays:hereIamnottheonewho
has written books, but the one who listens to the one
(you)whohasreadthem[17].AndinplacingJFL,the
questions place him out of place, if his real place is
with writing,itsirresponsibility,thebook,inwhathe
here still calls the modern and, since, the postmod
ern: for the postmodern writer is the addresser
positioned by writing in general, not knowing to
whom his sentences are addressed, but sending out
sentenceswhichwillcreatetheiraddressee.Inthisde
scriptionofwritingandthebook,therearenosubjects
of writing or reading (and thereby, says JFL, no sub
ject of history [23]): just proper names positioned in
pragmatic universes. Whenever this situation obtains,
there is postmodernity: the date is of no importance
[32]. Insofar as Au juste is not a book, but the tran
scription of a series of conversations, then it is not
postmodern.
ButAujusteisabook.BothJLTandJFLsaythatit
is(goingtobe)one.Forexample,JFL:Hereisabook
`by methat Im going not to have written [17]. Au
juste becomes the book it is (was) going to be only
whenitstopsbeingtheconversationstherecordingof
which it transcribes. In those conversations, JLT and
JFL are in turn addresser and addressee of sentences
bearing on a series of common referents and saying
similar or different things about them in different or
similar ways. In the book of those conversations, the
same sentences become different through a change in
that pragmatic situation: debts and responsibility are
lost again (or are transformed, becoming referents for
106

new sentences) as the text is launched out to sea in


search of at least one new addressee who can here
take the sentences of JLT and JFL as the referents of
further sentences which cannot intervene in the
pragmaticscenetheywilldiscuss.Thesesentencesare
themselves fairly (or unfairly) irresponsible, launched
out to sea, in search of an addressee, etc.: but only
fairly (or necessarily unfairly) irresponsible insofar as
they remain in debt, finalized by, among other
things,JFLsalreadyfinalizedremarksinAujuste.
The conversations becoming a book is inscribed
within the book. It is inscribed, for example, in the
added indications JFL and JLT identifying the ad
dressers of the various sequences of sentences: these
ascriptions could of course mislead (a necessary pos
sibility dramatized by a misprint on page 167, where
JFL is assigned three consecutive sequences), thereby
designating addressee rather than addresser, deliber
ately or not. It is inscribed, further, in two footnotes
earlyinthebook,oneonthedistributionoftheforms
tuandvousbetweenJFLandJLT,theotheronthe
distinction, subsequent to the real time of the con
versations, between modern and postmodern: for
whoeverthesenderishere,itcanbeneithertheJFL
nor the JLT of the conversations. Inscribed again, in
the titles of the various sections of the book, in the
cover note, in the date Novembre 1977Juin 1978
under the last line of the last conversation, which
hasitselfendedinalaughterunperformableinthe
book. And, being a book miming a conversation, it
could all happily enough be a fiction, written irre
sponsiblybyJFLorJLT,orboth,orneither,etc.And
similarlywiththiswriting,whichissignedasaway
107

of calling its addresser something after the event,


and as a way of attempting to constrain the en
chanements (i.e., the sentences linked to these) of
the addressee (who mightmusttemporarily bear
the same name as the addresser, or the names here
shortenedtoJFLandJLT:anyofwhomwillproduce
furthersentences,ifonlybyremainingsilentforas
soon as there is a sentence [and there is a sentence
(see Lyotards Presentation, in Alan Montefiore,
ed., Philosophy in France Today [Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1983] 129)], even silence
becomesasentenceinreply).
This makes a lot of sentences, and a lot of sorts of
sentences. The addresser positioned by these sen
tences, having been positioned by Au juste as its
addressee, could, in principle, write anything,
nimporte quoi: there is no absolute limit on the sen
tences which can be (inked with those of Au juste.
There are, of course, relative limits (if this is to be a
textrecognizablyaboutAujuste),allofwhicharefur
ther, or prior, sentences. Some of these could follow
on from the sentences written here (for example, We
cantpublishthisnonsense,positioningtheeditorsof
Diacritics as its addresser and the current addresser
asitsaddressee).Butatleastoneoftheselimitsseems
to precede what is written here, and is no longer a
judgment linked to a hypothetical, or technical, im
perative (dont write nonsense if you want to be
published in Diacritics), but a sort of categorical im
perativewithinthemoralityofthegenreofthereview
article,andwhichistranscendentinthesense,asJFL
puts it, that I cannot identify its sender: namely, Be
fair!Thesentenceswrittenhereshould,withoutques
108

tion (and I take this without question to be another


mark of transcendence), be fair descriptions, fair ob
jections, fair evaluations. The sentences which
describe, object, and evaluate would all take the sen
tencesofAujusteastheirreferent,butwouldposition
that referent in different ways, specific to the lan
guage games being played while describing,
objecting, and evaluating. But despite that difference,
all must, in principle, be fair, do justice to the book: I
must play the game. The prescription Be fair! pre
cedes and tends to constrain all the sentences written
here, and this, apparently, whatever game they are
playing.
InsofarastheprescriptionBefair!addressesitself
to the addresser positioned by these various and dis
tinctgames,itisasortofmetaprescription.Butinsofar
as it is a prescription, it belongs to just one of those
games, that of prescription. The metaprescription Be
fair!canthusbereappliedtotheprescriptionBefair!
insofar as (as we shall see) being fair to the prescrip
tion Be fair! involves respecting its specificity as
prescription, whatever the particular pragmatic con
text of that prescription. This split in prescription
already suggests that the justice to be done cannot be
simple:andthiscomplexityofthesentencewhichpo
sitions me as its addressee before I begin to describe,
object to, or evaluate Au juste is already the problem
ofAujuste.Thereareatleasttwojusticestobedone.
Letsbefair.
Or, rather, Be fair!, of unidentifiable addresser,
positioning me first as its addressee and then, here,
now (or, rather, then, there, for I am here, crucially,
asisthebookAujuste,alwaysalreadycondemnedto
109

belatedness with respect to the events constituted by


thesentences,necessarily,throughthefactofwriting,
missing them as moves), as addresser of its quoted
repetition. Be fair!, received before I can send any
thing.Befair,then.
If I comment on this prescription, Im not fair.
Commenting, I take up the prescription into my (de
scriptive) metalanguage, which positions me as
addresser of at least the sentence There is aprescrip
tion: Be fair! But the prescription did not call for
commentary, but for action, obedience: I should just
be fair, instead of talking about it so much [see Lyo
tards Logique de Lvinas, partially published in F.
Laruelle, ed., Textes pour Emmanuel Lvinas (Paris:
JeanMichel Place, 1980), English translation by Ian
McLeodforthcoming].
ThedescriptivesentencewithwhichIlinkupwith
theprescriptionpositionsthatprescriptionasitsrefer
ent, and suggests that truth will be told about that
referent. It concomitantly positions its addresser
(me) and its addressee (you) in a way specific to
descriptions, implying that the addresser knows
something about this prescription and that slhe is
tellingyouwhatitis.Thispragmaticsetup(disposi
tif) also proposes certain types of enchanement as
more fitting than others (e.g., I agree, Youre
wrong, etc.), but cannot prevent the eventuality of
other more or less disruptive sentences (e.g., Shut
up,Dinnersready,Whattimeisit?etc.),includ
ing the sentences constituted by your silence, by
your idiosyncratic inscription in the margin of your
copy of Diacritics, by your throwing that copy
across the room, etc. In other words, the pragmatic
110

setup obeys, and suggests as suitable, certain rules


foracertaingame.
Thefirstsentence,Befair!,worksdifferently,po
sitioning the poles or posts of its pragmatic universe
afterthefashionofprescriptives.Heretheaddresseris
not trying to tell the truth about anything, nor trying
tosecuretheaddresseesagreement.Thereisadiscon
tinuitybetweenthissentenceandthecommentaryon
it.Thisdiscontinuityisnotsimplyduetothefactthat
the second sentence is metalinguistic, but to the shift
of the game from prescription to description. If the
first sentence had been descriptive, there would have
been a certain continuity and commensurability be
tween it and the commentary. But here there is
incommensurability. And in the lack of respect for
thatincommensurability,thereisneutralization:inthe
enchanementtheexecutoryforceoftheprescriptiveis
lost.
If, as JFL argues, justice is a question of prescrip
tions, then injustice has already begun with the
second sentence, which does violence to the first by
lifting it out of the domain of the just and the unjust
and placing it forcibly in the domain of the true and
the false. The descriptive sentence is not fair in two
ways. First, it is ajust (and not yet unjust) insofar as
itsdomainissimplynotthatofjusticebutthatoftruth
andfalsehood.Thisajusticeisnotinjusticeinsofaras
it keeps itself to itself. But where description tries to
moveintoanddominatethespecificpropertiesofthe
gameofprescription,thenthereisinjusticeatbestand
terroratworst,asweshallsee.Oneexemplaryimpli
cation of this (and here there is a certain continuity
withEconomie libidinale, whichisinnosensesimply
111

repudiatedinAujuste) is thatLyotardisnottryingto
writeanewtheoryofjustice,andthattheauthorofA
Theory of justice is being unjust to justice on his title
page.
This apparently straightforward insistence on the
incommensurability of description and prescription
hasbroadandsurprisingeffects.Justicecannolonger
begroundedorderivedinanyfamiliarway:onecan
never conclude the just. In particular, what ought to
be cannot be concluded from what is [34]; an order
cannot find its justification in a denotative utterance
[46];noonecansaywhatthebeingofjusticeis[127].
Andinsofaraspoliticsisalsoamatterofprescription
and justice, a good deal of political thought is unjust
initsverystructure,initspretensiontoderivethejus
tice of its prescriptions from a description of the
(absent) good society (and here readers of Economie
libidinale will recognize an echo of the Grand Zro
motifoftheearlierbook).PoliticalthoughtfromPlato
to Marx has largely been caught up in this illusion,
which is double, and doubly unjust: first in that it as
sumes the priority of description with respect to
prescription;secondly,inthatitassumesthatdescrip
tion is adequate to the totality of language games
(including prescription), the heterogeneity and origi
nality of which Lyotard constantly stresses. Such
injustice is not simply an abstract question of lan
guage, for it can program the exercise of terror to
enforce the prescriptions calculated to lead a commu
nity (itself conceived of as a describable totality) to
realizethatprojectedgoodsociety.
A second strand of political thought might appear
to escape these problems. This second strand is the
112

more modern of the two (although not in a simple


chronological sense, in that Marx stands beside Plato
in the first, and Rousseau alongside the practice of
Ancient Greek democracies in the second), and at
temptstofindjusticeinautonomy,inthespecification
of formal conditions for the enunciation of prescrip
tions such that the posts of addresser and addressee
are interchangeable, producing a collectivity both au
thor of the law and its subject. JFL mobilizes two
argumentsagainstthisconception.Thefirstcontinues
to draw on the thought of Emmanuel Lvinas, whose
insistenceontheprimacyoftheethicalovertheonto
logical (and thus, in Lyotards terms, of the
prescriptive over the descriptive) also motivates part
of the critique of the first strand of political thought.
What is important here is Lvinass positing of an
asymmetry in the relation of prescription, such that
the addressee of a prescription is not only seized by
that prescription before understanding or commen
tary, but is also, by the fact of that seizure, debarred
fromsimplyoccupyinginturnthepostofaddresser.
Oronemightsaythattheveryconceptofautonomy
irrevocably splits any supposed subject between
posts of addresser and addressee, and that it is un
warranted to assume from the fact that the same
proper name (of a nationstate, for example) can oc
cupy both these posts that unity or selfpossession
results.
The second argument against autonomy draws on
theexampleoftraditionalnarrativeamongtheCashi
nahua Indians (already analyzed in La Condition
postmoderne): briefly, the pragmatics of Cashinahua
narrative are such that any subject is positioned as
113

referent and addressee of stories before being their


addresser; thesubject is thus told before slhe can tell.
The Cashinahua example is valuable to JFL because
thispragmaticorganizationisexplicitlymarkedinthe
ritualofthestorytelling:
Bysayingatthebeginning:here,Imgoingtore
counttoyouwhatIhavealwaysheard,andatthe
end:mynameissuchandsuch[i.e.,defininghim
selfwithinthekinshipstructureswhichdefinethe
Cashinahuasocialbond],[thenarrator]placeshim
selfatthetwopoleswhichhavebeenforgotten(in
thesenseofanactiveforgetting,arepression)inthe
modernWesternthoughtortraditionofautonomy,
andwhicharethepoleswhere...onereceivesanar
rativeinwhichoneisrecountedoneself,andreceives
anarrativewhichpeoplehaverecountedtoyou.[65]
The autonomy argument (and its associated theme of
the subject of the enunciation) assumes aprimaryof
the pole of addresser which is difficult to sustain in
thelightofthesearguments,whichsuggestthatthere
is no simple origin of sending, on the basis of which
any subject (whether individual or collective) could
giveitselfitsownlawsandinstitutions.
Giventhisdisqualificationoftraditionalanswersto
the problem of justice, a second major prescription
comestofollowtheBefair!Ifthisfirstprescriptionis
modalized to the form Lets be fair (this modaliza
tionisaconcessiontothegenreofdeliberation,inthe
samewayasAujusteitselfisaconcessiontothegenre
of the dialogue), then this second prescription, Lets
bepagan,comesasanattempttoresolvetheproblem
ofbeingfaironcethetraditionalcriteriaofjusticefail.
Being pagan does not involve substituting replace
114

mentcriteria,butrecognizingtheabsenceofcriteriaof
justiceingeneral.Thepagansituationisoneinwhich
I must judge without a model which could establish
the justice of that judgment, in which justice is never
given or achieved. The pagan situation is also that of
the dispersal of language games once description has
been removed from its traditional privilege (with the
pretension, in the Hegelian summa, of quoting, neu
tralizing,andspeakingthetruthofallsentencesfrom
allgames),andoncethetemptationtoreplacedescrip
tion with prescription as the dominant game (and
here JFL parts company with Lvinas [11718]) has
beenresisted.
Lets be pagan is immediately complex, then.
Does being pagan involve assenting to a description
(oftheheterogeneousandnontotalizabledispersionof
language games), or, insofar as that heterogeneity
cannotfairlybethereferentofadescription,obeyinga
prescription (to accept, practice, and aggravate that
dispersion)?Paganismnotes(describes?)thatthepre
tension to ground prescription in description (and
thus politics in an ontology, or in the concept, or in a
narrative of history) is pious and not pagan. It also
advocates(prescribes?)thatpagansituationwhilede
nying that this prescription is grounded in the
foregoing description. This tension within the word
(which is not a concept) paganism seems both to
dramatize the heterogeneity of language games, and
to suggest the possibility that the languagegame
game will find it difficult to account for all its own
movesinitsownterms.Thisisnotyetworryingifwe
arealreadypaganandnotstillpious,ifwedonotde
sire that the languagegame game provide a theory.
115

But it signals a certain murkiness to which I shall re


turn.
Paganism is not just a question of description and
prescription,butaffectsalllanguagegames.Giventhe
pluralityofgames,myinsistencehereontherelation
ship of just prescription and description might seem
willfullyperverse,oratleastreductive.Thiswouldbe
themorereprehensiblegivenJFLsexplicitrejectionof
such a reduction: answering JLTs worry that the op
position between description and prescription might
collapsebackintoaclassicaldualismbetweentheun
derstanding and the will, he insists that there are
many games [97], and, a little later, we know sim
ply that there are a lot of them (probably not an
infinite number, but ultimately we dont know; in
any case the number cant be demonstrated for the
timebeing,orifitcan,onlyprovisionally)[99].
Thisinsistenceonthepluralityofgamesgoesalong
with the assertion that there is no common measure
forthesegames.JFL:Whenyoustatethattheformula
forwaterisH20,youpositionyouraddresseeandpo
sition yourself and your referent [more strictly,
Lyotardwouldwanttosaythatitisthesentencethat
doesthepositioning]inawaywhichhasnorelation
ship [aucun rapport] with the pragmatics implied in a
proposition by Joyce [98]. To which JLT adds ab
solument aucun rapport, and JFL seems to agree.
Such an assertion of the aucun rapport is difficult,
andraisesfamiliarquestions.Attheveryleast,itsug
geststhatthereisarapportdusansrapport,impliedin
thepossibilityofstatingthelackofrelation,orinpro
ducing a third sentence which can link up with the
scientific statement and Joyces proposition and de
116

scribe them both in terms of (unrelated) games. JFL


insists,however,thatthefactthathecanspeakofthis
(non) relationship does not imply some totalizing
viewpoint with respect to some totality of language
games: the factthatIcanspeakofthispluralitydoes
notimplythatIpresentmyselfasoccupyingaunitary
point of view on the ensemble of these games, but
simply that these games have the capacity to talk
about themselves. And thats what theyre doing.
Someofthematleast[99].
The stress on the descriptive/prescriptive opposi
tion in the context of the assertion of plurality, then,
runstheriskofseemingalittlethin.ButIshallargue
thatthelogicoftherapportdusansrapportdictatesits
necessity,andthatthe(non)relationshipbetweende
scription and prescription is not just the de facto locus
of the local question of justice as prescription un
grounded in description, but the de jure condition of
playing the languagegame game under the complex
signofpaganism.
Forthevariousgamesareallplayedanddescribed
in terms of rules. The content of these rules is, to be
sure,provisionalandvariable(whenceLyotards rela
tive optimism in the stress on what he calls
experimentation, which is another name for justice
and paganism), but they are nonetheless rules, and
remain what is at stake in all games: only this com
mon stake allows, for example, for the possibility
envisaged at the end of La Condition postmoderneof
learningsomethingfromthegameofpostmodernsci
ence for the conduct of the game of postmodern
justice. These rules are, it would seem, metaprescrip
tions which determine the game being played. These
117

metaprescriptionscanappearinJFLsdiscourseasthe
referents of metadescriptions, and it is at this level
thatthemurkinessofpaganismislocated.Insofarasit
isplayedaspaganism,thelanguagegamegameplays
onanoscillationbetweendescriptionandprescription
at this metalevel. And precisely at this level the abil
ity of the languagegamegame to discriminate
between prescription anddescriptionbecomesdoubt
ful. If it could be shown that some of the sentences
involved at this level are in fact undecidable in terms
of the opposition between description and prescrip
tion, then this would suggest, not simply that JFLs
entities are gross, probably much too gross [99], but
that no continuous refinement of the entities of the
languagegame game could account for all its moves.
Suchapossibilitywouldopentheperspectiveofade
construction of the description/prescription
opposition (a deconstruction invited by the ambiva
lence of the title Au juste, which plays between the
descriptive notion of justesse and the prescriptive
notionofjustice),
95
whichwouldreinsribethevalue

95
In Allegories of Reading (New Haven: Yale, 1979), p. 269,
PauldeManalsoexploitstheplaybetweenjusticeandjust
esse. But where Lyotards work draws the most rigorous
consequences from the incommensurability of description
andprescription,deMantendstofudgethedistinctionow
ingtohisownfascinationwiththeoppositionofconstative
(descriptive)andperformative.Lyotardissuspiciousofthe
stress on the performative, on the one hand because of its
possiblelinkswithCapitalistvaluesofhighperformanceor
performativity, andontheotherbecauseamoreaesthetic
notion of performance tends to evacuate the political alto
gether. Lyotards work could provide the premises for a
118

of prescription without simply proclaiming it as


truth.
96
What might such an undecidable sentence be? Let
us return to the (meta)justice involved in respecting
the dispersion of games in their plurality, going for
the moment no further than the feeling that it is diffi
cult to decide whether that dispersion is the referent
of descriptions or prescriptions. This is the question
addressedattheendofAujuste.
JFLs first problem here is to link satisfactorily the
notionofanIdeaofjustice(intheKantiansense)with

reinscription of the literary and the political which would


notfallintotheinstrumentalisttrapsofaspeechacttheory
ofliterarydiscourse.
96
This is the point of difference with Lvinas referred to
above:To[Lvinass]mind,itisthetranscendentcharac
ter of the other in the prescriptive relation, in the
pragmatics of prescription, that is, in the (barely) lived
experienceofobligation,thatistruthitself.This

truthis
not ontological truth, it is ethical. But it is a truth, ac
cording to Lvinass very terms. Whereas as I see it, it
cantbethetruth[118].Itmaywellbethatthereadingof
Lvinaswouldbethepointatwhichtobegintheinevita
ble and difficult task of articulating Lyotards work with
that of Derrida. Such an articulation will not be possible
withoutacertainviolence(Violenceappearswitharticu
lation, Jacques Derrida, Violence et mtaphysique, in
LEcriture et la diffrence [Paris: Seuil, 1967; reed. coll.
Points, 1979], 117228 [219], tr. Writing and Difference
(London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978],
14748), but that violence would already be the problem
tobearticulated.

119

a certain notion of judgments of justice taking place


within a dialectic of opinions, where justice has to be
decided individually in each case, rather than by ref
erence to acriterionofjusticedeterminedinadvance.
This latter notion is linked by JFL to certain Sophists,
but also to the Aristotle of, for example, the Rhetoric.
The Kantian Idea is useful in that it in principle pre
ventsthehardeningofjusticeintodogmaordoctrine,
andthusresiststheattempttogroundprescriptionin
description. InKantianterms,theIdeadoesnotdeter
minejustice,butregulatesit.Butitnonethelessinvolves
acertaintotality(thesuprasensiblecommunityoffree
and rational beings) which, to be sure, can never be
achieved (there can be no corresponding intuition to
make such an Idea into a concept), but which func
tions teleologically as the nonempirical totality to
whichhumanityaspiresasymptotically[165].
The tension between such a totality and the stress
ondispersionandheterogeneityistheproblemofthe
doublejusticetobedone.Atthesimplerlevel,justice
is a question of the justice of prescriptions, and the
judgment of such justice is never given in advance,
butineachcasetobedecidedinthedialecticofopin
ion regulated by the Idea. All well and good. At the
more complex level, justice (or metajustice), involves
respecting the specificity of all games, of which pre
scription is only one. Here justice means keeping
justice(thequestionofprescriptions)outofallgames
other than its own. JFL: From this point of view, if
one really does limit oneself to these narrative, or de
scriptive, or other, games, which are not prescriptive,
theideaofjusticeshouldnotintervene[napasinter
venir, does not need to intervene, does not have to
120

intervene: is this a prescription or a description?]


[182]. The Idea of justice does have to intervene (or
should intervene) insofar as other games are already
unjust, infiltrated by prescription insofar as justice
hasalreadyintervenedanddisturbedtheproprietyor
purity of these games.(TheIdeaof)justiceintervenes
in order to prevent its intervention in games other
thanitsown.Gamesotherthanthatofjusticearejust
totheextentthattheydonotinvolvejustice.Prescrip
tion must intervene in all games to make sure that it
does notinterveneinothergames.TheIdeaofjustice
watches over the purity and propriety [183] of all
games, but in fact must prevent any such purity or
propriety to the extentthatitdoeswatchover.Purity
and propriety are rendered unthinkable by the re
quirementthatprescriptionalwaysalreadytransgress
its own purity or propriety in a pas audel which in
tervenes to the extent that it forbids intervention.
Every game except prescription includes a rule ex
cludingprescription.Asarule,prescriptionproscribes
prescription.
Thistroublesomeparadoxmight,itwouldseem,be
reducible precisely by respecting thespecificityofthe
IdeaofjusticeasIdea.justiceintheformofthepurity
orproprietyofgameswillneverinfactbeachieved;it
is not a concept; there can be no intuition of it. The
Ideasimplysuggestsapushtowardjusticeintheform
of the pure heterogeneity of games. But this simply
creates another paradox, for the idea of the Idea im
plies a sort of convergence, organization, general
congruence of a given multiplicity going towards its
unity[179],andthusthereturnofthetotalityincon
121

flictwiththedesiredpossibilityofmultiplicityas(pa
gan)justice.TheIdeaofjusticeisitselfunjust.
These paradoxes are recognized in JFLs closing
remarks, which posit on the one hand a multiplicity
of justices (each game respecting the others), and on
the other the justice of multiplicity, ensured, para
doxically, by a universal prescription prescribing the
nonuniversality of prescription. The multiplicity of
justices is only made possible by the justice of multi
plicitywhichitmustcondemnastotalizing.
This paradox, which ends the book in pagan
laughter, is the symptom of the murkiness located
earlier: but it also suggests that its source, the pos
ited undecidable sentence, can now be recognized.
This undecidable sentence is the rule itself. If pre
scription always and necessarily compromises the
purity of all games and prevents them from being
(a)just, this is because of the basic operator of the
languagegame game itself, the rule. Rules pre
scribe what must be done for a denotative, or
interrogativeorprescriptive,etc.,utterancetobere
ceivedasgoodaccordingtothecriteriaofthegame
to which it belongs [188]. But rules are also the de
scription of the game to which they belong,
according to the languagegame game which, in
stating the rules of games, both describes and pre
scribes. The prescriptive rule is always already its
own descriptive autonym. Or vice versa. The lan
guagegamegamethusproducessentencesitcannot
dominate: this means that it is neither simply one
game among others, nor a game which totalizes all
games. This suggests a third justice, located by JFL
within the multiplicity of justices, but which in fact
122

splits justice beyond the reach of the paradoxical


formulationssuggestedabove:Justiceheredoesnot
onlyconsistinsubmittingtotherules;itconsists,as
in all games, in working at the limits of what the
rules tolerate, in order to invent new moves, per
hapsnewrulesandthusnewgames[18889].
We can have no Idea of such justice. For here the
creationofnewrulesandevennewgamescannotfail
to disturb the purity and propriety of existing games.
This third justice is unjust both to the Idea and to the
constitutedmultiplicity.Butitisalso,perhaps,aname
for the complex unity of that Idea and that multiplic
ity, or for the movement which disperses the Idea as
multiplicity. The languagegame game played in Au
juste will have been an unstable, local effect of that
movement, and its justice involves playing it to the
limitandprecipitatingitsowndissolution,signaledin
thefinallaughter.Thejusticetocome(whichwillnot
arrive) will need to question the rule of rule and the
gameofgame,inanattempttophrasethatlaughter.

Postscript

TheaboveremarkswerealmostcompletewhenIhad
the opportunity to read Le diffrend. Nothing will
have been the same again. The sentences of Le dif
frend finalize those of Au juste in a way I cannot
here attempt to describe. A few points only. Lyotard
does indeedgiveupthetermlanguagegame,feltto
be too anthropocentric [see for example 91]. Its
place is taken by much more rigorously defined r
123

gimes de phrases and genres de discours, the rela


tionship of which would require long analysis. The
notion of rule remains, but it is now explicitly stated
that rules (of rgimes, in any case) are not prescrip
tions [175]. It is not immediately clear that they are
now thought to be descriptive. The tension between
metadescriptive and metaprescriptive sentences is
clarified and complicated by discussion of normative
sentences, which are metalinguistic with respect to
prescriptions(theytransformprescriptionsintolaws),
but are not themselves descriptive [2049]. Nor
matives allow an articulation of the ethical and the
political and pose the general problem of authority.
Laughter finds its place in this discussion, as the sign
oftheheterogeneitywhichpersistsinspiteoflawand
legitimation, which prevents the laws achieving the
necessity of total being [208]. A rereading of Au
juste would benefit from these distinctions, displace
ments, and refinements: it is no longer the same
book.
More generally, it would now be possible to refor
mulatetheparadoxesofAujustesdoublejusticeas
whatisnowpreciselydefinedasadiffrend(aconflict
which cannot be decided equitably because of the ab
senceofaruleapplicabletobothsidesatonce).Inthis
reading, the tensions of Au juste, and the laughter,
would be the sign of this diffrend; the diffrend of
justicecallingforitsphrasingasjustice.Thisdoesnot
mean that Le diffrend is justice, or the resolution of
itsowntitle.
Of the tensions, paradoxes, and diffrends that re
main, one returns to the question of the book, as
programmed in the Fiche de lecture which opens Le
124

diffrend. As a book (and Le diffrend is a book) of


philosophyratherthanoftheory,whatitputsatstake
is precisely the discovery of its own rules [12]: en
chanements will follow. One possible enchanement
would take as its referent the books style (style is al
ways a call to phrasing). The willfully unmodish
sobriety of that style, its declared desire for self
effacement before thought, will no doubt scandalize
those who hasten to misrecognize logocentrism. But
more interestingly, that style gives rise to a tone
(howtophraseatone?),whichLyotarddescribesas
sententious [13], and which should be disre
garded [quil convient de ngliger]. Why should it be
disregarded? What is at stake inasententioustone?
Sententiousness might, after all, be a good namefor
a certain undecidability of description andprescrip
tion....
125

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