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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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
19
LaPhnomnologie,p.43.
18
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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)
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.
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
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
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
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
43
JeanFranoisLyotard,Discours,figure(Paris:Klinckseick,
1971).
43
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
64
See the analysis of this slogan in Annie Leclerc, Origines
(Paris:Grasset,1988).
65
SeeLetombeaudelintellectuel(Paris:Galile,1984).
78
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
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
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
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
78
Discours, figure, p. 138; see Lyotard: Writing the Event, pp.
712.
89
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
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
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
87
Lecturesdenfance(Paris:Galile,1991),p.64.
95
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
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
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
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
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
104
AUGUST:DOUBLEJUSTICE
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
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
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
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
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
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
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