Interview: Jean-François Lyotard

Author(s): Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Van Den Abbeele

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 14, No. 3, Special Issue on the Work of Jean-Francois Lyotard
(Autumn, 1984), pp. 15-21
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464841 .
Accessed: 03/01/2013 02:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Diacritics.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
INTERVIEW

LYOTARD
JEAN-FRANCOIS

Georges Van Den Abbeele: In reading your work, one cannot help but be struck by its het-
erogeneity, its diversity, its relentless questioning of previously advanced categories. What
one could call the protean or nomadic quality of your thought inevitably places its critic in
the position of feeling already passed by, of being depasse by your work, such that a poten-
tial point of disagreement may turn out no longer to be current in your thinking. The ques-
tion raised then is that of the "responsibility"of your writing. More pointedly, your long-held
allegiance to avant-garde esthetics (evidenced by numerous books and articles on contem-
porary art from Duchamp to Monory) makes your work open to the charge of seeking the
new for its own sake. In the political sphere, the charge would be that of pursuinga liberalist
pluralism, if not anarchism. Can you respond to this criticism by clarifyingthe underlying
concerns of your intellectual project as a whole?
Jean-FrangoisLyotard: Ifthe heterogeneity of "my"work "passes by"[depasse]the reader, it
also "passes by" me, insofar as I am my first reader. However, I am also the supposed
"author"of "my"work, and you ask about my responsibilityin regardto it. Two defenses are
possible. The first is that we never publish anything except rough drafts. Even Le diff6rend
(1984), which I spent nine years elaborating and writing, remains a sketch, whose master I
have not been. And in this sense, I can without lying plead limited responsibility.That is to
say: a reader cannot incorrectly locate in a piece of writing an aspect which, according to
me, is not at all there. This is the matter for a litigation, perhaps for a diff~rend.
The second defense, compatible with the first, is that I accept - in fact I seek - heteroge-
neity. All thought conceals something of the unthought. We must then take it up, be it at the
price of self-contradiction. The interests of that which is to be thought must unhesitatingly
prevail over the concern to make a good impression, to construct one's authorial identity. I
here plead full and entire responsibilityfor the heterogeneity of the result. This result would
be homogeneous if that which is to be thought presented itselfas a unity and as a totality. But
it happens, each time, now, like a singular event. Thinking only takes place by listening in
attentively to the question: "is it happening that . . .?" [arrive-t-ilque. . .?]. Theory, stricto
senso, forthwith assigns to the question the answer it holds in reserve. Philosophy tries to
make the question reverberate. Theory is by its principle outside of time; philosophy is
immersed in the kairos.That philosophy, once transported into the political sphere, appears
"liberal,""pluralist,"or "anarchist"is quite possible. But politics is not a sphere; politics has to
do with the way one phrase is linked to another; it is inscribed right onto being meme
I' tre]. [,

G.V.: One way to describe your recent work is as a project to analyze sociopolitical prob-
lems of justice in terms of a problematics of language. This project is founded upon your sup-
position that "the observable social linkage is made out of 'moves' in language"[Lacondition

16

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 :
Earewr yh Nr t Nov
il i Of c r-, or you, re

7f you are you

not. te
not, I+ vouera wolo• 1, ...0
tifying that you
this stie ti you-r-
1?n'juI o. aefooling,

Q of
elf inajs of a
in
loying) tei[FeIvictim,
'"he 81 e
Let i be: you
re.
: :-:--:
.. •!•

:
Re110n orlemywr

1II- w
I~rI:-I-

if f? 11
Ew
The ere

....
n
i t
i~onothe
is ns1 P,~ nsito
C)

ea.Altoer8chohAlol .........:

e as
-: 1, i,
e, an s cra e4i~ r,

paintiff's T-ri1_
to i , For~. i
respon bilty ens~et: a

11
0h inu 1oend Yy
r E?ue 7nuCAP n

i t 'L F31 E1)

f'17 r!V;i 1t
C)
11 11 r 11
c;11 t;i
ri1.a
mE? Ilit

............

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
postmoderne 24]. In what ways do you feel that this is an adequate (or useful) model of the
relationship between language and society? And while an attentive reading of your work
reveals that your concern is primarilywith the contextual, pragmaticdimensions of language
use, does not your use of linguisticterminology and of formulations like the above riskreduc-
ing the complexity of social phenomena to discourse, a reduction which in your early
Discours, figure you denounce as endemic to Western metaphysics? How do you reconcile
the language-game model of society with your manifest interest in alternative media and
especially in the visual arts?
I-F.L.: First, the simplest of phrases presents a "universe"that is a society of instances:
addresser, addressee, referent, meaning (and I am neglecting the support of the phrase and
its code). These instances are or are not "occupied."But society and the explication of society
always presuppose this elementary interaction at the heart of the language atom. This inter-
action is the social link. You can recount its foundation, deduce its economy from the pur-
posiveness of interest, or of passion, etc . . .: this link is presupposed in your act of recount-
ing or deducing. Itdoes not follow that you must not recount or deduce, but that in doing so
you are making but a theory.
Secondly, one cannot enclose oneself in language; for that to occur it would have to be
a closed totality. It'sa linguist'sidea that it is this totality, because he makes it into his domain
of reference, his thing. The philosopher asks how to link one phrase well to the next. He is
not in possession of the good rule; he is looking for it. He must reflect and judge, as Kant
says. And through this he relates to language in the same way as the common person does:
an infinite, or in any case an indefinite, number of phrases remains possible at each instant.
Thirdly,"language"has no exterior because it is not in space. But it can say space. Itcan
say the body. Itcan say that the body "says"something, that silence speaks. Idiolects can cer-
tainly be imagined: the language of the unconscious, the language of classes, the language of
nature.... But in order to assert that language is involved, it is necessary to say what they
say, and they cease therefore to be idiolects. The "exterior"of language is the nothingness
which slips between one phrase and the one which will link up with it. The exterior is immi-
nence. But the latter is the intimacy of phrases among themselves.
Fourthly,I did not try in Discours, figureto oppose language and image. Iwas suggesting
that a (discursive)principle of readabilityand a (figural)principle of unreadabilityshared one
in the other. The book is certainly not exempt from a nostalgiafor some extralinguisticentity.
I believe, however, that it is legitimate to establish congruences between the "discourse"of
back then and the "genre of discourse" brought to bear in Le diff6rend and between the
"figure"of the first book and the "is it happening that ...?" of the last. All of which can in
short answer the request for homogeneity....

G.V.: Could you explain your use and subsequent abandonment of the term "language
game," which you borrow from Wittgenstein? What is gained in the move from the game
model to one of "phrases"?
I-F.L.: The answer to this question is given in Lediff6rend. Briefly:I have schooled myself in
the Philosophische Untersuchungen in order to purge myself of the metaphysics of the sub-
ject (stillpresent, in my opinion, in the Tractatus).Littlethought, since Spinoza, the Sophists,
Dogen, and Kant(!),displays as much ... divested. Desolating my culture fecundated me.
Thereafter,it seemed to me that "languagegames" implied playersthat made use of language
like a toolbox, thus repeating the constant arrogance of Western anthropocentrism.
"Phrases"came to say that the so-called players were on the contrary situated by phrases in
the universes those phrases present, "before"any intention. Intention is itself a phrase, which
doubles the phrase it inhabits, and which doubles or redoubles the addresser of that phrase.

C.V.: In your recent work, you insist very much upon the incommensurability (or untrans-
latability)of different phrase universes, as if to maintain their integrity. InAu juste, for exam-
ple, you argue extensively against the derivation of prescriptives from descriptives as
metaphysical and dangerous. On the other hand, in "IntroductionAune 6tude du politique
selon Kant,"you describe the critical act in terms of the seeking of "passages"(Uberginge)
between phrase universes. Could you explain your view of the critical act, and what you

diacritics / fall 1984 17

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
mean by these "passages"?What is the urgency that underlies your casting the task of the
intellectual in this way?
J-F.L.: Firstof all, the word "passage"- bergange- is found in the Introduction to Kant's
ThirdCritique. Itdesignates the very task that Kantassigns himself in that book, a task already
set in the discussion of the ThirdAntinomy of Reason, in the FirstCritique. Having, like no
one before him, aggravatedthe incommensurability between the cognitive law (descriptive)
and the moral law (prescriptive), Kant seeks to re-establish "over the abyss" a passage
between the two domains. He believes this passage to be found in the esthetic judgment and
in the idea of a purposiveness of nature in man. My reading is then the following: he in fact
finds a faculty of "passing,"that of the reflective judgment, the capacity to judge without
criteria (already at work, in fact, although under diverse titles, in the two domains); but this
faculty does not permitthe reestablishmentof a subject's unity nor of a system's architecture.
This faculty is "only"critical, as Kantexplains in the FirstProject for an Introductionto the
Third Critique; it comes and goes between domains which remain incommensurable. A
Hegelian outcome to this dispersion (the word is in Kant'santhropology) is thus refuted in
advance as a "transcendentalappearance."
Secondly, I believe that the ruin of subject-systems (which in Lacondition postmoderne
I called "great narratives"),the liberal, the marxist, the capitalist, the Christian, the
speculative, reveals to us today once again this condition of thought (and thus of action)
when it must reflect and judge without letting its course be inflected by a purposiveness
(anthropological, cosmological, or ontological) which would legitimate it.

G.V.: In Lacondition postmoderne, you speak of postmodernity as "ringingthe deathknell

of the era of the professor"[88]. Given the diversity of your own teaching experience (at
Nanterre in 1968, at Vincennes, with the InstitutPolytechnique de Philosophie, and with the
Coll6ge Internationalde Philosophie), what do you feel to be the pedagogical responsibilities
of those of us still engaged in "classical"universityteaching? What alternativescan you pro-
pose to the great Enlightenment narrativeof education as emancipation?
I-F.L.: Whether it be in the "classical"university or in the supplementary institutions to
which you allude, the pedagogical task, once stripped of its trappings,that of the great nar-
rative of emancipation, can be designated by one word: an apprenticeship in resistance.
Resistance against the academic genres of discourse to the extent that they forbid the recep-
tion of the "isit happening that ...?," against the great narrativesthemselves, againstthe way
thought is treated in the new postmodern technologies insofar as they express the most
recent application of capitalist rules to language, resistance against every object of thought
which is given to be grasped through some "obvious" delimitation, method, or end.
Pedagogical responsibilityis not the responsibilityto think, but to teach those to think who
supposedly don't know how. And there are no good criteria(the successful passing of exam-
inations is not a good criterion). We created the Institutand the Coll6ge to get away from
"good criteria."Itdoes not follow from that that we have better criteriabut that we dispose of
a space-time wherein the endurance of thinking can be felt without extrinsic obstacles
(especially in regard to objects which do not form part of the classical curricula of
philosophy). I touched upon this question in "Enduranceand the Profession,"Yale French
Studies 63 (1982).

G.V.: Yourwork often seems guided by an impious use of other texts (this is not a criticism).
One is even tempted to describe as "wild"your use of terms from pragmatics,from the later
Kant, from Levinas, etc. Can you justify this practice of intellectual bricolage in terms of a
more general reading strategy?The diversity of styles and genres which you draw upon in
your writing also testifies to an explicit attempt on your part to reject traditional forms of
writing philosophy. Can you speak then to the pragmatic occupations of your discourse?
I-F.L.: Firstof all, I remain continually surprised by the surprisethat my readings of works
provoke in my readers. I can't seem to make myself feel guilty for any disrespect but I ought
to feel that way out of incongruousness. I must be a bad reader, not sufficientlysensitive or
"passive"in the greater sense of the word, too willful, "aggressive,"not sufficientlyespousing
the supposed organic development of the other(?),in a rushto place it in the light of my own
concerns. "Wild"if you wish (but my concerns are cultivated); "impious"certainly in the

18

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
sense whereby Plato judges as impious the belief that the gods (here the works I read) are
corruptible by petitions and gifts. Should I try to seduce what I read? (In any case, not
"bricoleur.")- RatherI would say: one writes because one hears a request [demande] and in
order to answer it; I read Kantor Adorno or Aristotle not in order to detect the request they
themselves tried to answer by writing, but in order to hear what they are requesting from me
while I write or so that I write. It seems to me that Diderot proceeded in this manner.
Secondly, as for the "traditionalforms of writing philosophy," I know of none. The
proper of philosophy is not to have a proper genre. Tragedy, novel, tale, journal, dialogue,
conversation, apology, report, theses, study, research, inquiry, essay, manual, treatise-all
genres are good for it. This is because philosophical discourse is in quest of its rule and does
not have it from the start. Philosophy borrows it from a genre, in order to insert into that
genre the reflective judgment through which the genre's rules are interrogated.And that suf-
fices to turn the borrowed genre away from its generic purposiveness.

G. V.: Forsome time now (at least since Economie libidinale),you have denounced the "ter-
rorismof theory"in the name of the irreduciblyparticular,of the contextually specific. InAu
juste, you are very careful to insist upon the possibility of justice and of making just
judgments without, however, being willing to elaborate a "theory"of justice, which, if I
understand you correctly, could not fail at some moment or other to be productive of
specific injustices. I wonder, though, if theory can be so easily dispensed with. Is there not
necessarily a theoretical (or speculative) moment in the very conceptualization of the par-
ticular?And if, as you also suggest, theory is merely one genre of discourse among others, is
not the problem then less that of avoiding theory than of finding other ways to "phrase"
theory?
J-F.L.: Theory is in effect a genre, a tough genre. Modern logic has elaborated the rules for
this genre: consistency, completeness, decidability of the system of axioms, and indepen-
dence of the axioms. I have no objection to formulate against this genre (genres are not sub-
ject to objection). And in this case, theory is a remarkable elaboration of the linkings
between phrases, and firstof all of their formation into "well-formedexpressions"or proposi-
tions. It is not a question of "phrasing"theory otherwise (you might as well phrase tragedy
otherwise). It is only a question of determining the cases in which the theoretical genre
engenders paralogisms (which the Sophists, Russell, or G6del did, each in his own way).
One thus learns that these cases must not be accepted into theory such as it is, because they
arise from another genre. It is necessary then to judge, outside of all genres, what existing or
inexistent genre is suitable for phrasing these cases (which cease then to be paralogisms).
Although an amateur, I have always been attracted by formalism. It proceeds to a kind of
mine-clearing of the potencies of language. There exists not only the sapper's lighttouch, but
also an ironic and terrifiedrespect for the imminence of the explosion. Terrorthrough theory
only begins when one also claims to axiomatize discourses that assume or even cultivate
inconsistency, incompleteness, or indecidability. Contemporary "Frenchthought" is often
accused of irrationalismbecause it resists this extension. But it is this extension that is irra-
tional.

G.V.: Much of the difficulty in presenting your texts to an Anglo-Americanaudience comes

from their often admirable and very self-conscious grounding within the particularcontexts
in which they were written. Instructionspafennes is perhaps the most clearly marked of these
texts. Do you not fear that the widespread distributionand translationof your writings, that
is, of their abstraction from the particulartimes and places in which they were initiallycir-
culated, will allow for the most egregious attempts to apply your ideas in a uniform, univer-
salizing manner? Is there not something illusory or nostalgic in the notion of a discourse
rigorously situated in a particularcontext or scene of intervention?
I-F.L.: Every phrase links onto other phrases, be they explicit, presupposed, or implicitly
understood. None of them is the first phrase. If there is illusion and nostalgia, it is in the
expectation (Cartesian for example) of a first phrase, without precedent (or a last one,
without rejoinder). It is more conformable to this condition to render explicit the "context"
than to omit it. Universality is always a horizon to attain from the startingpoint of an imma-
nent, singular situation. See Benjamin, the latter Adorno. This condition in effect generates

diacritics / fall 1984 19

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
difficulties when it is necessary not only to translatefrom one language into another, but to
transferfrom one "culture"(a complex agglomerate of contexts) to another. Misapprehen-
sions are inevitable, especially if one claims to "applyideas"thus elaborated from a singular
situation. Ideas are not operators or categories, but horizons of thought. They are by no
means applied. There would be much to say about their means of propagatingthemselves.
In any case, I would ratherbe little read, if it is at least done in this spirit,than diffused like an
article of intellectual commerce. A recent experience at Trinity College in Cambridge,
England, reassures me moreover that if the resistances to propagation are multiplied at the
institutional(university,editorial, journalistic)level, it is precisely on account of the fact that
the intellectual "petitpeuple," young instructors,students, unregisteredauditors, are working
for the acclimatization of foreign ideas, and demand their propagation. There is something
heroic in this will. I salute it here in your person as well as in the persons of all the young
scholars who have resolved to propagate the singularity of my writings in the Germano-
phone, Italian, Brazilian Hispanophone, or Japanese worlds.

G.V.: Your notion of the diff6rend allows for subtle and complex analyses of the relation
between politics and language in specific cases of oppression. Inthe United Statestoday, the
most widespread and vital strand of criticism that deals with the literatureof an oppressed
group or with the problems of an oppressed discourse is no doubt feminist criticism. Is there
a specifically feminine diff6rend, an unlitigatable"injustice"done to women? In what ways
might your work be of interest to (or at odds with) feminism?
I-F.L.: Firstof all, not all oppressions signal diff6rends(they can involve litigations),and I do
not think that every diff6rend gives rise to oppression. Secondly, is there a feminine idiom
untranslatable into the masculine idiom to the same extent that the tragic idiom does not
translate into the elegiac nor the mathematic into the epic nor the speculative into the
cognitive? If this is the question, the answer requires that we look into what we mean then
by idiom. Freud certainly busied himself trying to delineate a feminine idiom irreducible to
the masculine. But at the same time he insistently indicates the bisexuality of men and
women. He indicates. Ifan injustice has occurred in this affair,it is bisexualitythat is the suf-
fering party, as much for men as for women: an interdiction is passed forbidding the latter
from assuming their virility, and the former from fulfillingtheir femininity. It would still be
necessary, I repeat, to articulatewhat is meant by these entities. Are they anything other than
modes in the musical sense? Men or women, we have the capacity for the major mode and
the minor mode. It is in between them, in between these modes that incommensurability
resides.
Finally, after reflecting upon it for a moment, I can count many texts relative to the
question man/woman from Discours, figure up to a text on Valerio Adami, "Ondiraitqu'une
ligne ..." (1983), which is my most feminine text, I believe.

G.V.: Your analysis of the proper name as a "quasi-deictic"leads you to an understandingof

the political in terms of a kind of generalized agonistics of the proper name. The stakes
involved in what meanings can or cannot be attributedto a proper name, in how that name
can or cannot occur in certain phrases, become very high. But then the philosophical stakes
in knowing what constitutes a proper name become just as high. Are there not certain com-
mon nouns which are also at issue in diff6rends?In other words, how is the proper name as
contested in a diff6rendto be distinguished from debate over the meaning and usage of any
word or concept?
]-F.L.: Propernames have that propertyof attractingto themselves phrases belonging to dif-
ferent regimens and to heterogeneous genres of discourse: Caesar,forpity'ssake! Down with
Caesar!Caesarwas at that time consul. Was Caesara great writer?YourCaesarannoys me. It
is for this reason that the difflrend flourishes in and around proper names. A "debate"over
the signification of a common noun is a genre strictly regulated in its end (the establishment
of a definition) and in its procedures (dialogue). The difference between one and the other is
the one noted by Aristotle at the beginning of the Rhetoric, shall we say: the difference
between School and political life, which tears apart the man of knowledge or of litigation,at
the tribune, at the tribunal or in the street, the agonistical places.

20

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Thank you for your questions. I have tried to answer them in the spiritof litigation, not
of the diff6rend. I join here a text (you will see that proper names are numerous in it) aimed
at rapidlymarkingout the singularcontext of my work, and thus at reanimatingthe diff6rend
between the latter and the Anglo-American public.

Decor
My big sister puts her PCB1 review notebook under her arm and tells me to come hold
her place at Maggi'sdairy store in an hour. She has seen that there is a waiting line; milk is
being distributed without ration cards, one liter per person. We make balls of paper with
dampened, old newspapers that we burn in the big stove in the dining room. The only
heated room in the middle-class apartment. Ice flowers on the windowpanes of the rooms
where it is -50 C. I come back running to take some money from my mother's change
purse, some guy is selling free-market"fishpat&"under the Montparnasse bridge. It'smade of
pulverized fish bones and skin. The purchase of a pair of shoes with soles of jointed wood is
projected for three months away, mine are taking in water. We are called to the rue de Tour-
non. At the Senate entrance, a tank is firingfrom its machine gun. An old man wearing a tie
falls down. He is carried up to his place, he is stretched out on the dining-room table. With a
scalpel, his son-in-law opens the wound he has received close to his breast and removes the
bullet from his heart. In the basement of the Medical School Faculty, a warm cadaver
decapitated by an artilleryshell. (In 68 at the same place, the brothel.) I run along the walls
of the Place de Rennes deserted at daybreak. In the empty window of a stationary, Drieu la
Rochelle's Notes pour comprendre le siecle are put on sale. It'sopen, I buy, I read at the Red
Cross station in the Passage Saint Andre des Arts. An American soldier gives me a penknife
with six blades. On the Champ Elysdes,they are shooting at an enraptured De Gaulle who is
walking down it singing the Te Deum to Our Lady.My father comes home, throws his thick
briefcase stuffed with coupons and fabric samples on the table, and says to my mother:
Fischbacheris closing shop, I no longer have my representative'scard. We wait in line at the
soup kitchen at the other end of the Boulevard de Vaugirard.In the railway station of Sables
d'Olonne, we distribute soup and help to old people evacuated from the Ardennes. The
smell of piss, ether and bad coffee. At the exit to the community center in Constantine, the
CRS2friskour Algeriancomrades, up against the wall with their hands in the air. They do not
friskme. She and I have decided to keep the child, I am out of work, my family does not like
Jews, or secretaries, or unwed mothers. We spend the night in the city hall of Antony to
defend it from the paratroopscome from Algiers. Fora whole night we count the banknotes
in suitcases transmitted by an Algerian and we stash them in a forbidden cupboard at the
Pasteur Institute.A stock of leaflets urging insubordination in my car trunk:the cop stops my
car in front of his booth in the passageway: you are traveling in a forbidden direction. With a
red flag and singing Ave Maria, we break into the administration building at Nanterre in
order to be given access to the telephone. My father throws out his Doriotist son-in-law who
has abandoned my sister, they come to blows, my father falls on the floor of the entrance.
We cross into the forbidden zone on the footboards of the train, with neither ticket nor per-
mit to circulate. Douy and I make ourselves some yellow starsand put them on because our
two Jewish buddies are wearing them at the lycee. My boy scout troop marches past the
statue of Joan of Arc, people applaud and chant: France for Frenchmen! I will continue on
the occasion of the next crisis. That my American friends understand what they would be
like if three or four times in their lifetime they had seen their president arrive from Canada
after the occupation of the United States by Mexican soviets and walk down the Mall in the
midst of sniper bullets.
-Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele

1Student shorthand for the first year of medical school with its emphasis on physics, chemistry, and
biology, whence the initials.- tr.
2Compagnies R6publicaines de S6curite, a special reserve police under the jurisdiction of the French
Ministerof the Interior. The reference is to the Algerian struggle for liberation.- tr.

diacritics / fall 1984 21

This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 02:09:15 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions