Subject: Re: deconstruction of self(early-late)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 97 14:38:41 +0100
From: Giles Peaker <G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk>


>Giles,
>
>Do you feel that you have a good sense of what Lyotard means by 
>"libidinal band"?  I don't.  What is the imagery here?  And why did he 
>choose this imagery?
>
>..Lois Shawver

I don't know about a 'good sense', but I will offer an interpretation. I 
take it that the imagery of the 'band' is an attempt to get away from 
thinking of the body as 'contained' or an organic whole/structure. The 
'organic body' gives rise to an inside and an outside, whereas the band 
is all surface (and if twisted into a Moebius strip, both its sides are 
one surface!). A band can also touch itself at any of its points, it can 
have ripples and folds, but still not contain anything. 

Rather than seeing the skin, say, as a point of transfer between the 
exterior world and the perceived (or rather, represented) sensation of 
the theatre of the interior; the band is where the event of sensation 
occurs, and at that instant there is no distinction between inside and 
outside.  (One could suggest that the band exists only in sensation - but 
I'm not sure if this could be supported as a reading of Lyotard). 

"One cannot say where one is from any point, any region, not only because 
that point or region has already disappeared when one claims to speak of 
it, but, also because in the singular and non-temporal instant of intense 
passage, it has been invaded and invested from both sides at once". 
(Economie Libidinale p25)

Does this mesh with your thinking?

Giles

Giles Peaker
Historical and Theoretical Studies
School of Art and Design, University of Derby, Britannia Mill, 
Mackworth Road, Derby. DE22 3BL (U.K.)
+44 (0)1332 622222 ext. 4063    G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk
Editorial Collective:Detours and Delays. 
An occasional journal of aesthetics and politics