File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1997/lyotard.9711, message 44


Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 08:51:35 -0800 (PST)
From: MATTHEW FRANCIS WETTLAUFER <mattw-AT-sfsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Query


One reason why a discussion is flagging is that all of us have differing
backgrounds in the material we're talking about--some know more about
Lyotard, some more about Derrida, some more about Levinas.  And even with
an individual author it's inevitable that you're going to find people who
have read one book but not another.  The best we can do--if we have lives
outside of this mailing list and most of us do--is to be courteous to each
other and try our best to have a discussion.  I've noticed that some
people have started posting antagonistic responses to each other's posts
and that's unfortunate.

I think Derrida's connection to Levinas is profound.  It is rooted in his
reading of Husserl, especially his first published work of the
Introduction to the Origin of Geometry.  There he recognizes language as
passage to ideal obejectivity, in temporality and between the
phenomenal world and the intentional consciousness.  This falling back
into language is also a falling back of sense or meaning into history
because without this alienated sense or meaning, sense and meaning would
be nothing more than empirical observation.  Language "carries it across"
to the ideal object, and to the Other as listener.

I think Levinas and Derrida both developed their ideas of the Other as a
result of their reading of Husserl, and as a reaction to their criticisms
of Heidegger.  Heidegger thought that the western tradition had forgotten
Being, but Levinas said it had also forgotten the Other.  There are some
interesting parallels between Lyotard and Levinas here in Lyotard's book
Heidegger and the jews.  But I think Derrida is as connected to this as
Lyotard--in his essay "Violence and Metaphysics", in his essays on Jabes,
and so on.  As far as I know Derrida would not stop at the distinction
between a Hebraic reading of the tradition versus a Hellenistic one--he
would view the opposition as only possible through a misunderstanding of
the way language works.  Does Lyotard not make this move?  Does he stay
with Levinas in their critique of Heidegger?  Ultimately Derrida's heart
is with Levinas, but the reason for the critique of Heidegger would be
different than Levinas's critique of Heidegger.  They both see the problem
but they are not in agreement as to why the problem arose in the first
place (I suppose I should avoid saying "first place" when talking about
Derrida!). 

Could the person who wrote about this in the "first place" comment on
Lyotard's essay on Levinas?

Matt

On Thu, 20 Nov 1997, Arturo Cherbowski wrote:

> Sorry for the silence with which I have responded for the last couple of
> days. . . I've been following the discussion (but has it really become a
> discussion? for after all Eric has a point when he says people raise
> questions but nothing sticks. . .people also throw around names but we
> never really talk about other related authors. . ) but I am somewhat
> confused. . .I seem to get some posts and not others. . . the last
> things I got were four consecutive posts by Eric, some in which he
> seemed to be responding to other posts. . . but which?  I do not have
> them, I do not think. . .or (very possibly) I am so dense I cannot
> follow even this as superficial and flighty as it has been. . . I also
> get the sense that some of you did not get some of my posts. . . For
> example, Jon did you get my nasty note in response to your snipe at
> Hugh?  did anybody get my diatribe about Capital?  if you did, then is
> it so boring or so wrong as to not even respond, not even to trash me or
> make fun of me?. . .damn, talk about silence and the differend. . .where
> did Levinas come up, I missed even that. . . anyways, a brief response
> until I am sure my posts are getting through and until I am sure this
> will stick for a while 'cause I do not want to waste my time again
> rambling if nobody recieves it or if nobody cares. . . yes, I think
> there is a lot in the Lyotard/Levinas relationship, even more than in
> the Derrida/Levinas one even though the later goes much more out of his
> way to claim the affinity, lineage, and hence even the
> property/propriety, almost as if he owned him. . . I do not think
> Lyotard on his part explicitly claims such affinity. . . anyways I do
> not think it matters much (at least not to me). . .what matters to me
> (and here I will continue to insist even if through a different route on
> what I was insisting before) is that the Lyotard that turns towards
> Freud and Kant (and away from Nietzsche but especially Marx), the
> Lyotard of "Le Differend" (which I for one do not consider such an
> important book, but only one more formulation of thetired theme of the
> other and language) as oppossed to the Lyotard of "Libidinal Economy" is
> as mystical and idealist (in both the technical and pejorative sense
> which given Hegel I think are very much the same or should be at least
> to all these frenchpost-structuralists) as the Levinas who spends a life
> pondering the ethical responsibility to the "Other" and does so
> admirably as long as the "Other" remains a formal, abstract and empty
> category but who then writes an essay on the incident at Sabra and
> Shatila in which the other suddenly becomes actual Palestinians and he
> can no longer deal. . .
> 


   

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