Subject: Re: Query - Sovereignty
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 97 23:21:32 +0100
From: Giles Peaker <G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk>


Eric Murphy wrote (in a useful and thoughtful post):

[snip of Lyotard etc.]
>There's the passage.  What follows here is my own comment.  The comments of
>Lyotard on what a philosopher does reminds me very much of Samuel Beckett's
>famous artistic credo:  "The expression that there is nothing to express,
>nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to
>express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."  If
>Beckett's work gives us an poetics of the 
>Sublime (which I believe is a good way to characterize it; a topic, perhaps,
>for another time.) then Lyotard is formulating here a philosophy of the
>Sublime, that attempt to find the impossible idiom that renders the silence
>visible and empowers the empty space to speak.

The Beckett phrase may well be a topic for another time, but it would be 
one that I would very much like to see raise its head, particularly as I 
have been thinking about it and its surrounding text for some time and, 
to be blunt, would disagree with the charactisation of it as sublime 
(although varied definitions etc.....). But, just as a quick and 
argumentative note, the one thing that does not, cannot, happen via 
Beckett is 'the empty space' speaking. Indeed, it is the_impossibility_ 
of (and perhaps the desire for) that speaking which is crucial. Cf the 
'Three Dialogues', in which the phrase here quoted occurs, and in which 
Beckett goes on to 'correct' the terms he uses in this (early) phrase. 
(The first and last 'expression/express' are eradicated further on in the 
text, otherwise the result of the phrase, which perhaps is very close to 
Lyotard's sublime, is what Beckett calls 'returning to the bosom of St 
Luke', a 'new occasion', and it is the relation of artist and occasion, 
aka expression, that is the problem, particularly the expression of the 
impossibility of expression. "We begin to weary of it, do we not", 
'nothing but an enlarging of the field of the feasible' etc.).

[snip]
>Thus, art and philosophy must both be necessary first in order that justice
>may be possible.  The question is, however, how do we practice a poetics of
>justice without falling into the fascist trap, described long ago by
>Benjamin, of merely making the political aesthetic?  It is on the contours of
>this differend, this paradox, that both art and philosophy must engage us,
> smuggling their precious cargo across the borderlands, thus redeeming what
>Benjamin himself could not do.   
 
i) On what basis can the (temporal) primacy of art and philosophy over 
justice be asserted (particularly given Levinas)?
ii) 'how do we...' Good question. You seem to have an answer? 
ii contd.) Whilst 'fascism aestheticises politics' is one of Benjamin's 
most popular phrases, it is not one of his best, indeed it is almost 
nonsensical in the way it is constructed in the 'Work of Art essay...'. 
However, this is still another topic for another time, although I think 
it might bear a certain importance for considering aspects of Lyotard, as 
you indicate.

Also, in regard to Bataille and Heidegger
> (also finding a
>hidden connection with two philosophers usually considered as inhabiting
>different ends of the political spectrum)

Really? I know I have partially stood up (crouched?) for Bataille's 
left/revolutionary allegiances in the past on this list, but I would be 
tempted to take his politics as more in a Sorel/Celine mode, capable of 
shifting base at any moment. It was Bataille who came up with the 
wonderful idea of Sur-Fascism (and meant it) after all. Cf acephale and 
the importance of 'distinction'. Personally, and for other reasons, I 
haven't any trouble with the 'connection' of the two.

Mostly side issues, I know, but then I have always been one for detours 
and delays. I look forward to the reading sessions.

Yours

Giles