Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 18:45:39 +0000
From: William McClure <whogoest-AT-australis.net.au>
Subject: Re: Query - Sovereignty


Thankyou for going to the trouble of doing this. At the moment I only
have time to give some of my thoughts on the #201.   

#201 

            What politics is about and what distinguishes various kinds
of
politics is the genre of discourse, or the stakes, whereby differends
are
formulated as litigations and find their "regulation".  Whatever genre
this
is, from the sole fact that it excludes other genres, whether through
indiction (slaves and women), through autonymic neutralization, through
narrative redemption, etc., it leaves a "residue" of differends that are
not
regulated and cannot be regulated within an idiom, a residue from whence
the
civil war of "language" can always return, and indeed does return.

The first line relates back to what Lyotard says in #199-200.  But it
also relates to #190. On the one hand politics is not to be identified
with a genre of discourse #190, and yet as #199 says "politics always
gives rise to a misunderstanding because it takes place as a genre" The
question for me is what is the relation between these two types of
politics?  The answer I think rests in the Kantian distinction between a
reflective and determinant judgement. Where politics is identified with
a genre the judgement the linking of phrases takes place according to
rules and the end prescribed by that genre.  Where "politics" takes
place as the "question of linkage" then the judgement concerning how to
link onto a phrase (which seems to come down to a judgement as to which
genre one is going to adopt for this pupose) is made without a rule.  It
the critical judgement which is in search of a rule.  I think #199 makes
it clear that the genre which politics (in the determinant sense) is
identified with "varies according to the nature of the authorization
inscribed in the normative prefix".  In short, what this refers to is
the addressor instance (the sovereign) of the normative phrase.  This
translates as: the genre which politics is identified with varies
according to the "sovereign".  Once politics is identified with a genre,
the rules and the end identified with that genre regulate the conflict
which takes place concerning the linkage of phrases.  The conflict
between the various genres concerning linkage is to some extent turned
into a litigation since it is regualted according to the rules of the
genre which politics is identified with.  But, this regualtion cannot
reduce the differend between phrase regimens nor genres so there is
awalys a residue etc.  (I am starting to run out of steam).  One last
point, which I think is important and that is Lyotard's Idea of politics
does not involve a conflict of wills passions etc, but a conflict of
phrase regimens and genres of discourse (see#190 -"politics consists in
the fact that language is not a language, but phrases, or that Being is
not Being, but There is's." ) And again, see #196. Human beings are
intances of phrase regimens, and not metaphysical entities existing in
their own right which pass messages backwards and forwards (see#18). 
(What does that say about "us"?)

Regards, William

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