Subject: Re: PMC: What is Postmodernism: A Demand Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 21:16:48 -0600 -----Original Message----- From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu <lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu> Date: Wednesday, October 28, 1998 8:35 PM Subject: Re: PMC: What is Postmodernism: A Demand >EricMurph-AT-aol.com wrote: >> >> Donald Turner wrote: >> >> What does Lyotard's "war on totality" (p.82) and rejection of the whole >> >> mean for ethics? Are traditional grounding ethical systems also rejected? >> >Bayard G. Bell responded: >> >In this regard, I think you will have to deal with Lyotard's >> >relationship to the ethics of Emmanual Levinas >> >> Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with you here, Bayard. I also have thought for >> some time now that Lyotard philosophy parallels in many respects the pattern >> used in the book "Totality and Infinity." The chief difference being that >> Lyotard avoids the piety, religiousity and humanism of Levinas, using the same >> structure in a more profane context. >> >> My nutshell version of Levinas would be this. (It is a lie. Please do not >> accept it. You really have no real choice except to read T&I yourself). >> >> Totality is essentially what the Self (chez soi) does when left to its own >> devices. It wants to absorb everything that is other into the circuit of >> itself and reduce it to the same. (Narcissus as the arch-philosopher: Ulysses >> always seeking home.) >> >> It is the basis of both Hegel and Heidegger with their totalizing schemes of >> the Absolute and Being. It is also the thrust of Lyotard's criticism of >> Habermas and metanarratives. >> >> The Infinite is met in the Other; the alterity of the face that can no longer >> be subsumed into ourself. Rather, like Abraham, it is an encounter that leads >> us into a new country. The face reveals the Infinite because it contains >> depths that cannot be reduced to mere presentation. The self is confronted >> with a Transcendence and the face demands from us a response. This is the >> basis of ethics. It is grounded in our response to a face - be it widow, >> orphan or stranger. It meets us before we know what to do. >> >> This ethical relationship is prior to the totalizing schemes of ontology. It >> is not grounded in logical systems. It is instead the relevation of the >> Infinite. This is what Lyotard himself terms the sublime. (also, in other >> respects, the differend) >> >> This leads us back to the question of what art should "look like." Obviously, >> as Lyotard states, he is committed to a art based not on beauty, but rather on >> the sublime. What does this statement really mean, however? >> >> Rather than ask what such an art would look like (which throws us immediately >> into the categories of taste and reflective judgement), perhaps it would be >> more fruitful to ask what happens to us when we experience such art. >> >> In his introduction to The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard makes the claim that >> he is a philosopher, not an expert. He goes on to say: "the latter knows what >> he knows and what he does not know: the former does not. One concludes, the >> other questions - two very different language games." >> >> What I personally have come to value in Lyotard is not what he says about the >> postmodern, the differend, the sublime or judgement, important as these things >> may be. Instead, he time and again invites us into a space where we must place >> to one side our thoughts, representations, generalizations and assumptions so >> that we can experience the event, what is happening, in a way which brackets >> our own pre-judgements and allows a response to occur which is different from >> the one previously thought out by us in advance of the event. >> >> This seems to me to be Lyotard's religion, to the very limited extent we can >> use that particular word is speaking of him, a postmodern pagan. It is >> something, however, I hope we can discuss further. I believe it lies at the >> heart of his postmodern conceptions. >-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- > >REPLY: > >I don't think of Lyotard as religious; I agree he takes us to a >different space >and would like to hear more about it. Artists sometimes do this, but >rarely, and >it it happened more often it wouldn't be that different. > >Today I read a quote of from Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, which >he wrote 9 months before his suicide. "I have a terrible need for -- I >will use the word religion -- so I go outside at night to paint the >stars." > >Regards, >Hugh > >-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- > > This is an interesting quote, Hugh. We often think (or at least myself and many others in my circles) of the religous as dogma and a system of belief, but in its "natural state" (for lack of a better term) religion is also a way of coming to terms with the "unpresentable". Religion can be a coming to terms with those emotions for which we have no images for. Van Gogh painted the night sky of his mind and we recognize its terror and beauty; Lyotard reminds us that we have a mind that is beautiful if we recognize the terror.
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