File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9903, message 29


Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 11:48:38 -0800
From: "Gerald M. Swatez" <swatez-AT-ni.net>
Subject: Re: A Reading of the Dossier


At 9:55 PM -0800 3/19/99, hugh bone wrote:

>Enough of cataloging, referencing, talking about other people.

>

>What do *you* think is important in Le Differend, and what questions

>arise in you mind that we (not the experts) are invited to comment
on?


Not quite enough, I think, Hugh.


Earlier, I said


    I have an intuition that Lyotard's

    explication in "The Differend" of some of the ins and outs of the

    pragmatics of communication (contrasted with syntax and semantics)
is an

    extremely powerful step toward understanding various of the
conflicts and

    miscommunications that arise among us on this multi-culturally
diverse

    planet.


and


    Lyotard has something to say about objectivity, I think. I hope
that we can

    discuss these matters with each other here in the terms he uses:
genres of

    discourse, phrase regimens, genre-specific rules for refutation
and

    validation.

    

    I hope that those of us who choose to participate here can agree to
use

    this forum as a means for gaining skill in using a "language of
phrase

    analysis" as Lyotard proposes.


Perhaps we can't all agree to that.  However, my own purposes at the
moment here are that limited. Not so much to pose nor to comment on
large questions, but merely to digest some of L's way of talking
(writing), to appropriate some of the distinctions he exposes.


I am slow. I like to creep around in a text, becoming familiar with its
twists and and turns, its straightaways and curves, its vistas and
blind alleys. (I do have manic moods while reading, indulging in
flights of fancy, elaborations and avoidances. But I too easily get
lost in those moods, forget where I started from, can hardly imagine
where I might be going.)


I *wonder* what is important in Le Differend. I've only read the
Preface and have barely begun to chew on the first 32 pages.



<bold>I</bold> said:


    I hear in Lyotard's words echoes of references to professional
controversies in various fields.


    (COMMENT: I read this assertion with a feeling of awe. If true, its


    implications are vast. One example: a. Translations from one
language 

    to another (e.g., French/English) can only be done in cases in
which 

    the two languages share phrase regimens. b. Implied: <bold>Phrase
regimens 

</bold>    are not relative to cultures; they <bold>are, in principle,
universal</bold>.)


    (COMMENT: I feel a small irony in the <bold>emphasis on
goals</bold> as the basis

    of linking rules conjoined with the Pretext....)


    (COMMENT: I am touched by the "re-entrant" character of Lyotard's 

    discourse; what he is saying must in some way be applied to
what/how 

    he is saying. --After a fashion, I see his explications here as
means

    of resolving Russell's proposal of "category mistakes" to account
for 

    the Liar's Paradox.)



The idea of "phrase regimens" excites me. "Genre of discourse" seem
similar to "unverse of discourse," which I have thought with for many
years.


Jerry








   

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