File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9907, message 110


Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 22:30:49 -0500
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Das Capital


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> Mary,
> 
As tantalizing as the prospect is of experimenting with a Deleuzian
project of becoming woman in this group, I must acknowledge that my wife
Mary and I share the same address.  Eric is the one who posts here. I
have had conversations with you, Lois, as well as with others here in
the past. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.

I personally agree with you, Lois that the differend between
Wittgenstein and Lyotard is a fruitful one and I would am happy to
continue to explore it.  I also feel that the question of politics we
are discussing here is not a programatic one, but rather a kind of
ur-politics.  The question is what the conditions must be that give rise
to politics and the demands for justice.

Earlier, Lois, you quoted Wittgenstein quoting Augustine and the
latter's definitely pre-structuralist views on language.  Here is
another quote from PI, section 32:

"Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language
of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he
will often have to guess the meanings of these definitions; and will
guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human
language as if the child came into a strange countrty and did not
understand the language of the coutry: that is, as if it already had a
language, only not this one."

Without falling into the trap of making a private language argument, I
think that quote explains well the basic conditions which make for
politics. For each language game is, in effect, a foreign country and
parology may be defined, at least in part, as the attempt of someone
with a language to understand the language of another.  It is a slow and
tenuous process where misunderstanding is a commonplace. The foreign
lands may be exotic, but they will never be our home.

Politics then becomes a matter of translation, while we recognise that
there is something which always resists translation, that can never 
enter the mother tongue.  Reality always has something of the uncanny
about it.

As I write these words, I notice a beetle has landed on its back and is
making futile attempts to right itself.  It reminds me of Gregor Samsa. 
I sense its pain and suffering, yet I really don't know what it is
feeling.  There is something here that will always remain alien to me. 
With a piece of paper, I gently lift it upright so it can crawl away to
find some other death.

Those of us who live in the borderlands between foreign countries find
that agonistics, war, violence and conflict is commonplace.  However, it
is not a necessity.  A good part of the paralogical consists of making
peace while preserving differences, creating a community which is not a
tribal herd - what Wittgenstein calls discovering the family
resemblances among the elements which have nothing completely in common.
Language, not as a city, but as a grand archipelago.

PS - I'm not familiar with the book on Wittgenstein and Justice you
mention, but I will look for it.


   

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