From: colin.wright3-AT-virgin.net
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 21:35:47 -0700
Subject: Re: Das Capital


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> Brent,
> 
> <the contentious question(s) is really:  "what value are lyotard's
> writings, removed from their strategic function within the political?"
> and are those displaced writings still, in a significant sense,
> "lyotard"?  (signed, lyotard?)>
> 
> Well, I use to theorize about psychotherapy.  And, within the
> psychotherapy arena, I feel, that paralogy's agonistics need not be
> warlike, or out to defeat the client's position -- let us hope.  And
> Lyotard says somewhere, I don'thave time to look forward, but I could
> find the quote and you may know it, that the adversary in agonistics
> might not be the other person, but the language one is working with.  I
> believe that people get themselves in language game scripts, and
> therapists need to assist in finding a way out of self-defeating
> scripts.
> 
> Sure, you can call this "political" but I resist this because there is
> another move in psychotherapy that is more frankly political.  There is
> a move to turn psychotherapy theory into an arena in which the client is
> taught to protest his or her oppression in various conversational
> arenas.  I prefer other ways to do therapy, and yet I like to build my
> therapy on Lyotard's notion of paralogy, as I'm interpreting it.
> 
> ..Lois Shawver

Lois,
     Discovering your background in psychotherapy has been a revelation
to me, the flicking on of a lightbulb which illuminates great dark
corners of our previous dialogues. It is absolutely clear to me now why
you have such a strong concern for consensus, or at least the importance
of an unproblematic communication. I can also understand why you might
be attracted to the notions of the silenced victim and the chance of
'justice' hinted at in 'The Differend'. 
      I'm afraid my only way into psychotherapy would be via
psychoanalysis, which I'm sure is pretty much discredited these days, at
least in its therapeutic (if not critical) aspect. However, would it be
fair to say that psychotherapy still has as its goal a notion of 'cure'?
Or is 'cure' too simplistic a word. Perhaps 'resolution' is less
vehement. 
       I agree with Brent that there might be some fascinating questions
emerging from a confrontation with your field of expertise and Lyotard's
corpus. What thoughts have you had on their possible affinites?
cheers,
Col