Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 12:52:06 -0700 From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Agency Judy wrote: -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- Judy, These are interesting ideas! I'll study them and hope others do too. Hugh ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > Colin said > >Because I am interested in Lyotard primarilly in terms of politics, > >agency seems conspicuous by its absence in his corpus. I need to re-read > >'The Differend' perhaps, but even as he underscores an ethico-political > >responsibility to create new idioms for expression, where does the > >momentum for this paradigm shift originate? > >I know it's a big question, but where would you locate agency in > >Lyotard's work? > > Yes, a really big question. An important one to me too. Easy to get lazy > and not think about it. glad you asked. It's hard for me to address the > question because the langauges I'm used to using (being used by) don't go > where I want to go in response to the question. > > When Lyotard emphasizes the way that humans inhabit discourses that have > lives of their own, and that make demands and that govern, this doesn't > happen in a vacuum but is a polemic against liberalism, isn't it? It's not > that there is no agency located in individuals but that the individual is > not the only location of agency, and that itself is a big thing to try to > grasp for any who are captivated by the liberal traditions in Western > thought. the analytical focus on human motivation and intention gets > bogged down in differends. The emphasis on the forces of discourses that > individuals are carried along by and governed by is refreshing to me > because of how it provides a way of talking about certain issues that is > not bogged down speculating about what someone did or did not intend. I > dont get the idea that Lyotard is denying that individuals will anything or > have experiences that motivate them in various ways, but that he's onto > something different that opens things up, potentially anyway. There is > power that causes happenings that can't be reduced to individual agency. > > When lyotard says that silence is a phrase, this implies for me that > individual agency can never be extinguished. I'm not yet sure how to say > what I mean by this though. > > It's individuals who play games. They exercise will when they have > discretion over what move to make. But the rules of the game also have > will, that the game be played a certain way and not another. The game plays > the player just as the player plays the game. But I think in Lyotard is > that idea that individual players who find that they can't win by the > rules, may find some way to sidestep those rules. From the point of view of > the game and of those for who the game is legitimate (e.g. the winners), > this might be called cheating, or not playing fair, it may involve ruse. > For me, this implies agency, but not pure individual agency: it's another > way of linking onto the game. The game will have its influence regardless. > > But I don't know. It's hard to talk about because the answer is not > either/or, nor systematic. What would you want to say about the location of > agency, and about accountability, in Lyotard's writings? > Judy
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