File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9910, message 9


Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:15:14 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: methodology and the differend


Judy,

The book I referred to in a message I just posted, has a good
description of the postmodern concept of the "Other", and a discussion
of a novel,
"The Painted Bird", by Jerzy Kosinski, covers your points about imputed
motives in a very dramatic way.  The "other" has been for me a very
nebulous term, but your examples make it more concrete.

Hugh

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^6
 
> >Motives, intentions, beliefs?  Don't we all have them? And what could
> >be more real....fear, pain, hunger, sex?
> 
> Yes. Talking about them this way is unproblematic. But when they are used
> to prove a ontological point, things can get muddled and diverted. For
> example, "You are saying that because you feel threatened," or "What you
> really mean is, you are prejudiced against people like that," or "You are
> trying to avoid the issue."  It seems fairly common usage when arguing over
> what is true, to find phrases in which motives are imputed to the other in
> characterizing the discourse they voice, as a kind of ammunition for
> invalidating what is being said, for silencing or putting the other on the
> defensive. I think such imputing of motives is related to what Lyotard
> critiques as anthropomorphization, as if the discourses stem from the
> individual personal psychology of the addressor rather than representing
> genres with lives of their own, independent of (and even contrary to) the
> motives of the (often hapless) people involved.
> 
> Judy


   

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