File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2001/lyotard.0102, message 53


Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:14:00 -0500
From: hugh bone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Intellectuals and the unpresentable


Thanks Diane,

for presenting more thoughts on the "is it happening.  My comments start
with** below.

> >"Man is unhappy and he dies." which is about as short and accurate as a
> Grand
> >Narrative can be.
>
> But Hugh, what's missing in this extreme minimalism is precisely
everything
> lyotard is trying to point to.

**The neat thing  for me is nothing is missing.  More is less.  Like:  Mona
Lisa is missing a mustache, or when you're in a Gothic Cathedral the little
colored panes of glass divert your gaze from the altar.

> >Is it happening? = Is what happening?   Will it ever happen?  Will it
never
> >happen?  Will I/we sense its happening?  Will it happen to all of us,
some
> >of us, none of us?  Will we understand it?  Will it have meaning?  Will
it
> >be true?  Will we believe it?  Will it help us or hurt us?  But most of
> all,
> >what was it for Lyotard who seems to have invented it?
>
> The Is it happening? is a question that preceeds and exceeds all the
others
> you ask up there. Lyotard doesn't invent it--he simply articulates it as
the
> sublime question. And the difference b/w What is happening? and Is it
> happening? is *enormous*. Whereas the former still tries to bring
> intelligence to the rescue, to assimilate the inassimilable by forcing an
> event into subject/object mentality, the latter involves what lyotard
calls
> the "disarming of thought," in which the "I" experiences more than it can
> ac/count (for).

**O.K.  Thought can make one ill.  The San Francisco policemen who responded
when the woman was killed by the
dog, were given psychiatric help.  A witness to the bus that destroyed
waiting Israelis, couldn't be alone afterwards. Since Freud, treating
unpleasant memories conscious and unconscious has been an industry.

Let's say the "happening", sublime as it may be, is different for each
individual.  Each has different sensory faculties, each has a different
life-history and a different memory-bank. I see a swatch of purple as
reddish - you see it as bluish or vice-versa;
which wine is more "dry", which choclate is more bitter?  Same with touch
and odors, sense of balance, effect of bright lights.

Lyotard makes us very conscious of the addressor, addresse relationship, and
phrases like "bringing intelligence to the rescue", and "disarming thought"
indicate that the addressor and addressee are the same.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to find a quote of Wittgenstein's to the effect
that, about things we can't put in words we must be silent. I think he only
meant silence vis-a-vis others.

Not-speaking and not having the words to
speak is essential to the concept of the "differend".  It takes to two to
create it - don't think it includes self-deception.

The words I've read most about the "sublime" are "beauty" and
"terror" and (I think from Rilke) beauty and terror combined.

If I ever experienced this, I cannot recall it, but I can recall a few
moments when there was a feeling of beauty without words to e xpress it, at
that moment, or afterwards. So I must speak of
sublimity without terror.  Until it happens.

I am, infrequently,  subject to feelings which seem to come from objects or
persons, and are for me, "sublime" events.

The range of such feelings is mainly art, sometimes personal relationships.
Such a feeling has come from a theatrical performance, a painting, a
cathedral, a few phrases of music, a few lines of poetry.

Other individuals must have feelings in some way similar, or certain
objects, sounds, and words would not have become world-famous.  World fame
of course has nothing to do with the sublimity.  But it is an indication
that many people have had
similar personal experiences -  of an event which interacted with their
respective memories and created sublime effects.

This idea of the sublime seems compatible with what you have written below.
But if "is it happening" only has to do with sublime and beautiful
experiences, and not with the rest of human life, it is very restricted
indeed.

Perhaps violent revolution inspiring and enacting terror and death also
would also qualify under Lyotard's scheme, .....
sublime, perhaps beautiful for the perpetrators... poly-ticks.

> Though there is no way really to explicate the sense of the Is it
happening adequately (and that's part of the point, the pain and pleasure
involved in  the experience of what is  inarticulable), L does give it his
best shot in
> several places. In The Inhuman, which you mention, I think he works the
> notion through quite rigorously. The sublime moment, the It happens,
refers
> to the disarming of thought in the experience of that which is beyond or
> overflows representation: the unpresentable. The It happens is an
> expropriating experience, or the experience of one's own depropriated
state.

**Unpresentable as not representable with words or body language makes sense
for me.  Does expropriating experience
mean suppressing or ignoring memories of feelings we are ashamed of, or
memories that cause other pain?

> It's something like the experience of the "face" in Levinas.

**At one time I tried to read Levinas, but remember only the name..

Thanks again,
Hugh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>
> best, ddd
>   ______________________
>
>        D. Diane Davis
>        Rhetoric Department
>        University of Iowa
>        Iowa City, IA 52242
>        319.335.0184
>
>        d-davis-AT-uiowa.edu
>        http://www.uiowa.edu/~ddrhet/
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of hugh bone
> > Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 11:30 PM
> > To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > Subject: Re: Becoming Intellectuals Without Organs
> >
> >
> > Eric,
> >
> > I have problems with most of Lyotard's French contemporaties.
> > They developed exotic and inflated abstractions of recondite
> > terms from the
> > Greek, or French, or God only knows where..
> >
> > I read several Foucault books because his description of
> > the evolution of knowledge and power was something new to me, and it
made
> > sense.  I tried a few times to read Derrida, because he was so famous,
but
> > he didn't make sense.
> >
> > I read a little of Sartre, most of Camus, but not for the
> > politics, although
> > "The Plague",  has political interest, and in "Caligula",  he writes:
"Man
> > is unhappy and he dies." which is about as short and accurate as a Grand
> > Narrative can be.
> >
> > Is it happening? = Is what happening?   Will it ever happen?
> > Will it never
> > happen?  Will I/we sense its happening?  Will it happen to all of us,
some
> > of us, none of us?  Will we understand it?  Will it have meaning?  Will
it
> > be true?  Will we believe it?  Will it help us or hurt us?  But
> > most of all,
> > what was it for Lyotard who seems to have invented it?
> >
> > Once, a couple of years ago, two or three of us posted our
> > understanding of
> > the sublime.  Maybe someone can explain the
> > "is it happening".  I didn't find an answer in "Le Differend", where it
is
> > mentioned, don't think it was mentioned in PM or
> > The Inhuman. Those books and Lyotard  quotes posted to the List, are my
> > knowledge of Lyotard.
> >
> > About Nixon:  I think the article is accurate about the liberal
> > legislation
> > he signed.  Expect its also correct about him being an outsider to the
> > Republican Establishment.
> >
> > Hugh
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > > hugh:
> > >
> > > I wish you would elaborate on this post. I wasn't quite sure what you
> > > were driving at. I take it you have problems with the "is it
happening"
> > > but I not sure why.
> > >
> > > By the way, I don't know that I buy the Nixon story either, but it
> > > certainly makes a great counternarrative, doesn't it.  Makes you stop
> > > and think - "What's happening?"  even when your thoughts fail to
> > > comprehend the event in all its complexity.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Diane,
> > > >
> > > > Stimulating!
> > > >
> > > > One could send  organs to bank.
> > > >
> > > > The "is it happening" .  Lyotard should have taken his own advice
and
> > > > "elucidated his presuppositions" about this little gem.
> > > >
> > > > No organs, no senses, no witness, no words, no communication,
> > > > no deleuzion.
> > > >
> > > > Imagine a universe of one (atomic) particle.  Your garden
> > isn't complete
> > > > until there's nothing left to take out. Remove particle.
> > > > Remove "being".  Remove "happening".
> > > >
> > > > What was in Lyotard's "mind"?  Absence of Presence? Presence
> > of Absence?
> > > > Being or Nothingness?
> > > >
> > > > regards,
> > > > Hugh
> > > >
> > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>




   

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