File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0201, message 31


Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 21:16:57 -0600
From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: tons of fun in 2001


steve.devos wrote:
> 
> Eric
> 
> did you see the Ruiz movie 'Time Regained' ?

Yes, I saw it at the theatre before I finished 'Time Regained'. A friend
loaned me a DVD so I can watch it again, but I don't have a DVD player,
so I am waiting to visit a friend who does have one after the holidays.
That shows you how much of a cyborg I really am. I certainly recommend
this movie, even if you haven't read Proust.

> I agree that we tend to look at the late Lyotard rather than the earlier material perhaps this is something that could be a new year resolution...

Yes, and how something of the earlier Lyotard finds a passage to the
later Lyotard, in spite of the obvious differences. 


> (and you and diane are probably as close to being genuises as it's
> likely i'll ever communicate with...)
> 
You flatter me waaay too much, but thanks.  These days I feel more like
one of Beckett's tramps who has been lucky enough to have found some
gainful employment for the time being. 

I feel fortunate there is a site like this where I can have
conversations I would never have in the everyday world and am glad to
find people like yourself who provoke me into thinking more deeply about
the issues. There's genius in that, too!

The concept of Genius is very an interesting one. Kant points out in the
"Critique of Judgment" that the word comes from Latin and means the
guardian/guiding spirit that each person receives as a gift at birth.
Kant ascribes fine art to the workings of genius because "fine art
cannot itself devise the rule by which it is to bring about its product.
Since, however, a product cannot be called art unless it is preceded by
a rule, it must be nature in the subject (and through the attunement of
his powers) that gives the rule to art; in other words, fine art is
possible only as the product of genius."

Kant thus explains in a short paragraph why it is that art can't be
taught!

Lyotard certainly shies away from using the word "genius". In an age of
the "death of the author" such a concept seems positively atavistic. 
However, without using the concept of genius, I think it is fair to say
that this thought of Kant's penetrates very deeply into what Lyotard
conceives as his own philosophical project.  As he states at the
beginning of The Differend; "The mode of the book is philosophical, and
not theoretical (or anything else) to the extent that its stakes are in
discovering its rules rather than supposing their knowledge as a
principle. In this very way, it denies itself the possibility of
setting, on the basis of its own rules, the differends it examines."

So, in some way it seems Lyotard is calling upon us to become geniuses
even without naming us so. How can this be possible?

Recently, I reread the book "Nadja" by Andre Breton. At the beginning of
this book Breton speaks of himself as a ghostlike presence who haunts
his own life. The guardian, if you will, who must discover the rule that
gives birth to life as art. An unnameable one who haunts life, who won't
disappear, and to whom we must testify in order to practice our art or
philosophy.

In order to bear witness to the differend, we must also bear witness to
something ghostlike, a guiding spirit who cannot be named, but who
continues to be felt and make its presence known, and for whose sake we
must continue to bear witness as we make our brief passageway through
the fractures of time. 

Our domicile remains as a haunted landscape where the uncanny appears in
the guise of a wild thought.

eric


   

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