File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0204, message 65


From: "Thomas Taylor" <taylorth-AT-bellsouth.net>
Subject: Re: Give me some milk or else go home
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 11:39:40 -0400


Postmodern Fables. A must read, I think. Try also
"Sensus Communis" (SP?, pardon) in Misere de la Philosophie (untranslated as
of yet).
Rod T.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Diane Davis" <ddd-AT-mail.utexas.edu>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 11:26 AM
Subject: RE: Give me some milk or else go home


> I feel out of the loop, everyone: where is Lyotard's  "Music Mutic"?
> Sounds like something I need to read!
>
> Thanks in advance,
> ~ddd
>
> ___________________________________________
>   D. Diane Davis
>   Division of Rhetoric (UT Mail Code B5500)
>   Department of English
>   University of Texas at Austin
>   Austin, TX 78712-1122
>
>   Office: 512.471.8765  FAX: 512.471.4353
>   ddd-AT-mail.utexas.edu
>   http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~davis
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu [mailto:owner-
> > lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Mary Murphy and Eric
> Salstrand
> > Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 8:00 PM
> > To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > Subject: Give me some milk or else go home
> >
> > Diane, Glen, Hugh, Rod, All:
> >
> > In his essay on Joyce's Ulysses, entitled "The Return upon the Return"
> > Lyotard makes the following remarks about community:
> >
> > "It is not enough to consider Bloom as a historian or a sociologist,
> as the
> > literary counterpart of urbanization in progress. He is also and
> > especially, I believe (with Benjamin), the return of solitude, of the
> > desert, of inoperativity at the heart of the community.  The modern
> city is
> > the operativity (oeuvre) in the bosom of which the community and the
> > individual are deprived of their artwork (oeurve) by the hegemony of
> market
> > value. Far from being a free city, Joyce's Dublin is, to use Jean-Luc
> > Nancy's words, an inoperative community."
> >
> > And as Rod alluded to with regard to a herd of cows mooing, in "Music,
> > Mutic" Lyotard writes:
> >
> > "The community forgets the anonymous horde moaning with the terror of
> no
> > longer being.  The community, however, does not efface the horde."
> >
> > Certainly, as Hugh pointed out, any conception of community is
> problematic
> > and as Diane said, community cannot be limited to the city alone, but
> > rather is prior to urbanization and always already complaisant with
> > technology.
> >
> > However, as Rob points out, if there is a tension between the
> community and
> > infancy, then what Diane calls contact and what Lyotard calls the
> touch
> > marks the site of our originary inscription. If this signifies our
> entrance
> > into community, it is also marks our entrance into bilocation.
> Henceforth,
> > we will carry the solitude, desert, inoperativity with us into the
> city as
> > Janus-faced citizens, mute barbarians who must wear masks, strangers
> taught
> > to speak an alien tongue, Cain masquerading as Abel.
> >
> > What Lyotard names the Differend is nothing more than a kind of
> "return of
> > the repressed" of the enfans, the horde, the silent witness who always
> > betrays us. Any conception of community which does not recognize the
> > conflictual nature that underlies it (like Romulus and Remus)
> implicitly
> > argues for terror, the violent smoothing over of differences, the
> enforced
> > silence of the phrase.
> >
> > In "Just Gaming" Lyotard refers to, even though he doesn't name,
> > autonomists such as Negri who argue in a similar fashion with regard
> to
> > community. They claim that workers have an autonomous power that
> transcends
> > capitalism and which is the source of resistance. They regard the
> enfans,
> > in other words, as both real and heroic.
> >
> > Lyotard differs from autonomists like Negri insofar as he emphasizes
> > instead the weakness, the manceps instead. Perhaps, as Rob has said,
> this
> > is the part of us, like Peter Pan, that refuses to grown up. Perhaps
> also
> > it is that part which is incapable of growing up, which is why it is
> called
> > the intractable, the rock we carry like a millstone around our necks,
> the
> > weight of time itself, the burden of re-membering.
> >
> > Lyotard offers us the heteronomous community, to which we can only
> bear
> > false witness. In this weakness lies our strength, only let's not be
> pious
> > about it. Rather, the common sense of the pagan requires that she
> makes a
> > ruse.
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
>


   

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