Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 16:22:50 -0700
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: openings onto the preface


Eric, this is a big interest for me too:


>One of the things I want to suggest, as we get ready to discuss "The
>Differend" is for us to consider the extent to which this book arises
>out of "The Postmodern Condition".....
>........
>
>.....the basic working hypothesis of "The Postmodern Condition" with
>its emphasis upon the changing status of knowledge and the crisis of
>legitimation seems central as well to the concerns of "The Differend".
>In TPC this situation is analyzed in terms of language games, a term
>Lyotard borrows from Wittgenstein.  It is interesting to note that in TD
>Lyotard drops this terminology. Thus the question needs to be raised -
>what provoked this change?


for me, the thought in the two books is impressively continuous, 
though branching out exuberantly in the second, hybridizing, yet it 
seems to me that for the most part, new terms are used, not just in 
this one example but in others, perhaps to do justice to evolving 
nuances.  I don't recall the term 'agonistics' coming up prominently 
in the Differend for example, yet the ideas are there, a different 
shading and more intense I'd say.  Paralogy is not used as term, yet 
that thought too seems more alive than ever.
'language games,' this seems to me an aspect of the qualitative 
change of levels of analysis in the two books, and in related 
discursive styles.  The Postmodern Condition was more at the level of 
the human metaphor, I thought.  At the level of individual and 
collective human actors and specifically human culture--compared to 
the metaphors of the Differend?   In the latter, Lyotard seemed to be 
relieving himself of "the cumbersome debt to anthopomorphism."

So as to language games and phrases, perhaps the change reflects a 
need to look more  microscopically at the processes of language.  The 
term language game can evoke imagery of a more established and 
finished product compared to the idea of a phrase, which suggests 
more of a component of something larger, something incomplete in 
itself but in need of linkage to something beyond.  The idea of a 
game is usually something conceived of as having explicated rules and 
as being fairly complex.  Breaking the idea of a game down further 
into component phrases can have the effect of evoking more of the 
gene-like imagery that Hugh spoke of, something less suggestive of a 
picture of humans in control, as authoring agents, and more of a 
picture of forces that are prior to human agency, and determining of 
individual/collective behavior.



>
>
>It could also be argued that the entire thrust of TPC, simplifying to
>the extreme, is to present a differend between two modes of
>legitimation; namely that of the performative versus that of paralogy.
>Do these concerns continue to find an echo in TD?


Yes, legitimation by paralogy would be the only just way of 
addressing differends, having as it does the goal of dissent.  Only 
by paralogical legitimation, compared to legitimation by consensus 
(litigation), can there be a bearing of witness to the differend. 
Thinking of what Steve said, when he was contrasting the difference 
between disagreement and differend, and pointing out that differends 
pertain not to empirical questions but to challenges between 
metaprescriptives, this links with the importance of the 
deconstructive activity.


>
>What is interesting is to observe both how many of these concerns still
>remain and also how the ground subtly shifts in the TD.


Yes, i'm very interested in this too.


>
>As to the question of whether or not TD is actually about something else
>besides the differend, keep in mind that the first chapter is entitled
>"The Differend" but it is then followed by six additional chapters on
>other topics which at times seem only tangentially connected with the
>concept of the differend itself.


I had a hard time with most of the book, except for the chapter 
called Genre, Norm.  On most of the chapters (excluding the preface) 
it was like i was reading it for the first time (which i was) and 
entering into many completely unfamiliar language games.  But in the 
chapter on norms, it was like reading something utterly familiar, 
with strong resonance.   And so, I would say that that chapter, for 
me at least, was very much directly about the differend--I agree with 
Steve, that differends involve conflicting genres and their norms 
(unless i misunderstood steve).  I wonder if I become more at home 
with the language in the other chapters, if the linkages will become 
more intelligible to me.


Judy
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