File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2002/lyotard.0205, message 44


From: Thomas Taylor <taylorth-AT-bellsouth.net>
Subject: Wildcard: Skin and Constitution
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 13:00:47 -0400


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Diane-Eric-Steve/ (and of course, "all,"  as we say, being good includers):

Due to being out of the loop and writing seminar papers I have unfortunately not been able to follow the conversation that is going on about community and Nancy (who I know precious little of). However, I had written something earlier regarding the skin that I would like to follow up on. What you're going to get here is a bit of brainstorming rather than a composition. Which is why I entitled this email "wildcard". I hope it will be a wildcard for you as for me. And as well, get a conversation started. In a minimal way, it might relate to community, but I am not sure if that is the case. As usual, I cannot spell check on my email so disregard my technical ignorance please.

So, skin. And then, affect. Skin to me has all to do with constitution, in all senses of the word. It marks our limit, the limit of what is me and what is not me. At the same time, being such a marker (and we might call it liminal) skin is also constitutional. That is, it is through the skin (read broadly as all sense organs) or rather through the signal that originate on the surface of the skin that something like a world is constituted. And constituted before thought. As such skin is not only a barrier, but also a frontier, porous, as JFL would say in his later writings, "passable".

One of the things that JFL is struggling with in his late work is: can we remember constitution, our own constitution? No, he says. And also, that this constitution is repetitive, almost like the old theological concept of perpetual creation. It happens before what is knowable only because it institutes the conditions of the knowable. To speak in the language of The Differend, it happens somewhere between the pharse and the "is it happening?" of the phrase. In "The Affect Phrase" he calls it a suspension of linkages. In Toward the Postmodern, it goes by such names as "disorder" (via Valery), "prescription" (via Kafka), etc. It is damn near impossible to write about, since it is something we do not think. It happens before thinking.

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Diane-Eric-Steve/ (and of course, "all,"  as we say, being good includers):
 
Due to being out of the loop and writing seminar papers I have unfortunately not been able to follow the conversation that is going on about community and Nancy (who I know precious little of). However, I had written something earlier regarding the skin that I would like to follow up on. What you're going to get here is a bit of brainstorming rather than a composition. Which is why I entitled this email "wildcard". I hope it will be a wildcard for you as for me. And as well, get a conversation started. In a minimal way, it might relate to community, but I am not sure if that is the case. As usual, I cannot spell check on my email so disregard my technical ignorance please.
 
So, skin. And then, affect. Skin to me has all to do with constitution, in all senses of the word. It marks our limit, the limit of what is me and what is not me. At the same time, being such a marker (and we might call it liminal) skin is also constitutional. That is, it is through the skin (read broadly as all sense organs) or rather through the signal that originate on the surface of the skin that something like a world is constituted. And constituted before thought. As such skin is not only a barrier, but also a frontier, porous, as JFL would say in his later writings, "passable".
 
One of the things that JFL is struggling with in his late work is: can we remember constitution, our own constitution? No, he says. And also, that this constitution is repetitive, almost like the old theological concept of perpetual creation. It happens before what is knowable only because it institutes the conditions of the knowable. To speak in the language of The Differend, it happens somewhere between the pharse and the "is it happening?" of the phrase. In "The Affect Phrase" he calls it a suspension of linkages. In Toward the Postmodern, it goes by such names as "disorder" (via Valery), "prescription" (via Kafka), etc. It is damn near impossible to write about, since it is something we do not think. It happens before thinking.
 
 
 
 
 

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