Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 14:05:52 -0700
From: Judy <jaw-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: openings onto the preface


steve
thanks for clarifying. more questions:

>Judy
>Not simply empirical but also related to the infrastructural world.


here's your other paragraph, from the previous post:

>>
>>  >Differend and Disagreement: Disagreement as a concept is not to do
>>>with words alone. We can say that it generally relates to the
>>>situation in which speaking parties (co)exist.


Is that what you mean by infrastructural world, the situation where 
the speakers co-exist?  Are you saying the differend, on the other 
hand, is superstructural  in some sense?  I understand it as being 
about norms, rules--but disguised by the overlay of seeming consensus 
about norms (the conflict of a differend is glossed over by the 
victorious party, the one with the last word).

I'm off on a track where the dividing line between word language and 
other language is not clear.  So, when  you say 'not words alone', 
what is that about?  Are you wanting to say that the differend, in 
contrast to a disagreement, has to do with words alone?


>>  Here is where
>>>disagreement differs from Lyotards construction of the differend.
>>>For disagreement is not concerned with issues such as the
>>>heterogeneous sentence regime, the presence and absence of rules for
>>>assessing discourse. It is not about the arguing but with what can
>>>be argued for example the existence or non-existence of a common
>>>object that exists between two persons. The disagreement concerns
>>>the presentation of the common object and is related to the
>  >abilities of the presenters to present it.


It seems to me that a differend implies, in addition to a conflict 
over rules of grammar or discourse, also a conflict over what can be 
argued, but a disagreement that is not a differend involves all 
parties presupposing certain things in common about the rules of 
discourse, so that the conflict is carried out in a way where defeat 
is not unjust, where defeat is legitimate and intelligible, while a 
differend is carried out in the absence of such consensual 
presuppositions, making the defeat of any party unjustifiable based 
on any rules.  To be defeated is to not be able to argue certain 
things, as you and others have said, because of the inadmissibility 
of the rules or the grammar needed to make the argument (the perfect 
crime).  I wouldn't want to say such a conflict is only about rules 
of discourse to the exclusion of being about conditions of existence, 
but that as conflict over conditions of existence, it's different 
from a justly litigatable conflict in that it is only decidable by 
might, coercian, having the last word.



>Lyotard limits 'the differend' within the Judeo-Christian world - which
>arguably does not actually exist. (Certainly didn't for the travellers I
>drove past this afternoon - origins possibly Indo-European).


I didn't realize that. Lyotard says that only in Judao-Christian 
discourse can there be differends?


>
>A disagreement as such has to be able to address the struggle between
>the human subject and the earth, which will always be pre or
>non-language. The Indo European reference is deliberate and key because
>of the necessity of recognising that the languages of the Indo-European
>families' morphology rest on the arbitrary distinction between noun and
>verb and which are specifically structured around verbal forms, this is
>supplied not as a semiological or grammatological process but as an
>activity of the statement of presence in the world of the human subject,
>of course 'we' can only be separated from it in the imaginary. Does the
>grammatical proposition function external to the Indo-European?


I had in mind, by grammatical proposition, those kinds of language 
games which teach normatively how to use words (and other language) 
in certain ways, ways that are linked to  the specific material 
conditions the speakers find themselves grappling with, those 
conditions being also part of language.  In some cultures, ostention 
is one kind of language game of this type.  One learns to point at 
something and say a name.  I am thinking of this as culturally 
specific.  I think of this as the nature of language learning, being 
shown how to do it, being rewarded when trying to do it, and rewarded 
more when doing it right, etc.  So in that sense, I think of any 
culture as being governed  linguistically by grammatical 
propositions, exemplars, paradigms.  i'm not sure i addressed your 
question..?

As for the struggle of human subjects and the earth, in what sense do 
you mean pre-language or non-language?


>....the two forms of law are practical and
>theoretical and are engaged in the useless attempt to conceptualize the
>unconceivable categorical imperative.

cool.

>  So - whilst I agree that
>Wittgenstein is all over the text - I think that Kant and Neitszche are
>more critical to Lyotard's project.

steve, the writings of you and others here are helping me a lot to 
see the connections with Kant, who I haven't studied.  I would like 
it if you (and others) would say some specific things about 
connections with Nietzsche.
Judy
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