File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0304, message 53


From: "Thomas Taylor" <taylorth-AT-bellsouth.net>
Subject: Re: silence, enfans, il y a, sublime
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 14:06:33 -0400


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The child and enfans can be separated. See my previous email for a reductive criticism. The key, within psychoanalytic writing is the difference between primary and secondary narcissism. The moment a child maintains some sort of relation, she is already in the secondary phase (ego-formation). Yet in the primary phase, there is yet to drawn any relation whatsoever. This is  at the limit of psychoanalysis, maybe it is birth trauma. Not sure about that. My take on Lyotard is that he commenting on the return of such a thing, holding that it abides even after the secondary phase, and furthermore that the secondary phase is a response or a defense against it. He demands a respect for it and a bearing witness to it, not to resolve it, to allow for that which cannot speak to "speak". The latter is in quotes is because the in-fans, by definition without relation, "speaks" only in affects.
That is all I can say for now, I have a deadline and carrying this over to ethics is something I just don't have the energy for.

Roger
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
  To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 10:48 AM
  Subject: Re: silence, enfans, il y a, sublime


  Geoff/Eric/Hugh

  Is this then the consensus amoungst you - that ethics is concerned with either the "self and other", or beyond that the "others, other"  who may in turn become your own other ? The other in these cases always being a human  or some other rational, intelligent being? Is this the limit of the ground on which your understanding of postmodern ethics stands?

  I was interested in the following statement from Eric:  "... Secularized along the lines of Freud and Lacan, and with a touch of Levinas and Lyotard thrown in, this seems to imply that the goal does not imply simply returning to the enfans in the form of the noble savage. Rather it implies integrating the enfans with the human in a way that doesn't merely buy into the whole myth of development. For the centaur, the animal and human are distinct, yet consubstantial...."

  The mixing of psychoanalysis and philosophy, makes it worthwhile to seperate the above from analysis which I'm thinking of here as a clinical practice - it is not the case within the field of "returning to the enfans" this being to miss the point of the process and reverse the meaning and intent of psychoanalysis. Serge Leclaire  putting it most clearly that we must all as human beings repeatedly "kill the phantasmagtic image of ourselves instilled in us by our parents" - starting from this point psychoanalysis deals with and address "the child within"  - the object being that the child always remains within and addressable. It is with the work of Melenie Klein, whose work on the child at the extreme limit of the appearence of language, dared to place and project subjective experience  back into the earliest periods when observation enables the proving of the difference between the linguistic and pre-linguistic dimension, through the simple observations that a child who does not yet speak reacts differently to punishment and being brutilised. Consequently it is unimaginable that the enfans can be made equivilant to the sophisticated social construct of the "noble savage" - even at its most "lovable" enlightenment based definition it's a phantasy therefore of a deeply capitalist social-economy...

  Thus I doubt the "ethical life" proposal that followed the quote from Eric - unless the enfans can be forcibly seperated from the psychoanalytical meanings of the child, which I doubt.

  regards
  steve



  regards
  steve

  gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu wrote:

But that situation tells me nothing about the "other",  Of course we assume
"others" are similar to ourselves, but we never know their minds.

In my understanding of the term, "ethics" is always about self and other.
How ethics was derived by Lyotard and/or other philosophers, from silences,
the enfans, the il y a, the sublime, .is a process I would like to
understand.

regards,
Hugh
    
Hugh,

Does the term "ethics" expand any if, instead of regarding it as a relationship
between the self and other, one regards ethics as being primarily concerned
with the other's other?  As much as I am concerned for the welfare of my 
neighbor (self and other), I am concerned for the third party, the excluded
middle, the subaltern that may not be present but is always set to arrive.  The
other's other--an other we might refer to through a capitialization of Other--
is the coming Other.

You ask about the "process" of the il y a, etc., and I wonder if that's the
axiomatic term or whether "prior-ness" is.  Process versus prior-ness. 
Levinas's radical prior-ness is a "darkness older than the absence of light." 
His is an ethics older than any politics, a relationship that is behind the
self, further, perhaps, than any beyond. 

To your list of silence, enfans, il y a, and sublime, I might also add
Deleuze's body without organs.  Do you find that as perplexing as these other
terms I wonder?  If not, why not?  I'm trying to extend your initial question
in the asking.  (And here it is again put more specifically:  What is the
relationship between the notion of il y a and body without organs?)

best,

geof



 


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The child and enfans can be separated. See my previous email for a reductive criticism. The key, within psychoanalytic writing is the difference between primary and secondary narcissism. The moment a child maintains some sort of relation, she is already in the secondary phase (ego-formation). Yet in the primary phase, there is yet to drawn any relation whatsoever. This is  at the limit of psychoanalysis, maybe it is birth trauma. Not sure about that. My take on Lyotard is that he commenting on the return of such a thing, holding that it abides even after the secondary phase, and furthermore that the secondary phase is a response or a defense against it. He demands a respect for it and a bearing witness to it, not to resolve it, to allow for that which cannot speak to "speak". The latter is in quotes is because the in-fans, by definition without relation, "speaks" only in affects.
That is all I can say for now, I have a deadline and carrying this over to ethics is something I just don't have the energy for.
 
Roger
----- Original Message -----
From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: silence, enfans, il y a, sublime

Geoff/Eric/Hugh

Is this then the consensus amoungst you - that ethics is concerned with either the "self and other", or beyond that the "others, other"  who may in turn become your own other ? The other in these cases always being a human  or some other rational, intelligent being? Is this the limit of the ground on which your understanding of postmodern ethics stands?

I was interested in the following statement from Eric:  "... Secularized along the lines of Freud and Lacan, and with a touch of Levinas and Lyotard thrown in, this seems to imply that the goal does not imply simply returning to the enfans in the form of the noble savage. Rather it implies integrating the enfans with the human in a way that doesn't merely buy into the whole myth of development. For the centaur, the animal and human are distinct, yet consubstantial...."

The mixing of psychoanalysis and philosophy, makes it worthwhile to seperate the above from analysis which I'm thinking of here as a clinical practice - it is not the case within the field of "returning to the enfans" this being to miss the point of the process and reverse the meaning and intent of psychoanalysis. Serge Leclaire  putting it most clearly that we must all as human beings repeatedly "kill the phantasmagtic image of ourselves instilled in us by our parents" - starting from this point psychoanalysis deals with and address "the child within"  - the object being that the child always remains within and addressable. It is with the work of Melenie Klein, whose work on the child at the extreme limit of the appearence of language, dared to place and project subjective experience  back into the earliest periods when observation enables the proving of the difference between the linguistic and pre-linguistic dimension, through the simple observations that a child who does not yet speak reacts differently to punishment and being brutilised. Consequently it is unimaginable that the enfans can be made equivilant to the sophisticated social construct of the "noble savage" - even at its most "lovable" enlightenment based definition it's a phantasy therefore of a deeply capitalist social-economy...

Thus I doubt the "ethical life" proposal that followed the quote from Eric - unless the enfans can be forcibly seperated from the psychoanalytical meanings of the child, which I doubt.

regards
steve



regards
steve

gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu wrote:
But that situation tells me nothing about the "other",  Of course we assume
"others" are similar to ourselves, but we never know their minds.

In my understanding of the term, "ethics" is always about self and other.
How ethics was derived by Lyotard and/or other philosophers, from silences,
the enfans, the il y a, the sublime, .is a process I would like to
understand.

regards,
Hugh
    

Hugh,

Does the term "ethics" expand any if, instead of regarding it as a relationship
between the self and other, one regards ethics as being primarily concerned
with the other's other?  As much as I am concerned for the welfare of my 
neighbor (self and other), I am concerned for the third party, the excluded
middle, the subaltern that may not be present but is always set to arrive.  The
other's other--an other we might refer to through a capitialization of Other--
is the coming Other.

You ask about the "process" of the il y a, etc., and I wonder if that's the
axiomatic term or whether "prior-ness" is.  Process versus prior-ness. 
Levinas's radical prior-ness is a "darkness older than the absence of light." 
His is an ethics older than any politics, a relationship that is behind the
self, further, perhaps, than any beyond. 

To your list of silence, enfans, il y a, and sublime, I might also add
Deleuze's body without organs.  Do you find that as perplexing as these other
terms I wonder?  If not, why not?  I'm trying to extend your initial question
in the asking.  (And here it is again put more specifically:  What is the
relationship between the notion of il y a and body without organs?)

best,

geof



  


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