File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0401, message 99


Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:48:29 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Counting Calories - linkages


Geof/Evgeni/all

My response is slightly different than Evgeni's

>In bringing things back around to Lyotard, I'm wondering what folks think about 
>his notion that it is "important to link, not how to link."  Here, too, is an 
>interesting bit from "Just Gaming," which suggests itself to any number of 
>things:
>  
>
It seems probable that for Lyotard one can propose that politics is not 
just one genre amoungst many other. I would suggest that it appears in  
in every choice/decision about how "one might link onto a phrase". In 
this  it's probable that we can understand that the decisions taking 
place, take place within genres and  are consquently engaged with a 
specific genre's rules for  linking and it's aims and intentions.  
Lyotard says that a genre of discourse " imposes its mde of linking ono 
our phrase and onto us...this conflict is a differend since the success 
and the validation proper to one genre is not proper to others..." 
(Differend: p136).  In this the assumption is also made that everytime a 
specific link is consructed, the other possible links are 'silenced' , 
these being the links that are not allowed within the genre in which 
youre functioning. There are always a multiplicity of  potential 
linkages and responses but as Lyotard points out only the one can take 
precedence. "This turns every linkage into a kind of victory of one 
genre over the others. These others remain neglected, forgotton, or 
repressed responsibilities..." (Differend p136).

My reason for emphasizing the political, is that in the case where one 
phrase is victorious over other alternative phrases in every linkage it 
is this which is the substantive basis for the politics of the 
differend, politics in this case " ... is the threat of the 
differend.... not a genre, it is the multiplicity of genres, the 
diversity of ends, and par excellence the the question of linkage... 
Everything is political if politics is the possibility of the differend 
on the occasion of the slightest linkage..." (Differend p138-9).  I 
infer from this then that all linkages are political because as they are 
based on the decision of one genre of discourse (linkage) over another, 
the acceptance of this implies that the repression, refused genres 
ensure that other potential voices are refused and denied. This implies 
that all texts, action or decision are in some way political precisely 
because it is engaged with the differend.

(Ranciere disputes this but that's another discourse...)

The text that follows - does it merely  imply  the ethical role of the 
thinker, which is how i first read it - which  at least in the period 
around this - is that the thinker should work to uncover the event,time 
when a differend has taken place and something has been silenced and to 
enble those who were silenced to be heard, "...to bear witness to 
differends...". Or is it something more akin to the 'politics' of the 
above - perhaps micropolitical...

>"For us, a language is first and foremost someone talking.  But there are 
>language games in which the important thing is to listen, in which the rule 
>deals with audition.  Such a game is the game of the just.  And in this game, 
>one speaks only inasmuch as one listens, that is, one speaks as a listener, and 
>not as an author.  It is a game without an author.  In the same way as the 
>speculative game of the West is a game without a listener, because the only 
>listner tolerated by the speculative philosopher is the disiciple.  Well, what 
>is a disciple?  Someone who can become an author, who will be able to take the 
>master's place...One of the basic rules is indeed that the position of sender 
>must remain empty.  No one may put herself or himself there; no one may be the 
>authority" (71-72).
>  
>
regards
steve


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