Jean-François Lyotard's The Differend  . . .  << chapters six & seven >>

CONTENTS:

(1) Lyotard’s The Differend, “Genre, Norm,” Ch. 6

(2) Lyotard’s The Differend, “The Sign of History,” Ch. 7

​

Differend
​Prefacing

Differend
​Chs.2-3

Differend
Ch.1

Differend
​Chs.4-5

(1) Lyotard’s The Differend, “Genre, Norm,” Ch. 6

​Lyotard’s The Differend, “Genre, Norm,” §§178-217 plus Kant Notice 3 & The Declaration of 1789 Notice:
A useful summation runs across the following: §§184-187, 196-197

(2) Lyotard’s The Differend, “The Sign of History,” Ch. 7

Recap:  
The preceding chapter, “Genre, Norm,” moved away from the exploration of the mystical-ethical genre of discourse (in its preceding chapter, “Obligation,”) into the social genre of discourse and the political, which is not a genre, but a concatenation of genres of discourse. 

• I.e.:  To avoid utter incommensurability, the interlocutor seeks a way to subordinate all ‘stakes’ of all genres of discourse to a single end: winning or gaining.  This leads into the political; its problem: how do we account for some ultimate transcendent goal and meta-judge (§§178-81)?  
• This leads into Kant’s “politics;” the Kant 3 Notice presents the archipelago and passages as analogy for making linkages between heterogeneous genres (representative of politics as that concatenation).  Its passage presents the ‘end’ as that of ethics (freedom) achieved by use of his aesthetic model of how to make judgments of taste (presumption of a purposiveness of nature, which actually hasn’t purpose, hence, judgment guided by an “as if”).  This aesthetic model (of ‘how to’) is illustrated by the (nearly synonymous) images of the: 
  • monogram  (an Ideal of sensibility guiding like a blurred sketch, incommensurate shadowy image as model, and created by imagination); and an ...
  • arrangement  (wherein judgment dismisses mathematical and transcendental ideas and invokes the dynamic antinomy of freedom and God to open a wholly new view and thereby mediate the dispute per regulation of an ‘arrangement’); which are like a ...
  • guiding thread  (which describes how to judge “as if” there is a certain criterion by a presumption of telos, a presumption authorized by nature). 
  • Judgment led by these images can yield an “agitated peace” (peace, but one that is ceaselessly exercising, honing reason).
• This leads to comparisons of modern and postmodern dispositions (will we or not accept this transcendent guide?) (§§182-83), which involves a recap of the problem (§§184-88), in order to move into the differentiations between the social and political, which also involves norms, hence, also the ethical (§§188-209, illustrated in Declaration of 1789 Notice), and finally, a distinction between traditional narrative models and modern deliberative politics (§§210-17).

“Genre, Norm” ends on the differentiation of how the narrative genre of discourse is far stronger than the deliberative genre of discourse (a quasi-genre of politics, which is that concatenation of genres), which is “fragile.”  Our last chapter, “The Sign of History,” then closely explores this differentiation in the success/resiliency of narrative and politics.

Outline:

​(§218):            

• Pagus: the site of differends
  • Pagus: a border-zone, literally a boundary staked out (fence, stakes, rocks, walls) on the land; a region, terroir. 
  • Pax: peace, a pact.          Vicus: a village, homestead, hamlet.      Heim: home, homeland.   Volk: the people.       Pagani: those who dwelt in the pagus.

 
(§§219-22):     

• Narrative:
  • The best genre of discourse at obscuring differends (§§219ff)
    • Mythic Narrative: Cashinahua (Cash. Notice)
    • Cosmopolitical Narrative: (§§221ff)

 
(§§223-35):     

• Making Myth Cognitive (§§223ff)  -->   Speculative Genre
  • Force: “Which has more ‘force’ (No. 227), a narrative phrase or a critical phrase?” (§231)
    • Christian Narrative of Love (§§232ff)
    • Secularization of Christianity  -->   Political (§235)  -->   Kant Notice:
      • {Kant N} Feeling in political/ethical: Enthusiasm:
        
      • {Kant N} Culture & Progress

 
(§§236-64):     

• Marxism (§§236ff)  -->   Economic Genre (§§240ff)
  • Economic Genre’s hegemony and obstacle (§§252-64)

Detailed Overview:
 
“What reality is, in the historical-political as elsewhere, is that object for which intuitions of its concept can be presented, the phenomenon” (Kant 4 Notice, p.161).
 
“Reality” … this is what has been at stake all along.  Reality is not given, but must be situated:
 

• “a phrase * comes along.  What will be its fate, to what end will it be subordinated, within what genre of discourse will it take its place?  No phrase is the first.  This does not only mean that others precede it, but also that the modes of linking implied in the preceding phrases—possible modes of linking therefore—are ready to take the phrase into account and to inscribe it into the pursuit of certain stakes, to actualize themselves by means of it.  In this sense, a phrase that comes along is put into play within a conflict between genres of discourse.**  This conflict is a differend, since the success (or the validation) proper to one genre is not the one proper to others” (§184).
  • * For Lyotard, generally consider a “phrase” as an “expression of meaning” neither limited to linguistic oral utterances aimed at communication, nor formal sentences or clauses of words; phrases are innumerable, and can include any speech acts, silence, gestures. Some of his examples: “It’s daybreak; Give me the lighter; Was she there? … ax2+bx+c=0; Ouch! … This is not a phrase; Here are some phrases” (§109) and, the “raised tail of a cat” (§123). The ambiguity of “phrase” as noun or verb should be noted and maintained.  
    
  • **  These questions and following represent how the ‘taking up and figuring it out’ is an obligation because the somethingness is indeterminate, but is a call that demands a response.  How we respond is flexible; the phrase carries with it baggage about its phrase regimen (its rules of formation) and genres of discourse (with stakes or ends, therefore rules for linking in accord with them).  Since none is the first (and none is last), there will be context already around into which the happening happens, and that context will have various genres of discourse already active
    

 

• “a phrase comes along” = an occurrence or phrase event happens =  {phrase = Ereignis = arrive-t-il? = both noun and verb, a site and activity, of a revealing-concealing} à in its happening, it gives forth some unknown something that then must be situated (figured into the moments of the phrase universe, hence, addressing the addressor, addressee, sense, and referent); this happening does not happen to a subject—it just happens—and subjects come to be subjects by taking up the somethingness given and figuring it out.  The phrase carries along with it its regimen, hence suggested ways of linking. 

 

• “A phrase, which links and which is to be linked, is always a pagus” (§218).  So, the phrase event happens into a pagus wherein the many genres are about and attempt to link according to their heterogeneous stakes.

 
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