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4, 114126

Notes on Lyotards Route to Atomism

Zbigniew Kotowicz
For Tiago

Metrocles, a student of the Peripatetic School, breaks w i n d in the middle of a

philosophical discussion. Struck by shame he locks himself in his house w i t h the
intention of starving to death. Crates the Cynic hears about this, eats a meal of beans
and goes to see the poor young m a n . After demonstrating what e e c t beans can
have he persuades Metrocles that it is w r o n g to go against nature in the name of
love of wisdom (philosophia). C u r e d of his shame Metrocles becomes Crates p u p i l .

L y o t a r d recounts a n u m b e r of similar anecdotes in w h i c h philosophers make use of

their body to question the prevailing customs. T h e y masturbate in public, strip naked,
roll in dung. T h e y were also apt to p u t the body in play to break the rules of the
philosophical dialogue - on hearing a subtle philosophical argument negating the
possibility of movement Diogenes simply gets up and walks across the r o o m .

Some of these philosophers also taught rhetoric. T h e y could shift their arguments in
whichever way it pleased them. Gorgias was famous for claiming that nothing exists,
and if something does exist we cannot know anything about it, and even if we know
something about it we cannot communicate it. T h e n there is the story of how
Protagoras defended himself against his p u p i l Euathlus w h i c h L y o t a r d mentions more
than once. Euathlus had never w o n a debate and the deal was that he pay only if
through the teaching he starts w i n n i n g . Protagoras points out that if Euathlus wins
the case then he still has to pay the fee as this w o u l d be a case of w i n n i n g a debate,
if he loses, likewise he has to pay. Perfidious. T h e y also displayed a marked lack of
respect for Athenian values. Crates, for example, said we should study philosophy
to the p o i n t of seeing in generals nothing b u t donkey-drivers. Protagoras declared
that he could not ascertain anything either about the existence of the gods or on
their nature. This brought the charge of impiety, his works were b u r n e d and he fled
Athens. Socrates was also accused of impiety (and corrupting the youth). He does
not take the opportunity to escape b u t in full acceptance of the verdict of his fellow
free Athenians he takes the hemlock. He accepts the Citys right to claim his life,
even though the charge, w h i c h he demonstrates d u r i n g his t r i a l , is ridiculous. In his
death he validates his good citizenship. M u c h derided in his lifetime (Aristophanes)
he dispels all suspicion and ever since his name is uttered w i t h nothing b u t reverence.
L y o t a r d thinks Protagoras flight to be a wiser option. 1

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Crates, Diogenes, Protagoras, Gorgias, and a host of others - this is the company
L y o t a r d w o u l d keep had he lived in their time. W h o were they? Mostly outsiders,
some were of slave descent (Menippus), some were w o m e n (Hipparchia), some had
to support themselves w i t h menial jobs (Cleanthes). T h e y were nomads, travelling
f r o m one city to another, charging for their teaching. T h e y o e n d e d the masters,
citizens of Athens, children of Athenian parents, beneficiaries of a revenue f r o m
their plots of l a n d , male, speaking A t t i c Greek, respectful of civic cults, carriers of
arms. 2 Euathlus, who brought the charge against Protagoras, was probably the son
of some grand family enjoying revenues f r o m their land or f r o m a r m i n g ships while
Protagoras had only his victories in discourse to live on. No salary, an artist. 3

The eccentricities of the crazy Cynics, of the uncultivated Megarians, of the Sophist
clowns, w i l l not create a School. 4 T h e y deal in appearances rather than T r u t h , they
teach to w i n arguments through pernicious rhetoric, claim money that they manifestly
do not merit. These outsiders negate the values of the centre, and so, there are only
margins, only minorities. The philosopher, the lover of wisdom, mistrusts this b a n d
of foreigners who have little respect for the rules of proper philosophical argument
and the divinity of Athenian law. Plato, for example, was quite clear, he w o u l d have
them banned f r o m the ideal city of The Republic or subjected to harsh punishment,
if not p u t to death, in the state of the Laws.

W h y should L y o t a r d be attracted to such antics? These philosophers disrupt the

order of the Athenian philosophical dialogue. A n d w h y should this be a virtue? It is
because one can establish historically the congruence between the constitution of
politics as an institution, a specifically masculine order, and the institution of
philosophy as a constituting discourse. 5 L y o t a r d does not mean the philosophy that
emerged in far-away I o n i a n colonies, he means philosophy as instituted and
bequeathed to us by the A t h e n i a n imperialism 6 - a dialogue about T r u t h . The
complicity between political phallocracy and philosophical metalanguage is made
here: the activity that men reserve for themselves arbitrarily asfact is posited legally
as the right to decide meaning. 7 The philosophical dialogue is a masculine discourse,
and a deadly one it is.

the ruse of reason (masculine) d i e r s f r o m the snares of sensitivity

(feminine): reason makes ruse of death [...] W h a t is pertinent for
distinguishing the sexes is the relation to death: a body that can die,
whatever its sexual anatomy, is masculine; a body that does not know
that it must disappear is feminine. M e n teach w o m e n of death, the
impossible, the presence of absence. 8

Taking its clues f r o m Athens, philosophy proceeds by instituting a series of unities

w h i c h converge towards one all-encompassing narrative, a metanarrative. Its guises
are numerous - Subject, History, Being... A l l of Lyotards e o r t s , one can say, are
driven by a dislike of this philosophical trend, we have p a i d a high enough price
for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and
the sensible, of the transparent and communicable experience. [...] The answer is:
Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate
the d i e r e n c e s and save the honour of the name. 9

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 Thus the lines are drawn, the task of philosophy is to pulverise the unity of Western
discourse; to invent passages towards a multiplicity.

Lyotards quest for a philosophical multiplicity led him to an atomist outlook. The
Dierend, which was a book that mattered to him greatly, is one of the most consciously
atomist works in contemporary philosophy. For this reason one should mention one
more Greek that Lyotard practically never does: Democritus of Abdera, the laughing
philosopher. He was a contemporary of Socrates but unlike the Sophists, Cynics and
others he never stayed in Athens (he visited the city only once), he never participated
in the philosophical life of the city, so he did not annoy, provoke and scandalize the
good Athenians. But still, it was Democritus that Plato considered the real enemy,
according to Diogenes Laertius, Plato wanted to have all his writings burned. And
for anyone of Platos bent he was indeed the most dangerous. Democritus prepared
a breach in the ontological totality upon which the Greeks insisted. He may have
ostensibly agreed with Parmenides stipulation that nothing comes into being out of
what is non-existent, that is why he conceived of the atoms as imperishable. But
apart from the atoms there is the void, this was the idea that set Democritus apart.
In his system the void is not simply empty passive space in which atoms move. It is
the other of the atom, non-presentable, empty rather than full, as Democritus put
it. The void is active, it is the non-existent which participates, so to speak, in reality;
it also divides and breaks up unity. The void is the intrusion of Non-Being into
Being. This was Democritus most scandalous idea; the Greeks did not like it, nor
did the mainstream of Western tradition. The wholeness and perfection of the Great
Chain of Being, one of the Wests most enduring metanarratives, explicitly forbade
the void.

Lyotard entered the atomist universe through the intuition of the void, an unusual
route, as normally it is the idea of the atom from which atomist systems are
constructed. The atom as such appears only in The Dierend, the void, that which
participates in what exists but cannot be presented, is at the centre of his thought
from the beginning: It must be clear that it is our business not to supply reality but
to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented.10 This statement
expresses Lyotards credo particularly well, it is behind both his earlier works and
the later writings.

II

Lyotards route towards the dispersed ontology of atomism begins w i t h his great
work Discours, figure. We have renounced the madness of unity, the madness of
furnishing the first unitary cause, the phantasm of origin 1 1 announces L y o t a r d in
the opening pages of the book. The insight w h i c h is at the core of the work is that
the discourse of words, all that comes through language, through dialogue, falls short
of what it claims to disclose. Discourse and its philosophical disguises, dialogue and
semiotics, have t h r o w n a cloak over the sensible, declaring it as less than being, as
belonging to falsehood and being unable to speak the t r u t h . To undo this damage
it is necessary to attack the self-importance of discourse. 12 If we are to talk about
T r u t h we must first realize that it does not pass at all through the discourse of

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signification, its impossible topos is not locatable in the geography of knowledge, it
can be sensed at the surface of the discourse by its e e c t s , and this presence of sense
is called expression. 13 Thus t r u t h is not in the d o m a i n of dialogue and dialectics, it
is in the figure w h i c h subverts the order of discourse. W h a t L y o t a r d means by
discourse is fairly straightforward, it pertains to all that is expressed through language,
to all that is inscribed in the system of signifiers; the figure of Discours, figure is more
complex. It denotes what is visible as well as invisible, b u t , most of all, it is intensity,
it is the eye, that is force. 1 4 This force gives discourse its expressiveness. The figure
cannot be seized by discourse, between the two there cannot be a dialectical relation.
The figure f o r m is the presence of non-language in language. It is something of
another order w h i c h is lodged in the discourse and w h i c h gives discourse its
expressiveness. [...] B u t so no-one is mistaken, this interiority of the figural space
in the discourse is not a dialectic. 1 5

The other feature of the figure is its disruptive character. So rather than fill out the
discourse it creates intervals in it. The event cannot be posed anywhere else b u t in
the vacant space created by desire. 16 The vacant space, the v o i d , the i n t e r r u p t i o n
through w h i c h the figure of the event w i l l emerge, has to be created, it has to be
forced open. The force w h i c h disrupts the discourse emerges f r o m the deep reservoir
of energy w h i c h Freud identified as the unconscious death drive. It never ceases to
work, and it works as the other of discourse not another discourse. 17 The incessant
work of the unconscious is energy, it is u n b o u n d , it is free and its displacements are
characteristic of its u n b o u n d nature. 1 8 From this follows that t r u t h never emerges
where it is expected. The energy of the figural disrupts narrative time, loosens the
chain of signifiers, it opens up gaps in discourses allowing t r u t h of the desire to
emerge.

The gaps are intensity. The semiotic machine [...] is ready to t u r n all intensity into
sign, to give value to something that is absent. 19 Signs are dead. Lets get out of
signs, lets enter into the order of tensors beyond semiotics. 20 The energy of the
tensor is contracting, tightening, p u n c h i n g a space in the order of narratives. W i l l ,
intensity, velocity, acceleration, are the signs of the workings of the subversive libido.
A l l this comes to a culmination in Economie libidinale, Lyotards most extraordinary
book. Religion, sex, money, jealousy, prostitutes, commerce are brought together at
quite an impossible speed to produce a vertiginous l a b y r i n t h of a text. It achieves
what L y o t a r d seems to have set out to do - to e e c t meaning through disruption of
discourses, to loosen up the discursive chain, to lay bare how m o d e r n capitalism
attempts to b u y and to annihilate time, a theme w h i c h he returned to on a n u m b e r
of occasions. It is also a desperate book, his livre mechant; a lot of whisky went into
it, he once said in a radio interview. It all ended in a cul-de-sac. A n d it had to.
Freuds death drive, however anarchic and free f r o m semiotics, however dispersed
its centres of energy, is a single mass of subjectivity. This cannot be the way to a
heterogeneous discourse as ultimately any philosophy of the w i l l [...] is a monistic
philosophy. 2 1

There is also another way of explaining w h y L y o t a r d had to abandon his l i b i d i n a l

politics. At a later time he said that in his youth he was d r a w n by three vocations -
that of a monk, of a painter, and of an historian. These, he went on to say, left their

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 trace in his constant preoccupation w i t h the law, f o r m (and colour), and the event;
ethics, aesthetics and politics remained constant themes in his thinking. 2 2 In the
period of Discours, figure L y o t a r d thought that art could be a political force, not in
the sense of a revolutionary art linked w i t h organised political activity b u t as a way
of deconstructing discourses. To have this force art first has to leave the museum
and suppress itself as art and as an activity of a nostalgic leisure of those who have
been exhausted by alienation. 2 3 T h e n art can be radical, not through attacking the
signified of things b u t their plastic organisation, their signifying organisation. This
activity shows that it is not the question of knowledge, of some discourse, of what
this discourse says, b u t the fashion in w h i c h it is presented. 24 H e r e , art plays a role
quite similar to the way the Cynics, Sophists and others questioned - particularly
through their displays of the body - the claims of discourse, dialogue and dialectics.
This comparison is never d r a w n directly b u t it can be inferred f r o m Lyotards
comments to an exhibition of photographs of hysteric patients f r o m Salpetriere. He
points out that the images of strange b o d i l y postures adopted by the patients, this
theatre of corporal elements, 25 defies the rigours of discourse, escapes its syntax,
the photograph no longer supports the arguments of the learned [savants], it suspends
the dialectic (instant), it is an unchained l i v i n g picture. 2 6 Contemporary art aims at
similar e e c t s .

Later L y o t a r d is not so sure about the revolutionary potential of art. It is not true
that one can do an aesthetic politics. It is not true the search for intensities or things
of that type can ground politics, because there is the p r o b l e m of injustice. 2 7 In other
words, it is not possible to discern what is just and what is unjust f r o m an aesthetic
judgement. The programme began in Discours, figure and brought to a conclusion in
Economie libidinale could not satisfy someone who once wanted to be a monk. An
impasse, another way in has to be forged.

III

O u t goes Freud, enter Wittgenstein, K a n t and Levinas. The notion of truth

(figurative or of the event or any other) also goes out. In drawing the contours of
his thought L y o t a r d takes f r o m Wittgenstein (of the post-Tractatus period) the
concept of language games; f r o m K a n t (principally of the t h i r d critique) the idea
that discourses are incommensurable; f r o m Levinas he takes the argument that the
ethical has precedence over the ontological. Lyotards thought becomes increasingly
more political. I do not believe myself to be a philosopher, in the proper sense of
the t e r m , b u t a politician. B u t this term remains to be defined; the meaning of
the w o r d politician must be completely overhauled. 2 8 W h a t this overhauling w o u l d
entail L y o t a r d does not state, however, true to his commitment to the unpresentable,
he is certain that the least one can say is that all politics implies the prescription of
doing something else than what is. 29 Politics converges w i t h ethics, it is about being
just. One is just w h e n one speaks only inasmuch as one listens, that is, one speaks
as a listener, and not as an author. 3 0 To be just is to respect the multiplicity of
language games, to respond to what happens, case by case. Justice is heterogeneous.
There still remains a question of capital importance: Where does the obligation to
be just emerge from? No ontology can be a grounding for this obligation because

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prescriptive statements cannot be derived from ontological propositions; it cannot
emerge from the I because for this to take place this I would have to be some
impossible autonomous entity which at the same time utters a law and is subject to
it; consensus cannot ground obligation either (consensus is nothing more than the
manufacture of a subject which is authorised to say we).31 Still, the obligation to
be just is a fact. It is not a fact in the usual cognitive or empirical sense and to get
some hold of it one has to take recourse to the concept of an Idea which Lyotard
understands in Kantian terms. It is not a determinant concept; it cannot be
demonstrated, derived, deduced, or calculated; it is a maximization of concepts
outside of any knowledge of reality.32 All that one can say is that one is an addressee
of the Idea of justice which puts one in the state of obligation, it is a command, but
its content cannot be stated in advance. The command precedes understanding, it
is to put oneself in a condition of listening to a discourse that does not describe
something but that prescribes an activity, a doing. The command comes from
nowhere, as it were, it is anonymous, the position of the sender, as authority that
obligates, is left vacant;33 the command comes from the void.

IV

In 1984 The Dierend is published. The themes are pretty much the same but they
are now cast within an atomist scheme. To formulate this atomist outlook Lyotard
drops the idea of language games, or perhaps it would be more precise to say that
he breaks them down to their basic constituents atoms of language, phrases.

First there is a phrase. It happens. A happening of a phrase is not an utterance of

a subject, it is an occurrence which presents the addressor, the addressee, the referent,
the sign. A phrase constitutes a universe. It is impossible for there not to be a phrase.
It is not subject to doubt; to doubt is already an occurrence and therefore a phrase.
A phrase cannot exist alone it is always preceded by a phrase and another one
follows. They are linked into regimens, regimens form genres of discourse. Every
phrase belongs to a regimen. A phrase must be linked to another, this is a necessity,
but how it is linked is not governed by necessity. The occurrence of a phrase cannot
be doubted; the fact that this phrase will be linked to another (and that another
preceded it) cannot be doubted either; the kind of a series that the linkages will form
is undetermined. Phrases are linked, this is a necessity, but the variability of linkages
is great and it cannot be determined, the variability is due to the fact that every
linking move concerns any (or all) of the phrases constituents, the addressor, the
addressee, the referent, the sign.

Phrases are linked into regimens following their own rules of linking. There are
countless types of regimens reasoning, explaining, knowing, describing,
commanding, ordering, recounting, deriding, joking, insulting and so forth. Yet it is
not phrases that form regimens but linkages between phrases. Inside the genre of
discourse the linkages obey rules which determine the stakes and the ends.34 From
this follows that since the rules are stated by the genre phrases cannot be validated
within it, for this another genre is necessary. Some regimens have strict rules of
linking but there are others which leave the type of linking unstated. Rules can also
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 be broken, unusual linkages can be invented to the p o i n t of completely transforming
the game, for example, The o c e r cries Avanti! and leaps out of a trench; the soldiers,
moved, cry Bravo ! b u t do not budge. 3 5

The idea that linking is a necessity could suggest that all phrases are linked together,
that there is a totality of all phrases, variable, but nevertheless a totality because
formed around the one simple concept that everything must be linked. But not so.
Sometimes a link is not possible. No passage from one phrase to another presents
itself. These impossibilities, the discontinuities are like holes in discourses. On the
one hand, they prevent the next phrase from occurring, on the other, they force a
search for the unpresentable, for that which did not happen. This is what Lyotard
refers to as the di erend.

Diferend translates into English as d i e r e n c e of opinion, a disagreement, L y o t a r d

gives the w o r d a more technical meaning. The d i e r e n d is the unstable state and
instant of language wherein something w h i c h must be able to be p u t into phrases
cannot yet be. 3 6 Impossible to find words, one says, to signal this state.

In the universe of phrases the di erends cannot not occur. Only within a genre is it
possible to imagine avoiding them (because the rules of the linking are stated by the
genre). But it is not possible to remain in one genre alone, other genres are necessary
to validate phrases (within genres phrases cannot be validated), how to link to another
genre cannot be stated. In a word: narrative is a genre; deliberation is a
concatenation of genres, and that su ces to let the occurrences and di erends sprout
up within it, 37 that is why language is a perpetual agonistics, why it is in a state of
a civil war.38

A d i e r e n d instigates a search of a link, a new i d i o m , an idiolect. This is what is at

stake in m o d e r n art, to bear witness to d i e r e n d s by finding idioms for them. 3 9 But,
the despair of never being able to present something w i t h i n reality on the scale of
the Idea overrides the j o y of being nonetheless called upon to do so. We are more
depressed by the abyss that separates heterogeneous genres of discourse than excited
by the indication of a possible passage f r o m one to the other. 4 0

A d i e r e n d can also be inflicted. It is w h e n the right for the search of a new phrase
(which is necessary) is denied. This is to inflict a w r o n g . I n the d i e r e n d something
asks to be p u t into phrases, and s u e r s f r o m the w r o n g of not being able to be
p u t into phrases right away. 4 1 If this w r o n g is perpetuated it becomes evil. By evil,
I understand, and one can only understand, the incessant interdiction of possible
phrases, a defiance of the occurrence, the contempt for Being. 4 2 Here the d i e r e n d
acquires political meaning. I w o u l d like to call a d i e r e n d the case where the p l a i n t i
is divested of the means to argue and becomes for that reason a victim. [...] A case
of a d i e r e n d between two parties takes place w h e n the regulation of the conflict
that opposes them is done in the i d i o m of one of the parties while the w r o n g s u e r e d
by the other is not signified in that idiom. 4 3 A w r o n g is a damage accompanied by
the loss of the means to prove the damage, 4 4 or even simply to testify it. An extreme
example of such a w r o n g is coded in the name Auschwitz. The existence of gas

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chambers is denied because the historian (Faurisson) has not been able to find a
single testimony of a deportee who has really seen w i t h his own eyes, the gas
chamber. 4 5 Proof of the existence of gas chambers must come f r o m its victims b u t
since there are no victims b u t dead ones, no place can be identified as a gas
chamber. 4 6 H o w can such a monstrosity come to be? In the most disturbing pages
of the book L y o t a r d dissects the horror. 4 7

The universe of the phrase Auschwitz is broken up. It begins w i t h a bastard half-
phrase, Die, I decree it. It is a phrase w i t h o u t an addressee as it is uttered towards a
people that have no right to reply. T h e y cannot gain anything through their death,
like Socrates who in the name of civic duty, died a beautiful death (or the deaths
in the name of freedom of the Paris C o m m u n e , or the glorious deaths of Stalingrad). 48
A n d the decree is w i t h o u t an addressee because there is meant to be no witness
(Jew) left to testify it.

The deportees, according to this [Nazi] authority, cannot be the

addressee of an order to die, because one w o u l d have to be capable
of giving ones life in order to carry out the order. B u t one cannot
give a life that one doesnt have the right to have. Sacrifice is not
available to the deportee, nor for that reason accession to an i m m o r t a l ,
collective name. Ones death is legitimate because ones life is
illegitimate. The individual name must be killed (whence the use of
serial numbers), and the collective name (Jew) must also be killed in
such a way that no we bearing this name might r e m a i n w h i c h could
take the deportees death into itself and eternalize it. This death must
therefore be killed, and that is what is worse than death. For, if death
can be exterminated, it is because there is nothing to kill. N o t even
the name Jew. 4 9

Most chillingly, L y o t a r d points out that Nazism has been defeated, beaten d o w n like
a m a d dog, b u t it has not been refuted. 5 0

The remarkable t h i n g about The Differend is that, while we find in it a relentless

agonistics and some of Lyotards hardest w r i t i n g , it is less militant, or less intransigent
than the earlier writings, Economie libidinale, in particular. This seems a direct
consequence of adopting the atomist scheme, though it is an atomism of a particular
character - phrases are temporal atoms 5 1 and the diaspora of phrases forms a
temporal atomism.

In ancient atomism the atom was thought of as a b i t of substance and, conceding to

Parmenides the rule that nothing can emerge out of the non-existent, atoms were
conceived of as imperishable. Developments in m o d e r n science (chiefly Paul Diracs
discovery that matter is coupled w i t h antimatter, and that p r i m a r y elements can be
annihilated and turned into energy) have rendered the idea of the atoms
imperishability obsolete. A temporal atomism avoids the Parmenidean trap, atoms

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 of time emerge and perish; but a number of the early insights of Democritus are
retained, most of all the interplay between the atom and the void. Lyotard takes
care to spell out some of the distinct features of the atom of time and of the void.
The gist of it comes in this short dense passage.

Every phrase is. Is is not [however] which is, it rather signifies there is,
it happens. B u t it happens is not what happens [...] nor does it signify is
there and even less so does it signify is real. Is does not signify anything.
[...] Rather is w o u l d be: Is it happening? [Arrive-t-il?] (the it indicating an
empty place to be occupied by a referent). 52

The last of these statements, though only coming in brackets, is in fact crucial for
distinguishing between an atom of time and the void. The empty place to be occupied
by a referent is an instant, but before it is occupied by a referent it cannot be stated,
it is no more than an Is it happening?. The occurrence of a phrase, a phrase-event is
when the referent emerges, it then becomes a now. As soon as it is grasped in the
universe of other phrases (the one that preceded it and the one which necessarily
has to follow) it enters diachrony, it joins other nows to become part of a temporally
ordered series. The now dissolves, one could say, into a duration that the series
creates. The type of series will depend on the phrase regimen in which the phrase
occurs. However, should the phrase not conform, swerve and form an unusual link
(the soldiers cry Bravo!), then, one could say, it behaves akin to a clinamen.

But in the concatenation of genres, in the noise of narratives, there occur other
nows which break up discourses. These are the empty spaces which are not occupied
by a referent, these are the di erends, the incommensurabilities. Such an empty
place, a void, is also a now but it is di erent in that it cannot enter into an ordered
series. Instead it becomes an agitation in place, one within the impasse of
incommensurability, and above the abyss, a vibration.53 It is the pain that
accompanies the impossibility to phrase.

In progressing f r o m Discours, figure L y o t a r d shed a n u m b e r of ideas that were not

helpful for his aims, (these aims are identified in this context as an attempt to
develop an atomistic ontology). The notion of t r u t h , revealed by the intensity of
the figural, disappears early on; language games make only a b r i e f appearance. In
one respect, quite central, the changes that the atomism of The Differend brought in
are capital. In Discours, figure L y o t a r d thought of intensity as some unconscious energy
w h i c h , w h e n p u t into play, disrupted discourse and opened the v o i d . But, as L y o t a r d
was well aware, 54 Freud always insisted that l i b i d i n a l energy is impervious to time.
In The Differend intensities have a temporal character, Is it happening? puts one in a
state of a temporal tension, the need to link. It is the expectant w a i t i n g for an
occurrence [...] The vigil. This w a i t i n g is in the phrase universe. It is the specific
tension that every phrase regimen exerts upon the instances. 55 Once a phrase
occupies an empty place of an Is it happening? it becomes a what, a being (not Being,
b u t one being, one time) 5 6 it enters diachrony and narratives, the universe presented
by a phrase is immediately social, if by social it is understood that an addressor,
an addressee, a referent, and a sense are situated w i t h i n i t . 5 7

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The temporality of phrasing necessitates linking. H a d this been all, Lyotards ever
present need to account for intensities w o u l d not be satisfied. B u t there are also the
d i e r e n d s . A d i e r e n d is an agitated n o w , the p a i n of not being able to represent,
of not being able to p u t a referent into the empty place of an Is it happening?. H e r e ,
intensities, wrongs, p a i n , cannot be given an ontological grounding, they do not
become a being; they are the intensities of the in-between, the interval, of the v o i d .
The intensities generated by the d i e r e n d s are necessary (because the d i e r e n d s are
necessary) b u t they are unpredictable, w h e n they w i l l occur cannot be known. In
this they resemble the workings of the anarchic death drive, b u t rather than being
some subjective energy, existing there w a i t i n g to erupt, the intensities of the d i e r e n d s
are an unavoidable occurrence in language, they are agitations of the v o i d , of non-
being. The philosophical gain of this reversal was i m p o r t a n t to L y o t a r d , he could
account for intensity w i t h o u t giving it an ontological grounding, w i t h o u t the
phantasm of origin. Intensity is generated by the v o i d . Non-being gives meaning
to being, just like in classical atomism.

The Differend attempts to give an ontological and linguistic, or lets

say phrastique status for that w h i c h Arakawa calls a blank. [...] It is
the v o i d , the nothingness, where the universe presented by a phrase
explodes and exposes itself; like a firework, w h e n the phrase happens,
and where the firework goes out, together w i t h the v o i d . This abyss,
the nothing that separates one phrase f r o m another, is the other of
the condition of all presentation and all occurrence. B u t this
condition is not graspable immediately by itself. Another phrase is
necessary to try to grasp it. This phrase carries in t u r n a presentation,
w h i c h presents, as m u c h as its universe, the preceding phrase and its
presentation, b u t b o t h re-presented. The blank is the condition of
the presentation and its evanescence, the name of being, perhaps,
before and after the occurrence [en avance et en retard sur
loccurrence]. 5 8

Such ontological basics are antithetical to a philosophical fundamentalism. There

are no ontological origins to pin down justice or truth. Instead we are put in a state
of an expectant waiting for an occurrence, in a state of an alertness which is
necessary to be just, to bear witness to the unpresentable. We dwell in a primary sea
surrounded by an archipelago:

Each genre of discourse would be like an island; the faculty of

judgement would be, at least in part, like an admiral or like a
provisioner of ships who would launch expeditions from one island to
the next, intended to present to one island what was found (or
invented, in the archaic sense of the word) in the other, and which
might serve the former as an as-if intuition with which to validate it.
Whether war or commerce, this interventionist force has no object,
and does not have its own island, but it requires a milieu this would
be the sea the Archepelagos or primary sea as the Aegean was once
called.59
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 VI

B u t while the universe of temporal atomism w i l l account for the event (which L y o t a r d
the w o u l d be historian wanted), for the law (the monk), the painters craving for
f o r m and colour is frustrated. Presence itself cannot be presented. We can have only
the Idea of presence and of nature b u t the imagination, even at its most extended,
does not succeed in presenting an object that might validate or realize the Idea. 6 0
Still, Whatever acceptation is given to the Idea of nature, ones right of access to it
is only through signs, b u t the right of access to signs is given by nature. N o t even a
denaturalized nature and signs of nothing, not even a postmodern nonteleology, can
escape this circulus 6 1 We cannot escape nature in w h i c h we are enmeshed. This
accounts for Lyotards attraction to the work of Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty
viewed matter as an element, m u c h as the Greeks thought of the four elements. This
element is flesh, visible as well as invisible, it forms a chasm between the body and
the w o r l d , between me and the horizon. L y o t a r d was d r a w n to this idea b u t early
on he rejected it because the phenomenological approach in w h i c h Merleau-Ponty
was steeped is still faithful to the philosophical tradition of the West, it is still a
reflection of knowledge [connaissance] and as such a reflection has as its function a
reduction of the event, to b r i n g the O t h e r back into the Same. 62 Nevertheless, there
is presence, there is matter. Perhaps, though L y o t a r d does not quite say so, it is this
primary sea, the milieu in w h i c h the archipelago nestles; it cannot be presented b u t
w i t h o u t it no enquiring force can be launched.

M a t t e r is, only that it is not available in the discourse of knowledge; presence occurs,
only that it cannot be presented. Presence is the instant w h i c h interrupts the chaos
of history and reminds us or only announces that there is [il y a] before all
signification of there is. 6 3 L y o t a r d recounts a story taken f r o m the Z e n philosopher
Dogen. D o g e n tells of a presence w h i c h cannot be reflected in the m i r r o r as it breaks
the m i r r o r into pieces. L y o t a r d comments: there is therefore a breaking presence
w h i c h is never inscribed or memorised. It does not appear. It is not a forgotten
inscription, it does not have a place or moment w i t h i n the support of inscriptions,
in the reflecting m i r r o r . 6 4 He borrows the story f r o m an Eastern thinker because
Western philosophy w i t h its preoccupation w i t h technologos is ill-equipped to deal w i t h
these ideas. At various other points hints of Oriental t h i n k i n g a p p e a r - presence can
only be given in the absence of an active spirit; 6 5 for t h i n k i n g a certain emptying
of the m i n d [mise a` blanc de lesprit] is necessary;66 what really deserves to be called
t h i n k i n g is to be apt to welcome what thought is not prepared to think. 6 7 Earlier
w h e n he sought to articulate the emptiness of the obligation to be just, L y o t a r d took
recourse (through Levinas) to Judaic thinking, here he seeks inspiration in the O r i e n t
to get hold of the idea of presence. ( A n d if L y o t a r d knew other writings on temporal
atomism of the Buddhist philosophers, he no doubt also found them to his liking).
These foreign imports are more than mere embellishments, they are essential to
come to grips w i t h the problems L y o t a r d was tackling.

Presence and the impossibility of presenting are themes relevant to contemporary

art. After The Dierend was already completed Lyotard penned a number of beautiful
and subtle commentaries (on Barnett Newman, Valerio Adami, Ruth Francken). He
Kotowicz
124
sketches a history of the idea of the sublime (from Longinus via Baumgarten to
Edmund Burke and Kant)68 to show that it is the sublime which animates the avant-
garde, not innovation. Innovation belongs to the metaphysics of capital, to its markets
and its technology of time.69 The avant-garde bears witness to the di erend. This
is an occurrence, a now that is a stranger to consciousness and cannot be constituted
by it. Rather, it is what dismantles consciousness, what deposes consciousness, it is
what consciousness cannot formulate, and even what consciousness forgets in order
to constitute itself.70

But while ceaselessly searching the meaning of the little impressions which Cezanne
spoke of while dismantling Mount Sainte Victoire, Lyotard also remembers the
lessons of Merleau-Ponty (one of the least arrogant of philosophers).71 Very much
in his vein he notes that

The logos may well criticize the delight of seeing; it cannot do away
with it. Indeed, it needs to see, because vision provides the irresistible
model of unanimity. When it comes to making a judgement of
existence, the visible has a sort of irreproachably modest rectitude, a
probity of its own. A candour. It does not preclude ambiguity or error,
but it always includes the promise of correction.72

For the visible to be there the relentless temporality of phrases and d i e r e n d s has to
give over to the space in w h i c h the body dwells. In a remark that could be taken
straight out of Bachelard, L y o t a r d says that the painter [ A d a m i ] goes to seek his
repose where time becomes open space. 73 This is no longer art acting out l i b i d i n a l
politics, this is art w h i c h is refusing to be at the service of the virile masculine gaze,
because the twentieth century-and-a-half [which is how L y o t a r d refers to our post-
Auschwitz decades] has decided, finally, not to leave space-time in the hands of men.
I hope. 7 4

VII

So, is postmodernity the pastime of an old m a n who scrounges in the garbage heap
of finality looking for leftovers, who brandishes unconsciousness, lapses, limits,
goulags, parataxes, non-sense or paradoxes, and turns this into the glory of his
novelty, into his promise of change? 75 N o t in the hands of Jean-Francois L y o t a r d .
His opus is a r i c h tapestry of philosophical reflection. He has done more than most
to r i d philosophy of the terrorism of prescriptions; he had a deep understanding of
the stakes in m o d e r n art; he looked squarely at the horror of Auschwitz. He set out
to wage war, to fight; he ended w i t h an atomist ontology, w h i c h is quite naturally
an agonistics. He also found there calm, this is perhaps the secret of atomism. No
longer the need for provocative antics in the manner of the Megarians and Cynics.
W h a t remains is the often repeated pagan (and perhaps Democritean?) laughter.
A n d , last b u t not least, this ontology averts the risk of nihilism that hovers around
Economie libidinale. H o w come? Because whatever horrors appear, whatever ruses
capitalism might invent to gain time, the Is it happening? [Arrive-t-il?] is invincible. 7 6

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 Notes
1
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, A n d r e w 34
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Le diferend (Paris: Editions
B e n j a m i n (ed.) ( O x f o r d : Basil Blackwell, 1989), p.139. de M i n u i t , 1983) (The Differed, G. v a n den Abbeele
2
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Sur la force des faibles, (trans.) (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
LArc, 64 (1976), p.5. 1988). T h e references to this w o r k are to numbers
3 L y o t a r d , Sur la force des faibles, p.8. in text, or Notices, not pages in the book), 53.
4 35
L y o t a r d , Sur la force des faibles, p.6. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 43.
36
5
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.1 19. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 22.
37
6
L y o t a r d , Sur la force des faibles, p.5. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 217.
38
7 L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.1 19. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 198.
39
8 L y o t a r d , The Differend, 22.
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.1 12.
40
9
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , La condition postmoderne: rapport L y o t a r d , The Differend, 256.
41
sur le savoir (Paris: Editions de M i n u i t , 1979) (The L y o t a r d , The Differend, 23.
42
Postmodern Condition, Geo Bennington a n d B r i a n L y o t a r d , The Differend, 197.
43
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 12.
M a s s u m i (trans.) (Manchester: Manchester U n i v e r s i t y
44
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 7.
Press, 1984)), pp.81-2.
45
10 L y o t a r d , The Differend, 2.
L y o t a r d , The Postmodern Condition, p.81. 46
11 L y o t a r d , The Differend, 6.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, Discours, figure (Paris: 47
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 152-69.
Editions Klincksieck, 1971), p.18. 48
12
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 156.
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.11. 49
13
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 157.
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.17. 50
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 160.
14
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.14. 51
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , T emoiger du d #erend (avec
15
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.51-2.
des exposes de Francis G u i b a l a n d Jacob Rogozinski
16
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.22. (Paris: Editions Osiris, 1989), p.120.
17
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Derive a partir de Marx et 52
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 131.
Freud (Paris: 1 0 / 1 8 , 1973), p.249. 53
L y o t a r d , The Differend, K a n t Notice, 4,4.
18
L y o t a r d , Derive a partir de Marx et Freud, p.249. 54
L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, pp.152-53.
19
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Economie libi dinale (Paris: 55
L y o t a r d , The Differend, 134.
56
Editions de M i n u i t , 1974), p.87. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 113.
20 57
L y o t a r d , Economie libidinale, p.65. L y o t a r d , The Differend, 193.
21
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d w i t h J.-P. T h e b a u d , Aujust 58
L y o t a r d , P eregrinations, p.67.
59
(Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1979), Just Gaming, W l a d L y o t a r d , The Differend, K a n t Notice 3,1.
60
G o d z i c h (trans.) (Manchester: Manchester U n i v e r s i t y L y o t a r d , The Differend, K a n t Notice 4,4.
61
Press, 1985), p.90. L y o t a r d , The Differend, K a n t Notice 3.
62
22
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Peregrinations (Paris: Galilee, L y o t a r d , Discours, figure, p.21.
63
1988), p.20. L y o t a r d , Linhumain, p.97.
64
23
L y o t a r d , Derive a partir de Marx et Freud, p.244. L y o t a r d , Linhumain, p.66.
65
24 L y o t a r d , The Differend, 153.
L y o t a r d , Derive a partir de Marx et Freud, p.223.
66
25 L y o t a r d , Linhumain, p.27.
Jean-Francois L y o t a r d , Linhumain (Paris: Galilee,
67
L y o t a r d , Linhumain, p.85.
1988), p.144.
68
26 L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, pp.200-06.
L y o t a r d , Linhumain, p.147. 69
27 L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.211.
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.90. 70
28
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.197.
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.55. 71
29
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.189.
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.23. 72
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.233.
30
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.72. 73
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.223.
31
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.81. 74
L y o t a r d , The Lyotard Reader, p.256.
32
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.75. 75
Lyotard, The Differend, 182.
33
L y o t a r d and T h e b a u d , Just Gaming, p.72. 76
Lyotard, The Differend, 263.

Z b i g n i e w K o t o w i c z completed his P h . D . in philosophy (Warwick) after fifteen

years as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. His previous publications include
Fernando Pessoa: Voices of a Nomadic Soul ( M e n a r d Press) and R.D. Laing and the Paths of
Antipsychiatry (Routledge). He w o u l d also like to mention a work that he is completing
Reading Bachelard (Reflections on Aspirations and Prejudices in Philosophy) to w h i c h this essay
on L y o t a r d is in a way a companion piece.

Kotowicz
126
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