Subject: Re: The scandal of obligation
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 12:57:43 -0500 (EST)


Hugh wrote:
> 
> Nothing I can prove, but reading "Le Differend", I think of necessity,
> in his usage, as constraints imposed by language, the way we use it,
> the way it must be used (necessary) for transfer of messages/meaning to
> occur.
> 
Isn't Lyotard problematizing the possibility of communication as the
transfer of messages, the expression of meaning that would pretend to
place the I in the instance of an addressor appealing to the consensus of a
common measure or a genre of discourse reducing the plurality of possible
linkages? As I read this notion(and I mean conceptualizing construct) of
"genre of discourse" it is like the third term in the dialectic that
obliterates the "interval" between the I and an other -- so in this sense
it can be read as a 'commentary' on Levinas. Like in Bataille, Deleuze,
Derrida, Levinas and lesser mortals it is always a question of
thinking/producing the
relation between the I and an other(includes trees, water, etc.) as an
irreversible, asymmetrical relation where in fact there is an "absolution"
of terms, a dissolution of all common measures; which furthermore is what
produces _nobodies_ without property, qualities and whatever else could 
lead to a narrativizing elucidation of character ('good' ones no doubt).



Ariosto


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