Lyotard, Literature and the Trauma of the differend

Lyotard, Literature and the Trauma of the differend

Lyotard, Literature and the Trauma of the differend Dylan Sawyer

Dylan Sawyer 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-38334-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-48050-0 ISBN 978-1-137-38335-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137383358 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations vii viii Introduction 1 The politics of representation 3 The unavoidable act 6 The siren s song 8 Sustaining a paradox 9 Lyotard 10 The postmodern condition 12 Critical concerns 14 Literature 21 1 The differend and Beyond 26 The phrase 26 The victim 32 The human 38 The sublime 40 Tribunal 44 Literature of the differend 46 The affect 53 Soundproof Room 57 2 Housed Exile 63 The indeterminacy of justice 65 Phrasing the ethics of the differend 69 Ethical writing 72 The haunted house 75 The Republic 78 The artist of exile 82 Remembering the forgotten 84 The wanderings of the differend 91 The ethics of the impossible 95 The call of exile 98 v

vi Contents 3 Homer and Ondaatje 101 The muse 106 The narrator 109 The hero 112 The tales 117 The telling 124 The echoes of silence 128 The author 134 Fame 140 The sublime parade 144 The trauma of the return 148 The differend 155 4 The Traumatic Sublime 159 The presentation of the sublime 161 Trauma 165 The traumatic sublime 170 The time of the victim 175 Impossible testimony 179 The letters of silence 182 The excesses of trauma 189 Traumatic writing 192 Instances of the traumatic 196 Traumatic failings 199 Trauma and the differend 202 Conclusion 204 A beginning 205 Hersey 207 Summation 208 The end 211 Notes 213 Bibliography 243 Index 253

Acknowledgements There s a line in a Jewish prayer: A person s thoughts are his or her own but their expression belongs to God. The same sentiment can be applied to how I feel about my family; without their unending support, without their constant love, good humour and solace, I would never have been able to find my voice let alone hope to sustain its articulation for so long. This book is dedicated to them. My thanks also go to all at Aberystwyth University who have in some way helped me over the years. Special mention must also go to Professor Robert Eaglestone and Dr Will Slocombe whose (entirely valid) comments and criticisms helped me add a clarity and depth to my subject that I would never have found alone. Thanks also to Chris Branson, John Wrighton, Andrew Blackmore and anyone else I ve forced to read various drafts over the years. I m also most especially indebted to Caroline Miles and everyone at the LPL who have always acknowledged the demands of my double-life and graciously looked the other way when I showed up for work armed with books that had categorically nothing to do with the running of a library. Finally, I d like to thank Carolina Cabral, a woman so kind and supportive to me over the years that this brief gesture of acknowledgement can t possibly convey the full measure of my gratitude. If this book was written with the aim of establishing obligation to those voices that remain unrepresented, then she is a person who has orchestrated her entire life around putting such a principle into practice something I m impossibly proud of, and always will be. vii

List of Abbreviations AP The Affect Phase (from a Supplement to The Differend ) found in The Lyotard Reader and Guide, ed. Keith Crome and James Williams (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) CS Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter (London: Picador, 1984) D Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998) EII Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated (London: Penguin Books, 2003) ELIC Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (London: Penguin Books, 2005) HJ Jean-François Lyotard, Heidegger and the jews, trans. Andreas Michael and Mark Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) I Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoff Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) JG Jean-François Lyotard, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) KL William Shakespeare, King Lear (London: Heron Books Ltd, 1957) LAS Jean-François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (California: Stanford University Press, 1991) LE Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: The Athlone Press, 2004) MS Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L Babinsky (New York: Paulist Press, 1993) O The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles (Bath: Penguin Books, 2001) P Jean-François Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) PF Jean-François Lyotard, Postmodern Fables, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) PMC Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington, Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) viii

List of Abbreviations ix PM:ETC Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children; Correspondence 1982 1985, ed. Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas, trans. Don Barry, Bernadette Maher, Julian Pefanis, Virginia Spate, and Morgan Thomas (London: Turnaround, 1992) R Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Classics, 1987) SR Jean-François Lyotard, Soundproof Room: Malraux s Anti- Aesthetics (California: Stanford University Press, 2001) TI The Iliad, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) TP Jean-François Lyotard, Toward the Postmodern, ed. Robert Harvey and Mark S. Roberts (New York: Humanity Books, 1999)