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Discourse as Language-
Game
Jean-Franpois Lyotard
does not take as subject the subject of the statement, the Selbst in
repose, ein ruhendes Subjekt, which would support accidents (das
unbewegt die Akzidenzen tragt); in conceiving or speculative thought,
the concept is 'the Se/bst proper to the object, represented as its becom
ing', that is 'the concept in the process of moving and taking its deter
minations back into itself.
From this point of view, if the analysis to follow has an accidental rela
tionship with the subject of its statements (i.e. the speculative state
ment), this is because it itself belongs to formalistic thinking and has fail
ed to place the subject properly, in the very movement by which it grasps
speculative discourse.
The question here is not without analogy with that of the cinema. The
analysis of the Koulechov effect shows that the linking of a second shot
with a given shot determines the meaning of the first. If you take the first
shot as the Se/bst, its link with the second is a problem, because many
sorts of links are possible, and the actual relation appears to be acciden
tal. That is the case for fixed thought. If on the other hand the Se/bst is
the movement pulling the shots along, then the determination of each
comes from a kind of ricochet (a Zurucknehmen, a Gegenstoss) from the
whole. But this whole itself is never given all in one: it is either not yet
there, or already no longer there, or both at once (when the film is being
projected, or even being made). Thus the speculative subject cannot be
assigned once and for all, it is restless, worried, and escapes positive
grasp. But at the same time it is without internal contingency, it forms an
organism, through a complex relation involving readjustment of the parts
onto the state of the whole, and remodelling of the whole according to
the ingestion of a given element. Meaning is consequently both ahead of
itself and behind itself, anticipating itself in the singular formation, taking
itself up again in the 'life of the whole'. This is why the speculative set-up
needs the Doppelsinnigkeit and the Zweife/haftigkeit: the double sense
of element and whole, and their dubious character.
2
In the Aesthetics, Hegel characterises the symbol by its 'essentially
zweideutig' nature: the lion I see on a medal is 'a form and a sensory ex
istence'; is it a symbol? That has to be decided. And if it is, what does it
symbolise? What is its Bedeutung? That too has to be decided. There are
thus two levels of equivocity: 1. sensory or symbol? 2. if the latter, what
is its meaning? We can only decide by saying expressly what the sensory
form is, and what the meaning is. But then the symbol is destroyed, and
the sensory becomes a form which the explicit statement compares with
the meaning.
In this text from the Aesthetics, the equivocality can appear to the
reader to be a provisional state of meaning, necessarily bound to disap
pear as one progresses in clarity, and in particular through the passage
from plastic to linguistic expression. Correlatively, this linguistic expres
sion can appear to be subject to the model of predicative judgement: a
meaning (a content) is attributed to a subject of a statement (the sensory
form of the lion).
Jean-Franqois Lyotard 61
But what speculative discourse demands is in no way univocity. There
is in Hegel's writings a repeated demand for equivocality to be preserv
3
ed. There is real joy for the mind in the discovery of the multiplicity of
significations of a word in a natural language, and this joy is at its height
when these significations are not only different, but opposed (en-
tgegengesetzt). Given equal lexical differentiation, a natural language is
in Hegel's eyes the more inhabited by 'a speculative spirit' the more
terms it has the significations of which are opposed. 'Coming across
4
words of this type can be a true joy for thought'. In such cases, thought
finds 'what is at the same time the result of speculation and nonsense for
the understanding, that is the reunion of opposites, lexicalised in a still
naive way in a single word with opposing significations'.
5
The German language is privileged from this point of view.
Speculative thought is particularly happy with the word aufheben. Even
more so than with the Latin to/fere: the affirmative signification of this
latter term, which is to raise (Clever) (the negative signification is to
remove (enlever) ) , does not already contain a negative weight, as is the
case with the German aufheben, whose negative signification is to bring
to an end, but the affirmative to maintain (erhalten). Now 'it is impossi
ble to maintain an object without removing it from its immediacy, and
thereby from an existence open to external influences'. The equivocality
of aufheben is thus redoubled: first it unites negative and positive in the
word itself, but it unites them again (or already) in the word (maintain)
which expresses only the affirmative meaning. (It would be possible to
discover an equal treasure of equivocality on the side of the negative
meaning: to set a term). Far from disappearing when one progresses to
comparison, the symbol, in the sense of the Aesthetics, proliferates in
the elements thus separated out. Equivocality is always maintained, even
when one sets a term to it.
So here we have a first requirement, that of safeguarding the
equivocalities thus determined. In satisfying it, one is obeying a con
stitutive rule of the speculative game.
An observation is required here on the subject of aufheben. The term
is 'perfectly' equivocal because it has two opposing signifieds: and it is
thus to be classed with many other words furnished by natural
languages. Described in this way, these terms belong to the domain of
reference denoted by those speculative statements which deal with
equivocality. If the terminology were permitted when dealing with
speculation, we would say that aufheben is an element of the object-
language. But it also belongs to the 'metalanguage', if indeed there is
one in speculation, and is an important operator of that metalanguage:
to maintain something and bring it to an end is, in 'conceiving thought'
(that is, speculative discourse), the operation which is applied to its ob
ject. This object, its referent, is the subject of the statement or judge
ment in 'formalistic thinking', which is on the side of the 'object-
language'. Taken up by the lifting machine, that is aufgehoben, the sub
ject of the statement sublates its equivocality: the attribute applied to it
62 Oxford Literary Review
mime). But the fact remains that in speculative discourse this force or
this will is subject to rules bearing on the linking of one statement to the
next, the rules we have described as the rules of the speculative set-up,
and notably the rules of immanent derivation and of expression.
Now the dissolution of the speculative involved in the foregoing
analysis by the formalistic thinking of language-games must (in
speculative terms) also dissolve this form. This form is also what Hegel
calls the subject. The speculative subject is of course not the subject of
the statement, and no more is it the subject of the enunciation, but is the
group of rules of equivocity, of derivation and of expression, that is, the
concept inasmuch as it is a transformer of meanings: work.
Let us now return to ordinary language. Take a statement (as token): 'I
can come round to your place' (Je peuxpasser chez toi). Every statement
presents a universe, with at least four instances (occupied or not); the
signified, the referent, the sender (destinateur) and the receiver
(destinataire), and their reciprocal situations. As is the case with most
statements, our example copresents several universes. / can copresents /
have the capacity (which in its turn develops into, / know where you live,
I'm not immobilised, I've the time, etc.). / can also copresents, it is an
eventuality (as opposed to, it's certain, it's a promise, etc.). Again, it
copresents / can if you want (that is, on condition that you say that you
want me to, which presupposes that I want to myself).
Many statements (No.2) can be linked with this first, according to the
copresented universe they retain: Your car's been repaired?, You're well
again?, I've moved, You're too busy, for the capacity; or, for the desire,
I'd rather you didn't, With pleasure, etc. Or again, for several of these
values. Do you think so?, and others.
What would be the speculative follow-up to the statement 'I can come
round to your place'? The one the effectuation of which I have just sket
ched, by showing its equivocality, developing the opposing meanings,
and expressing the results of its dissolution.
But in ordinary language, it is impossible always to be patient over
one's reply (sur le coup) (this would just about come down to replying
Do you think so? every time). The statement will in any case be the
presentation of a universe. It is articulated onto the previous statement
by one or other instance (the sender in You're the one who said it!, the
receiver in Who do you think you're talking to?,and so on); it may or may
not belong to the same language-game: the first statement is denotative
with modalised assertion, the second can be prescriptive (All right,
come). The second statement may also not be formally derivable from
the first (Have you any news of Chantal?).
In none of these cases does the linking obey the rules of speculative
discourse. Where does this difference, between what Hegel calls the
contents (the discourses spoken of by the philosopher) and philosophy
(speculative discourse itself), come from? I have supposed, following
2
G6rard Lebrun's indication, that it comes from impatience? The second
statement does not develop all the universes copresented in the first
Jean-Franqois Lyotard 67
statement, but retains one, or perhaps none, and neglects the rest. Is
this the error of finite logic, the fault of the exclusion of the copresented
universes? From the point of view of infinite speculative dissolution, that
indeed seems to be the case. But if we say that, then we are simply
repeating what philosophers (of understanding and representation) have
always said: that ordinary language is badly made, that the common
man makes mistakes, that only philosophy tells the truth, and that we
have to be patient.
In the impatience of the linkings of ordinary statements, there is
perhaps something else (which can perfectly well be stated), which
speculative patience misses because it is patience. If this is so, the con
tingency of these linkings would not be a failing (compared with the fine
necessity of speculative discourse). Rather, it would indicate this: that
perhaps language wants itself (this would be why one must say
everything), and in wanting itself it wants the infinite. But the infinite it
wants is not that of the diastole and systole of meanings passing through
the speculative machine, but that of the inadvertancy of moves (coups).
A statement is a move. A move implies rules for the game, a previous
move (the preceding statement), and a looseness in the linkings. It is this
last which is excluded by speculative discourse.
Notes
1. Phanomenologie des Geistes, Lasson e<, Meiner Verlag, 143ff; Preface de la
Phe'nome'nologie de /'Esprit, Hyppolite, Edit, bilingue, Aubier, 148ff.
2. Jubilaumausgabe, 12, 408.
3. Wissenschaft der Logik, Meiner Verlag, 10; Enzyklopadie, 96, Anm.
4. WL, 10.
5. WL, 94.
6. T h e system is realised in a continuous and pure progression, making no reference
to anything beyond itself WL, 36.
7. WL, 36.
8. Ph.G, 143.
9. WL,76.
10. WL, 78.
11. WJL,67.
12. Gerard Lebrun, La Patience du concept (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).