Lyotard and Critical Practice

Description

Through an engagement with the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard, this volume addresses the current crisis in the production and value of knowledge in the humanities and questions what we understand as ‘research’, ‘art practice’ and ‘the university’. In the spirit of Lyotard’s Postmodern Fables, the essays here chase ‘the same force of lightness’ that Lyotard saw in the arts and the sciences, minimizing jargon and literature review and forging new architectures for interdisciplinarity, critical practice and creative academic work. Alongside a selection of short texts by Lyotard himself, some of which have been translated for the first time, Lyotard and Critical Practice brings together international scholars and artists to explore how Lyotard’s thought urges us to question, disrupt and find alternatives to the established programme of the humanities today. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Kiff Bamford and Margret Grebowicz What resists thinking Lyotard supplement I Long views and distances Lyotard supplement II Why art practice? Part One What Resists Thinking 1 Listening to the Mute Voices of Words: Errant Pedagogy in the Zone Grasping the zone Illiteracy in the zone Writing and listening to the voices of words Words as silent teachers 2 Animal Testimony: Cetaceans Between the Interspecies and the Inhuman Blazon Animal Testimony Interesting? Swarm Secret 3 Under Threat: Rights and the “Thing” 4 A Matter of Time: Color, Affect, and the Suffering of Thought Lyotard Supplement I 5 The Affect-phrase (from a Supplement to The Differend ) 6 The Other’s Rights Part Two Long Views and Distances 7 Citing and Siting the Postmodern: Lyotard and the Black Atlantic Whence, then, the postmodern? A final note 8 Jean-François Lyotard’s Marxism, in Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Algerian War Socialisme ou Barbarie Lyotard and Algeria The Algerian war Conclusion 9 Lyotard and the Inhuman Mode of Production Why not a grand narrative? The tale of capital We are the curse 10 Lyotard, After Us Myths concerning grand narratives System as episteme Postmodern and the thermodynamic ideology Art within the paralogy of the system Lyotard Supplement II 11 Apathy in Theory The important event Indiscernable effects Passionate apathy The parody 12 “What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping . . .” Art Présent: Interview with Jean-François Lyotard by Alain Pomarède, late 1978 Part Three Why Art Practice? 13 Mute Communication: Drawing the Military-Industrial Complex 14 Critical Practice and Affirmative Aesthetics Negating Lyotard Affirmation and critique Resistance and invention Art and politics The crisis of foundations Immaterials The painter of postmodern life The great sophist The transformer Hinges Appearance and apparition 20,000 Hz Ge-Stell and machination Affirming Lyotard 15 “hang on tight and spit on me”: Lyotard and Contemporary Art 16 Uncertain? For sure. Limping? Certainly: Limp Thoughts on Performance Practice Incertitude Claudication “Afterward”: Lyotard’s Prescience Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index