herman rapaport, review [untitled] [of j.-f. lyotard, le différend], substance, vol. 15, no. 1,...

8/12/2019 Herman Rapaport, Review [Untitled] [of J.-f. Lyotard, Le Diffrend], SubStance, Vol. 15, No. 1, Issue 49 (Anti-Semi

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Review: [untitled]Author(s): Herman RapaportReviewed work(s):

Le diffrend by Jean-Franois LyotardSource: SubStance, Vol. 15, No. 1, Issue 49: Anti-Semite and Jew: The Aesthetics and Politicsof an Ethnic Identity (1986), pp. 83-86

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REVIEWS

Lyotard, Jean-Franvois. Le differendParis: Minuit, 1983.Le differend by Jean-Fran;ois Lyotard develops further the French post-structuralist engagement with analytic philosophy and is very sensitive to ques-tions which concern speech acts in the broadest sense of the term. In large part Ifind that the book develops ideas central to Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty,nwhich the issue of validating or proving propositions is considered from the

perspective of judgment.We recall that in the TractatusLogico-Philosophicus,Wittgenstein offered as oneof the tentative conclusions that if one has to say a proposition is identical to what itrepresents, then such a proposition is necessarily not identical. In short, identity isnot constative but inherent in the performance of the proposition's logic. Inlogic, process and result are equivalent, Wittgenstein writes.But much later, after considering language games in the Philosophical nvestiga-tions,Wittgenstein, in the subtle volume entitled On Certainty,began an unsettlingseries of speculations stressing the constative-that is, assertions of fact. Veryimportant is the idea that reference and naming depend, not on some innatecongruity between logic and world, as in the Tractatus,but on someone'sjudgmentor belief which necessarily places faith in rules, assumptions, evidence, agree-ments, consensus, examples. In a definite move away from the notion of alanguage game, Wittgenstein went so far as to write: We do not learn the practiceof making empirical judgments by learning rules: we are taught judgments andtheir connection with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausibleto us. With respect to the counting of evidence upon which judgments aremade, Wittgenstein admits that someone could discount such obvious evidence asthat the earth existed a hundred years ago, for to count it means that one has tosuspend doubt and accept or believe that the earth existed. Being reasonable insuch contexts, Wittgenstein says, means not to have doubts about things uponwhich everyone agrees. Hence facticity depends upon social consensus.In Le differend, Lyotard examines a situation in which a group of peopledevelop a discursive body of knowledge which chooses not to be reasonable inthat it holds doubts about that which we believe to know for certain. This groupconsists of those revisionist historians who have chosen to doubt the status of theHolocaust and emphatically deny that six million Jews were liquidated by theNazis during World War Two. Indeed, Lyotard himself takes it as fact that theHolocaust did happen. But he wants to interrogate a discursive situation in whicha most certain historical event has difficulty in presenting or presencingitself as that which can be validated, proven, made manifest. He wants to interro-gate how philosophical doubt can be used politically to expedite prejudice, andhe wants to study to what degree all philosophizing in the Wittgensteinian sense ismerely a matter of making prejudicial pacts, of learning judgments in whoseconnection victimage and its denial or erasure is effected.Sub-Stance N? 49, 1986 83


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ReviewsUnlike Wittgenstein, Lyotard develops these thoughts in terms of the Jakob-sonian poles of addressor/addressee and their relevance for speech act theory. Histerm, le differend, refers, specifically, to a performative speech act in which theaddressee is a victim without redress. I would like to call the differendthe casewhere a defendant is stripped of the means to argue and because of this fact turnsinto a victim. If the addressee, the addressor, and the meaning of testimony areneutralized, all is as if no harm had been done. The differend s a difference whichexists in a blatant manner but which is structured such that the victim cannot find a

means by which to address it. This is precisely the case worked out at length byFranz Kafka in TheTrial,and Lyotard sees it as crucial to an understanding of howthe Holocaust could be put into practice by the Nazis. At issue here are thoseperformative acts comdemning the victim to death-acts which, in their veryperformance, efface the articulation of that difference by means of which thevictim could present himself or herself as an other who is wronged. The revisionisthistorians who today claim to doubt the veracity of the Holocaust merely perpetu-ate that speech act situation in which countless people were deported and gassed.Le differendcontains several chapters, each with lengthy intratexts set apart insmall size fonts. The first chapter is entitled Le diff6rend and digresses from itsmain concern with the Holocaust to issues concerning the dialogues of Plato.Some people may find this juxtaposition of Auschwitz/Plato rather curious, butclose inspection of the text on Plato quickly reveals very pertinent connections interms of The Apology of Socrates and the philosophic handling of the issue oftestimony by the ancient Greeks. Lyotard notices that for the pre-Socratics thequestion of reference is subsumed in the site of the addressor, who is a god. Thustestimony consists of revelation. For Gorgias, on the contrary, reference is estab-lished between addressor and addressee and depends upon refutation. Thus theword logos changes its meaning. Lyotard adds, it is necessary for Plato toestablish those rules of argumentation which prohibit the weaker argument fromdetracting from the stronger .. . Of course, in order to do this one must firsthave a preconception of what is right orjust. Only from this can rules follow. But ifthis preconception is not already linked to the gods, how can it be asserted? This isthe problem Lyotard explores with respect to the pre-Socratics. Of course, thesophistic and later Aristotelian rules of argument give way to the administrationof proofs. This entails what Lyotard calls the metalepsis of sequencing argu-mentativejudgments by way of a chain of executors. The result is social consensus.The next chapter, The Referent, The Name, dwells on Wittgenstein's Tracta-tus, discussing the relation of propositions to the real. Not surprisingly, Lyotardargues that reality is inaccessible even in the case of deictic markers, since nodeictic marker can be communicated without it shifting places in an addressor/addressee model. Thus even here there is displacement. Moreover, in the invoca-tion of a deictic marker (i.e., hereI am ) one finds a constative expression which,of course, Wittgenstein has explicitly demolished in OnCertainty.At the end of thischapter, Lyotard returns to the question of Auschwitz in wondering about thetestimony of its survivors, of the here, look at what happened to me. Lyotardwonders implicitly about the validity of eye witness accounts, especially in the faceof what he sees as the disappearance of evidence. And without this validity, what isthe status of testimony, of the voices of the Holocaust?In Presentation, a chapter with digressions on Aristotle, Kant, and GertrudeStein, Lyotard interrogates the categories that make up testifying structures,categories which mediate what is presented; and he interrogates the system of

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propositions in which these presentations are to be found. Following is a chapterentitled The Result. Lyotard suggests that the Jews were prevented access tothose categories through which their testimony could be recognized. Because of ledifferend,it appeared as if the Jews had no legitimate complaint. And because theaddressor/addressee polarities were deconstituted, it was possible for the SS tomurder people without taking responsibility for any crime, since the killing of thevictim was not like passing sentence and carrying it out; rather, the killing wasbased on the presupposition that these people were already supposed to be deadand had no claim to be otherwise. Hence the judgment as both constative andperformative is presupposed. The rest is merely mop up. It is precisely a reestab-lishment of communicative contact between addressor/addressee that the Nurem-burg trials had to effect. And again the Eichmann trial in Israel was especiallysignificant in the sense that it gave to the victim his or her voice, his or her right toredress.

The last three chapters of Le differendare Obligation, Genre and Norm,and The Sign of History. Let mejust remark on the digression about EmmanuelL6vinas's work in Obligation. The digression is included perhaps because Levi-nas was himself a survivor, but almost certainly because his view of obligation interms of a deconstruction of the Greek rhetorical model of addressor/addresseeproduces many interesting counterpoints throughoutLe differend.Lyotard noticesthat whereas the suspension and deconstitution of an addressor/addressee rela-tion leads to Holocaust within a National Socialist context, that within Hebrewtradition itself this addressor/addressee relation is also made asymmetrical. Levi-nas places the accent upon the asymmetry of the relation I/you [je/tu]. The latteris not reversible; it imposes and maintains the destabilization of the knowledgewhere the I was an I (the oneself oneself, identity). Lyotard continues, the Iunderstands [here] nothing more of the ethical; it can only believe that it under-stands. Clearly, the victim is situated in the Hebrew context with respect to God asOther, a position in which the victim's expression of redress is not heard, is, asBuber said, eclipsed. But for Levinas it is this eclipse, this occultation, this silenceof the other which demands an obligation in which ethics is, in fact, established.Hence, le differendcan be viewed from not only the perspective of criminality, butof holiness.I am not sure that Le differendclarifies how one is supposed to relate sectionssuch as those on Levinas with those on the concentration camps. It may well be thatLyotard seesjudgment as suspended, the ethical as that which evades decidabilityin terms of the presencing of a distinct moment in which something is determined.Silences signal the interruption of self [Selbst], its fission. Le differend:is it asuspension, an interruption of silence, a moment of undecided decidability whichinvests itself in numerous moments in which the ethical is determined as theundetermined? If so, Lyotard may be viewing le differend n terms of an archipel-ago of contexts. There is no moral diachrony, Lyotard writes. There is nohomogeneity of law, he says also. And yet it is hard to read Le differendwithoutlinking and historicizing the relations between the fragments Lyotard presents,for the text suggests a collage which may be viewed as a unified schema. However,if one does view the text as a unity, one may well begin to have reservations aboutLyotard's suturing of sections like that on L6vinas with those on Nazi persecution,since the linkage may suggest the difference between Jewish culture and Naziculture is undecidable with respect to the question of ethics. A reader who mayfind such an inference may begin to wonder why the text of Le differenddoes so

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Reviewseviewslittle to discourage one from making associations compatible with anti-Semiticideology. Indeed, if one reads beyond Le differend nto Lyotard's Aujuste (the twobooks are closely related), one will notice passages such as those on the Hegelianconviction that Jews have developed a culture that resists direct confrontation,recognition, and engagement, passages which evoke rather than revoke the ideathat Jewish culture is itself diffident. It may well be that we are not supposed tomake the kinds of inferences which would give credence to anti-Semitic ideas, butgiven the way Lyotard's recent writings lend themselves to free association, itwould have been reassuring to have had some sentences in the recent texts whichmight allay the suspicion that Lyotard is supporting the notion that the Holocaustis the consequence of a form of thought or logical principle that can be derivedfrom Jewish ethics. Indeed, it is as if Lyotard's ethical philosophy were curiouslyuninhibited with respect to allowing for a transference with those very politicalresonances which have been so catastrophic for Jews in modern times. Indeed,this is an aspect of Lyotard's work that needs a fuller and perhaps much morethoughtful investigation than one can give in a review. Such a fuller treatmentwould include close inspection of Discussions, ou phrases 'apres Auschwitz' inLesfins de l'homme 1981) and the more recent Judicieux dans le differend in Lafaculte dejuger (1985). Given the elusiveness of these texts, it is perhaps prudent togive Lyotard the benefit of one's doubts; nevertheless, I find his recent worktouching on the Holocaust deeply distressing and repellant. For me it marks alimit where certain modes of post-structuralist interpretation reveal major inade-quacies as methods of philosophical reflection.

Herman RapaportUniversity of Iowa

Sternhell, Zeev. Ni droiteni gauche: I'ideologieascisteen France. Paris: Editions duSeuil, 1983. Pp. 414.Ni droiteni gauche is the third volume of Zeev Sternhell's trilogy on the radicalRight in France, and those who are familiar with Sternhell's previous books[Maurice Barres et le nationalismefrancais [1972]; La Droite revolutionnaire,1885-1914: Les originesfrancaises dufascisme [1978]), will find the argument of this one

quite familiar.The reader is informed at the outset that, like the previous books, this one willconcentrate on the essentials of the fascist phenomenon in France: the connectionof the nationalist, anti-liberal, anti-bourgeois Right with the anti-marxist, anti-liberal, anti-bourgeois Left. Both, Sternhell never tires of telling us, were disen-chanted with the established liberal democratic order of the Third Republic, wereits outspoken critics, and therefore ideologically undermined the Republic andprepared the fall of democracy in the summer of 1940 (p. 40). This is not tosuggest that Sternhell measures the popular support of French fascism or investi-gates the active role of the Leagues during the 1930s. A few pages touch on theseissues, but in general this is a book about ideas; the author's concern, as the subtitlestates, is the fascist ideology n France (emphasis mine).Sternhell is quick to admit that fascism enjoyed little political success in France,largely the result, he claims, of the strength of the conservative Right and of

little to discourage one from making associations compatible with anti-Semiticideology. Indeed, if one reads beyond Le differend nto Lyotard's Aujuste (the twobooks are closely related), one will notice passages such as those on the Hegelianconviction that Jews have developed a culture that resists direct confrontation,recognition, and engagement, passages which evoke rather than revoke the ideathat Jewish culture is itself diffident. It may well be that we are not supposed tomake the kinds of inferences which would give credence to anti-Semitic ideas, butgiven the way Lyotard's recent writings lend themselves to free association, itwould have been reassuring to have had some sentences in the recent texts whichmight allay the suspicion that Lyotard is supporting the notion that the Holocaustis the consequence of a form of thought or logical principle that can be derivedfrom Jewish ethics. Indeed, it is as if Lyotard's ethical philosophy were curiouslyuninhibited with respect to allowing for a transference with those very politicalresonances which have been so catastrophic for Jews in modern times. Indeed,this is an aspect of Lyotard's work that needs a fuller and perhaps much morethoughtful investigation than one can give in a review. Such a fuller treatmentwould include close inspection of Discussions, ou phrases 'apres Auschwitz' inLesfins de l'homme 1981) and the more recent Judicieux dans le differend in Lafaculte dejuger (1985). Given the elusiveness of these texts, it is perhaps prudent togive Lyotard the benefit of one's doubts; nevertheless, I find his recent worktouching on the Holocaust deeply distressing and repellant. For me it marks alimit where certain modes of post-structuralist interpretation reveal major inade-quacies as methods of philosophical reflection.

Herman RapaportUniversity of Iowa

Sternhell, Zeev. Ni droiteni gauche: I'ideologieascisteen France. Paris: Editions duSeuil, 1983. Pp. 414.Ni droiteni gauche is the third volume of Zeev Sternhell's trilogy on the radicalRight in France, and those who are familiar with Sternhell's previous books[Maurice Barres et le nationalismefrancais [1972]; La Droite revolutionnaire,1885-1914: Les originesfrancaises dufascisme [1978]), will find the argument of this one

quite familiar.The reader is informed at the outset that, like the previous books, this one willconcentrate on the essentials of the fascist phenomenon in France: the connectionof the nationalist, anti-liberal, anti-bourgeois Right with the anti-marxist, anti-liberal, anti-bourgeois Left. Both, Sternhell never tires of telling us, were disen-chanted with the established liberal democratic order of the Third Republic, wereits outspoken critics, and therefore ideologically undermined the Republic andprepared the fall of democracy in the summer of 1940 (p. 40). This is not tosuggest that Sternhell measures the popular support of French fascism or investi-gates the active role of the Leagues during the 1930s. A few pages touch on theseissues, but in general this is a book about ideas; the author's concern, as the subtitlestates, is the fascist ideology n France (emphasis mine).Sternhell is quick to admit that fascism enjoyed little political success in France,largely the result, he claims, of the strength of the conservative Right and of

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herman rapaport, review [untitled] [of j.-f. lyotard, le différend], substance, vol. 15, no. 1,...

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