THE DIFFEREND

1. Lyotard develops the philosophy of language that underlies his thought in The
Differend: Phrases in Dispute (1994)- admittedly most philosophical and most
important work of his.
2. A differend is a case of conflict between parties that cannot be equitably
resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both.
3. A differend is opposed to a litigation – a dispute which can be equitably
resolved because the parties involved can agree on a rule of judgement in a
common discourse shared by them.
4. The situation is analogous to the collision of two different language games,
each absolute in the self-enclosure of its rules.
5. Therefore, in the case of a differend, the parties cannot agree on a rule or
criterion by which their dispute might be decided.
6. Thus the ‘wronged one’ in a differend is not a plaintiff but a victim.
7. The victim’s wrong cannot even be presented for imposed silence or lack of a
proper discourse common to both the parties in which it may be presented.
8. Thus the victim is not just someone who has been wronged, but someone who
has also lost the power to present this wrong.
9. The logic of the double bind is involved in the differend, which is as follows:
either p or not p; if not-p, then Fp; if p, then not-p, then Fp.
10. i.e.two possibilities (p or not-p) both lead to the same conclusion Fp. For
example, it is like saying both “either it is white, or it is not white”; and “if it
is white it is not white”
11. The revisionist historian Faurisson’s demands for proof of the Holocaust is a
typical case that Lyotard discusses, wherein the logic of double bind is at
work.
12. The situation is this: either there were no gas chambers, in which case there
would be no eyewitnesses to produce evidence, or there were gas chambers, in
which case there would still be no eyewitnesses to produce evidence (since
they would be dead).
13. The situation is a double bind because there are two alternatives – either there
were gas chambers or there were not – which lead to the same conclusion:
there were no gas chambers (and no Final Solution).
14. The case is a differend because the harm done to the victims cannot be
presented in the standard of judgment upheld by Faurisson.
THE SUBLIME AS A ‘DIFFEREND OF FEELING’ AND A ‘FEELING OF
DIFFEREND’
15. Through the idea of the differend, Lyotard has drawn particular attention to
the problems of the presentability of the referent when the parties in dispute
cannot agree on a common discourse, or rule of judgement- something
characteristic of aesthetic judgements.
16. Sometimes, no more than vague feelings attest to the existence of a differend.
It may be the feeling of “not being able to find the words.” However we must
strive to identify a differend and to “present the unpresentable” as best as we
can.
17. In his Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, Lyotard associates the situation
with the feeling of the sublime in Kantian aesthetics.
18. However unlike Kant, for him, it is not just a disquieting situation which
indicates a split between the sensible (imagination) and the supersensible
(reason).
19. He describes the incommensurability of imagination and reason as a
‘differend’ which is “to be found at the heart of sublime feeling”
20. The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is
always constituted through an incompatibility between different intellectual
and affective faculties.
21. Here there is a collision of two different language games. Imagination speaks
a language of forms, of measures; reason speaks a language of the without-
form, of infinitude.
22. Sublime feeling thus sensitizes us to an “outside and an inside” in thought, or
to an “abyss” separating imagination and reason.
23. Sublime feeling becomes, as a result, “the transport that leads all thought
(critical thought included) to its limits.” Here the human capacity of reflexive
(self-referent) thinking is hinted at as the “limit”. 
24. This is because, for Lyotard: “with reflection, thinking seems to have at its
disposal the critical weapon itself. For in critical philosophy the very
possibility of philosophy bears the name of reflection.” 
25. Thus Lyotard enables us to see the sublime as a model for reflexive thinking
generally via his concept of the differend. This virtually infinite creative
capacity of thought is what according to him, manifests in the avant-gardes.