Lyotard's Freud

Author(s): Anne Tomiche

Source: L'Esprit Créateur , Spring 1991, Vol. 31, No. 1, Passages, Genres, Differends:
Jean-François Lyotard (Spring 1991), pp. 48-61
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/26286637

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to L'Esprit Créateur

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Lyotard's Freud

Anne Tomiche

Phénoménologie) up to the more recent texts of L'Inhumain (a

FROM DISCOURS, FIGURE1 (Lyotard's second book after La
collection of essays written in the mid-80s, published in 1988),
Heidegger et "les juifs" (1988), and "Emma,"2 Freud is a recurrent
figure. It is through a reading of Freud that Lyotard articulates the
notion of "figurai space" in DF: it is then through a "return to Freud"
that he elaborates those of "inhuman," "Jews," "infancy," and
"affect-phrase." I want to analyze here the role that Freud plays in these
texts, in order to determine both a continuity and a shift in Lyotard's
reading of Freud. The continuity lies in the stakes of the readings: to
"defend" the inarticulable, the heterogeneous, the inaccordable.
Between DF and the "return to Freud," however, a shift occurs with Le
Différend (1983), which elaborates a "philosophy of phrases."3 The turn
to Freud in DF was an appeal to metapsychology in order to "defend,"
without appealing to phenomenology, the inarticulable against the
hegemony of the linguistic. After Diff, the "return to Freud" in L'Inh.,
Heid., and "Emma" relies on an appeal to phraseology, allowing
Lyotard to do without metapsychology—i.e., without energetics, hence
without physics—in order to replace it with the philosophy of phrases
and to replace deconstructive economy with the questions of linkage and
phrasing.
In DF, under the name of "figurai space," Lyotard seeks to identify
that which, within discourse, undermines discourse, disrupts it, does it
violence. Art (poetry, painting) has to do with this figurai space: "the
position of art indicates a function of the figure, a function which is not
signified and which is located around and even within discourse. . . . Art
wants the figure, 'beauty' is figurai" (DF 13). If art reveals a function of
the figurai, then art is violence, disruption: such violence and disruption
result both from the fact that a force is exerted and from its work. The
work of this force which operates on and within discourse, undoing dis
course without destroying meaning, is also the work of dreams such as
Freud described it: "To undo the code, without consequently destroying
the message, but on the contrary liberating meaning, i.e., the lateral
semantic reserves hidden by organized speech, is also to perform a set of

48 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

opérations which Freud called the dream-work" (55). The figurai thus
entails: (1) that it is a space, which implies a topography, a spatial posi
tioning of the figure; (2) that such a figurai space is conceived as work,
hence considered from a dynamic and economic point of view—the point
of view of energetics; (3) that there is a relation between art and the
unconscious: the topography of the figurai is also the topography of the
unconscious, and the working of art (which is Lyotard's definition of le
poétique) operates according to the same "rules" as the dream-work.
From a topographical point of view, the figurai space is both outside
and inside discourse, bordering it and inhabiting it:

from within discourse, it is possible to move to and in the figure. It is possible to move to
the figure by indicating that any discourse has its counterpart in the object about which it
talks, an object which is over there as that towards which discourse points: a sight border
ing discourse. And it is possible to move into the figure without leaving language because
the figure inhabits it. (13)

The inferiority of the figurai space with respect to discourse is thus not
dialectical: there is no resolution, the figure remains both inside and out
side. Moreover, this figurai space is "the length and breadth [étendue]...
which creates the depth or the representation [and which], far from being
signifiable in words, lies [s'étend] along their edge" (14, my emphasis).
The figurai space creates "thickness," "depth," and "relief." When he
elaborated the first topography of the psychic apparatus—the topogra
phy of the Preconscious, the Unconscious, and the Conscious—Freud
already insisted that the topographical approach allows psychoanalysis
to move away from a descriptive psychology of consciousness and that
such an approach explains why psychoanalysis has been termed "depth
psychology," because it reveals the "dimension of depth in the mind."4
Both the topography of the figurai and that of the psychic apparatus are
topographies of depths, relief, and the three-dimensional. Moreover,
just as, in the figurai topography, the figure's relation to discourse is a
relation of simultaneous interiority and exteriority, so, in the psychic
topography, the notions of interiority and exteriority are called into
question by what Freud calls, paradoxically, "unconscious affect and
unconscious emotion." One would think, Freud notes, that the very
essence of an emotion is to be perceived, hence to belong to conscious
ness. Thus, there could not be any unconscious affect or emotion. In
fact, things work differently. An affective impulse can be perceived yet
remain unrecognized or misconstrued. Its own representative has been

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 49

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

repressed and therefore it has attached itself to another representation of

which, for consciousness, it is the manifestation. As Freud writes: "In
every instance where repression has succeeded in inhibiting the develop
ment of affects, we term those affects (which we restore when we undo
the work of repression) 'unconscious' " (Freud 178). The unconscious
affect belongs to consciousness (insofar as the affect is perceived) while
at the same time it is outside consciousness since the representation of the
original affect has been repressed and lies in the unconscious. Like the
figure, the unconscious affect is topographically both inside and outside.
In terms of energetics (from a dynamic and economic point of view),
both the figurai and the unconscious are defined in terms of a conflict
and as the work of forces. In the chapter of DF entitled "The Dream
work does not think," Lyotard analyzes the dream-work (Traumarbeit)
such as Freud describes it. Not a discourse, this work operates on the dis
course inside the dream (Traumgedanke) in order to disrupt and distort
it. Lyotard analyzes each of the four operations of the dream-work—
condensation, displacement, considerations of representability, and
secondary revision—in order to show that they do not belong to the
order of language. One of the things at stake in Lyotard's reading of
Freud is to oppose Lacan's interpretation of the dream operations in
"The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious."5 As the title indicates,
Lacan's interpretation privileges the letter, the signifier, and tends to
support his thesis that "the unconscious is structured like a language."
From the very beginning of his analysis of The Interpretation of Dreams,
Lacan asserts that in that work "every page deals with what I call the
letter of discourse" (159, my emphasis). When Freud associates the
dream with a rebus or with ideograms, it is in fact only in order to show
that "even in this writing, the so-called 'ideogram' is a letter" (160).
Despite the presence of visual, figurative, and graphic elements, the
dream is, according to Lacan, an organization of signifiers. Against
Lacan's linguistics, Lyotard promotes energetics: for each of the four
operations of the dream, Lyotard shows that what is involved in the
dream-work is not discourse, the organization of signifiers, but the other
of articulated and organized discourse.
Lacan's starting point, when he elaborates the structure of the uncon
scious, relies on linguistics—his own revised version of Saussure's
algorithm of the sign. In order to define condensation and displacement,
he begins his analysis with a definition of the tropes of metaphor and
metonymy—a definition of figures of style. His definition diverges from

50 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

Jakobson's but nevertheless relies on a similar linguistic privilege

granted, both in the interpretation of Freud's analysis of dreams and in
the definition of tropes, to the axes of substitution and association
around which articulated discourse is constructed. For Lyotard, on the
contrary, the operations of the dream perform a work of deconstruction.
Condensation corresponds to a change in a state of matter, such as the
reduction in volume involved in the change from gas to liquid. Applied
to a text (for example, the text of the dream), condensation results in a
compression of its matter:

condensation comes under an energetics which plays "freely" with the units of the initial
text: freely, that is, as regards the constraints specific to the . . . linguistic message. . . . The
force . . . compresses the primary text, crumpling it up, folding it,. . . fabricating new units
which are not linguistic signs or graphic entities. (244)

As for displacement, which Freud considers to be a work preparatory to

condensation, it also needs to be conceived in energetic terms:

Take a text written on a sheet of paper and crumple it. The elements of the discourse take
on relief, in the literal sense. Imagine that, before the grip of condensation compresses the
dream-thoughts, displacement has reinforced certain zones of the text, so that they resist
contraction and remain legible. (247)

Like condensation, displacement is the result of the pressure of a force

which, far from constructing articulated discourse along the paradig
matic and syntagmatic axes, deconstructs it, compresses its units, gives
them volume, thereby operating in the three-dimensional space of depth
and relief.

And Lyotard concludes6: "The dream-work is not a language; it is

the effect on language of the force exerted by the figurai. . . . This force
breaks the law. It hinders hearing but makes us see" (DF270). Whereas
for Lacan the unconscious is structured like a language, whereas in
Jakobson's analyses paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations underlie the
operations which construct discourse, what interests Lyotard is to show
that the dream-work does not operate according to articulated language:
on the contrary, the operations of the dream deconstruct articulated dis
course. They are spatial and non-linguistic insofar as they treat words
like things and have to be conceived in terms of energetics.
Similarly, the figure of style performs a deconstructive work upon
language. The notion of substitution involved in Lacan's and Jakobson's

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 51

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

definitions of metaphor relies on a structuralist notion of language and is

based on usage. However, the poetic metaphor defies usage insofar as
the substitution it carries out is precisely not one authorized by usage.
When substitution is authorized, the relation between the terms is not a
trope but simply an instance of a choice between terms which belong to
the same paradigm. Metaphor, on the other hand, "begins with an exces
sive breach, a transgression of the range of acceptable substitutes sanc
tioned by usage" (254-55). Like the dream-work, the poetic figure as
defined by Lyotard transgresses, deconstructs, and undermines articu
lated discourse: "the poetic has to do with deconstruction" (324). And
like the dream, the poetic figure reveals the "presence of a force other
than the law of language and communication in discourse" (325).
Hence Lyotard can draw an analogy between art and the uncon
scious: "at first glance the 'language' of the dream seems to be nothing
more nor less than the language of art" (260). This does not mean that
the work of art is a dream. The work of art does not interest Lyotard
insofar as it would be the fulfillment of the artist's desire—that is,
in terms of its "content"—but rather in terms of its work: if the
"language" of the dream is the same as that of art, it is because what is
similar is the work (of deconstruction) which both effect—a work which
in both cases entails an energetics and a dynamics—and the topography
(the depth of a nondialectical interiority) which characterizes them both.
Such a topographical, dynamic, and energetic description of a psy
chic process is precisely what Freud calls metapsychology: "I propose
that when we have succeeded in describing a psychical process in its
dynamic, topographical and economic aspects, we should speak of it as a
metapsychological presentation" (Freud 181). In DF, the poetic, defined
in "metapsychological" terms, is the force which works to destabilize
communicative discourse. Lacan's point in "The Agency of the Letter in
the Unconscious" was to show how "his" Freud anticipated the dis
coveries of structuralist linguistics. If Freud and psychoanalysis interest
Lyotard in DF, it is insofar as, from the same starting point as Lacan, he
calls into question the privilege granted to linguistics—in favor of forces
and energetics. Whereas Lacan's reading of Freud privileges the notion
of structure—discursive, static, without conflict or disorder—Lyotard
privileges metapsychology—non-discursive, dynamic, transgressive,
relying on an energetics. His reading of Freud allows Lyotard to
"defend" the visual, the sensible, the figurai against the discursive and
the articulated, without appealing to phenomenology—hence the shift,

52 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

within DF, from Merleau-Ponty towards Freud, from a phenomeno

logical approach to a metapsychological approach.
Between DF (from the early 1970s) and L'Inh., Heid., or "Emma"
(from the mid- and late 1980s), comes Diff., in which Lyotard elaborates
a "philosophy of phrases." The phrase interests Lyotard insofar as it is
an event: "a phrase 'happens' " (Diff. xii). The phrase is a quod, the
fact "that it happens" before all determination of "what happens." The
phrase-event presents what Lyotard calls "a universe": a referent (the
case), the meaning (what is signified of the case), an addressee (that to
which or to whose address something is signified of the case), and an
addressor (that "by" which or in whose name something is signified of
the case). The "subjects" (addressors and addressees) do not exist out
side the phrase universe and independently from it: "do we, identifiable
individuals, x, y, speak phrases or make silences, in the sense that we
would be their authors? Or is it that phrases or silences take place (hap
pen, come to pass), presenting universes in which individuals x, y, you,
me, are situated as the addressors of these phrases or silences?" (11). The
phrase-event is not the "product" of a "subject" addressor; the addres
sor is a position within the universe presented by the phrase. The phrase
event is therefore not the linguists' sentence—and the return to a ter
minology derived from linguistics or grammar is not a return to what DF
had undermined.
The phrase considered as an occurrence resists the test of universal
doubt: "it does not result from the phrase, I doubt that I am"—hence
the undermining of the Cartesian linkage, "I think (I doubt), therefore I
am." What results from the phrase, I doubt, is "merely that there has
been a phrase" (59). This does not mean that the sense and the reality of
a phrase are indubitable; it means that "for there to be no phrase is
impossible" (66). What is beyond doubt is the necessity of phrasing:
another phrase cannot not happen. "It is necessary to make linkage. This
is not an obligation, a Sollen [an ought to], but a necessity, a Müssen [a
must]. To link is necessary, but how to link is not" (66). Any phrase that
"happens" comes into play in a conflict of possible linkages. Such a con
flict stems from the heterogeneity and incommensurability of the dif
ferent genres of discourse which supply the regimens governing the dif
ferent possible linkages. This conflict among genres of discourse as to
how to link in specific instances is a différend, that is, "a case of conflict,
between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack
of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments. One side's legiti

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 53

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

macy does not imply the other's lack of legitimacy" (xi).

Freud is indeed not the central figure of Diff.—the main references
are to the Kant of the Third Critique and of the historical-political texts,
to the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations, and to Aristotle.
Indeed, psychoanalysis is not the target of Diff., a target explicitly
defined as "political" in the opening "reading dossier": "By showing
that the linking of one phrase onto another is problematic and that this
problem is the problem of politics, to set up a philosophical politics apart
from the politics of 'intellectuals' and politicians" (xiii). The present task
is not to develop the political and social stakes of Diff. but to analyze
how the "philosophy of phrases" leads Lyotard to a shift in his (reread
ing of Freud, from a metapsychological approach to a phrastic approach.
What Lyotard articulates in L'Inh., Heid., and "Emma" under the
names of "inhuman," "Jews," and "affect-phrase" (although the three
terms are not strictly equivalent) has to do with the figurai insofar as
what is at stake is still the unrepresentable, the unarticulated and inartic
ulable, the heterogeneous, the deconstruction of the discursive. The
"inhuman" inhabits and works on the "human" just as discourse was
inhabited and worked upon by the figure in DF. Man's "inhumanity"
would be revealed by the traces of an "indétermination, an infancy,
which persists in adulthood" (Inh. 11). What Lyotard calls infancy—
in-fans—is closely linked to the non-articulated, immediate in its mani
festation (i.e., without the mediation of articulation), which inhabits the
articulation of the "human" (the "adult") and persists there. The
"Jews"—with quotation marks to distinguish them from the real Jews—
play "in Western (European) thinking (as well as in the psychic appa
ratus) the role of an immanent terror, not identified as such and unrepre
sentable, an unconscious affect, and a misery which cannot be mitigated
by any medicine" (Heid. 43). Lyotard's "Jews" belong to the paradigm
of the non-integratable, non-expellable, which cannot be represented
without always being missed, for it resists words and images—the para
digm of the figurai on the scale of Western collective "unconscious."7 As
for the "affect phrase" in "Emma," it "does not 'speak of' anything"
(63), it is " 'outside' the articulated phrase" (65), it is a "pure presence"
which cannot "be translated in presentation or representation" (69).
However, beyond the links between, on the one hand, the inhuman,
the "Jews," the affect phrase, and, on the other hand, the figurai,
Lyotard's "return to Freud" involves a "rephrasing" of the meta
psychological presentation of the unconscious in terms of phrases and

54 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

linkage—hence in terms of différend: the "libidinal economy" at work

in the figurai gives way to a "libidinal différend" which defines the
affect phrase. Indeed, in "Emma," Lyotard is explicit about such a
"shifting" or a "righting" of his reading of Freud:

I tried, about fifteen years ago, to drown the thesis of the unconscious under the flood of a
general libidinal economy ... I was [then] led to that which, in Le Différend, is exposed
(rather than conceptualised) under the name of phrase. . . . From such an angle I feel
capable of approaching (as a philosopher) that which is the psychoanalyst's material. ... I
do not intend to "re-write" the unconscious, but to open a little breach in the metaphysics
of forces. (46, 56)

How does such a "rephrasing" of the metapsychological hypothesis

(with its topographical, dynamic, and economic aspects) into a "phrase
ological" hypothesis operate, and what are its stakes? More specifically,
what are its stakes as far as art is concerned, since the analogical relation
between the "language" of the unconscious and that of art remains?8
First element of the "rephrasing" of metapsychology: the conception
of the unconscious as an apparatus functioning according to the rules,
not of articulated discourse, but of a mechanics, gives way to a concep
tion of the unconscious as a phrase, not as an articulated phrase but as a
phrase-occurrence, a phrase-"it happens," a phrase-guod (the fact that
something happens) before all quid (the determination of what happens).
In L'Inh., the inhuman is in-fans, in-expressible, insofar as it is the shock
par excellence, the fact that something happens before all determination
of what happens: "The inexpressible does not lie in a beyond, in another
world, another time, but in the fact that it (something) happens" (104).
Indeed, it was precisely as a quod that Lyotard presented the phrase in
Diff.: a pure occurrence, a "that it happens" before the "what hap
pens." Lyotard thus articulates the "inhuman" in terms of a phrase
occurrence, a quod.
In the pictorial field, "the It happens [II arrive] is color, the painting.
Color, the painting as occurrence, as event, cannot be expressed. . ."
{Inh. 105). In aesthetics, the inhuman is a state where the mind is

prey to "presence" (a presence which is in no way present in the sense of the here and now,
that is, present as that which is designated by the deictics of presentation), a state of the
mind without the mind, a state which is required from the mind not so that matter could be
perceived, conceived, given, or grasped, but for there to be something [qu'ily ait du quel
que chose]. (153)

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 55

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

What is at stake in the art Lyotard discusses—postmodern art, although

he does not explicitly use the term in this book—is no longer represent
tion. It is an interest in matter (in painting—color, in music—timbre, in
writing—words) insofar as it has neither finality nor destination, as it i
not addressed to the mind and cannot be approached by a pragmatics o
communicational and teleological destination. What is at stake in art
today—the inhuman—is matter "before" thinking, a quod (matter as a
"pure" phrase-event) before all quid.
Such a quod of in-fans is closely related to what Lacan called the
Thing and Freud the unconscious affect—that is, to primary repression
(42). In L'Inh., Lyotard suggests that the quod would be the "first
shock" of the Freudian "deferred shock" (42, 185),9 and he elaborates
his analysis of the Freudian Nachträglichkeit in Heid. (28-42), an analy
sis which starts with a general mechanics, and then shifts towards phrase
ology. 10 Its starting point: within

the physical hypothesis of the mind, let's imagine that an "excitation," that is, a shattering
of the system of forces constituted by the psychic apparatus, . . . affects the system when
the latter has nothing to process this excitation, neither when it enters, nor inside, nor when
it exits. ... An excitation which is not "introduced," in the sense that it affects but does
not enter. (Heid. 29)

An excitation that shatters the psychic apparatus so violently that it can

not be registered and so that it forms a quantum of energy that cannot be
"linked," that is, fixed inside the system, constitutes the "first shock"
of the Freudian deferred shock—a shock without affect. If the energy
produced by such an excitation cannot be fixed inside the system, it is
however not "free" since it cannot be discharged—it is precisely as
energy that the excitation is present without being represented, as excess
energy. As for the affect which happens "after the fact," after the
shock, it is an affect without a shock, it is the return of the "originary
shock," the return of the initial clash which had struck without affect
ing. Such a description still belongs to the realm of energetics, dynamics,
hence physics. However, at the same time, superimposed upon the
presentation of the Freudian scenario in terms of energetics is another
presentation which introduces the phrastic terminology: the affect of the
deferred effect testifies that something has happened—testifies to a quod
—before any possibility of determining what happened—the quid. The
affect is thus that which "tells consciousness that there is something
there, but without consciousness being able to know what it is. Told of

56 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

the quod, but not of the quid. It is the essence of the event, that there is
'before' what there is" (35).
The "first shock," as energy which can be neither fixed nor dis
charged in the metapsychological formulation, becomes a " 'pure'
affect-phrase" in "Emma" (65). As Lyotard writes at the end of the
essay: "the 'pure' affectivity I have referred to is the non-physical name
of excitability" (69). It is the "presence" of a non-signifying, non
addressing, and non-referenced phrase. The affect—which is a "it hap
pens"—is a phrase which does not "speak of" anything but "says"
(without articulating) that there is something, that there is a quod but
without signification, reference, or address. The affect is a phrase inso
far as it is a "pure" event, a "pure it happens." The "deferred action,"
after the shock, is the presentation of the affect-phrase, its re-presenta
tion each time the affect repeats itself, but without the affect-phrase
representing anything. Why does the affect-phrase (re)-present itself
"after the shock" when it had not presented itself at the "first shock"?
Because, Lyotard says, something has changed: "The question of the
hysterical deferred effect, which probably extends far beyond hysteria, is
not the question of the production, during a mnemic representation, of a
previously absent effect, it is the question of the late modification of the
'pure' or ideal affect phrase" (61). Such a modification corresponds to a
change within the phrase universe. We shall come back to it.
Second element of the "rephrasing" of the metapsychological
hypothesis: if the "first shock" is conceived in terms of phrase and no
longer in terms of force, the question of linkage arises, and it is a tem
poral question. With the unconscious conceived in terms of a phrase, the
importance granted to the topographical aspect (of the unconscious and
of the figurai) gives way to an interest for temporality (phrasing, link
ing). The emphasis on the depth and relief of the psychic apparatus and
the figurai is replaced by an emphasis on the temporal paradox of the
unconscious affect, of the affect-phrase, and of art today. Such a tem
poral paradox lies in the fact that between the first shock and the later
shocks there is both a temporal continuity and discontinuity—a temporal
paradox which "echoes" the topical paradox of the figure (both inside
and outside discourse). The affect "stemming from" the first shock does
not take place at the time of this first shock, but later. And at the time
when it takes place, it is not recognized, it takes place as a new feeling,
and then repeats itself as "new" each time that it happens. Between the
first shock and the deferred shock there is thus a temporal discontinuity,

VOL. XXXI, NO. 1 57

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

resulting in amnesia, oblivion; and a work of anamnesis, the Durchar

beitung, will be required in order to work through the oblivion. But at
the same time, the affect repeats itself: it does not come from the first
shock, it comes back from it. And it is not because it has been forgotten
that it comes back: what is repeated, from the first to the second shock
and then to all the deferred shocks, is precisely the oblivion—the quod in
the absence of a quid—since "it is possible to know that a silent host has
come inside the house again without knowing what he is, without know
ing if he is the same each time" ("Emma" 55). What is repeated and
creates continuity is therefore oblivion, discontinuity itself. The linkage
between the first shock and the deferred shocks is precisely the absence
of linkage.
What is at stake in the psychoanalytic treatment as well as in writing,
painting, and music is this temporal paradox, the "chronologization
obtained thanks... to anamnesis," the "diachronic organization of that
which takes place in a time which is not diachronic because the earlier is
delivered later (in analysis, in writing), and the later . . . (the second
shock) takes place 'before' the earlier (the first shock)." It is the
"remembrance of a time (the first shock) which is lost because it did not
take place and time in the psychic apparatus, and it was not inscribed"
{Heid. 35). Freud and Proust meet in this remembrance of things past
which is the task of art (and Proust belongs to Lyotard's literary canon,
as do Kafka, Gertrude Stein, and Montaigne, among others, and in no
particular order). And if the anamnesis leads to a remembrance of time
lost, it is not insofar as the time lost would be represented, nor even pre
sented, but insofar as art insures a passage towards the "essence" of time
lost, towards the quod: art abandons preestablished syntheses to let the
fact that it happens come through. "Writing as passage or anamnesis. . .
in the case of writers and artists (it is Cézanne's working-through, of
course)" can be compared to the analytic working-through (which con
sists in "pricking up one's third ear," in abandoning established syn
theses to let the signifier work in a floating way) because it "offers for
inscription the whiteness of the paper, as white as analytic neutrality"
{Inh. 67). No more than the figurai could be identified with the dream
from the point of view of content (but could be from the point of view of
work), can writing as anamnesis be identified with analytic treatment
from the point of view of "content"—stakes, ends, and purposes. The
comparison bears on the nature of the work—the working-through—
which consists, in both cases, in opening a listening for the ineffable, the
inarticulate, the inaudible.
58 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

Third and last element of the "rephrasing" or metapsychology: the

"first shock" which strikes without inscribing itself is what Freud calls
sexual difference, under the different names of the mother's castration,
the prohibition of incest, the murder of the father, seduction, etc. Why
could this "first shock" of sexual difference not inscribe itself? Freud's
answer—Lyotard's Freud—involves "infantile sexuality," that is, the
hypothesis of a pregenital sexuality and of a "primary narcissism," a
hypothesis based on the notion of the prematuration of the psychic
apparatus and elaborated in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and
On Narcissism: An Introduction. And Lyotard "rephrases" Freud's
answer in terms of phrases: the prematuration of the psychic apparatus is
an "infancy" which is not a period of one's life but "an incapacity to
represent and to link something" (Heid. 37). This "something," which
Freud calls sexual difference, is neither

the anatomo-physiological difference between women and men, nor the difference in the
roles respectively attributed to them within the community. ... [It is] the name of that
which . . . dispossesses [the psychic apparatus], excises it, and exceeds it. [It] deprives it of
speech and thus makes it infans because "language" grabs [s'empare] it before it can pro
tect itself [s'en pare]. (Heid. 41)

It is therefore the name of the "pure" event, "pure it happens," the

quod, the "pure" affect phrase—"before" all consciousness, "before"
all representation. The impossibility for the "pure" affect phrase to
inscribe itself results from the impossibility of linking onto the affect
phrase because, as a "pure" event, it is neither referenced nor addressed
(whether as demand or as response), and therefore does not provide any
grip for linkage. Genitality—the quid of sexual difference—is the articu
lated phrase which requires linkage. Pregenitality—the pure quod, the
"before" of sexual difference—is the affect phrase which does not
belong to the realm of articulation, and therefore cannot be linked onto.
The "first shock" is the clash of the affect phrase—the phrase "before"
articulation, the in-fans phrase—with the articulated, adult, addressed,
and referenced phrase. Such a shock is not a clash between two different
languages which could be translated one into the other, since the in-fans
phrase lacks the articulations required for translation. Such a shock is
the clash of a radical and insolvable heterogeneity between two sets of
phrases—"between this affectivity and articulation, the différend is
inescapable" ("Emma" 69).
A similar différend characterizes art. In painting, it is a différend

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 59

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 L'Esprit Créateur

between color (matter) and construction (articulation) through design:

"in painting, after the exploration of the constraints bearing on the
chromatic organization of surfaces, all that remains is color" {Ink. 182).
What is at stake for the painter is "to make one see what makes one see,
not what is visible . . . , color in its occurrence" (114). In music, it is a
différend between "the color of sound," i.e., timbre, and melodic con
struction (articulation): "ultimately, the analysis of the regulations of
pitch only leaves the material as its remainder, the enigmatic presence of
vibrating. . . . This 'radical unthinkable' is an unthinkable for the ear, an
inaudible" (183). For thinking, it is a différend between words them
selves in their materiality and the articulation of thinking: words con
stitute, "in the secret of thinking, its matter, its timbre, its nuance, that is
to say, that which it cannot think. . . . Words are always older than think
ing" (155). Words are thus the in-fans of thinking, just as color is the
in-fans of painting and timbre the in-fans of music.
Between DFon the one hand, and L'Inh., Heid., or "Emma" on the
other, Diff. and the "philosophy of phrases" lead Lyotard to
"rephrase" the figurai: energetics is replaced by phrastics (the silence of
the force is replaced by the silence of the phrase); topography is replaced
by temporality; and the deconstruction operated by the figurai—the
force of disarticulation of the articulated—is replaced by the différend
between the unarticulated (matter, "pure" affect phrase, "infancy")
and the articulated. As we have seen, what was at stake in DF was "to
defend the eye," that is, to defend the sensible against the privilege of
linguistics and structure. And such a defense could move away from
phenomenology thanks to the appeal to energetics. Even if it is a non
visible visual, the figurai and energetics explicitly privilege the visual and
open a sight onto the non-articulated, the non-linguistic, the non-struc
tured—a sight onto silence. However, it is only a sight, not a listening.
As a matter of fact, the question of the address, the question of the other,
is not raised in DF. The interest (one of the interests) of phraseology is
that it can only be conceived in terms of intersubjectivity: as we noted,
the "subjects" in question (addressors, addressees) do not exist outside
the phrase universe, they are defined as positions within it. Through the
question of destination, "phraseology" thus opens a listening to the non
articulated, the non-linguistic—a listening to silence. The phrastic of the
unconscious, which Lyotard sets into place in L'Inh., Heid., and
"Emma," allows him to supplement both DF, insofar as it opens not
only onto a sight but also onto a listening, and Diff., insofar as it raises a

60 Spring 1991

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Tomiche

question which was absent from Diff., that of the (non-)articulation of

the unconscious in terms of phrases.

State University of New York, Buffalo

Notes

1. Discours, Figure (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971): hereafter referred to as DF. Translations

from the French are my own, although, when quoting from the chapter entitled "Le
travail du rêve ne pense pas," I have used (and slightly altered) Mary Lydon's transla
tion of this chapter in The Oxford Literary Review 6:1 (1983): 3-34. All page numbers
refer to the French text.
2. L'Inhumain (Paris: Galilée, 1988): Inh.\ Heidegger et "les juifs" (Paris: Galilée,
1988): Heid.-, "Emma," Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, no. 39 (Paris: Gallimard,
Soring 1989). Translations are my own.
3. Jean-François Lyotard, Le Différend (Paris: Minuit, 1983). Further references are to
the English translation by Georges Van Den Abbeele: The Différend: Phrases in Dis
pute (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988): Diff.
4. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sig
mund Freud, trans. J. Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1957), XIV, 173 and
174.
5. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), pp. 493-528. Translated by Alan Sheridan
as "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud," Ecrits: A
Selection (New York: Norton, 1977), pp. 146-78. References are to the English
translation.
6. For lack of space it is impossible to analyze here in detail how Lyotard elaborates a
similar argument for the two other operations of the dream: like condensation and
displacement, figurability and secondary revision must be conceived in energetic, not
linguistic, terms.
7. It seems to me that it is in such a direction that one ought to investigate Freud's place
and function in a book entitled "Heidegger and 'the jews,' " which opens neither
on Heidegger nor on a "Jewish question" but with a re-reading of the Freudian
Nachträglichkeit.
8. It would be worth analyzing how such a hypothesis relies on an intersection elaborated
by Lyotard between Kant and Freud, and how, while the intersection remains,
Lyotard's reading of the Kantian analysis of the sublime in the Critique of Judgement
undergoes a "rephrasing" similar to that undergone by his reading of Freud: the
emphasis placed on a "topography" and an "economics" of the Kantian faculties (as
forces), which corresponds to the emphasis placed on the Freudian metapsychology in
DF, is rephrased with the philosophy of phrases as an ineluctable différend between
aesthetics and ethics (a particularly enlightening text in this regard is Lyotard's "Pre
scription," published in this collection).
9. Although the official translation of the Freudian Nachträglichkeit in English is
"deferred action" (see Laplanche and Pontalis' Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith [New York & London: Norton]), I use here "deferred
shock" because the French translation of Nachträglichkeit, "après-coup," literally
"after the blow" or "after the shock," allows Lyotard to stress the relationship
between a "premier coup," the first blow, the original shock that hits the psychic
apparatus, and the "après-coup," the deferred effect which is a deferred blow, a
deferred shock.
10. The present reading of Heid, only deals with this section and does not claim to charac
terize the entire work.

Vol. XXXI, No. 1 61

This content downloaded from

199.248.173.248 on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:02:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms