Jean-François Lyotard on Differends and Unpresentable Otherness: Can God Escape the Clutches of the Christian Master Narrative?

Abstract

In this paper, I first elaborate on Jean-François Lyotard's postmodern critical approach, which is concerned with the way we deal with irresolvable conflicts, especially our forgetfulness of the ternes that is at stake in such conflicts. The plea of this French philosopher to respect and bear witness to the event of heterogeneity, which accompanies all discourse may open up new possibilities to think difference, otherness, and transcendence without falling back into the pattern of a grand narrative. Whether any of this constitutes what might be considered hidden traces of God in Lyotard, however, is far from sure. Nevertheless, his criticism of Christianity and also the urge to bear witness to the differend may appeal to theology. In order to further develop the potential of this theological perspective, I take Lyotard's criticism of the Christian grand narrative and his appeal to the ‘dark God’ of the Jews as a point of departure. I conclude with some critical-constructive theological indications regarding the way that a Christian ‘open’ narrative may result from such a conversation with Lyotard's postmodern act of bearing witness to the differend.

Notes

¹ The cognitive phrase regimen, for example, contains sentences that are formed so that they allow for a decision regarding truth or falsehood by means of verification/falsification, and a possible consensus between addressor and addressee can be procedurally regulated (D28–30; Lyotard 1988a: 16–7).

² Kant brought Lyotard to this path by describing critical philosophy as the tribunal of reason where the judge passes judgement over the legitimacy of claims from various cognitions, which Lyotard transcribes as the judge investigates the validity of the claims made by the different phrase regimens. In a litigation, the judge passes judgement over a conflict between several parties, makes an appeal to an available law book, and uses the established rule to pronounce a ‘definite judgement’. However, with a differend there is no law book available and no rule to apply. Rather, the rule must be found, which means that judgement must be made over the rule itself. The capacity to judge is thus assumed ‘reflective’ (Lyotard 1986b: chapter 1).

³ Just as the painter in painting refers to non-presentability the philosopher in writing bears witness to that aspect of heterogeneity which cannot be grasped in phrases. Just as only a plurality of distinct commentaries can refer to that which modern painting is about – whereby these commentaries themselves are ‘artworks’ insofar as they also substantially refer to that to which the artwork refers –, thus the event cannot be articulated in one phrase, in one discourse, but is testified to by an irreducible plurality of phrases and discourses (Cf. Lyotard 1988c: 44, 1990a: 86–7).

⁴ At the same time, ‘the jews’ bear witness to the fact that there is always forgetting going on because they are the people of the Law – the Law not to forget (Lyotard 1988d: backcover, 1990b).

⁵ Conflicts surface here. Stories from various communities collide; not because of heterogeneous discourse genres – they all use the narrative genre, there is thus no question of a ‘différend’ – but because of the incompatible diversity of names and meanings. There is, however, no judge, since there is no criterion to pronounce a judgement over all stories. The power of the story decides (D227). This power depends upon the degree to which the sentences realize the goal of the narrativity: namely to ‘re’-narrate the event by inscribing it in the development of the narrative itself.

⁶ Lyotard defines an ‘Idea’ as a universal concept, referring to an as-if referent – that is to say, as something that can only be presented as not presentable – grasped in dialectical phrases, which according to the rules of logic have their place in an argumentative discourse, where reasoning leads to conclusions via the universal. Dialectical phrases strongly resemble cognitive-descriptive phrases; their concept demands, however, that they be treated only ‘as if’ they were cognitive phrases, as if they refer to objects set in time and space. Only an analysis of the phrase regimen and an inspection of the existing validation rules can reveal their non-cognitive character. Kant would describe the treatment of dialectical phrases as cognitive phrases as a transcendental illusion.

⁷ Texts from the New Testament could give him sufficient reason to think so. See for example John 14, 21–3; but especially 1 John 4, 7–12.

⁸ This calls, as it were, for the same exercise Kevin Hart engaged in when he inquired into what way in which Jacques Derrida's thinking could inspire theology today (Hart 2000).

⁹ Lyotard's language pragmatics provide a thinking structure that is especially fit to conceive of the ‘open’ character of a Christian open narrative. There are, however, hardly any clues in Lyotard's work to further develop this narrative dimension, but Paul Ricoeur may offer support (Boeve 2011).