Childhood and education in Jean-François Lyotard’s philosophy

Abstract

The theme of childhood and education in Lyotard’s philosophy provides an interesting field of reflection combining education studies and continental philosophy. Childhood in Lyotard’s thought is mostly understood as infantia, a concept that appears towards the end of his work. The claim of this article is that childhood in Lyotard’s philosophy cannot be reduced to the late concept of infantia; looking at the recurring nature of this theme in his writings that is present from the beginning, as well as various figures under which it appears, pushes Lyotard’s readers to reconsider his work from a pluralist and interdisciplinary perspective.

Keywords:

• Lyotard
• childhood
• education

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Emine Sarıkartal had her PhD in 2017 at Paris Nanterre University with a doctoral dissertation on ‘Childhood figures in Jean-François Lyotard’s Philosophy’. She translated several books of Lyotard and Merleau-Ponty from French to Turkish. Her main working domains include aesthetics, childhood studies, psychoanalysis and philosophy of language.

Notes

1 I am referring here to the general bibliography about Lyotard, such as companion books, introduction books or encyclopedia articles. Although I consider them as important works about Lyotard’s key ideas, I wish to underline their partial character. See, for example Malpas (2003).

2 The question seems largely overlooked in France, whereas in the English literature on Lyotard one can find this kind of work. See, for example Dhillon and Standish (2000), see also Peters (1995), Marshall (2000); for a recent example see Irwin (2017).

3 For a detailed study on this question see Sarıkartal (2017).

4 My translation.

5 My translation.

6 I prefer the term ‘de-possess’ because the English word ‘dispossess’, although etymologically comes from the old French word ‘depossesser’, has changed its meaning in time and now designates an action by someone towards someone else, while the French word conserves the original sense of refraining oneself from possession.

7 The Lyotardian drift could thus be compared to Guy Debord’s theory of the derive. See Debord (1956). See also Zaoui (2008).

8 The most significative examples of these commentaries are the Habermassian and ‘Frankfurt School’ criticisms of Lyotard. See, for example Benhabib (1984).

9 The question of totalitarianism in Lyotard’s philosophy is another important topic of discussion, which could be addressed from different perspectives, such as the definitions of totality and totalitarianism in Lyotard, or possible comparisons with Hannah Arendt’s or Claude Lefort’s conceptions of totalitarianism.

10 See, for example Lyotard (1971), Lyotard (1973a), Lyotard (1974) and Lyotard (1977).

11 This does not mean that there is no difference between the concept of figural and that of libidinal in Lyotardian thought. We try to consider them from the general point of view that seems to dominate Lyotard’s writings in the 1970s, especially in relation to the question of childhood.

12 In a parallel sense, Mary Lydon and Anthony Hudek, translators of Discours, figure in English, put forward the idea of childhood in Discours, figure. Lydon relates the figure to infantia, and Hudek mentions childhood as a ‘figural topos’ in the book. See Lydon (2001) and Hudek (2011).

13 Although the German term Angst is usually translated as anxiety in English, I prefer to use the original term which already exists in English, in order to avoid the potential misunderstandings caused by the term anxiety.

14 Lyotard’s arguments rely on opposing the economy of production to what he calls the libidinal economy. The polymorphous perversity of the infantile body is the model of the libidinal economy because of its tendencies to adopt various forms of ‘pervert’ sexuality that is not oriented by reproduction.

15 See, for example Lyotard and Thébaud (1979), Lyotard (1976), Lyotard (1977) or Lyotard (1975).

16 See, for example Lyotard (1977).

17 The article is written in 1914.

18 The term ‘a-pedagogy’ refers to Lyotard’s ‘Nanterre, ici-maintenant’ (1970). See Lyotard (1973b). For further reading on the comparison between the Lyotardian a-pedagogy of the 1970s and the educational philosophy oriented by the concepts of differend and sublime, see James Williams’ ‘For a Libidinal Education’ in Dhillon and Standish (2000).

19 Kant refers thus to the French Revolution which provokes an enthusiasm on its spectators, an extreme form of the sublime feeling. See Kant (2005). The original text was published in 1798.

20 Lyotard refers to the distinction between logos and phoné in Politics, I, 2, 1253 a. Reinterpreting logos as lexis, that is articulated language according to a pragmatic axis and a semantic axis, Lyotard says that phoné would be the voice as timbre, a semeion signalling nothing but itself, singular tonality of pure affect, pleasure or pain, as Aristotle puts it (Lyotard, 1991, pp. 133–134). Lyotard asserts that in this reinterpretation of Aristotelian phoné, he follows Jean-Louis Labarrière who tends to understand the difference between logos and phoné through the concept of phantasia, which could be translated as imagination or representation. See Labarrière (1984) and Labarrière (1993).

21 See Lyotard (1979).

22 My translation.

23 My translation.

24 The text Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? Was originally published in 1784.

25 My translation.