Discourse, Figure (Cultural Critique Books) - Softcover

Lyotard, Jean-Francois

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816645663 ISBN 13: 9780816645664

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2019

Synopsis

Lyotard’s earliest major work, available in English for the first time

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Jean-François Lyotard is recognized as one of the most significant French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although nearly all of his major writing has been translated into English, one important work has until now been unavailable. Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp.

 

A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language.

About this title

About the Author

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was the author of many books, including The Differend, The Postmodern Condition, The Postmodern Explained, and Postmodern Fables.

Antony Hudek is research fellow at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London.

Mary Lydon (1937–2001) was professor of French emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

John Mowitt is professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816645663
• ISBN 13: 9780816645664
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544