Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information and Art

225 Pages·2018·1.77 MB·English

by  Ashley Woodward

Lyotard and the Inhuman
Condition
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Technicities
Series Editors: John Armitage, Ryan Bishop and Joanne Roberts, Winchester
School of Art, University of Southampton
The philosophy of technicities: exploring how technology mediates art, frames
design and augments the mediated collective perception of everyday life.
Technicities will publish the latest philosophical thinking about our
increasingly immaterial technocultural conditions, with a unique focus on
the context of art, design and media.
Editorial Advisory Board
Benjamin Bratton, Cheryl Buckley, Sean Cubitt, Clive Dilnot, Jin Huimin,
Arthur Kroker, Geert Lovink, Scott McQuire, Gunalan Nadarajan, Elin
O’Hara Slavick, Li Shqiao, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
Published
Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Refl ections on Nihilism,
Information and Art
By Ashley Woodward
Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media
Edited by John Armitage and Joanne Roberts
Forthcoming
Cold War Legacies: Systems, Theory, Aesthetics
Edited by John Beck and Ryan Bishop
Fashion and Materialism
By Ulrich Lehmann
The Afterlives of Georges Perec
Edited by Rowan Wilken and Justin Clemens
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Lyotard and the
Inhuman Condition
Refl ections on Nihilism,
Information, and Art
Ashley Woodward
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish
academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social
sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to
produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website:
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Ashley Woodward, 2016
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road,
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ISBN 978 0 7486 9724 3 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 9725 0 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0491 4 (epub)
The right of Ashley Woodward to be identifi ed as the Author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and
Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
Series Editors’ Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction: Beyond the Postmodern? The Inhuman
Condition 1
1 The End of Time: Evolution, Extinction, and the
Fate of Meaning 11
2 Information and Event: Lyotard’s Philosophy of
Information 41
3 Economy, Ecology, Organology: On Technics and Desire 74
4 Nihilism and the Sublime: The Crisis of Perception 105
5 Aesthēsis and Technē: New Technologies and
Lyotard’s Aesthetics 134
6 Immaterial Matter: Yves Klein and the
Aesthetics of the Sensible 151
7 Inhuman Arts: From Cubism to New Media 165
Conclusion: The Judgement of the Inhuman 189
Bibliography 196
Index 209
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Series Editors’ Preface
Technological transformation has profound and frequently unfore-
seen infl uences on art, design, and media. At times technology eman-
cipates art and enriches the quality of design. Occasionally it causes
acute individual and collective problems of mediated perception.
Time after time technological change accomplishes both simultane-
ously. This new book series explores and refl ects philosophically on
what new and emerging technicities do to our everyday lives and
increasingly immaterial technocultural conditions. Moving beyond
traditional conceptions of the philosophy of technology and of techne,
the series presents new philosophical thinking on how technology
constantly alters the essential conditions of beauty, invention, and
communication. From novel understandings of the world of technic-
ity to new interpretations of aesthetic value, graphics, and informa-
tion, Technicities focuses on the relationships between critical theory
and representation, the arts, broadcasting, print, technological gene-
alogies/histories, material culture, and digital technologies and our
philosophical views of the world of art, design, and media.
The series foregrounds contemporary work in art, design, and
media whilst remaining inclusive, in terms of both philosophical per-
spectives on technology and interdisciplinary contributions. For a
philosophy of technicities is crucial to extant debates over the artis-
tic, inventive, and informational aspects of technology. The books
in the Technicities series concentrate on present-day and evolving
technological advances but visual, design-led, and mass-mediated
questions are emphasised to further our knowledge of their often-
combined means of digital transformation.
The editors of Technicities welcome proposals for monographs
and well-considered edited collections that establish new paths of
investigation.
John Armitage, Ryan Bishop, and Joanne Roberts
vi
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost I want to acknowledge and thank James Williams,
for the inspiration, support, mentorship, and collegiality he has gen-
erously provided me, in one form or another, for more than a decade.
I also want to acknowledge Keith Ansell Pearson, whose work has
been a signifi cant inspiration. The occasional disagreements with
each in these pages are the product of a much deeper debt, and forma-
tive infl uence, for what attempts to pass for scholarship and thought
here. Finally I would like to thank Carol Macdonald at Edinburgh
University Press for believing in this project.
Some of the chapters in this book, in slightly different form, have
been previously published elsewhere, and I gratefully acknowledge
permission to reprint material from the following sources. ‘The End
of Time’ was originally published in Parrhesia 15 (2012): 87–105.
‘Nihilism and the Sublime’ was originally published as ‘Nihilism
and the Sublime in Lyotard’ in Angelaki vol. 16, no. 2 (2011):
51–71. ‘Aesthēsis and Technē’ was originally published as ‘New
Technologies and Lyotard’s Aesthetics’ in Litteraria Pragensia vol.
16, no. 32 (2006): 14–35. ‘Immaterial Matter’ was originally pub-
lished in Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life, ed. Barbara Bolt, Felicity
Colman, Graham Jones, and Ashley Woodward (Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007).
vii
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Abbreviations
Below are abbreviations of Lyotard’s main books, and frequently ref-
erenced other texts, which will be used throughout. Lyotard’s essays
and other minor works, along with other texts referenced, appear in
the Bibliography.
Works by Lyotard
A T he Assassination of Experience by Painting – Monory, trans.
Rachel Bowlby. Jean-François Lyotard. Writings on Contem-
porary Art and Artists, ed. Herman Parret. Vol. 6. Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2013.
D The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den
Abbeele. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988.
DF D iscourse, Figure, trans. Antony Hudek and Mary Lyton.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
DP Des Dispositifs pulsionnels. Paris: Galilée, 1994.
DT D uchamp’s TRANS/formers, trans. Ian McLeod. Jean-François
Lyotard. Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists, ed. Her-
man Parret. Vol. 3. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010.
DW Driftworks, ed. Roger McKeon. New York: Semiotext(e), 1984.
E E nthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History, trans. Georges
Van Den Abbeele. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
HJ H eidegger and ‘the jews’, trans. Andreas Michel and Mark S.
Roberts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
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Abbreviations ix
I1 (ed.) Les Immatériaux. Vol. 1: Epreuves d’écriture. Paris:
Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985.
I2 ( ed.) Les Immatériaux. Vol. 2: Album. Inventaire. Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou, 1985.
IN The Inhuman: Refl ections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Benning-
ton and Rachel Bowlby. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
JG (with Jean-Loup Thébaud) Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
KA Karel Appel: A Gesture of Colour, trans. Vlad Ionescu and
Peter W. Milne. Jean-François Lyotard. Writings on Contem-
porary Art and Artists, ed. Herman Parret. Vol. 1. Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2009.
LAS Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, trans. Elizabeth Rot-
tenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
LE Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. London:
Athlone, 1993.
LR The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin. Oxford and
Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
LRG The Lyotard Reader and Guide, ed. Keith Crome and James
Williams. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
MP Misère de la philosophie. Paris: Galilée, 2000.
MTI Miscellaneous Texts I: Aesthetics and Theory of Art. Jean-
François Lyotard. Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists,
ed. Herman Parret. Vol. 4.I. Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2012.
MTII Miscellaneous Texts II: Contemporary Artists. Jean-François
Lyotard. Writings on Contemporary Art and Artists, ed. Her-
man Parret. Vol. 4.II. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012.
P Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1988.
PC T he Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans.
Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1984.
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