The Inarticulate Affect: Lyotard and Psychoanalytic Testimony

Abstract

Philosophy rarely, if ever, engages psychoanalysis. It is then all the more noteworthy when a philosopher takes the risk of such an engagement. Jean-François Lyotard took this chance repeatedly and in different modes. While his American fame is largely based on his coinage of the term "postmodern," his early works were devoted to Freud's "libidinal economy," the title of one of his books. In the texts that appeared after The Differend—"his book of philosophy" as he called it—the task of philosophical thinking nevertheless changed. Philosophical thought was now asked to confront that monster which scandalizes the very rules of philosophical cognition: not libido, but affect.