Re-Writing Modernity

Author(s): Jean-François Lyotard

Source: SubStance, Vol. 16, No. 3, Issue 54 (1987), pp. 3-9
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3685193
Accessed: 19-07-2019 07:17 UTC

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 Re-writing Modernity*

JEAN-FRAN.OIS LYOTARD

First of all let me point out how much indebted I am to Kathy Wood-
ward, Carol Tenneson, Sydney Levy, and Mary Lydon for having sug-
gested to me (or even imposed on me) the title "Re-writing Modernity."
It is better than any rubric such as "Postmodernity," "Postmodernism,"
"Postmodern," and the like. The improvement lies in a double displace-
ment: a lexical commutation from "post-" to "re-"; and a syntactical
one dealing with the transfer of the prefix which is now connected with
"writing" rather than with "modernity."
This double transference implies two leading directions. First, it
makes immaterial a periodization of cultural history in terms of "pre-"
and "post-," of before and after, and questions the position of the "now,"
the present from which we claim to have a right view over the successive
periods of our history. Being an old, continental philosopher, I am re-
minded of the analysis of time by Aristotle in the Fourth Book of his Phys-
ics.: impossible to determine a difference between what is "gone"
(prdteron, previous) and what is "coming up," (huisteron, further) without
referring the stream of events to a now (a nun). But, in one and the same
moment, it is also impossible to take hold of such a "now," which is al-
ways vanishing, drawn along by what we call the flood of consciousness,
life, beings, events, and the like, so that it is once and for all both too late
and too soon for grasping something like an identifiable "now." "Too
late" designates an excess in the vanishing ("going off"), "too soon" re-
fers to an excess in the coming up. An excess with regard to what? With
regard to identity, to the project of grasping and recognizing a "being
here and now."
Applied to modernity, this argument has the consequence that nei-
ther modernity nor the so-called postmodernity can be identified and de
fined as clear-cut historical entities, the latter always being next to th
former. On the contrary the postmodern attitude is still implied in th

*Text of a lecture given at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Uni-

versity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in April, 1986.

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 4 J.-E Lyotard

modern one insofar as modernity p

itself and to resolve itself, therefore
librium, be it a utopian order or th
nonical Narratives-so that in this s
which modernity is pregnant defin
The relevant opposite of modernit
Classical age, which conveys, let u
"coming up" and the "going off,
measured as if both of them do car
meaning. That would be the case, f
and dispatched by myths, that is, i
the beginning and the end of a sto
On the same subject, it is importa
periodization of history is typicall
the revolutionary principle. To the
the promise of its own overcomin
date, the end of an age and the beg
ning something completely new, w
at zero. Such a gesture can be obse
sianism, or Jacobinism: year numb
tion, the Renaissance or revival, th
With those three "Re's" we get int
tle. This prescription of course is
dernity's relation to time. The r
consist in re-setting the hands of
starts, with a clean slate, a periodiz
new. This connotation of the "Re-
ginning, a beginning supposedly f
pre-judices are nothing but the re
storing sets of already uttered judg
consideration. Once again the play
and the "Re-" (the "Re-" being und
ing the "Pre-" of some judgments,
say when he named the epochs pre
which he was waiting and working
Now a second connotation of the
is connected first and foremost wit
to the origin at all, but rather a "w
a Durcharbeitung, a work of thinking
den not only in prejudices but also in
like, that are concealed even in the
analysis.
Freud differentiated re-petition, re-memoration and working through
in one of his most memorable-so to speak-short texts, namely his first
text about the psychoanalytical "technique." Repetition is nothing but
the fact of neurosis or psychosis, the "dispositif," the device or apparatus
allowing the wish to fulfill itself in enacting one's present life. The pursuit

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 Re-writing Modernity 5

of this device sketches the life of the patient in terms

The paradigm of this is the story of Oedipus. In su
ginning and the ending rhyme and, to this extent,
sical" organization of life in which gods, even the G
never cease being actors. The wishing device is em
cle setting up in advance the main events Oedipus
His life is stamped: the future of the King is inscr
past. This is repetition.
But the point is that, both in Sophocles' tragedy
sis, Oedipus and the patient seek access to consciou
the cause for the ills they are suffering and have
lives-they seek rememoration, the remembering o
Childhood is the name of this lost time. Oedipus, t
investigations about the cause, the sin which is at t
ble, the plague, afflicting his kingdom. Lying on t
seems committed to the same inquiry. This enterpr
sembles a detective novel. It rises as a second plot, l
over the first, thus accomplishing the destiny.
Most often re-writing modernity is taken in th
term re-writing is given the connotation of remem
positioning and identifying crimes, sins, and calam
the modern device. And, finally, the connotation of
the destiny already written in this oracle called mo
This use of "re-writing" becomes tricky, for suc
origins is a part of destiny itself. In other words, q
ning of the plot takes place at the end of that very
comes criminal as the detective is unmasking hi
why there is no "perfect crime," no crime capable o
for all time. Secrets couldn't be "genuine" secrets if
as secrets. In other words, there is no silence, as J
There is a sort of intimacy, an intrication, that of
criminal, that of sounds with silences.
If, therefore, we understand "re-writing modern
the sense of prospecting, designating and naming
posed to be at the origin of the troubles we suffer,
cess of remembering we are driven to carry on and
than to break it down. And in doing so, rather than
of modernity, we are still performing the writing
That is because re-writing modernity is part of w
writes itself, inscribes itself on itself as a perpetua
Let us illustrate this trick with two examples. In
functioning of capitalism and in putting the disali
force into the focus of a process of emancipation
could have believed that he had identified and deno
in which modern troubles are rooted: the exploitat
every detective, he could think that the uncoverin
namely liberal economy and society, would enable

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 6 J.-E Lyotard

its major plague. Today we know

all revolutions, brought about or
Marxism. It has repeated the alien
they were working for disalienati
Now let's turn to philosophy. Ni
of thinking from what he called
Plato to Schopenhauer and Wagne
is to seek the foundation enabling
cordance with justice and goodnes
ophy is that there is nothing like an
initial principle, nothing like a Gr
the Leibnizian principle of sufficie
and philosophical ones included, ar
But Nietzsche in his turn yields
foundation for these prospects, th
in doing so his philosophy reitera
fully achieves the metaphysics of
Western philosophical systems.
The example of Nietzsche's re-wr
the same fault he found in his pr
on what sort of re-writing might
tion of what it re-writes. It could
remembering. Freud had foreseen
the working through, the Durcharbe
nerung.
In remembering we do want too much: we want to take hold of the
past; we want to grasp what is gone; we want to master and reveal the lost
initial, primary crime as such, as though it could be detached from the
affective background and its connotations of guilt, shame, pride, anxiety,
that are still very much with us. Through this effort toward the objectiva-
tion of the first cause-as in the case of Oedipus' inquiry-we become
unaware of how much our will to know the origin of our trouble is urged
on by desire-our desire to work free from desire. In pursuing its end,
desire also performs this purpose. (I have in mind the ambiguity of the
French wordfin, which means both end and purpose.) Thus it is conceiv-
able that even remembering is still a good way to oblivion.
If the historical knowledge of an object or a thing requires its isolation
in a place apart from the network of the interests of the historian, this set-
ting apart is surely doomed to lead to a putting down. I guess English
speakers are responsive to the connotation of the term putting down. Right
or wrong, I use it in both senses of writing down or inscribing and of si-
lencing, repressing, even suppressing. "Writing down" conveys the idea
of an inscription, a recording, and a discredit. Many historical writings
belong to this sort of re-writing. Nietzsche pointed out this problem in
his Untimely Considerations and showed how that trick is at work in histori-
cal research. And I presume it is because Freud became aware of the
same trick that he finally gave up his former hypothesis that a neurotic

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 Re-writing Modernity 7

device was founded on an actual and testifiable event that he had called
the primitive or primal scene. In doing so he opened the door, on the
other side of the psychoanalytical process, to the idea according to which
the process of taking a cure could be, and presumably should be, an end-
less one. Unlike remembering, the working through could be defined as
a work without purpose and, therefore, without will: without purpose in
the sense that it works without being guided by the concept of its aim,
but not without purposiveness. The most relevant idea available to us
about re-writing presumably lies in this double gesture. We know that
Freud put a special emphasis on the rule called "equally floating atten-
tion" which the psychoanalyst must observe in front or in back of the pa-
tient. It consists in paying the same attention to all the elements of the
sentences uttered by a patient, no matter how petty or trifling they may
sound. In short, the rule is: no prejudices, but suspension of judgments,
responsiveness, and equal attention to all occurrences as they occur. The
patient on his side must respect a symmetrical rule: he is required to let
his speech go, to give vent to all "ideas," figures, scenes, names, sen-
tences, as they may come up into words, as they may occur, in "disor-
der," unselected, unrepressed.
Such a rule puts the mind under the obligation to be patient in a new
sense: not because it is passively and repeatedly enduring the same old
passion, but because it is practicing its own passibility or responsiveness
to whatever occurs to it, making itself passable through happenings com-
ing from a something it doesn't know. Freud named the whole process
"free association." It is nothing but a way of linking a sentence with an-
other without regard for either the logical or the ethical or even the aes-
thetic value of the linkage.
You may wonder how such a practice is related to "re-writing moder-
nity." Let me remind you that the clue, the only leading thread in this
working through lies in feeling or, let us say, listening to feelings. A frag-
ment of a sentence, a bit, one word, is coming up. You link it on the spot
with another bit. No reasoning, no arguing, no mediation. In doing so,
you are gradually getting close to a scene, the scene of something. You
sketch it out, you don't know what it is, your only certitude is that it re-
fers to the past-both the farthest and the nearest past; your own past
and the others' too. Lost time is not re-presented as on a tableau or even
presented at all. Lost time is presenting the elements of the tableau and
re-writing is primarily the recording of them.
It is patent that this re-writing gives us no knowledge of the past.
Freud himself thought the same. In his view, it was a matter of tech-
nique, of art rather than science. Re-writing doesn't result in a definition
of the past. On the contrary, it presupposes that the past is acting by giv-
ing the mind the elements with which the scene will be built.
But this scene does not claim to be the exact copy of a would-be pri-
mal scene. It is a "new" scene because it is felt to be new. What has
"gone off" is, so to speak, vivid. I would say it is not present as
ject, if an object can be present at all, but as an aura, a mild win

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8 J.-E Lyotard

ing, as an illusion. Marcel Proust in

Walter Benjamin in One Way Stree
same technique. Running the risk
suggest that this free floating pr
taigne's Essays.
To conclude with an impossibl
marks: first, even if Freud had co
matter of art, he also had the view
process of emancipation, of decon
scious, that is to say, the preorga
neurotic or psychotic device whic
think this hypothesis is suitable.
by "re-writing," an idea was loomi
large on it. I will only point out h
to the Kantian analysis of the wo
beautiful. First, they have in com
acceptance of the bits released by
put on the release of forms in ae
free from empirical or cognitive
fluid, shifting, and evading the p
lustrates his point with two metap
ing in the hearth and the vanish
waters. Kant comes finally to the
tion gives the mind "much to thin
ing, working with concepts, can
question of time I had started w
made possible only through the w
in a conceptual synthesis. What is
is given; it is the ability to let thing
titude lets each moment, each "
the names of Ernst Bloch (Spuren
port my views. At the end of Adorn
unfinished Aesthetic, we come acr
written and is the re-writing itsel
"micrologies" which is to be com
The second observation is quite
has obviously nothing to do with
modernism on the market places
do with the use of parodies and q
in either architectural, theatrical
that movement resorting to the tra
been displayed in novels or short
word "postmodern": it was but a
the foreground of the field of know
it is the re-writing of some featur
gain, particularly in founding its

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 Re-writing Modernity 9

general emancipation of mankind. But such a re-wri

been said, was for a long time active in modernity i
The third and last observation deals with the ques
conspicuous entrance of the so-called new technolog
tion, casting, delivery, and consumption of cultu
mention these new technologies now? Because they
form what is called "culture" into an industry (a
Such a change is to be understood as a re-writing. T
"re-writing" belongs to the jargon of journalism and
job. It consists precisely in the erasing, in the washing
left by unexpected, fancy-framed associations upon t
one is going to re-write. The New Technologies are g
tremendous expansion insofar as they submit any kin
any kind of medium-say visual images, sounds,
scores, songs and the like, and, finally, writing itsel
tation. This observation does not go so far as to view
as an immense network of simulacra, as Baudrillard
cerned with upsetting the concept of bits. Bits are n
given to sensitivity or imagination here and now; the
mation conceived by computing engineering at all
guage: lexical, syntactic, rhetorical, and so forth. Th
and made into a system according to a set of plans u
of a director. The question raised by those New Tech
to the idea of re-writing as it has just been sketched
be shaped like this: what is left of the working thro
mostly made of the play of imagination and the displ
an after and a now? How can it escape from the rules
ognition? For the time being, my answer is limited
modernity is to resist the supposedly postmodern wr

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