Libidinal Economy

by Jean-Francois Lyotard

Overview

Lyotard is considered one of the most brilliant and influential of French post-structuralist thinkers. Published in 1974 by Minuit, Économie libidinale is, of all his work to date, the most creative in its mode of writing and in its theorizing: a stunning, dense, brilliant piece in which Lyotard, ranging from Marxist and Freudian theory to contemporary arts, argues that political economy is charged with passions and, reciprocally, that passions are infused with the political.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253207289
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/22/1993
Series:	Theories of Contemporary Culture
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII and Professor at the University of California, Irvine, is author of numerous books, including The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Heidegger and "the Jews", and The Post-Modern Condition. IAIN HAMILTON GRANT is in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.

Table of Contents

Translator's Preface

Glossary

Introduction by Iain Hamilton Grant
A Shameless Immodest Provocation
Lyotard's Lyotards
One or Several Lyotards?
Openings/Surroundings
The Libidinal Economics of Critical Philosophy
Critique and Crisis
Phantasy Island: Back to Kant

I: The Great Ephemeral Skin
Opening the Libidinal Surface
Pagan Theatrics
Turning of the Bar
Duplicity of Signs
Deduction of the Voluminous Body
Duplicity of the Two Pulsional Principles
The Labyrinth, the Cry

II: The Tensor

Semiotic Sign
Dissimulation
Intensity, the Name
'Use Me'
Simulacrum and Phantasm
Syntax as Skin
Exorbitant

III: The Desire Named Marx
Libidinal Marx
There Is No Subversive Region
Every Political Economy Is Libidinal
Every Political Economy Is Libidinal (Cont)
There Are No Primitive Societies
Inorganic Body
Edwarda and Little Girl Marx
Force
Tautology

IV: Trade
Nicomachean Erotics
Lydian Eulogy
Institutive Prostitution
Outlet Payment
War of Silver, Currency of Death: Mercantilist Politics

V: Capital
Coitus Reservatus
The Concentratory Zero
Nihilist Theory of the Zero of Credit
The Reproductive Use of Credit Money
The Speculative Use of Credit Money: 1921
The Speculative Use of Credit Money: 1929

VI: Economy of This Writing
Economy of the Figurative and the Abstract
The Theoretical as Libidinal
Bodies, Texts: Conductors

Notes
Index