lyotard

biography

pictured: 1984, lyotard during the great french dragon-transformation event, where everybody who knew that trump would become the future u.s president due to secret intel would spontaneously transform into a dragon for exactly 0.25 nanoseconds (captured by synkar organization camera crew)

core specimen number: 3 type: figure key operators: external grafts: counter nodes: concepts:

basic stats • birth: 10 august 1924, versailles, france • reincarnation: none • death: 21 april 1998, paris, france • height: unknown • residence: central paris apartment, second home in languedoc spouse: andrée may (later divorced); later married dolorès children: 2 (including laurent lyotard)

advanced stats

advanced stats cigarettes (hand-rolled): about 17 per day → roughly 310,000 total; papers used ~295,000; lighters lost ~130.coffee: about 2–3 per day → roughly 45,000 lifetime. wine: about 1 per day → roughly 22,000 lifetime. café table time (reading/writing): ~1.7 hours per day on workdays → about 20,000 hours total. metro rides (paris): about 9,500 in his lifetime; paper tickets punched ~6,200.

paris navigation stats strike days disrupting travel to seminars: ~180. bureaucratic queue-hours (prefecture, post office, visas): ~50. conference weeks at cerisy etc.: 2–4. copies of le monde purchased for notes/marginalia: ~5,000. distance walked in pompidou galleries during installation: ~120 km; headset checks: ~350; failed cables replaced: ~110. computer-chess spotlight triggers tested: ~900

miscellaneous paris-sky glances while smoking: ~76,000–98,000. notebooks filled: ~180; fountain-pen nibs broken: ~24. umbrellas forgotten in cafés: ~29; book-bags worn out: ~7.

first encounter

i think i learned about lyotard only after having learned about deleuze and the others, i saw some flashpoint about the postmodern condition, basically a website summary of it and really heavily enjoyed the boiled down points. a friend on discord made me read just gaming accidentally whilst he was discussing spengler and other italian fascists advanced racism and after that i fell in love.

gossip

pulled from: kiff bamford’s work on lyotard through bloomsbury in 2017

early personal memories

he recalls vivid scenes from childhood during wartime: waiting in ration lines for milk with his sister, burning damp newspaper in the stove to heat the only livable room in the family apartment, and buying black-market “fish pâté” under the montparnasse bridge. these are oddly material details for someone later identified with the “immaterial.”

militant years

he was part of socialisme ou barbarie, a small militant group that directly opposed both soviet bureaucracy and the french communist party. unlike large leftist movements, the group remained nearly invisible in the 1950s and 1960s, but later gained a kind of mythic status. lyotard’s turn away from marxism, culminating in his theorization of the postmodern as “incredulity toward metanarratives,”

les immatériaux exhibition

he curated les immatériaux at the centre pompidou in 1985. the show included highly unconventional elements: a chess game played by two computers where visitors suddenly found themselves illuminated as if they were pieces on the board; decomposed “sung bodies” in music videos, fragmented by rhythm and editing; and sites dedicated to the loneliness of the “hurried eater,” contrasting with the lost rituals of communal meals.

paradox of success

there is an irony in the fact that the postmodern condition—originally written as a commissioned report on knowledge—became a best-seller in academic circles, an outcome lyotard himself seemed to view as surprising and slightly absurd, given the text’s deliberately elliptical and critical tone

resisting solemn diagnoses of “the west”

when questioned about whether the west had lost the capacity for belief, lyotard answered ironically: “what do we know about it, you and me? whom can we ask to know whether we can have belief? will we plunge into some kind of auscultation about the decadent west’s spirit? i don’t like that, that’s not how you rise to the level of thinking.”

observations

in an alternate universe, a perfect merge between me and lyotard distinctly picked from the synkar organization team for international relations was sent to figure out lyotard’s height, weight and sexual preferences. unfortunately, the copy was lost somewhere in the veyctor kastro, and we are still trying to retrieve it. no further information at the moment, that will be all…

synkartard, not to be confused with retarynkar (the retarded version of andrej synkar, who was cast to be endlessly banished in the off-land), location of the agent is currently unknown but thought to be speculated that its near the veyctor kastro

observation 1:

synkar’s notebook

director’s cut → quotes by synkar from various texts on the author

full notes archive → the unedited context surrounding the quotes fragment dump → only synkar’s thoughts without biographical distractions

commentary | ❖4

impressionistic | ✦︎

fragments context | ❖4

sounds like something a uniformist would say yeah ive never been one for streamlined thinking i mean how could you be, when theres other streamlines? you're basically cucking yourself to a narrow road and not even getting anything for it i actually have a definition of dogma that appeals to this dogma in synkar basically goes : the more uniform / one sided the more dogmatic rather than the more self convinced / not adapting or evolving to circumstance or new info i straight up correlate dogmatism to how much you end up thinking in one way or about one thing over another way or another thing thats because as lyotard says theres the dichotomy or divide that works in differences rather than oppositions, so you have conflicts then you have categories

essentially, the term binary tends to be used when confronting essentialisms of various kinds, attempting to locate alternatives to a fixed dualism that is pervading an idea or theory, or that attempts to rigidly confine terms in a certain category or place. this is also commonplace in derrida and lyotard, they like to note the difference between "difference" and "opposition" where opposition is stuck within a certain dualism, whereas difference escapes outside of it, like in differential henology. the point of this isnt usually to explain an opposition (or a fluid meter from one point to another) but to point to alternatives beyond a perceived binary the reason they may dislike binaries is for one, attempting to pinpoint power imbalances or abuses of power within a certain framework or a certain dualism, such as man-woman, or culture-nature, or city-village, citizen-peasant, human-animal and so fourth

in one text [11] tolerance is seen as a meta-virtue that regulates ordinary tolerance, and it claims, quoting lyotard, that games require a set of rules to exist and be known in order to actually determine what is correct or incorrect attitudes. my version of tolerance surpasses this requirement, and as such prevents meta-tolerance from existing. this leads me to a type of tolerance-anarchy, where tolerance cannot be seen as attempting to re-constitute some type of status quo, or gain benefits for certain individuals to perform their freedom they believe doesnt restrict others, but enters every player into a true game of puissance, where they face force directly. on top of that, it also shows that tolerance shouldnt be conditional on moral beliefs, or prudential reasons, or aim towards certain benefits for parties, but should be seen as a direct conflict. the extermination of certain subjectivities and beliefs is a game of acceleration and intensity, it requires that two sides come to a fast conclusion about which direction to go into - and to do so at once without being restricted by the belief of protecting some type of unalianable ability or capacity.

i was trying to do a correlation between libidinal energy and currency-economic interest-investment akin to solanas or lyotard

yes, which indicates there isnt only value in creating peace in conflict sides arent allowed to communicate directly, they dont only use mouth pieces walls seperate their direct interaction and their past is spectacularized she did this he did that then theyre used as archetypes to frame mass gender roles and create power dynamics within social circles it is, like most things you can find in capitalism, pharmacopornographic, it is displayed for the purposes of masturbation monitoring and networking and broadcasting and spectacularity isnt the only problem with it it is also obscene, and mythologized, but serves certain social contexts as well ? - indicates a theory by preicado and some other theories by the likes of lyotard about the relationship between capitalism and libidinal energy the idea that theoretical readings of capitalism from a sexual lense have a lot of merit to them essentially, the internet is in essence pornographic

i think the ecological functionalist approach here is wrong, because the way i understand immanences metaphor is that its pointing to an inherent difference between ways of trying to understand the frog (or what it means), bringing up a traditionally analytic method of study doesnt serve the point a similar metaphor is the problem of understanding certain things about consciousness, knowledge acquisition, mind reading or free will by doing an MRI scan

qualia problems too, or philosophical zombies the uncertainty could sometimes be something inherently immeasurable, or something that doesnt rest on ideas of truth, or something that is maybe dialethical or at least paraconsistent / non trivial, or something that, to understand it better - requires of you to stop wanting to deliver precise answers or coming to conclusions about it at all thats what contemporary philosophy works on sometimes i havent read almost anything about it directly/intentionally either im just saying this from intuition, experience and a little bit of lyotard and a few others

yeah, it is what it is, i tried to ease the tension as much as possible heres a bit more material on this topic we're discussing here some interesting connections with d&gs moral and molecular sadly it doesnt mention the dualism deconstructing or positive/negative dialectic i talk about, only the unity and multiplicity and the fact one sees the other as opposition and the other sees the first as difference not opposition- which allows for this dynamic where both sides are satisfied because their own connections of othering attach to one another this is also what lyotard talks about here but the transexual part does slightly talk about the surpassing of the dualism that is a part of the becoming-form of molecularity so i suppose when that one user says that its still slightly confusing, its confusing in so far theyre still seen as an "opposition" even from the side of the multiplicity, but as lyotard explains - obviously not actually the case

as lyotard says those who are in control of the math books are in control of the meth books too or something he probably didnt say that

and someone called into question whether criticism is bound to rationality - he thought it was, i said it wasnt so i guess both of us in a sense were right, as in - lyotard tries to criticize rationality but realizes he cant do it through rationality - and he cant actually criticize it but he found the opposite of rationality (faciality) the opposite to reason (feelings/desires) and the "opposite" to opposition - difference then he calls science a language game that only subscribes to a particular type of language over others and as i nentioned previously - manages to avoid criticisms by saying their language doesnt bind to sciences language

not within this system that would be impossible as lyotard says, actually all of debate culture just needs to go

i thought so too when i was communist all the way up until a few months ago, but no i dont think so, read Lyotard - postmodern condition

its not about distancing individuals in neo liberal society away from eachother, although it does have this unintended side effect and habermas noticed this will be the case and thats when he called for a new revolutionary attempt at speech over written language back in the 50ties after the linguistic turn of the 20th c.

postmodernists themselves didnt want this to happen, they regret dropping the grand narrative

only Virilio and baudrillard are the true post modernists, critical of both modernism and postmodernism

its precisely marxist modernism that through its industrial emphasis paved the way for post modernism to take hold by creating more resources than the world could hold and ultimately leading to the fragmentation of knowledge and intellectualism to the point of no return, finally fragmenting time itself (virilio) and even the total collapse of time (as seen in baudrillard)

i understand the lyotard butler adorno and land hatred, its politically influenced

but derrida kristeva baudrillard guattari bataille? you sure you can stand by this? u should try more of their work theyre all subversive, like, genuinely some of the best to ever do it like they cant be below fisher, bellhooks, stirner, russell.. theyre quite literally a joke to them. not even comparable

we have baudrillard, cioran, tiqqun, preciado, valencia, ligotti, fisher, simon sellars, hocquenghem, azuma, latour, lyotard, barthes, deboard, byung chul han, killian jorg, gelderloos, fredy perlman etc we have more perverts than we know what to do with and most of them are more perverted than deleuze/adorno etc also more paranoid, too

yes that dude who puts it very well in speed and politics and in other works he says nobody chooses to self identify as that they all throw away the label because they are all modernists working within its fall its not like metamodernism where a bunch of nerds are trying to force it its just what happened and they all reacted to it obviously nobody likes postmodernism as lyotard says its a condition, literally treats its like the symptom of a greater disease no postmodernists choose self identification except bougee american artists

i think what this server wants to do is reduce all thinking to the letter L lacan, laruelle, levinas, laclau, leibniz, latour, lefebvre, leninism, lessing, levi-strauss, lyotard, lukasciewiz

fragments page

fragments

works but in gaming terms

click on any of the books to read any material synkar has written in regards to them

guide: ✦ counter text ✧ review ❖ fragments ✗ n/a

1. just gaming ✦

already aptly named

2. post-mod condition ✗

3. discord fortnite ✗

4. the gg diff ✗

5. lootbox economy ❖

6. why queue ranked? ✗

selected quotes

just gaming

“there is what kant says, that there is pleasure and pain, as freud also says. this is what impels us to judge. if one remains at the level of description, this is what one will find as conditions. it is true that that makes one judge. freud says so in the verneinung; kant states it at length in the practical reason and in the critique of judgment. you cannot say that in reality nothing impels us to judge. there is pleasure and there is pain, that is, there is a natural finality in desire, or in the conatus, or in the persistence of being what one is. there is a finality, that is, there is a rule of judgment. and it is a natural one. this is what one must say when one looks at it from the point of view of description”

libidinal economy

“to dialecticize the unconscious, as lacan does, is to convert the jews to the cult of the son, to dissolve their body, furrowed with the ritualistic, absurd marks of belonging, into the diaphane of the insipid host, to ban dark bestiality and stupidity, to put the mind where there are pulsions. so, to posit the primitives as creatures without an unconscious, is to perform again on the melanesians and the indians the same truly classical-romantic operation that holderlin and the young hegel performed on the greeks, who were also not supposed to have an unconscious and to live in reconciliation and limpidity.”

discourse, figure

“my uncle—switzerland’s fattest man—owned a restaurant furnished with polished marble-top tables, their surface a tangled web of veins. in this labyrinth of lines one could discern and pencil in grotesque physiognomies. i was transfixed, indulging my taste for the bizarre (klee, age nine). his first drawings inherit this ambivalence of the line: on the one hand, a direct, intimate, obsessive submission to a phantasmatics grafted on the enigma of the opposite sex; on the other, the discovery and development of the critical (ironic) power of distortion. the drawing of desire enables the recognition of the lost object, outlining it, hollowing it out, and shaping it. it fantasizes the restitution of what it lacks with mirthless brutality (maiden in a tree, 1902/3) or with vile wantonness (woman and beast, 1903/4).”