Libidinal Economy

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Libidinal Economy
Libidinal Economy (French edition).jpg
Cover of the first edition
AuthorJean-François Lyotard
Original titleÉconomie Libidinale
TranslatorIain Hamilton Grant
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Subjects
PublisherLes Éditions de Minuit, Indiana University Press
Publication date
1974
Published in English
1993
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages275 (English edition)
ISBN978-0253207289
Preceded byDiscourse, Figure 
Followed byDuchamp's TRANS/formers 

Libidinal Economy (French: Économie Libidinale) is a 1974 book by French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. After the May 68 uprising in France, Lyotard distanced himself from conventional critical theory and Marxism because he felt that it had a rigid structuralist approach, imposing a "systematization of desires".[1] Turning his attention to psychoanalysis, semiotics, economic history and erotica, he repurposed Freud's idea of libidinal economy as a more complex and fluid concept, and proposed multiple ideas of libido and intensity in conjunction with it. Alongside Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, Libidinal Economy has been seen as a post-May 68 statement, and critics have argued that because of its intricate and complicated topics, the book is free of moral or political orientation. Lyotard subsequently abandoned its ideas and views, later describing it as his "evil book".[2]

Summary[]

Lyotard appropriates varying ideas of Freud's, in particular his idea of libidinal economy by which libido flows energetically through a structure of drives, while also using his idea of polymorphous perversity and appropriating Jacques Lacan's idea of jouissance to detail how masses of intensities form. He also introduces ideas of his own, such as a "great ephemeral skin" or "libidinal band" serving as a surface of reality harboring signs through which libidinal intensities pass, and the "tensor" which is a nihilist semiotic idea that stands for a sign with no "unitary designation, meaning or calculable series of such designations or meanings",[3] as well as "great" zeros that correspond to Lacan's master signifier and "concentratory" zeros that correspond to Marx's notion of capital. These ideas are used to discuss relations of force, flow and intensity in philosophy and economics, while mainly asserting that theory, because of its "immobility", has never adequately described or caught up to these relations. Lyotard concludes the book by proposing in a revolutionary manner that thinkers should "stay put, but quietly seize every chance to function as good intensity-conducting bodies."[4]

Discussed authors[]

Alongside wildly varying references, Lyotard incorporates the work of Marx (in particular his theory of organic and inorganic bodies), Nietzsche and Saussure in this context of this appropriation of Freudian ideas, as well as the perverse sexuality displayed in the fiction of the Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille. The economic work of John Maynard Keynes is deployed to, in the context of libidinal economy, define credit and interest as circuits of intensity. Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari and Jean Baudrillard are evoked pertaining to the aftermath of May 68; while being indifferent to their ideological concerns, he points out both similarities and differences between his work and that of Baudrillard, but argues in juxtaposition to him that "every political economy is libidinal" and, in opposition to his use of historical materialism, argues that "there are no primitive societies".[5]

Publication history[]

Libidinal Economy was first published in 1974 by Les Éditions de Minuit. In 1993, it was published in the philosopher Iain Hamilton Grant's English translation by Indiana University Press.[6]

Reception[]

Commentators have compared Libidinal Economy to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus.[7] The philosopher Peter Dews argues that Libidinal Economy, while part of a phase of Lyotard's thought less well-known than Anti-Oedipus in the English-speaking world, is important for its "treatment of the problem of the appropriate reaction to the erosion of the traditional" caused by "the incessant expansion of capitalist economic relations"; he also praises Lyotard's critique of Lacan. However, he argues that because Lyotard rejects Deleuze and Guattari's idea of opposing "good" revolutionary desire to "bad" fascist desire, Libidinal Economy is "bereft of any political or moral orientation". He notes that Lyotard subsequently rejected ideas he had advocated in the book, in order to discuss a "post-modern concept of justice", arguing that this could be considered an attempt by Lyotard to "make amends" for its "implicit amoralism". Dews suggests that Lyotard too quickly rejected the perspective advanced in the work.[8]

The philosopher Douglas Kellner writes that Libidinal Economy and Anti-Oedipus were both key texts in the "micropolitics of desire" advocated by some French intellectuals in the 1970s; according to Kellner, the "micropolitics of desire" advocates revolutionary change in practices of everyday life as a way of providing "the preconditions for a new society". He contrasts Lyotard's views with those of Baudrillard, noting that the latter eventually abandoned the "micropolitics of desire".[9] Grant compares Libidinal Economy to the philosopher Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology (1967), the philosopher Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), and Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), as well as to Anti-Oedipus, noting that like them it forms part of post-structuralism, a response to the demise of structuralism as a dominant intellectual discourse. He writes that the book is less well-known than Derrida's work, and that Dews's critique of it reflects a widespread view of it, that it drew a hostile response from Marxists, and that Lyotard himself was subsequently critical of it. However, he also notes that Lyotard is reported as having seen it as one of his key works, alongside Discourse, Figure (1971) and The Differend (1983).[10]

Simon Malpas suggests that the book is Lyotard's most important early work available in English translation, crediting Lyotard with providing "fascinating discussions of Freud, Marx and capitalism." He observes that as of 1993, the book was generating increasing interest among critics who have given attention to the work Lyotard produced before becoming interested in postmodernism.[11] Anthony Elliott argues that Lyotard's ideas are problematic from the standpoint of critical psychoanalytic theory, and involve questionable assumptions about human subjectivity and agency. In his view, Lyotard's "celebration of the energetic component of the unconscious is achieved at the cost of displacing the vital role of representation in psychic life" and his contention that representation is a local effect of libidinal intensities "erases the fundamental stress upon representation in Freud's interpretation of the self." Endorsing Dews's criticism of the work, he concludes that Lyotard's concept of libidinal intensities is not useful for "critical social analysis".[12] The philosopher Alan D. Schrift writes that Libidinal Economy reflects the passion surrounding the events of May 1968 in France, as well as disappointment with the Marxist response to those events.[13]

References[]

  1. ^ Doug Mann, Understanding Society: A Survey of Modern Social Theory. Oxford University Press, 2008. p. 257–258.
  2. ^ Jean-François Lyotard, Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p.13.
  3. ^ Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, introduction by Iain Hamilton Grant, p. xii-xiv.
  4. ^ Lyotard 1993, p. 262.
  5. ^ Lyotard 1993, pp. 1–262.
  6. ^ Lyotard 1993, pp. iii–iv.
  7. ^ Kellner 1989, pp. 46, 223; Grant 1993, p. xvii; Elliott 2002, pp. 163–166.
  8. ^ Dews 2007, pp. xix, 167–170.
  9. ^ Kellner 1989, pp. 46, 223.
  10. ^ Grant 1993, pp. xvii–xviii, xx.
  11. ^ Malpas 1993, p. 133.
  12. ^ Elliott 2002, pp. 163–166.
  13. ^ Schrift 2017, p. 619.

Bibliography[]

Books
  • Dews, Peter (2007). Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-574-6.
  • Elliott, Anthony (2002). Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-91912-2.
  • Grant, Iain Hamilton (1993). "Introduction". Libidinal Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20728-2.
  • Kellner, Douglas (1989). Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-0562-1.
  • Lyotard, Jean-François (1993). Libidinal Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20728-2.
  • Malpas, Simon (1993). Jean-François Lyotard. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25615-1.
  • Schrift, Alan D. (2017). "Lyotard, Jean-François". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-64379-6.
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