Description:
Now available in English, Discourse, Figure is Jean-François Lyotard's thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan's influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting and sculpture. Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard's passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language.
Review Quotes:
"Lyotard's Discourse, Figure has been an extremely important work for contemporary cultural theory. Lyotard brilliantly explores the relations between aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy; his book has changed the way we think about those relations."--Leo Bersani
"We have had to wait a long time for the English translation of this seminal book. It was among the first to bring 'word and image studies' to a level where binary opposition is no longer the sole mode of argumentation, and complexity of thought allows us to envision that both of these two complementary modes are constantly in operation. The key term 'the figural' brings thinking about visual manifestations of thought beyond the opposition between abstract and figurative that continues to predominate even today."--Mieke Bal