Lyotard and Critical Practice

Kiff Bamford is Reader in Contemporary Art in the School of Art, Architecture and Design, Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is author of Lyotard and the ‘figural’ in Performance, Art and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Jean-François Lyotard: The Interviews and Debates (Bloomsbury, 2020). Margret Grebowicz is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She is the author of Whale Song (Bloomsbury, 2017) and editor of Gender after Lyotard (2007).

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction – Kiff Bamford (Leeds Beckett University, UK) and Margret Grebowicz (University of Silesia, Poland) Part I: What Resists Thinking1. Listening to the Mute Voices of Words: Errant Pedagogy in the Zone, Derek R. Ford (DePauw University, USA)2. Animal Testimony: Cetaceans Between the Interspecies and the Inhuman, Margret Grebowicz (University of Silesia, Poland) and Marina Zurkow(New York University, USA)3. Under Threat: Rights and the “Thing”, Claire Nouvet (Emory University, USA)4. A Matter of Time: Colour, Affect, and the Suffering of Thought, Georges Van Den Abbeele (University of California, USA)Lyotard Supplement I 5. “The Affect-phrase” (from a Supplement to The Differend)—J.-F. Lyotard, translated by Keith Crome6. “The Other’s Rights,” J.-F. Lyotard, translated by Chris Miller and Robert SmithPart II: Long Views and Distances7. Citing and Siting the Postmodern: Lyotard and the Black Atlantic, John E. Drabinski (Amherst College, USA)8. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s Marxism, in Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Algerian War, Claire Pagès (The University of Tours, France)9. Lyotard and the Inhuman Mode of Production, Bartosz Kuzniarz (University of Bialystok, Poland)10. Lyotard after Us, Yuk Hui (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)Lyotard Supplement II11. “What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping” Art Présent: Interview with J.-F. Lyotard by Alain Pomarède, translated by Kiff Bamford and Roger McKeon12. “Apathy in Theory”, J.-F. Lyotard, translated by Roger McKeonPart III: Why Art Practice?13. Mute Communication: Drawing the Military-Industrial Complex, Jill Gibbon (Leeds Beckett University, UK)14. Critical Practice and Affirmative Aesthetics, Ashley Woodward (University of Dundee, UK)15. “hang on tight and spit on me”: Lyotard and Contemporary Art, Stephen Zepke (Independent Researcher, Austria)16. Uncertain? For Sure. Limping? Certainly: Limp Thoughts on Performance Practice, Kiff Bamford (Leeds Beckett University, UK)“Afterword”: Lyotard’s Prescience, Peter Gratton (Southeastern Louisiana University, USA)BibliographyNotes on Contributors

Rather than a unified picture that would prescribe a one-way relation between theory (philosophy, concepts) and practice (artistic, political), Lyotard and Critical Practice presents us with multiple ways of undoing the difference between them, sometimes close to Lyotard’s own writings, sometimes remote from his concerns. In this, it is however much in the spirit of Lyotard, who was always ready to retrace his steps and take off in unexpected directions.