The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms

[1882–1941]) invariably functions to
reveal (although not to ‘represent’ in the
accepted literary sense) a differend – a
mode of being in the world which is not
amenable to the traditional discourses of
narrative, language or character. Like the
critical theorist or the radical philosopher,
the task of the great writer (regardless of
intention or affiliation) should be to bear
witness to the differend; the task of the
responsible reader, meanwhile, should
be to transpose literary effects into a
discourse of social justice. In between
these two categories, however, there exists
another figure, one whose institutional
identity militates against the survival of
the differend: the critic. The traditional
role of the critic has been to sit in judgement
upon the literary text – that is, to
bring a particular array of skills and
knowledge to bear upon the text so that its
secret may be revealed, its ‘meaning’ discovered.
Traditional critical practice, in
other words, is by definition opposed to
the differend. Critical language represents
the arbitrary power which will always
attempt to (re)solve the differend with
reference to one or another privileged
subject (the author or the reader), or some
favoured external political narrative, such
as Marxism.
The differend, for Lyotard, is an injustice
suffered by those whose signifying
system is silenced by established representations
of ‘reality’; as such, it is part
of an ethical programme in which ‘the
unpresentable’ – that which is silenced in
every discursive event – is witnessed and
activated as an element within the process
of judgement. For others, however, postmodernism
à la Lyotard is a profoundly
pessimistic proposition, one based upon a
denial of the Enlightenment concept of
rational critique and a long tradition of
organized political dissent. The key figure
here is Habermas, whose theory of social
justice is founded upon a notion of
democratic consensus formed by subjects
who, although perhaps characterized by
incommensurate language systems when
they first encounter, are willing to work to
find common terms of reference within
which they may communicate effectively.
Although wide-ranging in both implication
and application, the differences
between Lyotard (broadly representing
postmodernism) and Habermas (broadly
representing an ongoing modernism
grounded in the responsible human subject)
stem from radically different ways of
understanding how language functions in
relation to reality, and more finely still,
from mutually exclusive apprehensions of
the individual word as it relates to the
other words with which it is surrounded
and to the ‘real’ world it ostensibly
represents. See also POSTMODERNISM and
POST-STRUCTURALISM.
See Jürgen Habermas, The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity:
Twelve Lectures (1987); Jean-François
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A
Report on Knowledge (1984), The
Differend: Phrases in Dispute (1988);
Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art
and Politics (1991).
GS
Dirge See ELEGY.
Disbelief See BELIEF.
Discourse 57
Discourse Up until the later part of
the twentieth century, ‘discourse’ had its
traditional meaning: the ordered exposition
in writing or speech of a particular
subject, a practice familiarly associated
with writers, such as Descartes and
Machiavelli. In recent decades the term
has been used with increasing frequency
and with new kinds of meaning, reflecting
in part the effect on critical vocabulary
of work done within and across the