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  Involuntary phrases for the 21st Century: “No phrase is the first.” §184

  Kiff Bamford

  1－20

  2025-11-10

  In an interview in 1978, Lyotard was asked if he believed a “communication volontaire” is possible. The difficulty of translating this phrase—“self-directed” or “voluntary” communication?—is enhanced by the fact that such a notion seems oddly out of
  time. Lyotard’s reply invokes aspects of the strange and strained relationship between his most philosophical book, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, and his most popular, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, in particular the shift from
  Wittgensteinian ideas of “language games” to that of phrase regimen and its attending critique of anthropocentrism. Is there, in this shift, a move that echoes current aspects of ecocriticism and into which it might, in turn, feed? The possibility of a “communication
  volontaire” will be considered through the inter-relationship of both texts, Lyotard’s own response in relation to his teachings at the university of Vincennes, and through artworks which perform aspects of this voluntary process.