"Libidinal Economy" by Jean Francois Lyotard (published 1970)


For a philosophical text translated from French to English, reading Lyotard's Libidinal Economy (1970) wasn't too difficult, albeit requiring, of course, ample time and concentration. And for the book having been published a little over fifty years ago, the text remains significant today as a commentary on those forces that drive us, either towards death or into life, passionately, lovingly, flailingly, pathetically, skillfully, terribly, hatefully, so on and so forth... enmeshing us within Lyotard 's concept of the libidinal band - that kind of mobius strip exemplifying the only kind of economy we'd want to be a part of - one that knows no difference between the revealing physical exteriors and the inner, innate, structures that define what lies within.


Much of the fascinating aspects of this text ride on the socio-cultural manifestations concerning how the libidinal economy flourishes (as opposed to an economy purely political or purely religious). Sexuality, Marxism, the cultivation of land and/or objects (of art or of consumable goods), the distinction of use-value and intrinsic value alone - all these are deconstructed, reconstructed, and finally constructed again through Lyotard's dialectic of the libidinal economy's pulsional band of intensities; emotional, physical, mental, and organizational, making for a quite exciting philosophical read; a page-turner, if you will.

It is crucial, at least to my understanding, that the underlying and no less subjective element of the Libidinal Economy is a metaphysics of language that carries theoretical transmutation by means of reasonable, completely honest/truthful, completely non-schematic, and anti-power hungry (for lack of a better phrase) creative formations whether textual and/or material. Representational magnitude is consistently denied throughout, and in its place a movement of understanding that goes above and beyond typical machinations of knowledgeable bodies and more and more a bringing out of bodies capable of making their own reality, as subject as they are to all that is not libidinal, all that can only pretend to make sense.

To read my series of chapter by chapter notes, please see my thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/felicia_v_edens/status/1328002285021114371

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