Standing Problems 255for linking together heterogeneous phrases, rules that are proper for attaining certain
goals: to know, to teach’. However, Lyotard insists that ‘there is no “language” in
general, except as the object of an Idea’. In other words, there is no overarching or
metalanguage that covers all genres and regimens.^28 A genre of discourse provides a
range of possible phrases; however, for Lyotard it is crucial to acknowledge that there
is no way at all to resolve differences between phrase regimens. As he puts it, there is
no ‘non-phrase...There is no last phrase’. For Lyotard, therefore, there are two key
assumptions underpinning his theory: ‘1) the impossibility of avoiding conflicts (the
impossibility of indifference) and 2) the absence of a universal genre of discourse to
regulate them’ (Lyotard 1999: xii).
If we translate the argument here: Lyotard is suggesting thatallwe have are phrases.
There is nothing underneath, behind, developing within or as references for, phrases.
The term ‘phrase’ here functions in the same way as Nietzsche’s ‘interpretative per-
spective’ or Foucault’s ‘episteme’. There is no pre-understanding prior to phrases.
Reality and truth are embedded in phrases. In breaking from the anthropomorphism
of Wittgenstein and Kant, Lyotard is also asserting the importance of the inhuman
(in the same spirit as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault). He also thinks
that traditional metaphysics is committed to the error of the ‘Idea’ of the human.
As Lyotard comments, the inhuman means ‘incompatible with an Idea of humanity’
(Lyotard 1999: 18; see also Lyotard 1991b). Lyotard predictably repudiates such a
metaphysical use. What we loosely call reality is in fact ‘a swarm of senses’, which
directly parallels Nietzsche’s ‘flux of sensation’. There is no meaning to this ‘flux’
or ‘swarm’ unless we apply a phrase to it, or as Lyotard puts it, unless part of this
flux is ‘pinpointed by a world’ (Lyotard 1999: 50). For Lyotard, phrases belong ‘to
heterogeneous families’, and all proper names are situated in these different ‘families’
(Lyotard 1999: 49). There are, for Lyotard, as many families as there are phrases. In
terms of the multiplicity attached to any proper name, Lyotard, with an ironic eye on
his own Marxist past, gives the example: ‘That’s Stalin, here he is. We acknowledge it.
ButasforwhatStalinmeans? Phrases come to be attached to this name, which not
only describe different senses for it (this can still be debated in dialogue), and not only
place the name on different instances, but which also obey heterogeneous regimens
and/or genres. This heterogeneity, for lack of a common idiom, makes consensus
impossible. The assignment of a definition to Stalin necessarily does wrong to the
nondefinitional phrases relating to Stalin, which this definition, for a while at least,
disregards or betrays’ (Lyotard 1999: 55–6). It is worth underscoring this point that
is, phrases justcannotbe translated into one another.
Some philosophers, for Lyotard, have seen this baffling sense of what is real or
what underlies our conceptual schemes as implying something mystical. He accuses
both Kant and Wittgenstein of this credulity. In his own reading, however, ‘We
see no reason to grant a “mystical” profundity to the abyss that separates cognit-
ives and prescriptives’. Incommensurability is not mysterious, the ‘heterogeneity of
phrase regimens and of the impossibility of subjecting them to a single law (except by
neutralizing them), also marks the relation between either cognitives or prescriptives
and interrogatives, performatives, exclamatives...For each of these regimens, there