conclusion 407Jean-Fran ̧cois Lyotard’sLe diff ́erend, perhaps the most characteris-
tic philosophical text in this area, has taken the philosophical core of
cultural and other differences to be situations where participants in
a dispute cannot even agree on the use of the vocabulary in which an
argument might be enjoined. As a consequence, what Barenboim refers
to as ‘explicit ideas’ must become an insuperable barrier between peo-
ple who do not share what Lyotard terms a ‘regime of discourse’. The
idea is that in the absence of a metalanguage which adjudicates on the
validity of the very languages being employed in a dispute, one is faced
with an aporia, and this leads, to use the term suggested by Said, in the
direction of paranoia. The interesting question in relation to our exam-
ple is what happens when the ‘regime of discourse’, or, avoiding the
rigidity of Lyotard’s term, medium of communication, does not involve
explicit ideas. If what Merleau-Ponty and Taylor point to is defensible,
some of the theorising in this area would seem to rely on a construal of
communication that neglects some of its essential substance.
Tobegin with, one should note that there are good grounds for argu-
ing that Lyotard’s idea of incommensurability is indefensible anyway,
because it depends on the notion that communication and understand-
ing function predominantly in terms of rules.^26 Construing communi-
cation in terms of rules alone not only generates a regress of rules
for the application of rules, but also does not tell us how we ever
even manage to choose the appropriate rule from those available in a
particular situation. For the tradition of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty
this ability has to derive from practical coping, not from adherence
to rules. Furthermore, as I have argued elsewhere, even knowing that
there is adifferend ́ requires more than can be thought of in terms of
two wholly incommensurable regimes of discourse. In which regime
is the ability toclaimthat there is adiff ́erendto be located (see Bowie
2003 b: ch. 6 )? Lyotard is led into a performative contradiction by the
attempt to explain his central notion, because the explanation requires
the metalanguage excluded by that very notion. At the same time, the
issue of irreconcilable positions in argument that Lyotard makes into a
questionable philosophical position does point to issues in which music
plays an important role.
This role for music is apparent, for example, when Said says that he
is interested in music precisely because it has to do with ‘what can’t26 Lyotard’s desire to avoid repressive assimilation of the other therefore leads to the para-
noid alternative, because he thinks that incommensurable sets of rules lead inevitably
to adifferend ́.