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Discourse, Figure

Discourse, Figure is one of the only attempts in French 'post-structural' philosophy to combine rigorous philosophical analysis with in-depth art historical inquiry. The book has had a long, if overlooked, impact on both French philosophy from the 1970s (Gilles Deleuze) to the present (Jacques Rancière) and art history (from Thierry De Duve to Rosalind Krauss). Discourse, Figure is also a reminder of Mary Lydon's significance as a translator and interpreter of post-war French literature. The book is thus be essential for those researching the history of philosophy and the reception of French thought in the English speaking world.

Besides the translation proper, the book contains a substantial number of footnotes and diagrams that required extensive research into Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical context circa 1971. Since Discourse, Figure draws on a variety of areas of inquiry – historical materialism, structuralism and structural linguistics, logic, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and aesthetics – that would have been more familiar to informed readers in the early 1970s than to those today, the notes are essential in providing a background to Lyotard's arguments. Because Lyotard depended on research which has in many cases been superseded (for example, on the work of Paul Klee and Stéphane Mallarmé), the translation needed to supplement his text with references to more recent research. Finally, the choice of chapter titles and certain key expressions demanded detailed justifications, since I often chose to deviate from published translations in order to better express Lyotard's affinity for polysemic phrases (such as 'The Bias of the Figural' for 'Le parti pris du figural').