The Lyotard Dictionary by Sim Stuart

Author:Sim, Stuart.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Passages

Judgement

Knowledge

Law

Modern, Modernity

Postmodern Science

Reason, Rationality

LEVINAS, EMMANUEL (1906–95) – see ‘Is it happening?’, ‘obligation’, ‘phenomenology’ and ‘poststructuralism’

LIBIDINAL ECONOMY

Ashley Woodward

Libidinal Economy ([1974] 1993a) is the title of one of Lyotard’s most important books, and the name of an idea elaborated in that book and related essays. The 1974 book was in part a response to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus ([1972] 1983), and a decisive point in Lyotard’s break with his Marxist past. The book made little impact, and Lyotard quickly changed his theoretical frame of reference. He later execrated it as ‘my evil book’ (P, 13), and Lyotard scholars have generally either ignored it, preferring to focus on later works, or followed him in criticising it. More recently, however, some have begun to give the work renewed and more positive attention (Williams 2000; Woodward 2009).

The idea of libidinal economy originates with Sigmund Freud. For him, it indicates the system of energy (libido) circulating in the human body and psychic apparatus, investing regions and undergoing metamorphoses. Lyotard greatly extends the idea of libidinal economy into a global metaphysics and identifies it with political economy. In ‘A Short Libidinal Economy’ he asserts that libidinal economy is not limited to the organic body: ‘It extends well beyond this supposed frontier because words, books, food, images, looks, parts of the body, tools and machines, animals, sounds and gestures are able to be invested, and thus function as charged regions and as channels of circulation’ (LRG, 205). This extension then allows a libidinal economic model of society:

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