The politics of judgement

A discussion that took place repeatedly over several months, a series of conversations, a language game: Jean-Loup Thébaud meets Jean-François Lyotard, who is twenty-five years his senior, in 1977/1978. Lyotard has already published "Libidinal Economy" and is currently working on his second major work, "The Inhuman." Thébaud's aim is simple: "Let's talk! Your recent books make any discussion, indeed any communication, impossible - everything is based on libidinal economies, the condition of the present is a lawless jungle, the social fabric has collapsed. Do you still care about the question of justice and injustice?" Playfully, wittily, and passionately, Thébaud and Lyotard discuss for several days the power and coercive force of language, the limits of discourse, the impossibility of consensus, and the question of a contemporary definition of justice. Even after more than thirty years, the discussion, which is presented here for the first time in German in a new edition with a foreword by Jean-Loup Thébaud, has lost none of its relevance.