As distinguished from a litigation, a differend [differend] would be a case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments. One side's legitimacy does not imply the other's lack of legitimacy. However, applying a single rule of judgment to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them (and both of them if neither side admits this rule). Damages result from an injury which is inflicted upon the rules of a genre of discourse but which is reparable according to those rules. A wrong results from the fact that the rules of the genre of discourse by which one judges are not those of the judged genre or genres of discourse. (xi)

A phrase, even the most ordinary one, is constituted according to a set of rules (its regimen). There are a number of phrase regimens: reasoning, knowing, describing, recounting, questioning, showing, ordering, etc. Phrases from heterogeneous regimens cannot be translated from one into the other. They can be linked one onto the other in accordance with an end fixed by a genre of discourse. [...] Genres of discourse supply rules for linking together heterogeneous phrases, rules that are proper for attaining certain goals: to know, to teach, to be just, to seduce, to justify, to evaluate, to rouse emotion, to oversee. ... There is no "language" in general, except as the object of an Idea. (xii)

Reflection is not thrust aside today because it is dangerous or upsetting, but simply because it is a waste of time. It is "good for nothing," it is not good for gaining time. For success is gaining time. A book, for example, is a success if its first printing is rapidly sold out. This finality is the finality of the economic genre. Philosophy has been able to publish its reflections under the guise of many genres (artistic, political, theological, scientific, anthropological), at the price, of course, of misunderstandings and grave wrongs, but still ... -- whereas economic calculation seems fatal to it. The differend does not bear upon the content of the reflection. It concerns (and tampers with) its ultimate presuppositions. Reflection requires that you watch out for occurrences, that you don't already know what's happening. It leaves open the question: Is it happening? (xv)

Reality is not what is "given" to this or that "subject," it is a state of the referent (that about which one speaks) which results from the effectuation of establishment procedures defined by a unanimously agreed-upon protocol, and from the possibility offered to anyone to recommence this effectuation as often as he or she wants. The publishing industry would be one of these protocols, historical inquiry another. (4)

There are no procedures, defined by a protocol unanimously approved and renewable on demand, for establishing the reality of the object of an idea. For example, even in physics, there exists no such protocol for establishing the reality of the universe, because the universe is the object of an idea. As a general rule, an object which is thought under the category of the whole (or the absolute) is not an object of cognition (whose reality could be subjected to a protocol, etc.). The principle affirming the contrary could be called totalitarianism. If the requirement of establishing the reality of a phrase's referent according to the protocol of cognition is extended to any given phrase, especially to those phrases that refer to a whole, then this requirement is totalitarian in its principle. (5)

This is what a wrong [tort] would be: a damage [dommage] accompanied by the loss of the means to prove the damage. (5)

It is in the nature of a victim not to be able to prove that one has been done a wrong. A plaintiff is someone who has incurred damages and who disposes of the means to prove it. One becomes a victim if one loses these means. (8)

The "perfect crime" does not consist in killing the victim or the witnesses (that adds new crimes to the first one and aggravates the difficulty of effacing anything), but rather in obtaining the silence of the witnesses, the deafness of the judges, and the inconsistency (insanity) of the testimony; then everything is as if there were no referent (no damages). If there is nobody to adduce the proof, nobody to admit it, and/or if the argument which upholds it is judged to be absurd, then the plaintiff is dismissed, the wrong he or she complains of cannot be attested. He or she becomes a victim. If he or she persists in invoking this wrong as if it existed, the others (addressor, addressee, expert commentator on the testimony) will easily be able to make him or her pass for mad. Doesn't paranoia confuse the As if it were the case with the it is the case? (8)

Now, it may be impossible to establish that the referent of a phrase does not have a given property, unless we have the right to resort to a refutation of the phrase in which the referent does have that property. How can I prove that I am not a drug dealer without asking my accuser to bring forth some proof of it and without refuting that proof? How can it be established that labor power is not a commodity without refusing the hypothesis that it is? How can you establish what is not without criticizing what is? The undetermined cannot be established. It is necessary that negation be the negation of a determination. -- This inversion of the tasks expected on one side and on the other may suffice to transform the accused into a victim, if he or she does not have the right to criticize the prosecution, as we see in political trials. Kafka warned us about this. It is impossible to establish one's innocence, in and of itself. It is a nothingness. (9)

I would like to call a differend [differend] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue and becomes for that reason a victim. (9)

A case of differend between two parties takes place when the "regulation" of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom. (9)

In failing to have recourse to this idiom, the laborer would not exist within its field of reference, he or she would be a slave. In using it, he or she becomes a plaintiff. Does he or she also cease for that matter to be a victim? (10)

In effect, the different is not a matter for litigationl; economic and social law can regulate the litigation between economic and social partners but not the differend between labor power and capital. by what well-formed phrase and by means of what establishment procedure can the worker affirm before the labor arbitrator that what one yields to one's boss for so many hours per week in exchange for a salery is not a commodity? One is presumed to be the owner of something. One is in the case of the accused who has to establish a non-existent or at least a non-attribute. It is easy to refute him or her. It all happens as if what one is could only be expressed in an idiom other than that of social and economic law. In the latter, one can only express what one has, and if one has nothing, what one does not have either will not be expressed or will be expressed in a certifiable manner as if one had it. If the laborer evokes his or her essence (labor-power), he or she cannot be heard by this tribunal, which is not competent. The differend is signaled by this inability to prove. The one who lodges a complaint is heard, but the one who is a victim, and who is perhaps the same one, is reduced to silence. (10)

Ability is a possibility and a possibility implies something and its opposite. Possible that p and Possible that not-p are equally true. It is in the very definition of the possible to imply opposites at the same time. (10)

Communication is the exchange of messages, exchange the communication of goods. The instances of communication like those of exchange are definable only in terms of property or propriety [propriete]: the propriety of information, analogous to the propriety of uses. And just as the flow of uses can be controlled, so can the flow of information. As a perverse use is repressed, a dangerous bit of information is banned. As a need is diverted and a motivation created, an addressor is led to say something other than what he or she was going to say. The problem of language, thus posited in terms of communication, leads to that of the needs and beliefs of interlocutors. The linguist becomes an expert before the communication arbitration board. The essential problem he or she has to regulate is that of sense as a unit of exchange independent of the needs and beliefs of interlocutors. (12)

Must it be imagined that there exists a "phrase-power," analogous to labor-power, and which cannot find a way to express itself in the idiom of this science and this politics? -- Whatever this power might be, the parallel must be broken right away. It can be conceived that work is something other than the exchange of a commodity, and an idiom other than that of the labor arbitrator must be found in order to express it. It can be conceived that language is something other than the communication of a bit of information, and an idiom other than that of the human and linguistic sciences is needed in order to express it. (12)

To give the differend its due is to institute new addressees, new addressors, new significations, and new referents in order for the wrong to find an expression and for the plaintiff to cease being a victim. This requires new rules for the formation and linking of phrases. (13)

The differend is the unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be. This state includes silence, which is a negative phrase, but it also calls upon phrases which are in principle possible. This state is signaled by what one ordinarily calls a feeling: "One cannot find the words," etc. A lot of searching must be done to find new rules for forming and linking phrases that are able to express the differend disclosed by the feeling, unless one wants this differend to be smothered right away in a litigation and for the alarm sounded by the feeling to have been useless. What is at stake in a literature, in a philosophy, in a politics perhaps, is to bear witness to differends by finding idioms for them. (13)

This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain which accompanies silence [...] that they are summoned by language, not to augment to their profit the quantity of information communicable through existing idioms, but to recognize that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can presently phrase, and that they must be allowed to institute idioms which do not yet exist. (13)

We find that they are substitutes for phrases. They come in the place of phrases during a conversation, during an interrogation, during a debate, during the talking of a psychoanalytic session, during a confession, during a critical review, during a metaphysical exposition. The phrase replaced by silence would be a negative one. Negated by it is at least one of the four instances that constitute a phrase universe: the addressee, the referent, the sense, the addressor. The negative phrase that the silence implies could be formulated respectively: This case does not fall within your competence, This case does not exist, It cannot be signified, It does not fall within my competence. A single silence could be formulated by several of these phrases. (13)

In its form, the argumentation establishing reality follows the nihilist reasoning of Gorgias in On Not-Being: "Nothing is; and even if it is, it is unknowable; and even if it is and is knowable, it cannot be revealed to others" (Anonymous 979 a 12). (14)

The logical retreat, absurd when it is isolated from the course of the prosecution's argumentation, unveils the rules for the family of cognitive phrases: determination of the referent (kettle borrowed or not), attribution of a predicate to the subject of the utterance (borrowed with a hole in it or not), display of a case which proves conclusively (returned with a hole in it or not). (15)

Ontology, poesis, is permitted, it is a genre. This genre does not have the same rules as the dialectical genre (in the Greek sense). Specifically, the goddess is not an interlocutor subject to the rules of refutation. It sufficed for Parmenides to indicate two paths available to thought, that of Being and that of Not-Being, for Gorgias to turn them into a thesis and an antithesis argued by partners in a dialectic from which the goddess is absent and to have them refute each other. The duality of paths is intolerable to ontology, it implies contrariness and authorizes a negative dialectic. (15)

Reality is not bestowed by some goddess at the tip of her index finger, it has to be "demonstrated," that is, argued and presented as a case, and, once established, it is a state of the referent for cognitive phrases. This state does not preclude that, simply put, "nothing is." (16)

To establish the reality of a referent, the four silences must be refuted, though in reverse order: there is someone to signify the referent and someone to understand the phrase that signifies it; the referent can be signified; it exists. The proof for the reality of gas chambers cannot be adduced if the rules adducing the proof are not respected. These rules determine the universes of cognitive phrases, that is, they assign certain functions to the instances of referent, addressor, addressee, and sense. Thus: the addressor presumably seeks to obtain the addressee's agreement concerning the referent's sense: the witness must explain to the addressee the signification of the expression, gas chamber. When he or she has nothing to object to the explicative phrase, the addressee presumably gives his or her agreement to the addressor: one either accepts or does not accept the signification, that is, the explanation given by the addressor. If one does not accept it, one presumably proposes another explanation for the expression. When agreement is achieved, a well-formed expression becomes available. Each one can say: we agree that a gas chamber is this or that. Only then, can the existence of a reality which might suit as a referent for that expression be "shown" by means of a phrase in the form: This or that is a case of a gas chamber. This phrase fills an ostensive function, which is also required by the rules of the cognitive genre. (16)

The "restrictions" placed on phrases acceptable in the sciences are necessary in order for the verification or falsification of these phrases to be effective: they determine effectible procedures whose reiterable effectuation authorizes the consensus between addressor and addressee. (17)

These are not really "restrictions." On the contrary, the more you specify rules for the validation of phrases, the more you can distinguish different ones, and conceive other idioms. (17)

As a genre of discourse, ontology presupposes this obscure illumination: what it phrases, Being, is also what is phrased through its mouth; the referent is also the addressor. (20)

Socrates draws on the following accomodation: one ought to forbid mimesis but one cannot. In fact, things themselves are not grasped, only their images. If things were grasped, there would be no need to phrase. Or else, if we didn't phrase, there would be no need to mime. Phrasing takes place in the lack of being of that about which there is a phrase. Language is the sign that oen does not know the being of the existent. When one knows it, one is the existent, and that's silence. [...] One can thus only compromise with mimesis. (22)

The poetician calls this turn a metalepsis [...], a change in the level of one's take on the referent. [...] What Genette has to say and the examples that he cites give a different import to metalepsis: it is the crossing of a "shifting but sacred frontier between two worlds, the world in which one teels, the world of which one tells." (25)

These operators of narrative distanciation play, within Platonic poetics, a role analogous to the exclusions that strike the third party in the "Socratic" dialogue. We readers can be neither more nor less admitted to the written dialogue than the Cretan and the Spartan are to the simulated dialogue. Like them, we are too feeble or, like the materialists, we are vulgar and recalcitrant. We are incapable of coming to an agreement concerning the rules of the dialogue, whose principal rule is that the agreement concerning the referent ought to be obtained for ourselves by ourselves. We believe in the decision of the third party in matters of reality. We think that success in the eyes of the third party is the sign of the true. We believe in agonistics. We allow the lesser argument to prevail, under the right conditions. (25-6)

There is a differend, therefore, concerning the means of establishing reality between the partisans of agonistics and the partisans of dialogue. How can this differend be regulated? Through dialogue, say the latter; through the agon, say the former. (26)

By its principle, dialogue eliminates recourse to a third party for establishing the reality of the debate's referent. It requires the partner's consensus about the criterion for this reality, this criterion being a consensus over a single phrase regarding this reality. (26)

A universal cannot be concluded from a particular. Whence the phrase: There are no more victims (which is tautological with the phrase: There are no more differends) is not a cognitive phrase and can neither be verified nor refuted by means proper for establishing and validating cognitives. For example, the referent labor-power is the object of a concept, but to speak like Kant, it does not give rise to an intuition nor consequently to controversy and to a verdict before the tribunal of knowledge. Its concept is an Idea. (27)

These are examples of situations presented in the phrase universe of Ideas (in the Kantian sense): the Idea of nation, the Idea of the creation of value. These situations are not the referents of knowledge phrases. There exist no procedures instituted to establish or refute their reality in the cognitive sense. That is why they give rise to differends. (27)

Wrong comes from the damages not being expressed in the language common to the tribunal and the other party, and [...] this gives birth to a differend. (28)

The animal is deprived of the possibility of bearing witness according to the human rules for establishing damages, and as a consequence, every damage is like a wrong and turns it into a victim ipso facto. -- But, if it does not at all have the means to bear witness, then there are not even damages, or at least you cannot establish them. -- What you are saying defines exactly what I mean by a wrong: you are placing the defender of the animal before a dilemma. [...] That is why the animal is a paradigm of the victim. (28)

The condition of the encounter is not this universe, but the phrase in which you present it. It is a transcendental and not an empirical condition. Regarding this universe, it can just as easily be said that it is the effect of the encounter as its condition (the two expressions are equivalent). (28-9)

Can't these contacts be avoided? -- That's impossible, contact is necessary. First of all, it is necessary to link onto a phrase that happens (be it by a silence, which is a phrase), there is no possibility of not linking onto it. Second, to link is necessary; how to link is contingent. There are many ways of linking onto I can come by your place. (29)