The role and place of »blank« in late Lyotard

Abstract

The author attempts to show «some implications of the problematics of the role and place of the »blank« in late Lyotard. He shows that Lyotard's thematisation of blank - its variations through void, emptiness, whiteness, the self-erasure of the subject and silence - presents problematics of the new conception of the subject, causality and temporality, which, nonetheless remains a »work in progress«. The main reason for that lies in Lyotard's understanding of the role of »blank«, the »making of the blank« itself, understood mainly as the self-erasure of the subject, as a kind of »negative dialectics« which makes possible the appearance of an elaboration of a new conception of the subject, and at the same time paradoxically blocks its full elaboration.