Jean-François Lyotard on Differends and Unpresentable Otherness: Can God Escape the Clutches of the Christian Master Narrative?

In this paper, I first elaborate on Jean-François Lyotard's postmodern critical approach, which is concerned with the way we deal with irresolvable conflicts, especially our forgetfulness of the ternes that is at stake in such conflicts. The plea of this French philosopher to respect and bear witness to the event of heterogeneity, which accompanies all discourse may open up new possibilities to think difference, otherness, and transcendence without falling back into the pattern of a grand narrative. Whether any of this constitutes what might be considered hidden traces of God in Lyotard, however, is far from sure. Nevertheless, his criticism of Christianity and also the urge to bear witness to the differend may appeal to theology. In order to further develop the potential of this theological perspective, I take Lyotard's criticism of the Christian grand narrative and his appeal to the 'dark God' of the Jews as a point of departure. I conclude with some critical-constructive theological indications regarding the way that a Christian 'open' narrative may result from such a conversation with Lyotard's postmodern act of bearing witness to the differend. © 2011 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.status: publishe