Figuring art in Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s Écrits sur l’art

Abstract

In his posthumous Écrits sur l’art, French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe considers his numerous experiences with artists and their works as different ways of putting himself to the ‘test of art’. This consists in pitting the main tenets of his philosophical works (Typographies, vol. I: Le Sujet de la philosophie, and Typographies, vol. II: L’Imitation des modernes) against his lived encounters with works and artists, while taking account of the particular complex of problems that confront art in the twentieth century following its two crises of authority, that of God and of Man. The central question that drives his Écrits sur l’art is ‘How can art identify itself?’ Lacoue-Labarthe asks us to take particular note of its reflexive formulation: when art becomes a self-constituting force, how can it be anything other than a form of survival? To support his position, Lacoue-Labarthe revisits several concepts he developed in his philosophical works: art as the site of a retreat, the hyperbological nature of art, the disaster of the subject and the concept of the figure.