Lyotard and Non-Human Language in the Age of LMMs

Instructor: Anna Longo Date & Time: March 28, April 4, 11, 25 09:00-11:30 ET

DESCRIPTION: Large Language Models present us with a new and shattering perspective on language that forces us to put into question our assumptions on the meaning of terms such as thinking and speaking, as they are traditionally linked to the idea of subjectivity. In this seminar we will shed some light on what language is for neural networks through the lenses of Lyotard’s anticipatory reflections on the emergence of a non-anthropocentric conception of language.

We will first introduce the view on language that emerges from Le Différend: to master language amounts to correctly enchaining words one after one another according to rules that depend on use, something that a statistical machine could do. From this standpoint, language is not the means of expression of a subject, but the subject is an effect of modes of linking words. We will then see how Lyotard develops this view in the exhibition Les Immatériaux (Centre Pompidou 1985). Here, the philosopher was interested in computer technologies and the way in which they challenge the modern conception of language as well as the status of the subject. The beginning of the internet era, which the philosopher witnessed, invites us, in fact, to rethink the role of humans within an ontology in which everything (including humans) is a more or less complex interface in the global communication network. Finally, we will consider the conception of language that follows the process of vectorization and embedding that allows, today, the deployment of LLMs (large language models). We will see how current natural language processing technologies achieved the non-modern and non-anthropocentric way of conceiving language that Lyotard was invoking while subverting his expectations. We will discuss the promises and risks implied by the vectorization of language, in particular, we will question the social and political consequences of the uses and abuses of the automated system for linguistic production.

Session 1: Le Différend / Readings: Excerpts from The Differend; “In reading your work…” in Jean-François Lyotard: The Interviews and Debates, edited by Kiff Bamford, Bloomsbury 2020.

Session 2: Les Immatériaux / Readings: Lyotard, “After Six Months of Work…” in 30 Years after Les Immatériaux, edited by Y. Hui and A. Broeckmann, Meson Press, 2015; “Les Immatériaux: A Staging” in Jean-François Lyotard: The Interviews and Debates, edited by Kiff Bamford, Bloomsbury 2020; “Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard” in Lyotard’s Interviews on Les Immatériaux, edited by A. Broeckmann and S. Meijide Casas, Les Immatériaux Research, Working Paper No. 11, 2024.

Session 3: The Vectorization of Language / Readings: Juan Luis Gastaldi, “Why Can Computers Understand Natural Language?” Philosophy & Technology, 2021, 34(1), pp. 149–214; Gregory Chatonski, “Vectorial Politics.”

Session 4: Students’ Presentations /

IMAGE: Julieta Aranda, As the Ground Becomes Exposed, 2016

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