An eye at the edge of discourse

Abstract

To what extent can the visibility of a thought be questioned when that thought is still in process? How does an idea appear? How does an idea communicate or signal its presence to the mind when it does not yet exist in the objectivized form of a work? Even in this larval stage, an idea does have a concrete existence: It manifests itself in the form of an eye that stares at the one who is thinking it. The birth of an idea is thus the birth of a gaze. This gaze is none other than language itself, which, when it gives itself in the emergence of an idea, is shared between a signifying face and a plastic face - between discourse and figure, to cite the title of Jean-François Lyotard's principal text. Through the idea, the eye of language looks at us and settles "at the edge of discourse." © 2007 International Communication Association.