The Reception of Lyotard's Discours, figure during the Spanish Transition to Democracy

Abstract

Unlike its English version, first published in 2011, Discours, figure was published in Spanish in 1979, four years after Francisco Franco's death, during the Spanish transition to democracy. The relevance of this information is connected to the fact that the man who introduced Lyotard to the Spanish intellectual scene was the now controversial Spanish liberal-conservative journalist Federico Jiménez Losantos. However, at the time, Losantos was not only known for being an unwavering supporter of Maoism, but he was also among the first promoters of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Barcelona and one of the main theorists devoted to the study of reductive abstraction in Spain. The purpose of this article is threefold, as it intends to (1) break down the publishing dynamics that led to Lyotard's work being translated into Spanish so early on; (2) delve into the context of that translation within a very specific framework, which is the shift toward liberalism of many post-’68 Maoists; and (3) analyze the poor reception of Lyotard's work by the Spanish-speaking public. To approach these questions, this article resorts to one of the fundamental premises of the economy of desire that Lyotard postulated in the 1970s: that any research on political economy must be paired with an analysis of its libidinal economy.