Discourse, figure is Lyotard's second book of philosophy. The main thrust of this work is a critique of structuralism, particularly of Lacan's psychoanalysis. The book is divided into two parts:1) Lyotard uses Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to undermine structuralism.
2) He uses Freudian psychoanalysis to undermine Lacan and certain aspects of phenomenology.
Lyotard begins with an opposition between discourse (related to structuralism and written text) and figure (a visual image related to phenomenology and seeing). He suggests that structured, abstract conceptual thought has dominated philosophy since Plato, denigrating sensual experience. The text and the experience of reading are associated with the former, and figures, images and the experience of seeing with the latter. He proceeds to deconstruct this opposition and attempts to show that discourse and figure are mutually implicated.
Thesis: Discourse contains elements of the figural (poetry and illuminated texts are good examples), and visual space can be structured like discourse (when it is broken up into ordered elements in order for the world to be recognisable and navigable by the seeing subject).
Ultimately, the point is not to privilege the figural over the discursive, but to show how these elements must negotiate with each other. The mistake of structuralism is to interpret the figural in entirely discursive terms, ignoring the different ways in which these elements operate. In the second part of Discours, figure, Lyotard suggests that structure and transgression are related to Freudian libidinal forces ( libido's energy, forces not mediated by rationality), and so, he paves the way for the libidinal philosophy developed in Libidinal Economy.
