9. Post-structuralism II: Jean-François Lyotard- "The Postmodern Condition " Flashcards
1
Q
Jean-François Lyotard
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- In the 1980s and 1990s, Jean-François Lyotard is at the center of the debate surrounding postmodernism.
- In his seminal work The Postmodern Condition – arguably the most succinct manifesto about this phenomenon – Lyotard defines this era as being characterized by the end of any legitimate ‘master narratives’ (or metanarratives) – one of the most important terms in the discussions about postmodernity.
2
Q
The Postmodern Condition
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- The Postmodern Condition is, in Lyotard’s view, first of all a condition of increasing de-legitimization.
- Up to now, so-called grand narratives or master narratives – narratives, that is, built around what Derrida would call ‘transcendental signifieds’ – have hierarchically arranged the local narratives that they comprise.
- These master narratives, however, have lost their grasp and legitimation.
- What remains are only small, local narratives, non of which can claim more validity than, or dominance over, any other.
- While modernism still claimed to establish a new narrative – a narrative about newness itself, by cutting all ties to what came before – postmodernism assumes that there cannot be anything completely new. It thus uses history more as a tool-box, as an archive to be quoted.
- One could say that, while modernism actually assumes that something like an engineer (comp. Lévi-Strauss, Derrida) is possible, and that a new discourse can be created, postmodernism has realized that the only option is a form of bricolage.
- As there are no more legitimate master discourses, one has to conceive about human coexistence as the ‘agon’ (play) of language games, neither of which can claim to be the only right or legitimate one.
- All we can do, then, is to invent new, more interesting moves on the board of language games that life is.
- Any single subject, moreover, is constituted by the discourses that ‘cross’ it, as it is as nodal points within this network of discourses that we have to think the subjects.
- Justice, however, has as its task to ensure that language ‘moves’ can be made; that no one is arbitrarily excluded from the game – which is what terror means for Lyotard.
- Why, however, justice itself would then not be a master narrative – that he draws out of the hat right at the end of The Postmodern Condition – remains unclear; nor why or how it (or he) should escape the naturalist fallacy.
- As the title of another book of Lyotard – Just Gaming – suggests, justice is about keeping the game going; there is one thing, however, that must escape being turned into a game, and that is justice itself.
- Justice thus regulates the play within the structure, while escaping the play itself; it thus constitutes a ‘transcendental signified’.
3
Q
Grand Narratives and Local Narratives
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- According to Lyotard, not even the paradigm of performance or efficiency can hold things together anymore without resorting to some sort of terror:
- ”There are many different language games – heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches – local determinism.
- The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices, following a logic that implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social injustice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of this power is based on its optimizing the system’s performance – efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear” (356).
4
Q
Postmodern Knowledge: Paralogy
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-”Is legitimacy to be found in the consensus obtained through discussion, as Juergen Habermas thinks?
(See Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Reason, T.C.)
- Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And invention is always born of dissension.
- Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool for the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert’s homology, but the inventor’s paralogy” (356).
- Comp. Cixous: “… there is no invention possible … without there being in the inventing subject an abundance of the other, of variety.”
- What counts – what can only count – as there is nothing ”new under the sun”, is the paralogy (a ”para-logics”) of inventing, of taking what is known and finding new combinations for it. As in a game, you cannot simply change the rules or invent new figures on the board; you can only come up with good moves.
5
Q
Prescriptive and descriptive language games: the end(s) of legitimation
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- Indeed, legitimation itself has become practically impossible due to the assumption of the incommensurability of language games:
- ”Its (enlightenment’s) characteristic is that it grounds the legitimation of science and truth in the autonomy of interlocutors involved in ethical, social, and political praxis.
- As we have seen, there are immediate problems with this form of legitimation: the difference between a denotative statement with cognitive value and a prescriptive statement with practical value is one of relevance therefore of competence. There is nothing to prove that if a statement describing a real situation is true, it follows that a prescriptive statement based upon it (the effect of which will necessarily be a modification of that reality) will be just” (359).
- This is a result of his assumption of the incommensurability of language games, in this case the prescriptive and the descriptive one. If such a ”naturalistic fallacy” is just that – a fallacy – then legitimation itself becomes impossible, as legitimation is always that of a status quo (present ’is’) legitimating itself by what is desired (future ’ought’).
6
Q
What is Postmodern?
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- It is very problematic to clearly distinguish between modernism/modernity and postmodernism/postmodernity.
- While, however, modernism still believes in the project of a universal enlightened emancipation – if only on a highly eclectic and subjective level – and believes in a total rupture with what came before, such an option is not available from a postmodern perspective.
- “In this account there is no longer a horizon of universalism, of general emancipation before the eyes of postmodern man, or in particular, of the postmodern architect. The disappearance if this idea of progress within rationality and freedom would explain a certain tone, style or modus which are specific to postmodern architecture. I would say a sort of bricolage: the high frequency of quotations of elements from previous styles or periods (classical or modern), giving up considerations of environment, and so on” (1612/3)
7
Q
Postmodern Architecture
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- The term postmodern has actually been coined in architecture.
- In Learning from Las Vegas, the architect Robert Venturi has defined the difference between modernism and postmodernism as follows:
A) The building that looks like a duck from all sides.
B) The building that looks like a nice diner from the front, but is a decorated shed from the side.
- While, that is, a modern building still assumes to be a ”whole” sign – like, e.g., a skyscraper – in which signifier and signified are still taken to be ’one’, postmodern architecture intentionally plays with the signifier, using also older styles which then are playfully integrated.
- Postmodern architecture represents the ”decorated shed,” and thus does not follow modernist architecture’s credo ”form follows function” (which assumes that the signifier (form) is subjected to, and has to follow, the signified (function).
8
Q
The Modern
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- Modern architecture’s assumption, however, that such a complete convergence between signifier and signified is possible, is mistaken; as is the one that one can actually initiate a total break with history:
- “The idea of modernity is closely bound up with this principle that it is possible and necessary to break with a tradition and to begin a new way of living and thinking. Today we can presume that this ‘breaking’ is, rather, a manner of forgetting or repressing the past. That’s to say of repeating it. Not overcoming it” (1613).
- As we do in our dreams, we rather have to “work through” the past, and not to repress it, lest we will be haunted by it by a “return of the repressed.”
9
Q
Good-bye to progress
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- The last two hundred years of history – from Auschwitz to the “development of the techno-sciences” (comp. Horkheimer/Adorno and Marcuse!) – have proven the assumption of human progress or emancipation wrong.
- “From this point, it would be necessary to consider the division of mankind into two parts: one part confronted with the challenge of complexity, the other with the terrible ancient task of survival. This is a major aspect of the failure of the modern project (which was, in principle, valid for mankind as a whole)” (1614).
- Whether the latter is “true” is open to debate, however. The project of modernity undoubtedly claimed universal validity – but maybe mistakenly so!
10
Q
Modern Art
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- Although the work of the modern(ist) avant-gardes is today usually smiled at – not least for the immensity of its claims – Lyotard sees these works ‘working through’ the implications of modernity.
- What plays an enormous role for him – in both modernist and postmodernist art – is the concept of the sublime.
- What he takes from Kant’s definition of the sublime is the collision between two discourses or ‘language games’: that of the imagination and that of reason.
11
Q
The Sublime
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- While in Kant, reason carries the day – as the imaginary is not able to imagine, say, infinity or the immense power of nature, but reason is able to think it, and thus establishes its power over the imaginary – for Lyotard the sublime in (post)modern art accedes its impossibility to represent that clash between the faculties (also conceived of as language games).
- As postmodernity is characterized by the “clash” of incommensurable language games – none of which can claim dominance – postmodern art has the task to “represent the unrepresentable”: this insoluble ‘Different’ of language games.
