“I define postmodern as incredulity
towards metanarratives.”
“Narratives are fables, myths, legends,
fit only for women and children.” But because they purport to tell the “truth,”
narratives are also dangerous: “We know its symptoms. It is the entire history
of cultural imperialism from the dawn of Western civilization. It is important
to recognize its special tenor, which sets it apart from all other forms of
imperialism: it is governed by the demand of legitimation.” Legitimation is
difficult territory for Lyotard who saw a crisis in legitimation, a symptom, as
he said, of the contamination of “metaknowledge” by the poison of ideology.
“Where, after the metanarratives, can
legitimacy reside?” He continued, “Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of
the authorities; it redefines 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.” And paralogy–or the challenge of an
alternate discourse–disorder–is at the heart of Lyotard’s solution to the end
of the metanarrative, which, oddly to those who have heard so much of this
word, will be mentioned only a few more times in the report.
“Our working hypothesis is that the
status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is know as the
postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age.”
An incredulous Marxist, Lyotard feared
now that knowledge had shifted its location (computers) the creation and
accumulation of knowledge would move away from the control of the universities
and would be under the rule of corporations, which he observed, were now
“multinational.” Like Foucault, Lyotard understood that knowledge was power and
he also realized that such corporations had “passed beyond the control of
nation states.” In a post-war period that picked winners and losers, the
wealthy nation states would have an advantage in the production and
dissemination of this new kind of knowledge generated by computerization and
that the poorer countries would be left behind, as receivers, producers or users.
Lyotard feared that rich nations and powerful corporations would corner and
command knowledge in order to retain their powers, fearing that computerized
knowledge “could become the ‘dream’ instrument for controlling and regulating
the market system..In that case, it would inevitably involve the use of
terror.” The solution to this threat is “quite simple: give the public free
access to the memory and data banks.”
Lyotard considered that any form of
control of knowledge was a form of violence and terror against intellectual
freedom, using words, “violence” and “terror,” words that were strong and were
laced with his past experiences with totalizing systems. For the current
reader, these remarkable passages are early warnings of the fight to keep
the Internet, a system that Lyotard did not live to see fully developed, free
and open and accessible to it users on an equal basis. But in-between the pages
where Lyotard announced the end of the metanarrative and the active
participation of the public in the production (and control) of knowledge is his
discussion of science/knowledge (information) and how knowledge can exist under
the “postmodern condition” through language games. With a nod to Ludwig
Wittgenstein, language games have the capacity to bring about counter
narratives or “little narratives” or paralogy, which, as he said, was at the
heart of postmodernism.
from: https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/jean-francois-lyotard-postmodern-condition-metanarrative/
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