Notes on: Jean-François Lyotard,

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

Jameson:

J. sees Lyotard as responding to a contemporary "crisis of representation" in the sciences -- a crisis which calls into question "an essentially realistic epistemology, which conceives of representation as the reproduction, for subjectivity, of an objectivity that lies outside it -- projects a mirror theory of knowledge and art, whose fundamental evaluative categories are those of adequacy, accuracy, and Truth itself." (viii)

In the face of this crisis, Lyotard "saves" science and its "postreferential epistemology" in terms of linguistics and "theories of the performative (J. L. Austin), for which the justification of scientific work is not to produce an adequate model or replication of some outside reality, but rather simply to produce more work, to generate new and fresh scientific énoncés or statements, to make you have 'new ideas' (P.B. Medawar), or, best of all (and returning to the more familiar aesthetics of high modernism), again and again to 'make it new': 'Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver Du nouveau!'" (ix)

J. further summarizes Lyotard's distinction between the "two great legitimizing 'myths' or narrative archetypes (récits)" which justify scientific research":

Lyotard is ostensibly taking on Habermas's "vision of an evolutionary social leap into a new type of rational society, defined in communicational terms as 'the communication community of those affected, who as participants in a practical discourse test the validity claims of norms and, to the extent that they accept them with reasons, arrive at the conviction that in the given circumstances the proposed norms are 'right,''"

This is rejected by Lyotard as "the unacceptable remnant of a 'totalizing' philosophical tradition and as the valorization of conformist, when not 'terrorist,' ideals of consensus." (x)

Lyotard thinks he's rejecting this tradition (2)-- as well as the first Enlightenment tradition (1); Jameson's point is that, despite his effort to move beyond these two modernist traditions in favor of an allegedly "post-modern" approach, Lyotard nonetheless remains rooted in (1).

In any case, in Lyotard, "narrative is affirmed, not merely as a significant new field of research, but well beyond that as a central instance of the human mind and a mode of thinking fully as legitimate as that of abstract logic." (xi)

Jameson supports Lyotard in part as he notes that one of the features of 'scientific' periods of history is "the relative retreat of the claims of narrative or storytelling knowledge in the face of those of the abstract, denotative, or logical and cognitive procedures generally associated with science or positivism." (xi)

This contrast is further developed in terms of the attitude towards time and the past:

As may be clear from Jameson's (Marxist-oriented -- and thus rooted in tradition "1)") critique of Lyotard's critique of Habermas (also rooted in tradition "1)") -- central to this discussion is the definition of terms:
 

Examples from architecture: Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the "International Style." Marked by the belief that through transformation of architectural forms, a transformation of social life would follow. "Architecture as a substitute for revolution."

Postmodernism:

[Jameson's comment on Lyotard: "There is then here reproduced something of the celebration of modernism as its first ideologues projected it -- a constant and ever more dynamic revolution in the languages, forms, and tastes of art (not yet assimilated to the commercial revolutions in fashion and commodity styling we have since come to grasp as an immanent rhythm of capitalism itself)..." (xvi)]

Habermas: PM "involves the explicit repudiation of the modernist tradition -- the return of the middle-class philistine or Spiessbuerger rejection of modernist forms and values -- and as such the expression of a new social conservatism." On Jameson's account of architectural history, Habermas is correct -- see xvii.

Jameson's comment on both Habermas, Lyotard: despite Lyotard's critique of Habermas and the Frankfurt School as remaining tied to the 'totality' narrative of German Idealism -- both Lyotard and Habermas remain committed to 'the conception of the revolutionary nature of high modernism." (xvi)

Lyotard's rhetoric is "one of struggle, conflict, the agonic in a quasi-heroic sense..." -- associated with his vision of "nonhegemonic Greek philosophy (the Stoics, the Cynics, the Sophists) as the guerrilla war of the marginals, the foreigners, the non-Greeks, against the massive and repressive Order of Aristotle and his successors." (xix)

Narrative (according to Lévi-Strauss) must generate the illusion of 'an imaginary resolution of real contradictions' (xix)

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Introduction

"Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks the truth, it is obliged to legimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy. I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appear to some grant narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth." (xxiii)

the Enlightenment narrative:

"the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value is deemed acceptable if it is cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds." "The hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end -- universal peace." (xxiii)

"As can be seen from this example, if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond: these must be legitimated as well. Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth." (xxiv)

Postmodernism: "incredulity toward metanarratives" This should issue, he claims, not in the consensus-oriented "communication theory" of Habermas, which runs the risk of turning consensus into terror. Rather, "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of 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." (xxv)

His question will be one of legitimation -- first of all, of the social bond. But he will take this up in light of the related issue of the legitimation of the sciences. His strategy will be to propose a solution to the problem of the legitimation crisis of the sciences -- and further this solution in turn as the solution to the legitimation problem in ethics and politics.

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1. The Field: Knowledge in Computerized Societies

..."the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age."(3)

"...for the last forty years the 'leading' sciences and technologies have had to do with language..."(3)

The transforming impact of computers "... is changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited. It is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information -processing machines is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human circulation (transportation systems) and later, in the circulation of sounds and visual images (the media)." (4)

"The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language." (4)

"The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume -- that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its 'use-value.'" (4f.)

[This section, as Lyotard summarizes it in Section 6, also contains two objections "against the unquestioning acceptance of an instrumental conception of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. Knowledge is not the same as science, especially in its contemporary form; and science, far from successfully obscuring the problem of its legitimacy, cannot avoid raising it with all of its implications, which are no less sociopolitical than epistemological."(18)]

2. The Problem: Legitimation

Because, however, science exists side by side another kind of knowledge (narrative, as related to ideas of internal equilibrium and conviviality); and because scientific knowledge "cuts a poor figure" in contrast with narrative, leading to a demoralization and alienation among its researchers and teachers; --> all this contributes to and thus raises the question of the legitimacy of science, along with the allied question of the legitimacy of contemporary social and political institutions ("the legitimation crisis" of Habermas, et al) -- a question of "double legitimation."(8)

"The question of the legitimacy of science has been indissociably linked to that of the legislator since the time of Plato. From this point of view, the right to decide what is true is not independent of the right to decide what is just, even if the statements consigned to these two authorities differ in nature. The point is that there is a strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics: they both stem from the same perspective, the same 'choice' if you will -- the choice called the Occident." (8)

In simplest terms, "...knowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided? In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government." (8-9)

3. The Method: Language Games

Lyotard describes his procedure as one "emphasizing facts of language and in particular their pragmatic aspect," where pragmatic seems to have to do with a Hobbesian/Wittgensteinian approach to language as a game: "to speak is to fight, in the sense of playing, and speech acts fall within the domain of a general agonistics." (10)

Correlatively, "...the observable social bond is composed of language 'moves.'" (11)

4. The Nature of the Social Bond: The Modern Alternative

To discuss the condition of knowledge requires an understanding of the society in which such knowledge emerges and exists. However, there are two competing models for society. On the first view, society forms an organic, functional whole == Talcott Parsons, functionalism: "optimistic," and "it corresponds to the stabilization of the growth economies and societies of abundance under the aegis of a moderate welfare state." (11) It becomes, however, technocratic, cynical, despairing: "The true goal of the system...is the optimization of the global relationship between input and output -- in other words, perfomativity." -- i.e., not harmony between the needs and hopes of individuals or groups and the functions guaranteed by the system.

On the second, Marxist, view, posits a divided (class) society. This generates critical (in contrast with functional) knowledge.

The choice between the two seems arbitrary -->

5. The Nature of the Social Bond: The Postmodern Perspective.

This dilemma itself represents "a type of oppositional thinking that is out of step with the most vital modes of postmodern knowledge." (14)

As well, he argues that one impact of the information age is to blur both models:

So, Lyotard's approach is to understand the social bond in terms of language games between given selves. Contrary, then, to those who see the breaking up of "the grand Narratives" as equivalent to the dissolution of the social bond, Lyotard thinks the social bond is intact -- at least in the form of language games. (15)

6. The Pragmatics of Narrative Knowledge

Here he offers an "analysis of the nature of 'narrative' knowledge" -- first of all, in order to clarify the characteristics of scientific knowledge in contemporary society, and secondly in order to better understand "how the question of legitimacy is raised or fails to be raised today." (18)
 

This admittedly ethnological/anthropological description of knowledge, reshaped in terms of linguistic analysis, leads him to point out the further ethnographic observation regarding "the distance separating the customary state of knowledge from its state in the scientific age: the preeminence of the narrative form in the formulation of traditional knowledge....Narration is the quintessential form of customary knowledge, in more ways than one." (18)

A third property has to do with the transmission of narratives. On Lyotard's analysis, "The narrative 'posts' (sender, addressee, hero) are so organized that the right to occupy the post of sender receives the following double grounding: it is based upon the fact of having occupied the post of addressee, and of having been recounted oneself, by virtue of the name one bears, by a previous narrative....the knowledge transmitted by these narrations...determines in a single stroke what one must say in order to be heard, what one must listen to in order to speak, and what role one must play...to be the object of a narrative.

Thus the speech acts relevant to this form of knowledge are performed not only by the speaker, but also by the listener, as well as by the third party referred to.....a narrative tradition is also the tradition of the criteria defining a threefold competence -- 'know-how,' 'knowing how to speak,' and 'knowing how to hear' [savoir-faire, savoir-dire, savoir-entendre] -- through which the community's relationship to itself and its environment is played out. What is transmitted through these narratives is the set of pragmatic rules that constitutes the social bond." (21)

A fourth property of narrative knowledge is its effect on time. (This seems to have to do with rhythm, meter, etc.)

This leads Lyotard to the interesting claim that "a collectivity that takes narrative as its key form of competence has no need to remember its past. It finds the raw material for its social bond not only in the meaning of the narratives it recounts, but also in the act of reciting them. The narratives' reference may seem to belong to the past, but in reality it is also contemporaneous with the act of recitation." (22)

What seems to be of greatest importance here is that "a culture that gives precedence to the narrative form doubtless has no more of a need for special procedures to authorize its narratives than it has to remember its past." (22) On Lyotard's view, this means that narrative is anti-authoritarian and radically democratic: no one is singled out as narrator; in a kind of radical "narrative democracy" (my term), anyone can be a narrator.

In still other terms, the question of legitimacy does not arise for narrative:

7. The Pragmatics of Scientific Knowledge

Lyotard provides here a (similarly linguistically-oriented) analysis of "the game of science."

This analysis works by noting that any claim -- Lyotard's example is Copernicus stating that the path of the planets is circular -- is in language, and hence involves the pragmatic "posts" of sender, addressee, and referent.

"First, the sender should speak the truth about the referent." (23) This means, on the one hand he is supposed to be able to provide proof of what he says, and on the other hand he is supposed to be able to refute any opposing or contradictory statements concerning the same referent." (23)

Secondly, the addressee should be able to give or refuse to give his assent to the statement. But this means in turn that he is a potential sender, and thus under the same double requirement as the original sender.

Third, there should be a correspondence between the referent and the statement, if the statement is to be true. The tricky question: "...since what it [the referent] is can only be known through statements of the same order as that of Copernicus, the rule of adequation becomes problematical. What I say is true because I prove that it is - but what proof is there that my proof is true?" (24)

According to Lyotard, two rules provide the "scientific" solution to this problem:

On Lyotard's showing, then, the pragmatics of science compares with the pragmatics of narrative as follows:

On the one hand, both narrative and science are thus analyzed as language games -- but, on the other, each game is driven by different criteria:

Given these manifold differences between the two language games, "It is therefore impossible to judge the existence or validity of narrative knowledge on the basis of scientific knowledge and vice versa: the relevant criteria are different. All we can do is gaze in wonderment at the diversity of discursive species, just as we do at the diversity of plant or animal species." (26)

However, it is important to notice from where we start. Briefly, if we start from the standpoint of narrative -- then we can encompass the scientific discourse with "a certain tolerance: it [narrative] approaches such discourse primarily as a variant in the family of narrative cultures. The opposite is not true. The scientist questions the validity of narrative statements and concludes that they are never subject to argumentation or proof. He classifies them as belonging to a different mentality: savage, primitive, underdeveloped, backward, alienated, composed of opinions, customs, authority, prejudice, ignorance, ideology. Narratives are fables, myths, legends, fit only for women and children. At best, attempts are made to throw some rays of light into this obscurantism, to civilize, educate, develop." (27)

Lyotard sees in this, not surprisingly, "the entire history of cultural imperialism from the dawn of Western civilization," -- an imperialism which has a "special tenor" among other forms of imperialism, as "it is governed by the demand for legitimation." (27)

8. The Narrative Function and the Legitimation of Knowledge

L. notes that "It is remarkable that for a long time it [science] could not help resorting for its solutions to procedures [for legitimation] that, overtly or not, belong to narrative knowledge." (27)

In particular, he suggests that today science uses an epic narrative:

Further claims that "the new language game of science posed the problem of its own legitimation -- in Plato." (see 28)

Also notes in this context the problem raised by Gödel's proof:

Argues that in fact science has done so:

This seems to me to confuse the terms and thus the issue. Especially as Lyotard continues here, it is not at all clear that he is using the term 'modern' in a consistent sense.

With modern science, two new features appear in the problematic of legitimation. To begin with, it leaves behind the metaphysical search for a first proof or transcendental authority as a response to the question: "How do you prove the proof?" or, more generally, "Who decides the conditions of truth?" It is recognized that the conditions of truth, in other words, the rules of the game of science, are immanent in that game, that they can only be established within the bonds of a debate that is already scientific in nature, and that there is no other proof that the rules are good than the consensus extended to them by the experts. (29)

If this is modern -- it is clearly not Aristotelian: so in what sense is Aristotle a modern?

13. Postmodern Science as the Search for Instabilities

Notes that determinism is the basis of "legitimation by performativity" -- a "positivist 'philosophy' of efficiency. Over against such determinism, he will cite here a number of examples, exhibiting that "the pragmatics of postmodern scientific knowledge per se has little affinity with the quest for performativity." (54)

So he claims, simply, that "Science does not expand by means of the positivism of efficiency. The opposite is true: working on a proof means searching for and 'inventing' counterexamples, in other words, the unintelligible; supporting an argument means looking for a 'paradox' and legitimating it with new rules in the games of reasoning. In neither case is efficiency sought for its own sake; it comes, sometimes tardily, as an extra, when the grant givers finally decide to take an interest in the case. But what never fails to come and come again, with every new theory, new hypothesis, new statement, or new observation, is the question of legitimacy. For it is not philosophy that asks this question of science, but science that asks it of itself." (54)

He argues here, in a fashion reminiscent of Paul Feyerabend, that "The question, 'What is your argument worth, what is your proof worth?" is so much a part of the pragmatics of scientific knowledge that it is what assures the transformation of the addressee of a given argument and proof into the sender of anew argument and proof -- thereby assuring the renewal of scientific discourse and the replacement of each generation of scientists. Science develops -- and no one will deny that it develops -- by developing this question. And this question, as it develops, leads to the following question, that is to say, metaquestion, the question of legitimacy: 'What is your 'what is it worth' worth?'" (54)

Further claims that the "fall" into philosophical pragmatism or logical positivism as the end of the 19th century has lead to a recovery of knowledge "by including within scientific discourse the discourse on the validation of statements held to be laws. As we have seen, this inclusion is not a simple operation, but gives rise to 'paradoxes' that are taken extremely seriously and to 'limitations' on the scope of knowledge that are in fact changes in its nature."(54f.)

Sees Gödel's theorem as "a veritable paradigm of how this change in [the] nature [of science] takes place." But also mentions here the transformation of dynamics as of particular interest because it directly undermines the notion of determinism defining the notions of performance in the domain of social theory and social systems.

More carefully, he begins by recalling Laplace's 'demon' who "knows all of the variables determining the state of the universe at a moment t, and can thus predict its state at a moment t'>t." (55)

This assumption, however, is already limited by the advent of quantum mechanics and atomic physics in two ways:

A counterargument: " these problems concern microphysics and ...they do not prevent the establishment of continuous functions exact enough to form the basis of probabilistic predictions for the evolution of a given system. This is the reasoning systems theorists -- / who are also the theorists of legitimation by performance -- use to try to regain their rights." (57f.)

Against this, however, is "a current in contemporary mathematics that questions the very possibility of precise measurement and thus the prediction of the behavior of objects even on the human scale."

Quoting Mandelbrot: "The functions with derivatives are the simplest and easiest to work with, they are nevertheless exceptional. Using geometrical language, curves that have no tangent are the rule, and regular curves, such as the circle, are interesting, but quite special." (58)

Data regarding several kinds of objects "describe curves similar to those of continuous functions for which no derivative exists," which, because they have a dimensional fraction of self-similarity (between one and two, between a line and a flat surface) Mandelbrot calls fractals. (58)

Another example: René Thom's catastrophe theory. (58f) On this showing, determinism is itself determined by local conditions. Most likely, "All that exist are 'islands of determinism.'" (59)

In sum:

14. Legitimation by Paralogy

Concludes with the claim that "Consensus has become an outmoded and suspect value. But justice as a value is neither outmoded nor suspect. We must thus arrive at an idea and practice of justice that is not linked to that of consensus.

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From the essay, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?"