This is as much as to say that the hypothesis is banal. 1 His book The Postmodern Condition (1984a; orig. An illustration of the first model is suggested by Talcott Parsons (at least the postwar Parsons) and his school, and of the second, by the Marxist current (all of its component schools, whatever differences they may have, accept both the principle of class struggle and dialectics as a duality operating within society).”. Simplifying to the extreme, it is fair to say that in principle there have been, at least over the last half-century, two basic representational models for society: either society forms a functional whole, or it is divided in two. What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination. It is tempting to avoid the decision altogether by distinguishing two kinds of knowledge. What guides Marxism, then, is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge that can be produced by society and acquired from it. And each of us knows that our self does not amount to much. It is widely accepted that knowledge has become the principle force of production over the last few decades, this has already had a noticeable effect on the composition of the work force of the most highly developed countries and constitutes the major bottleneck for the developing countries. Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major – perhaps the major – stake in the worldwide competition for power. Of course, certain minorities, such as the Frankfurt School or the group Socialisme ou barbarie, preserved and refined the critical model in opposition to this process. But this realism of systemic self-regulation, and this perfectly sealed circle of facts and interpretations, can be judged paranoid only if one has, or claims to have, at one’s disposal a viewpoint that is in principle immune from their allure. Or will the State simply be one user among others? Manchester University Press, 1984. The atoms are placed at the crossroads of pragmatic relationships, but they are also displaced by the messages that traverse them, in perpetual motion. Liberalism does not preclude an organisation of the flow of money in which some channels are used in decision making while others are only good for the payment of debts. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s material has been highly influential in the development of postmodern thought. The “producers” and users of knowledge must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to invent or learn. [Jean François Lyotard] -- This founding essay of the postmodern movement argues that knowledge--science, technology, and the arts--has undergone a change of status since the 19th century and especially since the late 1950s. Or better: one is always located at a post through which various kinds of messages pass. Nothing of the kind is happening: this point of view, it seems to me, is haunted by the paradisaic representation of a lost organic” society. I use the word in a broader sense than do contemporary German theorists in their discussions of the question of authority. In many circles, Lyotard is celebrated as the postmodern theorist par excellence. That this is so is not subject to discussion or verification on the part of the addressee, who is immediately placed within the new context created by the utterance. In Parsons’s work, the principle behind the system is still, if I may say so, optimistic: it corresponds to the stabilisation of the growth economies and societies of abundance under the aegis of a moderate welfare state. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game.” ― Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge If this were the case, communicational transparency would be similar to liberalism. The war is not without rules, but the rules allow and encourage the greatest possible flexibility of utterance. Jameson. That is the working hypothesis defining the field within which I intend to consider the question of the status of knowledge. There is insufficient space here to chart the vicissitudes of these struggles, which fill more than a century of social, political, and ideological history. And it is fair to say that for the last forty years the “leading” sciences and technologies have had to do with language: phonology and theories of linguistics, problems of communication and cybernetics, modern theories of algebra and informatics, computers and their languages, problems of translation and the search for areas of compatibility among computer languages, problems of information storage and data banks, telematics and the perfection of intelligent terminals, to paradoxology. Dedicating oneself to “catching up with Germany,” the life goal the French president [Giscard d’Estaing at the time this book was published in France] seems to be offering his countrymen, is not exactly exciting. Read more. The First 5 Chapters of main body of work are reproduced here. A move can be made for the sheer pleasure of its invention: what else is involved in that labor of language harassment undertaken by popular speech and by literature? As for the second function, it is common knowledge that the miniaturisation and commercialisation of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited. 134 –146). But then again, it is not exactly a life goal. Reducing them to this function is to adopt an outlook which unduly privileges the system’s own interests and point of view. For brevity’s sake, suffice it to say that functions of regulation, and therefore of reproduction, are being and will be further withdrawn from administrators and entrusted to machines. Everywhere, the Critique of political economy (the subtitle of Marx’s Capital) and its correlate, the critique of alienated society, are used in one way or another as aids in programming the system. of Lyotard 'sown philosophical views, whose combative and prophetic voice, familiar to the readers of his other works, will surprise by its relative silence here. The question of the legitimacy of science has been indissociably linked to that of the legitimation of the legislator since the time of Plato. Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorised to promulgate such a law as a norm. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. In many circles, Lyotard is celebrated as the postmodern theorist par excellence. The constraints function to filter discursive potentials, interrupting possible connections in the communication networks: there are things that should not be said. This methodological split, which defines two major kinds of discourse on society, has been handed down from the nineteenth century. In the work of contemporary German theorists, systemtheorie is technocratic, even cynical, not to mention despairing: the harmony between the needs and hopes of individuals or groups and the functions guaranteed by the system is now only a secondary component of its functioning. The other the critical, reflexive, or hermeneutic kind by reflecting directly or indirectly on values or alms, would resist any such “recuperation.”. What is new in all of this is that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, professions, institutions, and historical traditions are losing their attraction. Lyotard JF The Postmodern Condition Excerpt Chapters 9 and 10 Pages 31 41 Black from PHARMACY PPB 320 at Kenyatta University appears in this book This is the function of the principle of class struggle in theories of society based on the work of Marx. When we examine the current status of scientific knowledge at a time when science seems more completely subordinated to the prevailing powers than ever before and, along with the new technologies, is in danger of becoming a major stake in their conflicts – the question of double legitimation, far from receding into the background, necessarily comes to the fore. 1. In this light, the new technologies can only increase the urgency of such a re-examination, since they make the information used ‘in decision making (and therefore the means of control) even more mobile and subject to piracy. Bureaucratisation is the outer limit of this tendency. The answers are clear: yes, if the university opens creative workshops; yes, if the cabinet works with prospective scenarios; yes, if the limits of the old institution are displaced. “Traditional” theory is always in danger of being incorporated into the programming of the social whole as a simple tool for the optimisation of its performance; this is because its desire for a unitary and totalising truth lends itself to the unitary and totalising practice of the system’s managers. A different case involves utterances of the type, “Give money to the university”; these are prescriptions. Suppose, for example, that a firm such as IBM is authorised to occupy a belt in the earth’s orbital field and launch communications satellites or satellites housing data banks. 4 people found this helpful. These moves necessarily provoke “countermoves” and everyone knows that a countermove that is merely reactional is not a “good” move. This idea of an agonistics of language should not make us lose sight of the second principle, which stands as a complement to it and governs our analysis: that the observable social bond is composed of language “moves.” An elucidation of this proposition will take us to the heart of the matter at hand. The Postmodern Explained to Children Correspondence 1982-1985 @inproceedings{Lyotard1992ThePE, title={The Postmodern Explained to Children Correspondence 1982-1985}, author={Jean-François Lyotard and J. Pefanis and M. Thomas}, year={1992} } The reader will already have noticed that in analysing this problem within the framework set forth I have favoured a certain procedure: emphasising facts of language and in particular their pragmatic aspect. Access to data is, and will continue to be, the prerogative of experts of all stripes. Manchester University Press, 1984. It would be superficial to reduce its significance to the traditional alternative between manipulatory speech and the unilateral transmission of messages on the one hand, and free expression and dialogue on the other. For it is impossible to know what the state of knowledge is – in other words, the problems its development and distribution are facing today – without knowing something of the society within which it is situated. Take any civil law as an example: it states that a given category of citizens must perform a specific kind of action. A portion of the description would necessarily be conjectural. From every direction we are being urged to put an end to experimentation, in the arts and elsewhere. Jean-Francois Lyotard Postmodern Condition The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge Reactional countermoves arc no more than programmed effects in the opponent’s strategy; they play into his hands and thus have no effect on the balance of power. Black-. As for the sender, he must be invested ‘with the ’ authority to make such a statement. 3 Chapter Summaries - Summary The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations Measure for Measure Summary and Characters The Tell-Tale Heart The War of the Worlds - Summary The Age of Total War 1860-1945 Lannon chapters 2-3 summaries - White Teeth The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge This does not necessarily mean that one plays in order to win. I am summarising. Learn more about Orientalism and Civilization and Its Discontents with Course Hero's Now take the example of a scientific statement: it is subject to the rule that a statement must fulfil a given set of conditions in order to be accepted as scientific. Our working hypothesis is that 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. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Jean-Francois Lyotard What is postmodernism? And it does not look as though they wilt be replaced, at least not on their former scale, The Trilateral Commission is not a popular pole of attraction. However, the perspective I have outlined above is not as simple as I have made it appear. 1979) introduced the term to a broad public and has been widely discussed in the postmodern debates of the last decade. It should now be clear from which perspective I chose language games as my general methodological approach. Transformation in the nature of knowledge, then, could well have repercussions on the existing public powers, forcing them to reconsider their relations (both de jure and de facto) with the large corporations and, more generally, with civil society. Places emphasis on narrative in the fields of science, too. Further Reading: Abstract. I have read that under the name of postmodernism, architects are getting rid o… I suggest that the alternative it attempts to resolve, but only reproduces, is no longer relevant for the societies with which we are concerned and that the solution itself is stilt caught within a type of oppositional thinking that is out of step with the most vital modes of postmodern knowledge. Lyotard introduced the term 'postmodernism', which was previously only used by art critics, into philosophy and social sciences, with the following observation: "Simplifying … What he means by this term is that each of the various categories of utterance can be defined in terms of rules specifying their properties and the uses to which they can be put – in exactly the same way as the game of chess is defined by a set of rules determining the properties of each of the pieces, in other words, the proper way to move them. To the postmodernist, there exists no absolute truth. Great joy is had in the endless invention of turns of phrase, of words and meanings, the process behind the evolution of language on the level of parole. That is why it is important to increase displacement in the games, and even to disorient it, in such a way as to make an unexpected “move” (a new statement). However, this hypothesis about the institution is still too “unwieldy”: its point of departure is an overly “reifying” view of what is institutionalised. At any rate, we know that it is unwise to put too much faith in futurology. Second, the trivial cybernetic version of information theory misses something of decisive importance, to which I have already called attention: the agonistic aspect of society. What is needed if we are to understand social relations in this manner, on whatever scale we choose, is not only a theory of communication, but a theory of games which accepts agonistics as a founding principle. It is clear that what is important is not simply the fact that they communicate information. An excerpt from Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge: "What, then, is the postmodern? Chapters 9 and 10 Pages 31-41. In this context, it is easy to see that the essential element of newness is not simply “innovation.” Support for this approach can be found in the work of a number of contemporary sociologists, in addition to linguists and philosophers of language. The pragmatics of prescription entail concomitant changes in the posts of addressee and referent. The scenario of the computerisation of the most highly developed societies allows us to spotlight (though with the risk of excessive magnification) certain aspects of the transformation of knowledge and its effects on public power and civil institutions – effects it would be difficult to perceive from other points of view. Reciprocally, it can be said that the boundaries only stabilise when they cease to be stakes in the game. I am not claiming that the entirety of social relations is of this nature – that will remain an open question. I find this partition solution unacceptable. The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. I have read an art critic who packages and sells Transavantgardism’ in the marketplace of painting. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. The postmodern scientist is the author not of the grand narrative, but of the little narrative, a project Lyotard implies will be the cultural work of the postmodern condition. That scientific and technical knowledge is cumulative is never questioned. Each individual is referred to himself. In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard provides his most thorough treatment of the postmodern, and for this reason I shall subject this work to a close reading.2 Lyotard continues to use this concept through the mid-90s. This makes it invaluable to any serious student of PoMo. Examples: Does the university have a place for language experiments (poetics)? Or more simply still, the question of the social bond, insofar as it is a question, is itself a language game, the game of inquiry. The intent behind the essays from scholars in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is to examine Lyotard's notion of the postmodern condition and its relevance and special significance for the field of education. (2) To lend an ear to an event is the most difficult thing in the world. A word on this last point. If we consider a declaration such as “The university is open,” pronounced by a dean or rector at convocation, it is clear that the previous specifications no longer apply. The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers. It is useful to make the following three observations about language games. This breaking up of the grand Narratives (discussed below, sections 9 and 10) leads to what some authors analyse in terms of the dissolution of the social bond and the disintegration of social aggregates into a mass of individual atoms thrown into the absurdity of Brownian motion. In the computer age, the question of knowledge is now more than ever a question of government. Conversely, one can count on its critical function, and orient its development and distribution in that direction, only after it has been decided that society does not form an integrated whole, but remains haunted by a principle of oppositions The alternative seems clear: it is a choice between the homogeneity and the intrinsic duality of the social, between functional and critical knowledge. The true goal of the system, the reason it programs itself like a computer, is the optimisation of the global relationship between input and output, in other words, performativity. A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Finally, barring economic stagnation or a general recession (resulting, for example, from a continued failure to solve the world’s energy problems), there is a good chance that this scenario will come to pass: it is hard to see what other direction contemporary technology could take as an alternative to the computerisation of society. 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. Welcome to The Postmodern Condition by French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998). ; Postmodern condition = post-industrial, computerized society; Postmodernism as "incredulity toward mata-narratives" (Introduction xxiv). And today more than ever, knowing about that society involves first of all choosing what approach the inquiry will take, and that necessarily means choosing how society can answer. Can you tell stories in a cabinet meeting? Barthes | Of a different order again is the efficiency of a question, a promise, a literary description, a narration, etc. FREE study guides and infographics! one, the positivist kind, would be directly applicable to technologies bearing on men and materials, and would lend itself to operating as an indispensable productive force within the system. On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. For the merchantilisation of knowledge is bound to affect the privilege the nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the production and distribution of learning. "Answering the Question: "What Is Postmodemism?" Althusser | The pace is faster or slower depending on the country, and within countries it varies according to the sector of activity: the general situation is one of temporal disjunction which makes sketching an overview difficult. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (French: La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir) is a 1979 book by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, in which the author analyzes the notion of knowledge in postmodern society as the end of 'grand narratives' or metanarratives, which he considers a quintessential feature of modernity. Precession of Simulacra ’, in Storey ( Reader ) the process capitalism! Exhaustive ) the class of decision makers transmission of acquired learning-are already feeling the effect, will. 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