The Postmodern Condition

By Jean-Francois Lyotard

Lyotard defines Postmodern as incredulity toward meta narratives. That is due to the progress in the sciences. We have clouded by many narratives in regards of knowledge and understanding of our world, however, we don't necessarily know what are really meant. Our lives are under greater influence by these kinds of pragmatics of language particles than in the province of Newtonian theories.

Lyotard questions the legitimacy of meta narratives lie, technology? or consensus suggested by Jurgen Habermas? In postindustrial society, the question of legitimating of knowledge is in different terms.

First, what is knowledge? denotative discourse bearing on a certain referent does not really know what it thinks it knows. Positive science is not a form of knowledge, but rather a language game.

The legitimation by paralogy, as we cannot rely on grant narratives, but litter narrative.....

The pragmatics of science is centered on denotative utterance, which are the foundation upon which it builds institution of learning, but its postmodern development brings a decisive fact to the fore.

Science pragmatics development does not simplify but rather builds a monster formed by the interweaving of various networks of heteromorphous classes of utterance (denotative, prescriptive, performative, technical, evaluative etc.)

For this reason, it seems impossible to achieve the consensus of Habermas.

Lyotard's Concept of
Paralogy
Lois Shawver

In Lyotard's (1984) philosophy, the term "paralogy" means a flood of good ideas that are inspired by conversation. Postmoderns, he tells us, have a quest for "paralogy," a hunger for stimulating conversation and ideas that work in a satisfying way. To get those ideas paralogists often share an irreverent attitude towards well accepted theories, breaking them up and recombining them in revolutionary new ways. The point of paralogy is to help us shake ourselves loose of stultifying traditional frameworks that we have come to take for granted in order to enhance our spontaneous creativity.

How can we do that? Lyotard observes that people today (in our postmodern era) have discovered ways to create paralogy. He tries to analyze what he finds in order to reveal our paralogical techniques.

When paralogy works, it seems to rely on two techniques: First, postmoderns avoid "terror", where terror means arbitrarily removing people from the discussion, in order to prevent them from talking even when they are presenting themselves in ways not designed to shut us up.

Second, paralogists allow people to define their terms locally. That is, if someone says "What I mean by 'stuff' is everything that I have that isn't worth anything to anyone else," in paralogy we let that definition stand as a a local and provisional definition of "stuff." Rather than challenge the definition, we try to step inside the speaker's vocabulary. This is generous listening and it promotes a reciprocal generosity when it is our turn to speak.

Lyotard also felt that paralogy would be fostered by agonistics, or contention. angry words. He thought that people would be inspired by a good fight. I tend to disagree. A good fight may be inspiring, but in the end, if the verbal weapons are lethal enough, it shuts the conversation up.

I think what is needed is agreeable disagreement, alternative disagreeing ideas presented in ways that do not offend. Good ideas seem much more likely to flow when people do not anticipate having their character assasinated in pejorative language and when disagreement is less personal and more directed at the text being challenged.

Also, paralogy, in my view, is is more likely to happen when the participants give each other space to speak, let them negotiate the language they are going to use to say what they want to say. Generous paralogical listeners simply try to step inside each other's language and make sense of it before they extend alternative statements. This requires us to ask people good questions but also to give people the space and support they need to answer those questions. People often do not know what they think unless others are willing to ask about it and listen.

Does paralogy sound like something everyone would want? There are those that argue against paralogy. There is a paper you can access below by Hatcher. However, the call for paralogy in a number of papers also suggests that people might well fall into non-paralogical discourse unintentionally. These papers do not use the term "paralogy." But, if you read between the lines, you will see that these are papers far and against it.

http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~mhalber/Research/Paper/pci-lyotard.html

Lyotard claims that we have now lost the ability to believe in meta-narratives, that the legitimating function that grand quests once played in society has lost all credibility. The question then becomes, what now forms the basis of legitimation in society if there is no overarching meta-narrative? For Lyotard, the answer lies in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which analyzes the way sub-groups in society regulate their behavior through rules of linguistic conduct. If we have rejected grand narratives, then what we have fallen back on are little narratives. Little narratives are Wittgenstein's "language games", limited contexts in which there are clear, if not clearly defined, rules for understanding and behavior. We no longer give credence to total philosophical contexts like Marxism which ostensibly would prescribe behavior in all aspects of life, rather, we have lots of smaller contexts which we act within. We are employees, we are students. These roles legitimate knowledge and courses of action in their limited contexts. By fragmenting life into a thousand localized roles, each with their particular contexts for judging actions and knowledge, we avoid the need for meta-narratives. This is the nature of the modern social bond. Our effectiveness is judged in the context of how well we perform in each of these many limited roles. We may be a good employee but a poor driver, etc.