Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 19:13:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: orpheus <cwduff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: Re: lyotard


	Hello I am very interested in this point, this question. What is
modern, and how "we" have all moved away from the term, and into the
seemingly looser term post-modern. In literary cirlces, the terms modern
is still unstable in terms of what it does or does not designate. Marjorie
Perloff the American critic points to the literary origins of the word
post-mdoern. In 1972 David Antin and several others launced a literary
magazine callled Boundaries - it has been going strong since, and its
subtitle was a journal of Post-Modernim. Perloff remarks that in the
modernist sensibility the fragment (and the theories/criticisms
emergent there of) is a more dominant discourse, and that in the
post-mdoern sensibility, the essay form (not being fragmented necessarily)
has come to the fore again. It has come to the fore that is an epistem of
ists own calibre. The essay (the  "essai") is not a fragment that is a
relfection of an original whole in pieces. In Lyotard and in the way you
have stated his position viz-a-viz the modern/postmodern paradigm I am
remnded of Tristan Tzara's remark that modernism is already a past
phenomena, and no longer had any interest. That was in 1920 he said that.
When modernism is supposed to be at its height! Already a dead modernism
balking at its own choices? - Anyhow this is the littlest literary speck
of viewing on the subject. I have read Lyotard's Driftworks and some other
pieces, and I really enjoy what he does. One thing I dont get though (and
last winter in a lecture at McGill university Edward Said said that the
big narratives were also gone) is this loss of the larger narratives. In
literature there has been a similar movement one might say away from the
"narrative" but its meaning and consequences are rather different. For
instance, is Eliot modern and is Joyce not modern? I would say according
to the definition you made below that Eliot is modern. He longs for the
larger (universal ) narrative - whereas with Joyce play (esp in Finnegans
Wake) comes all to the fore. So the subtle differences between essay and
fragment that Perloff makes are also relative really to genre and an
author's overall positioning. Am I making sense? Now back to the larger
narrative - this  may sound simple, with the loss of the big  narrative
(the socalled universal ones) are all the truths that they stood for lost
in the Lyotardian scheme of things? Or are the truths carried forward and
now take on meaning , relevance and significance in the post-modern state?
- I meant new meaning . Im thinking of Marx here mostly, and I realize
this is not very specific but its been a while since I read (and even
remember what MArx says - yikes! how embarrassing) him. 
	So does Lyotard come out completely on the side of enchantment
versus lets say the gloomy realities of everyday life? Is Lyotard closer
to the Deleuze/Guattari positions on these matters? Im thinking of their
way of tthinking (in particular) of thinking about parts and wholes, and
the lyotardian notion of meta-narrative verus the post-modern narratives.
	Sorry about any awful typos I have a very slow modema and it takes
ages to correct anything....



	Anyhow I like this discussionthat has begun and hope it
continues....
			Clifford Duffy
	Especially that post-modern is not a periodic structure, but if
that is the case, then what precisely do we mean by referring to the
modern period? Would it be more accurate to call it a state of mind?



	
	Lois S. wrote: 
> Let me remind you a little.  For Lyotard, the postmodern is not a
period 
> that comes after the modern.  He actually says somewhere that something 
> must be postmodern first to become modern.  Something is "modern", in 
> Lyotard, because it is enchanted by a metanarrative, a grand account of 
> things (e.g., Marx, Freud, Hegel) that would tell us how everything 
> works.  We are "postmodern" if we are incredulous of such metanarratives.