Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 16:42:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-crl.com>
Subject: Re: lyotard




Clifford,

Lyotard doesn't say that the metanarratives are lost, but that we are
incredulous of them.  There is a world of difference between those two
statements.  The Freudian (or Marxian, Hegelian, logical positivst, 
whatever) metanarratives are still there, but they are endorsed now by 
followers.  Even the followers, today, are eclectic in their mixing of 
the elements of one school and another.  Instead of turning to what is 
written in the canon, we turn to each other and engage in discourse (as 
we are doing here.)  The canon is still there, but its role is 
different.  We still read Freud, but he is not the last word.  The last 
word is never spoken.  It is constantly evolving in a paralogical medicum 
of dialogue that is continuously trying to find ways to express what 
cannot be said within the language-game of the metanarratives.  

In place of dogmatic authority (read that "metanarratives"), Lyotard 
prescribes, in my opinion, a sociology of mind.  This will not yield us 
consensus, but it will yield us a continuous refreshing of the 
formulation of our concepts -- and in a world in which new fresh text is 
of capital value, that is the bottom line.

It is difficult for me to find the essential thread of postmodernism 
between Lyotard and literary figures, or people from other arts.  To use 
a Wittgensteinian phrase, there are a family of uses of the term 
"postmodern" and "modern".  Lyotard's speaks to me, however, and to many 
others.  Moreover, I believe its popularity has something to do with the 
fact that Habermas accepts a similar definition and takes the other 
position, embracing modernism rather than postmodernism.  

Do we need to find a single thread to define the term?  Or can we define 
it locally?  Calibrating our definitions to each other as well as to the 
authors whose works we admire?  I suspect our individual answers to that 
question reflects how postmodern our inclinations are.

..Lois Shawver