File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1997/lyotard.9706, message 32


Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 22:12:35 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Paralogy and Noise


Giles Peaker wrote:
> 
> This is (first) partly in response to Hugh Bone's post of 2-6-97 and
> (second) partly a response to the debate on the paralogical
> Hugh Bone wrote:
> >This forum was a void until a few weeks ago.  It's supposed to be
> >about Lyotard, and if you have visited the Lyotard archive you
> >know there are a lot of other modern philosophers in the system.
> >
> >Also, if you have visited many of the other forums you know they are
> >mostly noise and trivia, especially re politics.
> VISIT SLATE, WIRED, FORUMS OF LARGE US NEWSPAPERS.
> 

And the noise here is? TOO MANY TOPICS, TOO MANY SPLASHES - LIKE 
FIREWORKS. PEOPLE AROUND A TABLE WITH A COMMON PURPOSE TRY TO HAVE
ONE MEETING WITH CONTRIBUTIONS, NOT MULTIPLE TWO-WAY CONVERSATIONS.
> 
> >Lois has made a good statement about defining our terms, which brings
> >to mind the larger purpose of how we can help each other advance
> >particular interests.
> >
> >There was concentration on "paralogy", but we are losing the
> >concentration.
> 
> What ever happened to the petit narrative? Nobody is 'stopping you'
> discussing paralogy. LOIS WAS CURIOUS ABOUT PARALOGY EARLY ON. HER QUESTIONS BROUGHT THE LIST TO LIFE.  Surely there is space for different 
threads. YES, AND SLATE HAS THIRTY-ODD THREADS PROCEEDING SIMULTANEOUSLY.
SAME PEOPLE JUMP FROM ONE TO ANOTHER; LOTS OF WISECRACKS AND INVECTIVE.
"NOISE". NOT WHAT THIS LIST IS ABOUT.
 In
> addition, some might consider the legacy of avant-gardists and modernists to be very important with regards to Lyotard's writings (and 
his terms). THEY MIGHT..... WHAT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ANY OF US PROBABLY
FITS SOME VISION, SOME GOAL, SOME PROJECT OUR MINDS INSIST ON.
>WHEN YOU SCAN BOOKS IN THE STACKS YOU PROBABLY READ "CONCLUSIONS"
AND "BIBLIOGRAPHY" FIRST, THEN SCAN THE INNARDS.

Lyotard certainly didn't object to putting 'dead poets' at certain places
> in his work (nor did he avoid castigating them!). Could this not be
> discussed?  COULD BE; MILLIONS OF BOOKS ABOUT WM. SHAKESPEARE.
> 
> >In art class, an individual would put up his/her latest work, the
> >entire class would observe.  Like a Quaker meeting, those so moved would
> >speak.  Everyone had a turn, everyone had a voice. The teacher's role
> >was guidance, encouragement, technical information.
> 
> And who is teacher here?  NO ONE, SO WE GUIDE, ENCOURAGE, PROVIDEINFORMATION TO EACH OTHER.
> >
> >If we want to expand, integrate, round out, each person's philosophical
> >views (with the help of Lyotard and participants of this forum) we can
> >post a "picture" and take turns commenting.
> >
> >hb
> I thought we were. WE TRY.  FROM "LE DIFFEREND" I GOT INSIGHT ABOUTLANGUAGE AND HOW IT MAKES US HUMAN WHICH I AM TRYING TO ARTICULATE INTO
A PICTURE. NOT MUCH SUCCESS SO FAR.
> 
> In another mail Hugh Bone wrote
> >One person's absurdity is another's fanatic belief.  It's absurd
> >to bemoan a past even God cannot change. Dead poets threaten no
> >one.  Living Hitlers create new Holocausts and Gulags.
> >
> >Scholarship serves many roles in preserving the status quo.
> >
> >hb
> As well as the inescapable 'nightmare weighing on the brains of the
> living' which is the past in the present, AGREED, BUT WHY CONCENTRATEON DEAD HITLERS. SPEAK OF LIVING HITLERS. one can learn from the past -
> obvious but true. I would like to try to be able to recognise whatever
> 'second time as farce' we might sleepwalk into. The question of Pound
> raises some valid questions about, amongst other things, paralogy,STILL TRYING TO UNDERSTAND PARALOGY about
> the definition of terms and authority. DEFINITION OF TERMS AND AUTHORITY - LE DIFFEREND SPEAKS TO THIS, ALSO, SOMETHING CALLED 
"OBLIGATION"  VERY MYSTERIOUS... What it might be argued to suggest
> is that a refusal to be bound by extant games is in no way incompatible
> with a virulent refusal to allow the same right of redefinition IT TROUBLES ME THAT LOIS STRUGGLES WITH DEFINITIONS WHILE OTHERS PRAISE
GUATTARI AND DELEUZE WHO SEEM TO DISDAIN DEFINITION. CASTORIADIS CITES
THE SERIOUSNESS AND IMPORTANCE OF RUSSELL SAYING MATHMATICIANS DON'T KNOW 
WHAT THEY TALK ABOUT OR WHETHER WHAT THEY SAY IS TRUE. REDEFINITION IS
GREAT BUT NOT WHILE THE BALL IS IN PLAY. THE HUMPTY DUMPTY APPROACH
TO DEFINITIONS AT LEAST DEFINES AUTHORITY. to
> others; the transformation of meaning or the crossing of the 'borders' of
> different games by the importation of terms (e.g. 'Jew') does not ipso
> facto cause the collapse of metanarrative (or even scepticism). I realise
> that this is a heavily laden example, and I apologise, but the
> importation of Nazi mythology into science springs to mind - there was
> certainly a transformation of the langauge game, and a consensual one
> (for some). ALSO TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING "LANGUAGE GAME" 
> 
> In an earlier post Lois Shawver wrote:
> > If the discourse is more paralogical,
> >we are not all analysts and none of us put
> >forth a metanarrative.  Instead, we are each
> >saying things like, "I think
> >the man is trying to gain control of the corporation"
> >and someone else says, "What do you mean by 'dominate'?
> >And this is allowed to be defined, not by referring
> >to a general lexicon, but within the conversation.
> >The paralogical participants will yield to that definition
> >in the moment, but they will not be obliged thereby to to take the
> >definition into other conversations.
> Fine if we are all equally paralogical, but the very example demonstrates
> that we are not. This hypothetical discussion could, I would suggest,
> only function in a Habermasian heaven of communicative rationality.
> Metanarrative remains neccessary in order to be able to establish the
> grounds of discussion, otherwise what consensual position (however
> temporary/ local) could be established - what is the discussion for?
> Mutually defining terms would have to be preceded by defining purpose and
> so on in an infinite regression. AS JULIAN BOND SAID, IF YOUSTOP BEATING YOUR WIFE IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD START BEATING YOUR
DOG.  MORE PEOPLE HAVE COMMITED CRIMES FROM OVER-SMOKING THAN HAVE
DIED OF INFINITE REGRESSION.
> 
> Moreover, there is little doubt, in the hypothetical example, about whose
> definition of terms would be more effective. To make the gestrure of
> appeal to the text -  if I remember rightly, the only way to assess
> language games in Lyotard is by how 'good' (convincing? effective?
> elegant? I need help here) they are. I quote from 'Just Gaming' in which
> he writes that we must judge "without criterea...It is decided, and that
> is all that can be said...I mean that, in each instance, I have a
> feeling, that is all...But if I am asked by what criterea do I judge, I
> will have no answer to give" (Minneapolis 1985 p14-5). Whilst he later
> says that an aesthetic politics is not sufficient, I can't see how this
> isn't aesthetic, and no admission of criterea is apparently acceptable
> (contra Habermas). Imposition of one game on another, I read Lyotard as
> arguing, is wrong (although how it is judged to be wrong strikes me as a> question, is this an re-importation of a transcendental ethics? ) and 
yet> the success (as survival or as spread) of a language game seems
 only to > have a performative basis - it is 'right' if it works, and 
here perhaps > we return to the operations of corporate capital
that Mark Bower raised > early in this discussion.
> 
> As a small personal example, varieties of management speak seem to have
> an alarming success in the domination of terms at the moment - I speak
> from bitter experience - and whilst they are thoroughly sceptical about
> the great sweep of the enlightenment project, its performers somehow lack
> that paralogical openness that Lois Shawver so admirably practices. How
> do I persuade them, or how do we reach a mutual understanding, however
> contingent? Not so much a philosophical question as a Brechtian one, I
> admit, but I hope it will be admitted as valid.
> 
> Yours
> 
> Giles            THANKS, GILES.  IF YOU OR ANYONE ELSE HAS                   READ AND RE-READ "LE DIFFEREND" AND HAVE IT
\                  AVAILABLE, I WOULD LIKE TO PREPARE A SHORT LIST
	           OF QUESTIONS ON SPECIFIC PARAGRAPHS.
                         
                        Sincerely, 
                        Hugh
> 
> Giles Peaker, Historical and Theoretical Studies
> School of Art and Design, University of Derby, Britannia Mill,
> Mackworth Road, Derby. DE22 3BL (U.K.)
> (01332) 622222 ext. 4063    G.Peaker-AT-derby.ac.uk
> Editorial Collective:
> Detours and Delays. An Occasional Journal of Aesthetics and Politics
> http://art.derby.ac.uk/~detours/detours.html


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005