Date: Fri, 06 Jun 1997 14:07:36 -0400
From: mab207-AT-psu.edu (Mark Bower)
Subject: Re: Paralogy (and politics)



>I don't know what Mark is referring to here, but on p. 111 of The Lyotard 
>Reader (edited by A. Benhamin, Blackwell, 1989), Lyotard says, 
>
>     ...when someone says that he is not political, either right or left, 
>     everyone knows that he is right."  
>

I don't think that I made the right/left comment, but if I did I would agree
with you here.  

One thing that I have been wondering about metanarratives:  if we are now
incredulous  of metanarratives, if they have lost their power to convince us
to act, why is it that bearing witness to the differend seems to be the same
as resisting metanarratives?  Have they really lost their power to convince?  

I've been thinking about the ways that Lyotard described genres as rules for
linking heterogenous phrases.  While phrases in dispute within the same
regimen are a litigation which can be resolved according to the rules
without domination, phrases in dispute from heterogenous regimens present us
with a differend.  While genres provide rules for linking heterogenous
phrases, there can be no metacriteria for adjudicating between regimes.
Thus in the Postmodern Condition, Lyotard warns us about the genre of
technoscience becoming dominant.  

If I remember correctly, he describes the act of linking heterogenous
phrases as inherently political.  The domination of one phrase regime (or
genre) over another is not linking, therefore it is not political.  Could it
be that paralogy is an insistent impertinence that points to the differend
and demands the linking of phrases instead of domination?  

Mark