Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 20:07:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-crl.com>
Subject: Re: Paralogy (and politics)




On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Mark Bower wrote:
> 
> 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?  

The differend is a difference of opinion (see, for example, The 
postmodern Explained, p.13)  Isn't it the case that those who are modern 
do not bear witness to the differend, the difference of opinion, because 
their dream requires them to stamp out any difference of opinion?

This is how I think about it: In classicism, there is a truth and all
agree.  In modernism, there are many groups each with bikd vision of the
truth, each convinced that its own truth is the real truth, each willing
to kill, if necessary for the sake of its beliefs, for the sake of its
truth.  And so, in modernity, there is war among the different schools,
agonistics, attempts to dominate, brutal attempts.  On the other hand, in
a postmodernism, there is no longer a nostalgia for consensual belief in
general truths.  Intead, knowledge is legitimized by paralogy, a kind of
negotiated language game and meaning in local contexts..  And the
postmodern is pleased to do this without searching for general truths to
unite our splintered world because the postmodern remembers that at
Auschwitz a whole people was destroyed within the spirit of modernity
(p.19)  Postmodernism has been an experimental method for exploring new 
rules of discourse, new rules of art and knowledge production, and a way 
which brings with it, perhaps surprisingly, great joy (at least if one no 
longer is nostalgic for metanarratives -- that is, at least it brings joy 
if one is postmodern.)

..Lois Shawver