Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 23:10:14 -0500
From: mab207-AT-psu.edu (Mark Bower)
Subject: Re: The scandal of obligation


>Ariosto Raggo wrote:
>> 
>> Hugh wrote:
>> >
>
>>Isn't Lyotard problematizing the possibility of communication as the
>> transfer of messages
>
>Could be, if you mean he is simply philosophizing about the ever present
>difficulty of picking the best words to do the job out your head,
>sending them to the ears of another in the hope of some congruence
>between his/her understanding these words, their sequence, inflection,
>meaning and what you intended when you spoke the message.
>

____________

I think that Lyotard's move is a way of attempting to understand
communication as something other than exchange (the genre of economics).  To
say that addressors and addressees are instances that arise in the actuality
of a phrase is to question the solidity of the self as the originator and
sender of messages.  This seems to be consistent with the project of
resisting metanarratives--particularly the metanarrative of technoscience
which provides us with the metacriteria of "efficiency."

Mark Bower