Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 23:54:10 -0800 From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net> Subject: Re: Random thoughts on Lyotard Reading titles in UC Irvine archives, it seems Lyotard has had ideas on almost everything. For years I belonged to an art group. We discussed postmodernism in art classes and, eventually, I decided the term can mean most anything. It's not something that's "there", like Peoria or Sunset Beach, and people come and see it, and more or less know what they mean when they use the word. It's an attempt, in art, to give a name to something new. But if the new art is in many regions, and it is, and if there are many viewers, and there are, and if each artist has their own style, and they do, confusion is near utter. My point about postmodernism and art is that names like "postmodern" are so extremely general they have little meaning. A name like Cubism or Dada had meaning because the works of certain artists were the object of the definition, and statements about those works and those artists related to that meaning. Something like this was occurring not just in the art world, but also in the worlds of literature, philosophy and other humanities. My interest is in Le Differend which gives new insight on language, how language rules us and is at the same time what makes us human. Le Differend, along with other works in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, convinces one that the capacities of the human brain through language give our species the edge over others and allow us to create the many worlds each individual inhabits. Lyotard's work adds to understanding of this process; it is a catalyst leading to new horizons. There is little ambiguity in his discussion of rights and wrongs, plaintiffs, defendants, judgments, addressor, addressee, referent, sense, presentation, presuppositions, authority, competence, etc. >From another philosopher: "I could not talk to myself had others not talked to me." - Narrative is the method by which the child becomes "human". Feral children of human parents, raised by animals, cannot acquire "human" speech, language, or being. Lyotard, in, "Le Differend", draws heavily on Wittgenstein, Kant, Plato, and opens doors to "language" which were beyond my imagination, probably W,K,P, also. Before reading Lyotard, I was aware that Wittgenstein was credited with the concept of the "language game" as the assertion that the use and meaning of language is not something God-given, or a function of Reason, but the discovery that the meaning of words is their use in discourse. And, you might say, discourse creates and sustains social groups. Even deaf mutes can use sign language. Lyotard cites and elaborates various Wittgenstein assertions. Going beyond, in the manner of Deconstructionists, he speaks of phrase genres and phrase-regimes that govern the use of different kinds of phrases, and describes them as if they are entities having a "life" of their own. His term "phrase" means both complete thoughts, as in French or English sentences, and simple phrases, exclamations, etc. without subject/predicate. Generally he means sentences, but he insists that silence can be a phrase. A baby cannot choose a language, and probably "reads" faces long before he/she can link sound and meaning. Thus children's brains, consciousness, power of speech, are formed by phrases spoken to them by the living, transmitted from generations of parents and ancestors long deceased. By the time a person has a college degree, s/he has been subjected to a couple of decades of words and other forms of communication, and influenced by the everyday metanarratives of folklore and religion, as well as metaphysics, and politics.. Lyotard's use of the term "metanarrative" generally describes what I call "ideology", but it is much broader. Compare languages with genetic streams which fabricate, dominate, control,living beings, human and non-human, persisting through generations. The mysterious practice we call language, enables a faculty of personal expression which transcends individual mortality by conveying visions, concepts, thoughts and dreams to contemporaries and future generations Genetic instructions are of course actualized only in living tissue of the species-individual. while words persist as texts, and languages of the arts such as paintings in caves, sculpture and architecture have endured for thousands of years. My understanding of metanarratives is that they are systems of thought, like Marxism, or Christianity. According to Lyotard and other postmodernists some have lost faith in these stories and are looking for something better. People try desperately to communicate meanings. Written and spoken words, of course, share this burden with other modes of expression, including body language and all the languages of the arts.
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