File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 51


Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 15:06:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: legitimation


> Here are some working notes I have made on the concept of
> legitimation.  I think the concept of legitimation needs
> to be included as part of our understanding of
> metanarrative -- but I haven't put anything together on
> this at this point.
> 
> <http://www.california.com/~rathbone/legitima.htm>
> 
> ..Lois Shawver

Thanks, Lois, for the notes.

I want to keep coming back to legitimation and its place within language 
games, since Lyotard sets out on a very specific heading in PMC. Within a 
domain of language games, legitimation would be a kind of presupposition 
of how to play a given game--what moves are permissible. In re: science, 
Lyotard takes this point up in section 7, pp 23-24. On p. 24 there's a 
particularly interesting passage that addresses legitimation and language 
games. He's discussing the somewhat recursive relation between statement 
and referent in scientific knowledge:

The scientific solution of this difficulty consists in the observance of 
two rules. The first of these is dialectical or even rhetorical in the 
forensic sense: a referent is that which is susceptible to proof and can 
be used as evidence in debate. Not: I can prove something because reality 
is the way I say it is. But: as long as I can produce proof, it is 
permissible to think that reality is the way I say it is. The second rule 
is metaphysical; the same referent cannot supply a plurality of 
contradictory or inconsistent proofs. Or stated differenly: "God" is not 
decpetive. (PMC 24)

This second rule is significant later in the book since it excludes the 
possibility of paralogical legitimation. The first rule emphasizes how the 
rules of play for the science language game go about determining "the 
real." In this instance, a "legislator" isn't stating rules 
(prescriptives) but rather acting upon the presuppositions of the game 
itself--its metaprescriptives. the legislator is actually more judge that 
law-maker, since her position within the game is already mapped by the 
pragmatic determinants of the game itself.

So you make a statement about the world and try to put it into play 
within the langauage game of science. As the addressee of your statement, 
and thereby legislator (given the quirks of the denotative language game 
that science subsumes) I can respond:

	a) the statement meets criteria as legitimate move. I accept it 
	   as scientific.
	b) the statement breaks the rules. I reject it as "unscientific"
	c) the statement makes a "new move": no rules are broken, but it 
	   sets up an agonistic relation with existing moves. I accept it (and 
	   if I am buying into Kuhn, I would deem it revolutionary)

Note that "true" has no place in this approach, although science claims 
the authority to map the real/true as its referent.

What Lyotard tracks in this book is the emergence of performativity as 
the dominant prescriptive. To make a move in this game becomes about 
communication, efficiency, context control.

That's enough for now, I guess

--mark




   

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