File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 6


Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 13:23:34 -0500
Subject: RE: Chapter 5: Commentary




Eric Salstrand WROTE:
<<<However, art is also limited in its effectiveness.  Business consultants
such as Tom Peters and Charles Handy have advocated a postmodern approach to
business that advocates a kind of permanent revolution in which the
organization is radically restructured to allow for greater innovation,
creativity and empowerment of workers.  This approach sounds very similar to
the paralogical actions which Lyotard advocates.  However, where this
tendency has been enacted, it has also gone hand in hand with  delayering,
reengineering,  downsizing and the elimination of middle management
positions. Lyotard foretells of this approach, so characteristic of the
eighties and nineties, to a certain extent.  The disturbing aspect of this
change, however, is the extent to which these extensions of paralogical
actions also resulted in a greater consolidation of power.  The plasticity
of capitalism is such that is able to accommodate these paralogical  actions
even while it extends its domination. Where is the art and politics capable
of challenging these relationships in a way that provides for greater
liberation in the workplace and the social realm?  What paralogical actions
are now necessary?>>>

Don Smith replies:
Liberation in the workplace is my project, or at least my interest. As a low
level manager with 30 years at a large corporation the following comments
are based on observation mixed with speculation. You are so right that
capitalism is able to accommodate postmodern tendencies. Not only do they
accommodate them, they nurture them. Large corporations increasingly depend
on workers having "disposable selves". As Lyotard says on page 63, "The
system seems to be a vanguard machine dragging humanity after it,
dehumanizing it in order to re-humanize it at a different level of normative
capacity." and on page 46, "...the goal is no longer truth but
performativity... the state and or company must abandon the idealist and
humanist narratives  of legitimation in order to justify the new goal." And
on page 62, in describing systems theory, "Administrative procedures should
make individuals "want" what the system needs in order to perform well." New
cultures are created and disposed of based on the vicissitudes of profit and
workers are expected to adapt. But It seems more like the older
metanarritives have been replaced by the dominant economic narrative of
performativity. The argument of the profit motive is so acceptable to the
working class that workers continually accept things that are not in their
interest simply because they make sense for profitability. The argument
goes, that unless there is continuous profit improvement there will be no
jobs. 

And don't be fooled by what you may read about restructuring. I see little
evidence that the structure is changing. The corporation is still a class
system with the power at the top. However there does seem to be a
technologically driven need for more cross functional organizing and
corporations are struggling with how to keep control of the changing
landscape.

I would say that there are possibilities for parology to be used by workers
to gain more control but it is unlikely. It amazes me that new business
culture imperatives such as quality teams or empowered work groups that
encourage management free activities are not realized by workers as power
shifting possibilities but it just isn't happening.

Don
      






   

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