File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 72


Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 09:12:37 -0800
Subject: Re: paralogy


mnunes-AT-gpc.peachnet.edu wrote:

> > Don said:
> > Lois, your explanation is very clear but if the rule
> of parology is that a
> > move in the game must take the conversation forward
> and present a > fertile
> > perspective or destabilize the status quo and allow
> the generation of new
> > ideas, then why isn't that rule, which is universal to
> the game of > parology,  a metanarrative or at least a
> part of the old metanarratives?
> > Don
> >
> Mark said:
> The only meta- here would be at the level of
> prescriptive: the rules of
> paralogy. That doesn't make it a metanarrative, since it
> has nothing to
> do with how the game of science is played, for example
> (or tennis for
> that matter: playing tennis would be quite different
> from a paralogical
> approach to tennis).
>

My reply:
Look at the language that Lyotard uses to describe the
postmodern's relation to metanarratives: Postmoderns are
*incredulous".  The metanarratives are *lost* and yet
postmoderns are no longer *nostalgic" for the lost
metanarratives.

To my ear, this represents a state of affairs that we find
ourselves in, not a rally call for how we should be.  I
think it is not a violation of postmodern ethics (or rules
of any kind) to believe in metanarratives.   It is just
that postmoderns have lost their faith in metarratives.
The possibility that paralogy can rise to becme a new
metanarrative is not a horror.

On the other hand, I think it is not.  The postmodern does
not only engage in paralogy.  It is just the quest of the
postmodern, the new quest I think.  But why can't the
postmodern play the game of "going along" or "rebelling
against the system" at times?  Incredulous people do these
things without credulity in a metarrative guiding them.
What rule to they violate?  No rules exist to govern the
whole of postmodernity saying such language games are out
of bounds.

But, among the possible language games is the game of
paralogy, and this game has become the quest of the
postmodern, the most satisfying (perhaps) or the most
inspiring, the most exciting language game.  Its
attraction belongs to the fact that it is the place in
which new language games are born, or, in other words, in
which our creativity is fostered by the community that
sustains our paralogy.

..Lois Shawver



   

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