File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 93


Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:05:20 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Football (European), Rugby, and the rules of the game


Lois wrote:

> So, innovation is similar to paralogy but not quite the
> same.  It can look the same.  What is the difference?  I
> think the difference is that paralogy takes us into a new
> language game.  It is not an innovation within the system
> (rather like Kuhn's normal science) but a move to change
> the game that allows data before us to show different
> patterns.  The paralogy, then (read on for the next
> paragraph) tends to destabilize the game that is being
> played and allow us to move into another language game by
> encouraging the promulgation of new rules and norms that
> are locally and provisionally determined.

Instead of xerostomia, let me offer an Austinian example which I think 
clarifies the distinction between innovation and invention--and I see 
invention as the paralogical.

Austin tosses out as an example the mythological origins of rugby: that a 
player picked up the football (soccer ball) and started to run with it, 
at which point others started to chase him, etc. Thus a new game was formed.

One might easily draft this *event* into the service of innovation by 
constructing a narrative of how rugby improves on football (it's an 
"evolution of the game" etc. etc.). But as an event, as a moment of 
paralogy, it is strictly invention--but precisely because something is 
put into play. The game doesn't come to a crashing halt. Play continues 
in an altered game (not necessarily better or even the "new" of innovate).

--mark
 

   

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