File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9907, message 47


Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 16:30:28 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Paralogy continued


Judy wrote:

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Hello again,

I leave the whole discussion intact, for I think it contains a lot of
substance.  

To the extent Lyotard teased us, spoke in riddles, or failed to explain
his doubts and uncertainties, we'll never know unless posthumous work
appears.

So we explore further what's in our own minds.

Hugh

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> Colin said
> 
> >To Lois(and anyone else who's listening):
> ....for me you simplify when you say: 'when we avoid making
> >metanarratives, the principle of requiring a consistent system falls
> >away'. The very avoidance of making metanarratives is itself a
> >consistent (political) position.
> 
> and the very need to 'avoid making metanarratives' implies that the
> principle requiring consistency rather than falling away, is in need of
> ongoing resistance. If every phrase presents a universe and constitutes it
> according to a regimen, to me this means to use language is to start off
> down the path of generalization and obscuring of difference every time;
> postmodernity brings insight into this and raises the possibility of
> resistance in the valuing of ongoing deconstruction (paralogy). This
> doesn't mean a valuing of the new for its own sake but for the sake of
> freedom from the oppression that comes from the uncritical justification of
> the hegemony of what one says, or in what one agrees with. Because such
> justification is inherent and ongoing, deconstructive discourse becomes
> valuable, and is legitimized by the recognition of such inherence.
> 
> Colin said
> ....and the differend, for me at least, does not have
> >explicitly negative overtones: as you enigmatically state 'the differend
> >can be magical'. On the other hand, it is not affirmative either, as
> >evidenced by Lyotard's desire to maintain the silence around the name of
> >'Auschwitz' (a silence which echoes through 'Heidegger and "the jews"').
> 
> Yes, I agree, his treatment of differends is not critical or negative. What
> he treats critically is the obscuring of differends, the pretenses that
> they have been resolved or dissipated or 'fixed' as if they are in need of
> being solved. What I like in Lyotard is that he points me in a direction of
> depathologizing incommensurability and heterogeneity. He shifts things so
> that pathology (injustice) consists in forgetting, denying, silencing
> differends, and it's not a problem to be fixed for Lyotard in my opinion:
> it's the way of language, of heterogeneous genres and phrase regimens
> (politics is the state of genres). But what is postmodern is an increasing
> willingness to tolerate and accept, and even to value, unresolved
> incommensurability, to acknowledge it from a state of aporia, to find there
> a place to wander and remain in and not to rush away from. Pagan judgment
> is slowed, despite its passion, by the lack of faith in extraneous
> transcendent criteria.
> 
> Colin said
> >      I still feel uncomfortable about your characterization of paralogy
> >as at least in part consensual.
> 
> Here I share your feeling. Consensus implies a shared logic, however
> momentary. Shared logic, I'm thinking, is immediately metanarrative. It's
> not something to be gotten rid of, it's an inevitable part of the process
> of language, including paralogy, but it has no place of privilege, it's a
> "suspect value"; it's that which waits to be questioned, deconstructed, and
> soon. time is of the essence. The paralogism is illogical, i.e. logically
> inconsistent: aporetic, incommensurable, and desired as such.  Differends
> are not the problem: the denial of differends is what needs critical
> discussion.
> 
> Colin said
> ...
> >'moves' playable within it must be local, in other words, agreed upon by
> >its present players and subject to eventual cancellation," you'll find
> >that he's describing the localized formation of language games, not the
> >activity of paralogy. Clearly, consensus is inextricably bound up with
> >language games.......Paralogy
> >is beyond even the antithesis of this consensus, it represents its
> >abolition.
> 
> I share this reading; this is a helpful distinction for me.
> 
> Colin said
>  If one were to accept your reading of paralogy as somehow
> >both consensus and dissensus, Lyotard would become a rather dull
> >relativist who, rather than representing an important critique of
> >Habermas, would merely be proffering an atomized version of
> >communicative action, a multiplicity of small but nonetheless
> >Habermasian social universes. To be honest, I think this danger is
> >present in Lyotard's work itself, or at least it is in 'Just Gaming'.
> 
> I would like to discuss some more this danger or the way in which Lyotard's
> language lends itself to  such a reading. What would have to be different
> for this danger to become lessened?
> 
> Colin said
> >With Lyotard, sophistry, rhetoric, persuasion, and the ruses pagans use
> >to trick their Gods all become very positive, and indeed poltical, terms
> >- as you say 'the process, the paralogy, becomes the goal'.
> >     What does everyone think? Does rhetoric really occupy the place in
> >Lyotard's thought I've been suggesting? I'd love to know what you all
> >feel about this.
> 
> What you say makes sense to me. A value on clever defiance of the
> hegemonic, whatever it may be, seems pronounced in Lyotard, although I'm
> not sure about the "whatever it may be."  His political biases are with the
> oppressed genres and phrases. His biases in terms of actual conditions seem
> fairly unhidden to me. A question for me is, does a critique of hegemony of
> genres as such (in the abstract?) lend itself to a value on
> positionlessness, a denial of legitimacy to the certainty of rightness and
> justice which accompanies the taking of political action?  In Just Gaming,
> Lyotard's writings give me the idea of such action being no less inspired
> for the absence of transcendent criteria, yet...I don't know. There would
> seem to be an undermining of the kind of thinking that goes along with
> organizing and sustained efforts. If all organizing could be undermined, so
> that there would never be any more than momentary ascendency of any
> interest, I might see a justice in it, but in the real world....Anyway, how
> this is different from liberalism, I don't see.
> 
> As for what you ask about the place of rhetoric, do you mean to say this is
> Lyotard's genre?  I would agree with that. Or do you mean he advocates it
> as a genre of political action?  If so, I would ask 'as opposed to what?'
> This is what philosophers do, right?  Isn't rhetoric the political action
> of philosophy?  but I dont know if I understand the question.
> Judy



   

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