File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1999/lyotard.9907, message 9


Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 10:44:58 -0700
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: opening salvo


Lois Shawver wrote:
> 
> Thanks to Judy and Colin for stimulating and cordial conversation on
> Lyotard!
> 
> Colin, to my way of thinking, it is important to avoid evaluating
> Lyotard as if he were presenting just a better metanarrative.  Lyotard,
> like Wittgenstein and Derrida show us new paths out of the trap of
> making metanarratives.  I believe they also give us clues as to how we
> make metanarratives.

-AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT-

Perhaps we can find among the few dozen people who've come to this
Lyotard place, sufficient interests, beliefs, thoughts, convictions
about
who they are and how the World works to create a meta-conversation.

I think of metanarratives as essential.  Like civilizations, they rise,
evolve, are discredited, and may eventually survive, only as history.

The new metanarrative of globalism is driven by the old metanarrative of
the divinely ordered State.  The fall of the Wall and the unforseen
advances in computer technology and global communication have made this 
possible.

We need metanarratives as we need maps in strange territories or lights
in dark rooms.  Science has given us new metanarratives.  The Cosmos,
DNA, the worlds within a single cell, the trillions of connections in
your brain.

We need paralogy and the local, and the social bonds.  The cult of the
divine right of the State dies slowly.  It took this country through
WWI, WWII, Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Kosovo wars, and a lot of 
other hostile actions too numerous to mention.  

Our military is a strong support of the metanarrative of free trade and
globalism.

Just as old-fashioned imperialism destroyed the local, globalism is 
destroying the local. 

>From the days when Western heirs of the Romans and Greeks, ethinic
cleansed the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australia, and much of
Africa, the practice of destroying native villages to enrich remote and
wealthy conquerors continues.

The logic of the local and the Social Bond is a coupling of interest
and interaction with people who are part of one's physical existence.

But we cannot escape a linkage to remote powers and events, whether the
Pope, the terrorists, the IRS, or the telphone robots who defeat
communication.  This is the metanarrative we live daily.

Best,
Hugh


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005