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
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