Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 08:24:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: mnunes-AT-gpc.edu
Subject: Re: Paradox, Protagoras


> The two paradigm cases Lyotard discusses are the historical revisionism
> of Faurisson concerning the Holocaust and the totalitarian standpoint of
> Stalinist communism.  What both of these judgments share in common with
> metanarratives is the basic position they take. It is the illusion of a
> standpoint outside of history able to judge it in totality without being
> judged in turn.  This is what leads to a kind of monopoly on the
> procedures for the determination of what is real.
> 
[snip]
> 
> One of the common misinterpretations of the metanarrative is that it is
> that it is something merely willful on Lyotard's part, a kind of
> premature foreclosure upon the possibilities of history. In this
> passage, I believe that Lyotard is attempting to show that any attempt
> to formulate a metanarrative of history will end in a kind of paradox of
> the "All Cretans are Liars" variety.  The metanarrative attempts to
> maintain objectivity by embedding its judgment in an exterior process
> called history and thereby forgets that this judgment is actually one
> made by the participant himself.  As Lyotard points out: "The history of
> the world cannot pass a last judgment. It is made out of judged
> judgments."

Thanks Eric for your insightful summary comments. I am particularly 
grateful for your comments on Kant, a significant blind spot in my reading.

When you say "any attempt to formulate a metanarrative of history," I 
wonder if it might be helpful to think in terms of the kind(s) of 
genre(s) in which it is even *possible* to make this sort of "objectifying" 
move. It could be argued that, for lack of a better term, the "enlightenment 
project" serves as a kind of meta-genre that legitimizes a number of 
discourses under the sign of "rationality" and "reason." In this 
reading, logical positivism, performativity, and technocracy (capitalist 
and communist) operate as a constellation of genres that produce 
overlapping and mutually reinforcing phrase universes.

--mark