File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0304, message 122


Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 18:32:43 +0100
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: The angel of postmodernism




Glen

more rough notes then -

Often when reading radical critiques of modernity the primary issue is 
not that the reading of modernity is wrong in itself - but rather the 
tendency to not accept and properly establish the relationship between 
modernity and capitalism, which are not seperable. A critique of a 
society should not only take place as a critique of political/social 
institutions or the underlying social and philosophical understandings - 
modernity and its associated rationalism - but at it is underlying 
economic and material level. The critiques are founded on seperating 
supposedly different social and political systems - but we should be 
able to see that modernity/capital cannot be considered as different 
objects...

No I meant "future goodness that is in reality disguised as present 
cruelty" and was referring to the way in which a better world was not 
only served up as an item to mask the unpleasentness of the present - 
but that it also masked the fact that the future goodness was going to 
consist of the continuation of the same...

The brick of rationality to which I'm referring is that which 
modernity/capital killed off many potentially oppositional creatures - 
it reinvented as inferior  and failed all forms of thought and life 
which did not associate themselves with reason. Not then common-sense 
which as has been pointed out many times is usually a reflection of 
dominant ideologies...

regards
steve

Glen Fuller wrote:

>  
>
>  [Often this latter refernce to capital - is hidden behind the notion 
> of the rationality and reason being in some sense seperable from their 
> history within capital - as if rationality is not implicated in the 
> social and the economic, the material world in which we exist on an 
> everyday basis - then the critique of rationality is often the failure 
> to be honest about the attack being on our socio-economic rationale. 
> To believe that this is an attack simply on rationality in itself 
> rather than an attack on the source of the problem leads to 
> justification for the bombing to continue...]
>
>  
>
> Steve , if you have the time, do you think you could explain what you 
> mean here a bit more: "then the critique of rationality is often the 
> failure to be honest about the attack being on our socio-economic 
> rationale"? And the next line too...   
>
> ("future goodness that is in reality disguised as present cruelty"???? 
> Don't you mean present cruelty disguised as future goodness!!??)
>
> One of my favourite bits of the Pomo C. is how he talks about 
> efficacy, about the focus being on the efficacy of the 'games'. 
> However, I am not sure what form of rationality you are talking 
> about... do you mean the rationality of the banal (common sense)? The 
> reinscription, at the limit of the rational, of the conditions of the 
> rational? "Its like that because that's the way it is." Rapping in 
> tautologies, I love it. How the conditions and rules of the 'game' 
> enter the space of the game as the players' sol. (Kinda like what 
> Virilio talks about, but that is another tangent.)  
>
> Glen.
>
>
>


HTML VERSION:

Glen

more rough notes then -

Often when reading radical critiques of modernity the primary issue is not that the reading of modernity is wrong in itself - but rather the tendency to not accept and properly establish the relationship between modernity and capitalism, which are not seperable. A critique of a society should not only take place as a critique of political/social institutions or the underlying social and philosophical understandings - modernity and its associated rationalism - but at it is underlying economic and material level. The critiques are founded on seperating supposedly different social and political systems - but we should be able to see that modernity/capital cannot be considered as different objects...

No I meant "future goodness that is in reality disguised as present cruelty" and was referring to the way in which a better world was not only served up as an item to mask the unpleasentness of the present - but that it also masked the fact that the future goodness was going to consist of the continuation of the same...

The brick of rationality to which I'm referring is that which modernity/capital killed off many potentially oppositional creatures - it reinvented as inferior  and failed all forms of thought and life which did not associate themselves with reason. Not then common-sense which as has been pointed out many times is usually a reflection of dominant ideologies...

regards
steve

Glen Fuller wrote:

 

 [Often this latter refernce to capital - is hidden behind the notion of the rationality and reason being in some sense seperable from their history within capital - as if rationality is not implicated in the social and the economic, the material world in which we exist on an everyday basis - then the critique of rationality is often the failure to be honest about the attack being on our socio-economic rationale. To believe that this is an attack simply on rationality in itself rather than an attack on the source of the problem leads to justification for the bombing to continue...]

 

Steve , if you have the time, do you think you could explain what you mean here a bit more: “then the critique of rationality is often the failure to be honest about the attack being on our socio-economic rationale”? And the next line too...   

(“future goodness that is in reality disguised as present cruelty”???? Don’t you mean present cruelty disguised as future goodness!!??)

One of my favourite bits of the Pomo C. is how he talks about efficacy, about the focus being on the efficacy of the ‘games’. However, I am not sure what form of rationality you are talking about... do you mean the rationality of the banal (common sense)? The reinscription, at the limit of the rational, of the conditions of the rational?Its like that because that’s the way it is.” Rapping in tautologies, I love it. How the conditions and rules of the ‘game’ enter the space of the game as the players’ sol. (Kinda like what Virilio talks about, but that is another tangent.)  

Glen.





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