From: "Lois Shawver" <rathbone-AT-california.com>
Subject: RE: Marx's critique
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 21:16:49 -0700


Steve D,

I have been planning to get to your last note (July 1) on the Marx statement
in Lyotard, but things piled in on me and I have not had time to do it
justice.  Also, I wanted to find my Anti-Oedipus book so I could read the
preface by Foucault.  I finally found my book.  But I was surprised to
discover that the preface in my book was by Foucault.  Would you please
check your copy to see if your memory served you correctly?  The preface by
Foucault could be understood much like you explained Lyotard, I think.
Anyway, if the preface in your version is by Lyotard, I would like to know
what version you are looking at.  I would very much like to read such an
article.

..Lois Shawver
-----Original Message-----
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[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of
steve.devos
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 3:14 PM
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Marx's critique



Lois/All

I tend to agree that at the time of the PMC and afterwards Lyotard's
social and political positions seem best understood through the then
triumphalist liberal democratic, liberal parliamentarian . In part then I
agree with the sentiments outlined in the first paragraph and think that
this is a brief summary of the fear of technology and development which
haunted Lyotard's work - at least as interpreted below and I have some
sympathy with this reading. But where your phasing raises a question, is
why is it thought that the knowledge and information stored in the
peculiar encoded forms of set theory which all the existing forms of
databases are based on - is oppressive?  Even in 1979 when the storage of
data  and the uses being made of it were more restricted and less
ubiquitous than they are now it should have been clear that the storage
of data in itself was not oppressive. 'Data' stored in systems is a
blatantly double edged  sword, part oppressive and part liberatory, the
data stored in systems are simply human constructed facts,  and facts are
made. Given that a "...reality cannot be used to explain why a statement
becomes a 'fact'..".  If I ignore the 'oppression'  - then what it seems
to me that Lyotard does offer is a strong explanation of how we can can
avoid the false inclination to say that the natural sciences are timeless
and perhaps tenseless. This latter proposition might be a softly harmless
statement except that people seem to grant a specific explanatory power
to these abstractions. It seems important to recognise that we cannot
explain why human beings believe something on the basis of accepting that
it is true, or relates to a fact rather the critical word is 'explain'.
Now that systems are more ubiquitous and becoming more recognizably
humane - courtesy in part of non-market organizations such as CERN - can
one propose that they are oppressive for the data they hold ? as being
different qualitatively worse than the effects of taylorist mass
production on the everyday lives of  workers ?

I doubt that the above is quite as non controversial as your own
statement  but we can rework the issue later perhaps.

[I considered writing something about pluralism and language games here -
later perhaps].

Originally like many leftists who became committed during the early 1970s
- it was in the early 80s when  I became deeply engaged with the work of
the various postmodernists, Lyotard's critique of modernist grand
narratives, Baudrillard's symbolic exchange and cultural simulcra,
Derrida's critique of western metaphysics - from these positions in the
early 80s it seemed possible to invent new forms of resistance and
rebellion.  At it's most basic the postmodern theories are understood as
being an attack on the enlightenment - here then the enlightenment is the
problem and postmodernism was the solution. The postmodern positions were
understood during that period as the descendent of the entire "spectrum
of modern and contemporary liberation struggles..." From the challenges
to Western political hegemony over the south and colonial rule,  women's
movements, antiracism were interpreted as being the groundwork of
postmodern struggles. In other words then - modernity was understood as
the field of power for the white mostly european male then the postmodern
was thought of as the field of non-white, non-male, non-european. "The
politics of difference incorporates the values and voices of the
displaced, marginalised, the exploited and the oppressed..."  (Bell
Hooks)  Further then notions such as difference, discourse,
interpretation and hybridity are presented as powerful weapons against
the supposed institutions of modernity. Whilst I still have some sympathy
for these positions - it  is now clear that no actual or potential
liberation was going to be possible based on these starting points... In
all probability they are merely the interesting mirror to the domination
of the neo-liberal counter-reformation.  This is not to place them in  a
reactionary allaince with neo-liberalism etc but rather to think of them
as a transition to something else. In this context then the end of  the
grand narratives seemed potentially to incorporate the end of the very
things that we need to struggle against - rather than suggesting the end
of the narratives needed to justify the struggle for human liberation or
 understanding.

regards
steve



Lois Shawver wrote:
      You may well be right, Steve, that Lyotard's postmodern
      philosophy of the PMC will not be of any use in the struggle
      against capital.  But don't you agree that Lyotard was not
      trying to struggle against capital at the time of PMC.  He
      had given up that struggle.  What he was struggling to
      accomplish was a new form of oppression, a form of oppression
      that was just becoming possible through the advent of
      computer databases, a form of oppression that could be
      averted, he thought, if a more postmodern understanding of
      knowledge were accepted, a form of knowledge in which plural
      paradigms of knowledge were tolerated, not by permitting
      people within these competing paradigms to loiter side by
      side in their comments, never connecting, but by permitting
      the competing paradigms to look for ways to improve
      themselves in the hopes of winning the battle of the
      competition of ideas, especially new ideas emerging from new
      language games..

That seems like a noncontroversial interpretation of the impulse
that organized Lyotard's thinking in the PMC.  Do you agree?  And,
as such, that interpretation still leaves it an open question as to
whether the philosophy that readers have taken from the PMC can
be useful to them for whatever purpose they might have.  I do not
yet recognize that any test has been made that would dictate any
conclusions like that.

Yet, if I understand you correctly, you say that you once did think
that the PMC philosophy would serve the purposes of the Marxists of
our era, purposes you identified as your own.  But you tried it,
gave it a chance, and the results were completely discouraging.  Do
I hear you right?

So, please tell me, how did you interpret Lyotard so that he seemed
to you he could be useful?  I'm not planning to be rigid about your
interpretation of Lyotard.  I think a certain degree of drift of
meaning is really quite inevitable, and probably good.  But still,
perhaps, there should be a certain contact with what he said if one
were to claim that it had something to offer one's projects, even
though you no longer seem to feel that way.

..Lois Shawver

      Lois/all

      I think your two brief statements are fair.

      Whilst I am in this context deliberately understanding
      the issue of 'critique' in terms of it's Hegalian and
      Marxist context  - it is also worth remembering
      tha[Lois Shawver] . t Lyotard interprets the phrase
      against all the related uses of the term and positions.
      It is only in the PMC period that critique is readable
      as being predominantly a Hegalian and Marxist issue.
      Reading the material from the late 60s and early 70s it
      should be clear that any position founded on a
      'critique' is being questioned and by implication
      refused. My specific interest in the PMC statement is
      based on the resurgence of marxist thought that has
      been building up in the past half decade.  During the
      80s and early 90s when the postmodern positions were at
      there best the 'paralogist' inventor of new systems did
      not produce any utopian phantasmagorias that helped to
      structure a response against the primary problem of our
      era. I thought during the 80s that the best approach to
      resist the counter-reformation of the neo-liberals was
      founded on a radicalism built on such approaches but
      nothing sustainable developed and it has  increasingly
      seemed that we attempted to throw the baby out with the
      bathwater when we willfully accepted the 'end of
      critique' along with the 'end of emancipation'. (To
      maintain the line of thought then): In the PMC  Lyotard
      is highly critical of Marxism, he states that the
      general critique of capital is undermined by the
      incorporation of the working class  within the system
      of development that is constructed to maximise
      performance and value. With this he refuses the
      'critique' because of what he argues is a Marxist
      essentialism which he contrasts to postmodern
      pluralism, but in  the 21st Century as the bombs are
      warmed up to fall on another set of Innocents this can
      be considered almost a casual indictment of
      postmodern...



      regards
      steve