Lyotard: What is Postmodernism?

Lyotard: What is Postmodernism? School of Foreign Studies Sep. 12, 2005

Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?  The Postmodern Condition (1979) publ. Manchester University Press, 1984. The First 5 Chapters of main body of work are available at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm

Para. 1: tendencies against pomo

Para. 1: tendencies against pomo  Tendencies: To put an end to experimentation; to extol realism and “transavantgardism,” to impose a common way of speaking, to restore a solid anchorage of language in the referent;

Para. 1: tendencies against pomo  Tendencies: To put an end to experimentation; to extol realism and “transavantgardism,” to impose a common way of speaking, to restore a solid anchorage of language in the referent;  Attacks on pomo: nonsense; spreading a reign of terror in the use of language; surrendered to the speaking machines the concern for reality; substituted for the referential paradigm that of “adlinguisticity;”

Para. 1: tendencies against pomo  Tendencies: To put an end to experimentation; to extol realism and “transavantgardism,” to impose a common way of speaking, to restore a solid anchorage of language in the referent;  Attacks on pomo: nonsense; spreading a reign of terror in the use of language; surrendered to the speaking machines the concern for reality; substituted for the referential paradigm that of “adlinguisticity;”  Pomo carries very little weight in front of political authority.

Para. 2: Habermas vs. neoconservatives

Para. 2: Habermas vs. neoconservatives  Habermas: if modernity has failed, it is in allowing the totality of life to be splintered into independent specialties which are left to the narrow competence of experts.

Para. 2: Habermas vs. neoconservatives  Habermas: if modernity has failed, it is in allowing the totality of life to be splintered into independent specialties which are left to the narrow competence of experts.  --- differentiation of cultural spheres or disenchantment of worldviews

Para. 2: Habermas vs. neoconservatives  Habermas: if modernity has failed, it is in allowing the totality of life to be splintered into independent specialties which are left to the narrow competence of experts.  --- differentiation of cultural spheres or disenchantment of worldviews  Habermas: The surrealists waged the most extreme warfare [on art], but two mistakes in particular destroyed their revolt. First, when the containers of an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, the contents get dispersed. Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow.

Wellmer & Habermas: unity of experience

Wellmer & Habermas: unity of experience  Remedy:

Wellmer & Habermas: unity of experience  Remedy: aesthetic experiences cognitive processes normative expectations

Wellmer & Habermas: unity of experience  Remedy: aesthetic experiences cognitive processes normative expectations  Arts & aesthetic experiences: bridge the gap between cognitive, ethical and political discourses, thus opening the way to a unity of experience

Lyotard’s Questions

Lyotard’s Questions  Should all take their places in the sociocultural unity as in an organic whole?

Lyotard’s Questions  Should all take their places in the sociocultural unity as in an organic whole?  Does the passage between different games belong to a different order?

Lyotard’s Questions  Should all take their places in the sociocultural unity as in an organic whole?  Does the passage between different games belong to a different order?  If so, would it be capable of effecting a real synthesis between them?

Lyotard’s Questions  Should all take their places in the sociocultural unity as in an organic whole? A Hegelian inspiration: similar to the notion of a dialectically totalizing experience  Does the passage between different games belong to a different order?  If so, would it be capable of effecting a real synthesis between them?

Lyotard’s Questions  Should all take their places in the sociocultural unity as in an organic whole? A Hegelian inspiration: similar to the notion of a dialectically totalizing experience  Does the passage between different games belong to a different order? Closer to Kant but must be submitted  If so, would it be capable reexamination of a to postmodernity’s of effecting a real synthesis betweenof history and of a subject unitary end them?

Realism

Realism  In the diverse invitations to suspend artistic experimentation, there is an identical call for order, a desire for unity, for identity, for security, or popularity.

Realism  In the diverse invitations to suspend artistic experimentation, there is an identical call for order, a desire for unity, for identity, for security, or popularity.  Artists and writers must be brought back into the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned the task of healing it.

Habermas’ theory of communicative action

Habermas’ theory of communicative action  Habermas' main aim has been to construct a social theory that advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework.

Habermas’ theory of communicative action  Habermas' main aim has been to construct a social theory that advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework.  The framework rests on the argument (called "Universal pragmatics") that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose" or "goal") — the goal of mutual understanding, and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding.

Habermas’ theory of communicative action  Communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution, but in contemporary society it is suppressed or weakened by the way in which major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organizations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality, so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld.

Habermas’ theory of communicative action  He posits intersubjectivity as a way to avoid the dilemmas inherent in the "philosophy of subject." Instead of proceeding from the isolated subject confronting the objective world, Habermas opts for a model that considers human beings in dialogue with each other to be the foundation for emancipatory social thought.

Habermas’ theory of communicative action  He posits intersubjectivity as a way to avoid the dilemmas inherent in the "philosophy of subject." Instead of proceeding from the isolated subject confronting the objective world, Habermas opts for a model that considers human beings in dialogue with each other to be the foundation for emancipatory social thought.  Communicative rationality: it is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus - and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims".

Para. 2: The crisis of realism

Para. 2: The crisis of realism  Capitalism inherently possesses the power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and institutions to such a degree that the so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except as nostalgia or mockery, as an occasion for suffering rather than for satisfaction.

Para. 3 & 4: Photography & Cinema vs. Realism

Para. 3 & 4: Photography & Cinema vs. Realism  Photographic and cinematographic processes can accomplish better than narrative or pictorial realism.

Para. 3 & 4: Photography & Cinema vs. Realism  Photographic and cinematographic processes can accomplish better than narrative or pictorial realism.  Realism: "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude.“

Para. 3 & 4: Photography & Cinema vs. Realism  Photographic and cinematographic processes can accomplish better than narrative or pictorial realism.  Realism: "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude.“  The effect of reality: the fantasies of realism

Para 5 & 6: anti-realism

Para 5 & 6: anti-realism  Anti-realists don’t support what exists, they “question the rules of the art of painting or of narrative as they have learned and received them from their predecessors”.

Para 5 & 6: anti-realism  Anti-realists don’t support what exists, they “question the rules of the art of painting or of narrative as they have learned and received them from their predecessors”.  The supporters are mass conformists, gratifying the mass who desires for reality. e.g. pornography.

Para 5 & 6: anti-realism  Anti-realists don’t support what exists, they “question the rules of the art of painting or of narrative as they have learned and received them from their predecessors”.  The supporters are mass conformists, gratifying the mass who desires for reality. e.g. pornography.  Duchamp: dispossess the craft of painting or even of being an artist.

Para. 7 & 8: Realism and Power

Para. 7 & 8: Realism and Power  When power assumes the name of a party, realism and its neoclassical complement triumph over the experimental avant-garde by slandering and banning it.

Para. 7 & 8: Realism and Power  When power assumes the name of a party, realism and its neoclassical complement triumph over the experimental avant-garde by slandering and banning it.  Aesthetic judgment is conducted by political academicism.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  The mind has a receptive capacity, or the sensibility, and the mind possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding. sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects.

Kant’s Theory  The mind has a receptive capacity, or the sensibility, and the mind possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding. sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects.  Subjecting sensations to the a priori conditions of space and time is not sufficient to make judging objects possible. Kant argues that the understanding must provide the concepts, which are rules for identifying what is common or universal in different representations.

Kant’s Theory  The mind has a receptive capacity, or the sensibility, and the mind possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding. sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects.  Subjecting sensations to the a priori conditions of space and time is not sufficient to make judging objects possible. Kant argues that the understanding must provide the concepts, which are rules for identifying what is common or universal in different representations.  By applying concepts, the understanding takes the particulars that are given in sensation and identifies what is common and general about them.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  The mind that has experience must also have a faculty of combination or synthesis, the imagination for Kant, that apprehends the data of sense, reproduces it for the understanding, and recognizes their features according to the conceptual framework provided by the categories.

Kant’s Theory  The mind that has experience must also have a faculty of combination or synthesis, the imagination for Kant, that apprehends the data of sense, reproduces it for the understanding, and recognizes their features according to the conceptual framework provided by the categories.  The mind must also have a faculty of understanding that provides empirical concepts and the categories for judgment.

 The proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility and the understanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive power of inference, inexorably into mistakes.

 The proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility and the understanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive power of inference, inexorably into mistakes.  The faculty of reason naturally seeks the highest ground of unconditional unity. It seeks to unify and subsume all particular experiences under higher and higher principles of knowledge.

 The proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility and the understanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive power of inference, inexorably into mistakes.  The faculty of reason naturally seeks the highest ground of unconditional unity. It seeks to unify and subsume all particular experiences under higher and higher principles of knowledge.  But sensibility cannot by its nature provide the intuitions that would make knowledge of the highest principles and of things as they are in themselves possible.

 Nevertheless, reason, in its function as the faculty of inference, inevitably draws conclusions about what lies beyond the boundaries of sensibility.

 Nevertheless, reason, in its function as the faculty of inference, inevitably draws conclusions about what lies beyond the boundaries of sensibility.  However, we can never have knowledge of the totality of things because we cannot have the requisite sensations of the totality, hence one of the necessary conditions of knowledge is not met.

 Nevertheless, reason, in its function as the faculty of inference, inevitably draws conclusions about what lies beyond the boundaries of sensibility.  However, we can never have knowledge of the totality of things because we cannot have the requisite sensations of the totality, hence one of the necessary conditions of knowledge is not met.  Reason's structure pushes us to accept certain ideas of reason that allow completion of its striving for unity. We must assume the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality as practical necessities for the employment of reason in the realm where we can have knowledge.

Kant’s Theory  Kant first addresses the challenge of subsuming particular sensations under general categories in the Schema theory. Transcendental schemata, Kant argues, allow us to identify the homogeneous features picked out by concepts from the heterogeneous content of our sensations.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  An analysis of knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. The subject of a synthetic claim, however, does not contain the predicate.

Kant’s Theory  An analysis of knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. The subject of a synthetic claim, however, does not contain the predicate.  In the third Critique, Kant's account of judgment begins with the definition of judgment as the subsumption of a particular under a universal. If, in general, the faculty of understanding is that which supplies concepts (universals), and reason is that which draws inferences, then judgment 'mediates' between the understanding and reason by allowing individual acts of subsumption to occur.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  This leads Kant to a further distinction between determinate and reflective judgments. In the former, the concept is sufficient to determine the particular - meaning that the concept contains sufficient information for the identification of any particular instance of it.

Kant’s Theory  This leads Kant to a further distinction between determinate and reflective judgments. In the former, the concept is sufficient to determine the particular - meaning that the concept contains sufficient information for the identification of any particular instance of it.  In the latter, the judgment has to proceed without a concept, sometimes in order to form a new concept.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  Reflective judgments are important for Kant because they involve the judgment doing a job for itself, rather than being a mere co-ordinator of concepts and intuitions.

Kant’s Theory  Reflective judgments are important for Kant because they involve the judgment doing a job for itself, rather than being a mere co-ordinator of concepts and intuitions.  aesthetic judgments (or 'judgments of taste') must have four key distinguishing features. First, they are disinterested, Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. Fourth, through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive without purpose‘.

Kant’s Theory  Reflective judgments are important for Kant because they involve the judgment doing a job for itself, rather than being a mere co-ordinator of concepts and intuitions.  aesthetic judgments (or 'judgments of taste') must have four key distinguishing features. First, they are disinterested, Second and third, such judgments are both universal and necessary. Fourth, through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive without purpose‘.  A teleological judgment concerns an object the possibility of which can only be understood from the point of view of its purpose.

Kant’s Theory

Kant’s Theory  In aesthetic cognition, there is no one 'determinate' concept that pins down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed some 'free play', and rather than being subject to one concept, it instead acts in 'harmony' with the lawfulness in general of the understanding. It is this ability of judgment to bring sensibility and understanding to a mutually reinforcing harmony.

Kant’s Theory  In aesthetic cognition, there is no one 'determinate' concept that pins down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed some 'free play', and rather than being subject to one concept, it instead acts in 'harmony' with the lawfulness in general of the understanding. It is this ability of judgment to bring sensibility and understanding to a mutually reinforcing harmony.  The sublime names experiences like violent storms or huge buildings which seem to overwhelm us; that is, the object appears ill- matched to, does 'violence' to, our faculties of sense and cognition.

Para. 9 & 10: Power of capital & eclectic pomo

Para. 9 & 10: Power of capital & eclectic pomo  In the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield.

Para. 9 & 10: Power of capital & eclectic pomo  In the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield.  What is advised is to offer works which, first, are relative to subjects which exist in the eyes of the public they address, and second, works so made that the public will recognize what they are about, will understand what is signified, …

Para. 11 - 13: reality testified by a consensus

Para. 11 - 13: reality testified by a consensus  There is no reality unless testified by a consensus between partners over a certain knowledge and certain commitments.

Para. 11 - 13: reality testified by a consensus  There is no reality unless testified by a consensus between partners over a certain knowledge and certain commitments.  Modernity exits with a shattering of belief and with discovery of the "'lack of reality' of reality, together with the invention of other realities.

Para. 11 - 13: reality testified by a consensus  There is no reality unless testified by a consensus between partners over a certain knowledge and certain commitments.  Modernity exits with a shattering of belief and with discovery of the "'lack of reality' of reality, together with the invention of other realities.  Nihilism as a philosophical concept was given its most definitive form by Nietzsche, for whom it is ‘the radical repudiation of value, meaning and desirability’. Extreme nihilism is often thought of as vulgar relativism where no criteria exist for choosing one value, knowledge claim, or course of action over another.

Para. 14 - 15 Modern art: the aesthetic of the sublime

Para. 14 - 15 Modern art: the aesthetic of the sublime  The sublime carries with it both pleasure and pain  conflict between the faculty to conceive of sth. and the faculty to “present” sth.

Para. 14 - 15 Modern art: the aesthetic of the sublime  The sublime carries with it both pleasure and pain  conflict between the faculty to conceive of sth. and the faculty to “present” sth.  Beauty exists if a certain “case” appeals to the principle of a universal consensus.

Para. 15

Para. 15  Taste testifies that between the capacity to conceive and the capacity to present an object corresponding to the concept, an undetermined agreement may be experienced as pleasure.

Para. 15  Taste testifies that between the capacity to conceive and the capacity to present an object corresponding to the concept, an undetermined agreement may be experienced as pleasure.  The sublime takes place when the imagination fails to present an object which might come to match a concept.

Para. 15  Taste testifies that between the capacity to conceive and the capacity to present an object corresponding to the concept, an undetermined agreement may be experienced as pleasure.  The sublime takes place when the imagination fails to present an object which might come to match a concept.  The unpresentable: prevent the free union of the faculties, prevent the formation and the stabilization of tast.

Para. 16 & 17: modern art vs. avant-garde

Para. 16 & 17: modern art vs. avant-garde  Modern art devotes its “little technical expertise” to present the fact that the unpresentable exists: formlessness, abstraction or negative presentation of the infinite, allude to the unpresentable by means of visible presentations.

Para. 16 & 17: modern art vs. avant-garde  Modern art devotes its “little technical expertise” to present the fact that the unpresentable exists: formlessness, abstraction or negative presentation of the infinite, allude to the unpresentable by means of visible presentations.  The avant-gardes: expels artifices of presentation which make it possible to subordinate thought to the gaze and to turn it away from the unpresentable.

The postmodern

The postmodern  Lyotard believes that postmodern is "a part of the modern," and there is a circular relation between modern & postmodern:  "A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant."

Para. 2: Two modes with sublime

Para. 2: Two modes with sublime 1. Emphasis on the powerlessness of the faculty of presentation, on the nostalgia for presence, on the obscure and futile will;

Para. 2: Two modes with sublime 1. Emphasis on the powerlessness of the faculty of presentation, on the nostalgia for presence, on the obscure and futile will; 2. Emphasis on the power of the faculty to conceive or on the increase of being and the jubilation which result from the invention of new rules of the game.

Para 3 – 5: Proust vs. Joyce

Para 3 – 5: Proust vs. Joyce  Proust: calls forth the unpresentable by means of a language unaltered in its syntax and vocabulary and of a writing which still belongs to the genre of novelistic narration; but the unity of the book is not seriously challenged.

Para 3 – 5: Proust vs. Joyce  Proust: calls forth the unpresentable by means of a language unaltered in its syntax and vocabulary and of a writing which still belongs to the genre of novelistic narration; but the unity of the book is not seriously challenged.  Joyce: allows the unpresentable to become perceptible in his writing itself, in the signifier, with narrative operators put into play but without concern for the unity of the whole. The grammar and vocabulary are considered rituals preventing the unpresentable from being put forward.

Para. 7: Modern vs. Postmodern aesthetics

Para. 7: Modern vs. Postmodern aesthetics  Modern aesthetics is an aesthetic of the sublime, though a nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues of offer to the reader or viewer matter for solace and pleasure.

Para. 7: Modern vs. Postmodern aesthetics  Modern aesthetics is an aesthetic of the sublime, though a nostalgic one. It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues of offer to the reader or viewer matter for solace and pleasure.  The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations ... in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.

Conclusion

Conclusion  Not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented;

Conclusion  Not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented;  Reconciliation between games: transcendental illusion – causing terror

Conclusion  Not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented;  Reconciliation between games: transcendental illusion – causing terror  Beware of the nostalgia for the whole and the one, and wage a war on totality

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Lyotard: What is Postmodernism?

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