Lyotard and the Postmodern Condition

First Thought:

Lyotard's initial formulation of post-modernity, admitted by him as grossly simplified, is an incredulity toward meta-narratives. It is an attempt to understand the narratives of knowledge in their conception and application. Written for a time in which mass-communication, cybernetics and information processing technologies are changing the modes and forms of knowledge, he questions the process of knowledge (learning) and praxis (via legislation), but also and most importantly, of legitimation itself. The grand meta-narratives of the past were "dialectical", synthesizing whilst remaining unitary and linear. Teleological narratives were all-encompassing and all-pervasive, concealing or demoting all other forms of knowledge. The scientific meta-narrative acts as a universaliser, a cumulative progression of knowledge toward some ultimate truth, therefore is essentially totalitarian or terrorizing. The sociopolitical functions in the same way; "the name of the hero is the people, the sign of legitimacy is the people's consensus, and their mode of creating norms is deliberation. The notion of progress is a necessary outgrowth of this [CR 149]". It differs from traditional narrative knowledge, in Lyotard's view, in that its scientific pretensions assume an accumulation of knowledge and a progress of mankind. It supplants old teleology with linear progress. In doing so, power is justified and the retaliation against old/outmoded teleology does violence to individual thought, and any criticism of, or divergence from, the meta-goal. The need for consensus, for universality, suppresses and oppresses, as Stalinist Russia exemplifies.

Exactly.

The scientific narrative de-legitimated itself by demanding legitimation, in the sense that, its subscription to an assumed theory of "right" (a priori truths waiting to be discovered by the rational mind of man), its operation under premises and foundations that go unquestioned, requires the same kind of meta-narrative it hopes to authenticate. It, as legitimator, rests on unfounded pre-legitimations and is thus incapable of legitimating itself.

Lyotard favours "a multiplicity of finite meta-arguments, [meaning] argumentation that concerns meta-prescriptives and is limited in space and time." [CR 153]. The games, their rules, consensus and players must be heteromorphic (I would use polymorphic) and local. Paralogy is innovation within diversity, a productive resistance to meta-narratives. "No "pure" alternative to the system" [CR 153] will be stated, because none will work.

Another thought:

Now. There are some problems, I think, with Lyotard's text. "Consensus has become an outmoded and suspect value. But justice as a value is neither outmoded nor suspect. We must thus arrive at an idea and practice of justice that is not linked with that of consensus." [CR 153]
I think he means this in the same way he said that losing the nostalgia for the meta-narrative does not mean we are reduced to barbarity [CR 152], but doesn't this dissolve into relativism and can relativism work? Also, regardless of post-modern self-consciousness, don't most people rely on some meta-narrative to legitimate their existence? Whether they support multiplicity and plurality, don't most people still believe that there are some common fundamental principles?
I feel that in practice, it is hardest to understand how Lyotard's paralogy would work, without power groups using the lack of meta-narratives to omit their bottom line (profit/power) at the expense of human rights. Or to appeal to certain beliefs (especially fears or hopes) without concern for them at all, simply because they are effective.

Harry Frankfurt, Princeton dude, explores bullshit. Here is a rundown from the Princeton site (link here):

"He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

I am actually not sure what I think of Lyotard's theory. I understand it in principle and I can see similarities with Arendt's local polis-style logos (speech-action), but I wonder whether this only works on a local scale. Also, what of his opening of data banks? It seems as though he is an (admittedly pre-) internet utopian. As though freedom of information would lead to better decisions, or that it would solve the supposed problems that lack of information encompasses. What are those problems? Lack of power? "It could also aid groups discussing metaprescriptives by supplying them with the information they usually lack for making knowledgeable decisions... Language games would then be games of perfect information at any given moment." [CR 154) Hmm, sounds iffy.

The same thing goes for post-modernism in general; I kept thinking back to Lukác's fragmentation and reification; the continual splitting of the world (man, time, labour and so on) into easily contained and calculable segments. It seems as though this was justified by a grand narrative, progress, and now it is the grand narrative: multiplicity, diversity, individuality. Frederic Jameson accuses postmodernism as being the logic of late capitalism and I kind of agree with that. There is also a sense in which, unless (and often even if) you are continuously learning, critiquing, creating, playing and innovating, you will be under the umbrella of other controls (the State, ideologies, stereotypes etc), and this is not how most people live their lives. That is not a statement of supposed-self-superiority, more an acknowledgement that it is difficult to live this model and can be conducive to convenient generalisations, apathetic relativism, and fragmented personal narratives that allow both your capitalist urges and your dedication to the green movement, your subscription to freedom-based aphorisms, "fair go", "tolerance", "equality" and your patriotic approval of closed borders and secret fear of boat people.
Post-modern thinking seems just as easily abused as other meta-narratives, but perhaps more prone to bullshit.


Another Thought:

Re: Falling Water - I think that Frank Loyd Wright's house is alright as an example, certainly conceptually, but perhaps more pertinent examples would be Le Corbusier's Paris Plan, the Crystal Palace in London, Tatlin's tower, the Bauhaus building in Weimar (plus other Bauhaus architecture) and especially Brasilia. The obsession with glass was ideological; they were the attempted expressions of a utopian vision of truth and transparency. They were physical manifestations of ideas of a better world; in the same way that Kant believed we could, by seeing our progress in history, further it along its path, modernist architecture attempted to change the way that we existed in buildings, to change the world for the better. They were building a self-determined "new society", attempting to change ideas of beauty to encompass rationality, exemplified in the Bauhaus slogan "form follows function".
Of course, the thing is that the Bauhaus architecture, especially coordinated by Hannes Meyer, was attempting to work with both psychological, social and environmental factors, but it did have a social vision through so-called "biological architecture". Such ideas are usually corrupted and in hindsight we call them naive, but a skeptical view does not make their intent any less earnest or admirable. There were many modernist ideas of social architecture that believed the right type of architecture could diminish violence, could make men (always) rational, could shape a better humanity. There were "master" elements in architects, especially Le Corbusier, Wright etc, intellectual and theoretical elitism, which I think is often part of the meta-narratives of the absolute.
Brasilia is my favourite failed modernist project and one of the only completed full examples of the modernist vision. Its sociological intent was to create a classless society etc etc. Needless to day (not just because I have already mentioned it) it failed.

Le Corbusier's Paris Plan. Boo.

Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, Marseille (kindergarten on roof)

The wondrous, scary Brasilia

Falling Water, Frank Loyd Wright

Plan for the Barbican Centre, London

Arednt on the Human Condition

Amy Sillman. Great Job.

First Thought:

Arendt is concerned with what she believes to be the rise of the social; the relegation of previously public affairs to the private realm and household matters to the public. She goes back to the Greek polis, a space where she felt real freedom could exist in action and speech.

'Action' in this sense is more than any single outcome or result. It is a space of coming together, an enlarged sphere of community where individuals can relate to each other and interact. Action leads to unpredictability and thus diverges from what Arendt sees as 'behavior', which as part of the rule by no-man, or modern bureaucracy, orders and conforms. Although standards for behavior constantly change, along with it laws, beliefs etc, the structure of modern society incorporates and enforces behavior. We create, but the products of our theories and technology also shape us. Freedom, plurality and solidarity are sacrificed to life necessities, comfort, abundance, control, production, behavior; this is the rise of the social. Action, so seen, is the freeing of human activity, where thinking and speech are tied to experience, community, spontaneity and unpredictability. Re-connecting thought-speech-action is Arendt's return to logos. It is not limited to a space or time, but is ephemeral, temporally and spatially existent only in the coming together of people in freedom; “Wherever you go, you will be a polis”. It allows greatness to come forth, for people to exceed themselves, to express themselves with courage and integrity, and to put themselves forward to be judged by others, though this must not be mistaken with modern notions of success, through wealth and power. Rather, it goes against material and calculable notions, arising “only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities ”. The polis can be taken as the space of appearance, “where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things, but to make their appearance explicitly.”

Another Thought:

The rise of the social seems overly restricted in its being the necessities of life. I still don't understand why she used this analogy; the great moral problems of our age are also encompassed in this sphere; power relations, subjugation, equal rights. The idea that the necessities of the private sphere have dominated politics is perhaps more about our becoming producers (not work, but labour) and consumers, holding jobs simply to get by or to fund our lifestyles. I think that her space of appearance is incredibly important and pertinent, as are her distinctions between labour and work, public and private (in the sense of freedom being seen as an inner domain, individuated and isolated, rather than a part of the public sphere). Perhaps I misunderstood her conception of the rise of the social, but it seemed that its separation from the political could only occur when there was a space of equality in which we could be free to act and speak. Since these social issues are political issues and we have not found a way to appear to each other as equals, this separation seems premature and limiting. The fundamental problem that she raises is that our society is one of consumers and producers, but not makers or actors. The rule of sanitized bureaucracy, the conformism and the schism in action and thought are problems of the rule of knowledge over learning and calculable success over ephemeral excellence.

Well, I was thinking of an analogy and I now think I understand what Arendt is talking about with the rise of the social. I was thinking of the ancient gardener and his tending to his plants, who respects the seed and nurtures it into its natural end (Heideggarian, of course). Then I thought about the removal of the foodspace from our lives, whereby mostly people do not live near the site of food production, it is no longer near to them. Food, sustenance, become necessities that must be organised, arranged, transported, bought. They become part of the city's responsibility to its citizens, securing their well-being. The care of the basic necessities, food and shelter, in bigger societies, falls to the State and later, corporations, to bureaucracy, to no-man. The concerns of the bureaucracy in a modern technological society are to provide this care in an efficient and cost-effective way, with the least imposition on monetary resources. This then becomes the political agenda, it becomes the function of the bureaucracy and the politicians, thereby dominating public life. We are shaped by society as much as we shape it. We fall into line with regards to our priorities, they become the same as the State's. With enough time passed, we no longer equate our ideas of humanity, of what it is to be human, with the public sphere. Rather, the public sphere is of practicality and how it is to be human; we become our own means and there are no views toward ends, in the sense of the fundamental questions toward the meaning of life. When we are so thoroughly obscured, we can start to see humans as impositions on our means; immigrants pose threats to jobs and so we see them as "illegal aliens" as if they were an illicit species, rather than our own kind. And yet, we still manage to enjoy cheaply made goods from third-world countries, where we are aware that no job security or fair wage policies exist. We are stuck in a selfish paradox, whereby we look only to our basic needs rather than asking bigger questions, polis-type questions, of what it means to be human, of what matters most, of whether a life of consumption is worth someone else's life of near-slavery.

Arendt Another Another Thought

Excerpt from

Wolf and Vampire: the Border between Culture and Technology

Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest

"Today, common sense tells us that the border between technology (formerly known as nature) and culture is a fluid one. It is common to describe technology as a cultural practice, or culture as a fabric of interwoven material, intellectual, and social techniques. Of course, there is an obvious interrelation between culture and technology in terms of method, media, and material, and it is not difficult to identify the technical aspects of texts, or the cultural implications of communication technologies, and so forth. This interrelation of culture and technology, however, is actually based on their separation, a border that is—insofar as we can perceive it—fundamental to modernity. The separation has nothing to do with objects or disciplines, with established criteria or genera, with groups or institutions. Rather, it is sharp but unstable—it is mobile, flashing here and there between form and function, between architecture and building.

The latest attempts to reconcile culture and technology had been preceded—over the last 250 years—by antagonist attempts at playing them off: on the one hand, there was the pessimistic tragedy of culture in a technical world, and, on the other, the optimism of continuous scientific and technological progress. For some, this meant the antagonism of German culture and French civilization. Or, as the Swiss historian Siegfried Giedion put it, the split between feeling and thinking in modernity

For Giedion, the divorce of thinking and feeling is rooted in the unevenness of scientific and artistic progress in the early nineteenth century, when feeling could not compete with the pace of thinking, which was advancing rapidly, and scientific achievements were regarded as neutral in terms of their emotional meaning. Important achievements had no bearing on inner life, and mechanization took command.⁴ The result of these developments is the “split personality” of the modern mind, which separates thinking and feeling. Even more scandalous than the divorce of culture and technology in the nineteenth century was a repression of artistic imagination, in which art assumed the form of eclecticism—separated from the creative power of the epoch and maneuvered into the grotesque “reign of the upholsterer.” "

Arendt on Tradition and the Modern Age

Another Thought:

What I wonder about Arendt is where her conception of logos (encompassing speech and reason) sits within a framework (or whether it does at all). Is logos given equal weight in and outside the mind, as in, must it be paired with action to constitute her equal relations? Or is it more a way of being in the world, where the thinking about thinking is encompassed in a bigger idea of us thinking in the world just as we conceive of doing in the world; as in, giving them the same necessity. In order to dissolve the duality, we must redirect thinking toward Plato's cave, back to the real world. If this is the case, I actually think this has a lot in common with Heidegger's reformulation of Being, as the way we are in the world, insofar as he advocates a more holistic way of understanding being that is not just correct, but true (to use his words). That in the general understanding of these concepts, they are only available as dualities, which is why Arendt references Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Marx as not breaking with the philosophical tradition but simply distorting or inverting it. A new (and perhaps Heidegger would have found an Old High German word or re-imagined a lost ancient greek one) understanding needs to be not just thought, not just ushered in to the annals of philosophical tradition, but enacted, lived. Could a dissolution of the duality see a change in the way that we exist, both alone (with ourselves) and together?

Ok, so I don't know enough about this and I did look it up on Wikipedia, but the stoics did seem to have a rather active conception of Logos, where reason is also identified with animation and generation in the world. "The stoics took all activity to imply a Logos, or spiritual principle." It was the active reason pervading the universe and animating it... it was conceived as material i.e. in this world. The law of generation was logos spermatikos or seminal logos, the "principle of the active reason working in inanimate matter." Humans possess a portion of divine logos.

So perhaps I am taking Arendt into a Heideggerian-type reformulation of language, but I find this to be crucial in a reformulation of thinking, i.e. the way that we think about ourselves, the way that we think about thinking, the way that we think about action. I think that for all the criticism of Heidegger's flowery language and poésis, it is genuinely necessary to get out of a language system that has become so restricted in its potential for meaning, i.e. to give importance to the exactness of language, rather than allowing play, multiplicity or poetry, feeds into a kind of science of ordering and fixing. Limited meaning also limits the ways of seeing and understanding. Not, of course, that reformulating would mean taking the opposite of exactness and doing away with meaning altogether or some sort of radical Dada cutting words from dictionaries, letting them fall on the floor, picking them up and as they come, assembling them into a nonsense poem. Rather, thinking in terms of the correct but not true. A more holistic view, that (an this is what I think Arendt is getting at) does not presume to know or formulate the "true" but rather acknowledges that proclaiming as "truth" is the problem. Our understanding of the separated worlds of contemplation and action can be seen in a different way, not as separate at all, but as a logos, thinking that animates, a constant relationship between us and the world that exists in no prescribed generalisation. A problem, as I see it, is that certain technologies expand this gap (thought/action) by placing action in a non-space - i.e. the Internet, of which I am a part, insofar as, if space is where we must exist, where we must be in the world, think in the world, act in the world, the placement in this non-space of the products of logos (thought/action), not only inhibits "real-world" action but diminishes something of the active thought as well. Back to the example; whilst our relation to thought and thinking on the Internet may be seen as liberating in some regards (connection to wider audiences, communities, informations etc), it necessarily exists in a different "space" to our human relationships. Not different as in opposite, just not the same. It precludes certain aspects of our physicality that cannot be denied as we engage full-bodied with the world. One interesting thing I have read about in the realms of neuroscience is our misconception of things like emotions, where we often think of them as intangible or as "mental events", but how inextricably they are connected and reliant upon bodily functions. Anger, for example, is almost inconceivable without the constriction of blood vessels, tensing of muscles, shaking and other symptoms that are part of it. These are bodily, and as such, bound in space. What happens when this physicality is somewhat diminished (as I believe it is on the Internet)? Is our engagement also limited? And if we are trying to imagine a fluid, holistic encompassing of thought and action, is not thought also diminished, being estranged from action. Again, not that I am a Luddite, nor do I believe that Heidegger was one, but I do think that each "way of..." limits another. The way of being on the Internet limit others. It is not that prescribing a ratio of these "ways of..." will fix or improve anything, or that there is or must be a "way of" understanding "ways of..", rather, simply understanding that there are ways of being and that these often privilege or limit other aspects of being, could allow the kind of ongoing, real-time relationship with thinking and action, whereby living itself is constituted as the relationship between oneself and ways of being.

I was going to end with something I like that this dude, Shiv Visvanathan, wrote before the turn of the millennium in A Letter to the 21st Century; "The magical must liberate reason from its anxieties of universalism; the part can only be the whole, if the whole is mysterious."

But instead I shall leave you with Goethe:

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of life springs evergreen.

Building, Dwelling, Thinking

Heidegger is asking the question of how we exist within the world. We, as man, dwell. He refers back to the old German word Buan to encompass the dwelling that is now hidden by our ideas of building. This old word contains building both as cultivating and protecting and as erecting edifices. It is important to see our relationship to the world in a new way. Heidegger's idea of the fourfold allows this; earth, sky, mortals, divinities. They must all co-exist as the original oneness. Humans must neither master the Earth, nor passively stand in wait. They save, care and nurture; they gather. "But if dwelling preserves the fourfold, where does it keep the fourfold's essence?... Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the fourfold in that with which mortals stay: in things." Things create space, allow locales, in their gathering of the fourfold. The boundary does not limit or stop, but allows a thing's unfolding. We exist in space, we dwell, we stay within the fourfold. Heidegger traces nachbar, neighbour, back to the old German word Nachgebauer, the near-dweller. It points to being on the earth and being mortal, but also has connotations of caring, nurturing, protecting, cherishing, saving. He relates the words peace, Friede, the free, preserved from harm and danger, safeguarded and takes the real meaning of freedom to be a sparing, a positive notion of allowing something to develop in its own essence, to allow things peace and to be free in the fourfold. Building, so considered (in the original sense), is admitting and installing the fourfold, allowing a space, a locale, to house our human lives. But this notion is corrupted when, instead of attending to the fourfold and our place within it, we construct without respecting the meaning of human dwelling and its inescapable relation to thinking and building. The modern world imposes constructed edifices on the landscape, rather than encompassing them in a respectful relationship.

Another Thought:

We were talking about types of houses, from the Black Forest farmhouse, which harbours the family from birth to death, respects both mortality and divinity, and both the Earth and sky. This is contrasted with pre-fab houses, built for no-one in particular, set upon the ground at no particular location, that need not heed the sky if it can pump water from elsewhere, that need not heed the Earth, for it is no longer the supplier of sustenance or nutrients, which come now from supermarkets and chemists. This kind of construction, social and physical, does not care for mortality, which it avoids, nor divinity, in which it does not believe. We no longer dwell, as a sparing, rather we abuse those which cannot protect themselves, both the Earth and ourselves. In this strange non-relationship, we have lost sight of ourselves as co-existent, with others, with the earth, sky and divinities. The divinities can be associated with Being, Dasein, and wonder, rather than meaning transcendent Gods. We need simply to renew our understanding of what it means to exist, to dwell, to be and we will find our place as nurturers once again. I think this means that we must live in a "constant relationship" - by this I mean, live with integrity, fully, continuously and conscientiously. There is a schism, it seems, between our ideals and our reality and it seems a constant refrain that, one would like to live better, it is just too expensive, inconvenient, time-consuming etc. We must reconsider what it is that makes us human; whether it is more akin to consumption or nurturing. It is relatively pointless to have lofty ideals and better goals (which is why the Green/eco movement is allowing us to continue guilt-free consumption) without an integrity in action.

Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology

First Thought:

Heidegger starts by leading us into the type of questioning that he thinks has been neglected, in this case, the questioning of the essence of technology. He points out that it is nothing technological in the sense that it is not machinery or tools, rather it can be seen as a way of revealing. The ancient Greek word for revealing in Heidegger's sense is aletheia. From this point we have two possibilities for unconcealment, of revealing; the first is poiesis, the bringing-forth and the second is enframing, Gestell, a type of revealing that can be seen more as a challenging of the world, by man's domination as subject, who conceives of the world through science, over object. Revealing can be seen as how things come into being; either on their own (en heautoi) or by another (en alloi). The tree, for example, comes into being out of itself. We humans may be the caretakers, gardeners, nurturers and may set the tree up straight and help it along its way, but we are not the makers of the tree. This is simple enough for us to understand. But what of a table? We are given four causes - materialis (matter/material) - in this case the wood from a certain type of tree, formalis (shape) - a family dining table, finalis (the end that determines the previous two) - the family meal, the gathering of the family around a table - this determines where the family is and thus the available wood, how big the family is, the size, the shape etc, and the causa efficiens - the bringing about of the table, informed by the other 3, and en alloi (by another) in this case. When these four causes are all co-responsible and co-existent, we may have the original root of technology, techne, the arts and activities of the craftsman, the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techne is a bringing-forth, a poiesis, that allows the material and the craftsman integrity. The opposite would be a modern day, mass-produced table, whose causes are never co-responsible; rather than a specific end in mind, there is a general telos - anyone willing to pay for the table is the desired end, the material must be easy to mass-produce and is often inorganic, the shape must be exactly reproducible every time, and the maker is often a machine, with no knowledge of the end or means (itself). How did we get to this stage? What broke up the four causes? Heidegger points to enframing and man as being challenged forth to conceive of the world as standing-reserve. This means that nature is seen in its predetermined potentiality - solely as potential for man's endeavours, whose potential is predetermined in a scientific, orderable and calculable way. The standing-reserve is the world as regulated, secured resource at the ready for man's and science's further ordering. Man is not solely responsible for this; he is not to blame. Neither is Heidegger asking us to ignore or reject technology. Man must be brought back into his essence, his role in the four causes. Enframing covers other ways of revealing (namely poiesis) and the danger lies in our not being able to conceive of the world differently. Man is Dasein, the beings able to comprehend the idea of being, thus caretakers, nurturers. We must come back into a relationship with the world that is respectful. When man is "meditating, striving, shaping and working, entreating and thinking, he finds himself everywhere brought into the unconcealed." To have a continued and diligent relationship to the world, to respect the four causes as co-responsible, thus to respect the material, shape, end and oneself as co-creator, is to no longer see the world as simply standing by waiting for man to do something with it. This attitude applies not just to energy resources, or made things, but to everything, to the world and to humans. One of the dangers is seeing ourselves as standing-reserve, and we need only think of the holocaust, the gulag, and in a more ordinary context, the deskilled labourer who need not even know what is being created or who will one day use it, what materials are being used etc. As humans, we become part of the orderable, less creator or causa efficiens than manipulated manipulator, part of an increasingly complex and fragmented set of causes.