He uses these terms metaphorically, however, to describe the workings of reality and society as a whole, divorcing them from their usual attachments to human beings. In this context, modern and postmodern art can be distinguished in the following way. Lyotard admits that this description of everything in libidinal terms is a “theoretical fiction,” merely a way of speaking which gives us useful terms for theorizing about what happens in the world. Materialism Generally speaking, postmodernism embraces materialism and consumerism and the general view that economic competition and material success is …
But of course, any such eyewitnesses are dead and are not able to testify. For Lyotard something must be postmodern before it can become modern. It may be the case that the only evidence for the claim to land rights that the Aborigines have will not be admissible as evidence in the court of government law (though it is perfectly acceptable in tribal law).
Lyotard says that one of the most striking features of scientific knowledge is that it includes only denotative statements, to the exclusion of all other kinds (narrative knowledge includes other kinds of statements, such as prescriptives). The concept is based on the following analogy: The rules of language (grammar) are analogous to the rules of games; meaning something in language is thus analogous to making a move in a game. This goal directs how phrases are linked on from one to another.
Meme’s have permeated culture as a new medium of expression. Lyotard presents the logic of the double bind involved in the differend in general as follows: either p or not p; if not-p, then Fp; if p, then not-p, then Fp. Postmodernism challenges all truths and concludes that there is no such thing. In Lyotard’s postmodern period, art is privileged for its sublime effects and the attention it calls to the differend. If the entire project of science needs a metalegitimation, however (and the criteria for scientific knowledge would itself seem to demand that it does) then science has no recourse but to narrative knowledge (which according to scientific criteria is no knowledge at all). Furthermore, in post-industrial society information has become a primary mode of production, and Lyotard is concerned that in the interests of maximising profits information will become increasingly privatised by corporations. He does, however, see a problem with the legitimation of knowledge by performativity. Lyotard’s philosophy of language and justice is most fully developed through the concept of the differend, in the book of the same name.Lyotard develops the notion of paganism in “Lessons in Paganism” (reprinted in Paganism rejects any universal criteria for judgement, yet Lyotard claims that we must judge, that justice demands this of us. His most substantial writings of this time were his contributions to the Lyotard’s second book of philosophy is long and difficult. Furthermore, Lyotard draws attention to the fact that reason tends to operate with structured systems of concepts which exclude the sensual and emotional, but that these exclusions can never be entirely maintained.
Lyotard’s answer is – Lyotard calls the change that has taken place in the status of knowledge due to the rise of the performativity criterion the Lyotard does not believe that the innovations he predicts in postmodern education will necessarily have a detrimental effect on erudition. The term “Inhuman” has two meanings for Lyotard. For Lyotard, there is no affirmative region, no pure outside to nihilism.