robert pointed out that derrida did not criticize master narratives. i'd also point out that the book, French Theory, which is highly critical of the way french theory was taken up in the u.s., points out that its taking up originated in coffee houses, art houses, independent 'zines, on the "margins of the margins" of the "counter-cultural scene". i.e., the enthusiasm for it, its initial introduction, was not within academia. i wrote about this already on LBO: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2008/2008-September/015553.html
heh. what is even more amusing is that lyotard's discussion of metanarratives wasn't operating quite as simplistically as the conversation posits. i.e., he was speaking to the political practices *around* socialism, marxism, communism. and that kind of, you know, matters.
lyotard says that the state spends a lot of money so that the sciences can pass themselves off as epics since the authority and legitimacy of the state is based on the epic status of science.
there have been two myths that have acted as justifications for institutionalized scientific research, and those myths are *nationalized*:
1. the liberation of humanity (deriving from Fr Rev) where humanity is the 'hero' of liberty
2. the speculative unity of all knowledge (deriving from German Hegelian tradition with its emphasis on totality)
"All peoples hae a right to science. If the social subject is not already the subject of scientific knowledge, it is because that hs been forbidden by priests and tyrants. The right to science must be reconquered."
Here, Lyotard argues that this narrative of liberty and freedom comes to the fore in order to addume control over the training of 'the poeple' in the name of the 'nation'. (see yesterday's post on the history of Victory Gardens. dot dot dot.)
Lyotard goes on to say:
"In Stalinism, the sciences only figure as citations from the metanarrative of the march towards socialism, which is the equivalent of the life of the spirit. But on the other hand Marxism can ...develop into a form of critical knowledge by declaring that socialism is nothing other than the constitution of the autonomous subject and that the only justification for the sciences is if they give the empirical subject (the proletariat) the means to emancipate itself from alienation and repression." (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on KNowledge)
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