Lyotard, Jean-Francois - The Postmodern Condition - A report.pdf - ebooki - przemeksaw

Jean-François Lyotard (1979)

The Postmodern

Condition

A Report on Knowledge

Source : The Postmodern Condition (1979) publ. Manchester University

Press, 1984. The First 5 Chapters of main body of work are reproduced

here.

1. The Field: Knowledge in

Computerised Societies

Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies

enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known

as the postmodern age.' This transition has been under way since at least the

end of the 1950s, which for Europe marks the completion of reconstruction.

The pace is faster or slower depending on the country, and within countries it

varies according to the sector of activity: the general situation is one of

temporal disjunction which makes sketching an overview difficult. A portion

of the description would necessarily be conjectural. At any rate, we know that

it is unwise to put too much faith in futurology.

Rather than painting a picture that would inevitably remain incomplete, I

will take as my point of departure a single feature, one that immediately

defines our object of study. Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse. And it

is fair to say that for the last forty years the "leading" sciences and

technologies have had to do with language: phonology and theories of

linguistics, problems of communication and cybernetics, modern theories of

algebra and informatics, computers and their languages, problems of

translation and the search for areas of compatibility among computer

languages, problems of information storage and data banks, telematics and the

perfection of intelligent terminals, to paradoxology. The facts speak for

themselves (and this list is not exhaustive).

These technological transformations can be expected to have a considerable

impact on knowledge. Its two principal functions - research and the

transmission of acquired learning-are already feeling the effect, or will in the

future. With respect to the first function, genetics provides an example that is

accessible to the layman: it owes its theoretical paradigm to cybernetics. Many

other examples could be cited. As for the second function, it is common

knowledge that the miniaturisation and commercialisation of machines is

already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made

available, and exploited. It is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of

information-processing machines is having, and will continue to have, as much

of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human

circulation (transportation systems) and later, in the circulation of sounds and

visual images (the media).

The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of

general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become

operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information." We

can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not

translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new

research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being

translatable into computer language. The "producers" and users of knowledge

must now, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these

languages whatever- they want to invent or learn. Research on translating

machines is already well advanced." Along with the hegemony of computers

comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining

which statements are accepted as "knowledge" statements.

We may thus expect a thorough exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to

the "knower," at whatever point he or she may occupy in the knowledge

process. The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable

from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming

obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationships of the suppliers and

users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and

will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of

commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and

consume - that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in

order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new

production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.

Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its "use-value."

It is widely accepted that knowledge has become the principle force of

production over the last few decades, this has already had a noticeable effect

on the composition of the work force of the most highly developed countries

and constitutes the major bottleneck for the developing countries. In the

postindustrial and postmodern age, science will maintain and no doubt

strengthen its preeminence in the arsenal of productive capacities of the

nation-states. Indeed, this situation is one of the reasons leading to the

conclusion that the gap between developed and developing countries will grow

ever wider in the future.

But this aspect of the problem should not be allowed to overshadow the

other, which is complementary to it. Knowledge in the form of an

informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and

will continue to be, a major - perhaps the major - stake in the worldwide

competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day

fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over

territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw

materials and cheap labor. A new field is opened for industrial and commercial

strategies on the one hand, and political and military strategies on the other.

However, the perspective I have outlined above is not as simple as I have

made it appear. For the merchantilisation of knowledge is bound to affect the

privilege the nation-states have enjoyed, and still enjoy, with respect to the

production and distribution of learning. The notion that learning falls within

the purview of the State, as the brain or mind of society, will become more and

more outdated with the increasing strength of the opposing principle,

according to which society exists and progresses only if the messages

circulating within it are rich in information and easy to decode. The ideology

of communicational "transparency," which goes hand in hand with the

commercialisation of knowledge, will begin to perceive the State as a factor of

opacity and "noise." It is from this point of view that the problem of the

relationship between economic and State powers threatens to arise with a new

urgency.

Already in the last few decades, economic powers have reached the point of

imperilling the stability of the state through new forms of the circulation of

capital that go by the generic name of multi-national corporations. These new

forms of circulation imply that investment decisions have, at least in part,

passed beyond the control of the nation-states." The question threatens to

become even more thorny with the development of computer technology and

telematics. Suppose, for example, that a firm such as IBM is authorised to

occupy a belt in the earth's orbital field and launch communications satellites

or satellites housing data banks. Who will have access to them? Who will

determine which channels or data are forbidden? The State? Or will the State

simply be one user among others? New legal issues will be raised, and with

them the question: "who will know?"

Transformation in the nature of knowledge, then, could well have

repercussions on the existing public powers, forcing them to reconsider their

relations (both de jure and de facto) with the large corporations and, more

generally, with civil society. The reopening of the world market, a return to

vigorous economic competition, the breakdown of the hegemony of American

capitalism, the decline of the socialist alternative, a probable opening of the

Chinese market these and many other factors are already, at the end of the

1970s, preparing States for a serious reappraisal of the role they have been

accustomed to playing since the 1930s: that of, guiding, or even directing

investments. In this light, the new technologies can only increase the urgency

of such a re-examination, since they make the information used 'in decision

making (and therefore the means of control) even more mobile and subject to

piracy.

It is not hard to visualise learning circulating along the same lines as money,

instead of for its "educational" value or political (administrative, diplomatic,

military) importance; the pertinent distinction would no longer be between

knowledge and ignorance, but rather, as is the case with money, between

"payment knowledge" and "investment knowledge" - in other words, between

units of knowledge exchanged in a daily maintenance framework (the

reconstitution of the work force, "survival") versus funds of knowledge

dedicated to optimising the performance of a project.

If this were the case, communicational transparency would be similar to

liberalism. Liberalism does not preclude an organisation of the flow of money

in which some channels are used in decision making while others are only

good for the payment of debts. One could similarly imagine flows of

knowledge travelling along identical channels of identical nature, some of

which would be reserved for the "decision makers," while the others would be

used to repay each person's perpetual debt with respect to the social bond.

2. The Problem: Legitimation

That is the working hypothesis defining the field within which I intend to

consider the question of the status of knowledge. This scenario, akin to the one

that goes by the name "the computerisation of society" (although ours is

advanced in an entirely different spirit), makes no claims of being original, or

even true. What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for

discrimination. The scenario of the computerisation of the most highly

developed societies allows us to spotlight (though with the risk of excessive

magnification) certain aspects of the transformation of knowledge and its

effects on public power and civil institutions - effects it would be difficult to

perceive from other points of view. Our hypotheses, therefore, should not be

accorded predictive value in relation to reality, but strategic value in relation to

the question raised.

Nevertheless, it has strong credibility, and in that sense our choice of this

hypothesis is not arbitrary. It has been described extensively by the experts

and is already guiding certain decisions by the governmental agencies and

Lyotard, Jean-Francois - The Postmodern Condition - A report.pdf

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