This theory of knowledge initially requires one to accept the hypothesis that objective knowledge is an unstable concept, due to it being seen in many different lights over the past few decades. That Lyotard claims that the status of knowledge has shifted since the end of World War II, most significantly through the advancements of computerized information and science, means accordingly that we are now living in a ‘postmodern age’, which involves human beings becoming instrumentalized – now just mere utilities in a series of functions set out through capitalism. This is essentially nihilistic and has clear fundamental suggestions that the human race is now caught within a downwards spiral of ‘knowledge as a commodity’. Lyotard’s argument that “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” (PC, ch1), implies that knowledge has essentially become something which nowadays originates merely from electronic devices with the sole intention and benefit of consumerist profit. This, as a result, to me suggests that the human being has no influence or control over their individual state of knowledge – it has become something completely regimented and therefore impersonal. This is a concept which I would argue against, as not only do all humans have their own individual minds and conscious awareness, but we have no means of measuring the intake or output of any type of knowledge in/from a human being. Despite agreeing that the status of knowledge has indeed shifted, I do not agree that human beings have become instrumentalized within recent years. As Lyotard proposes, in the most nihilistic terms the human is reduced to a mere ‘manipulandum’, which I understand as that we are totally under the confinements and certainly the influences of societal knowledge. However, contemporary philosophers since the 1950’s have shown that it is still possible to transform one’s existence to an extent, as much as was possible pre-World War II, which negates the proposition that human beings are simply ‘utilities’.
I would argue that Lyotard’s argument neglects the important point that knowledge is constantly being created everywhere, for everybody, but it is that we move forward as a race and society when we “produce” new vital knowledge of scientific expansion, and I agree with Lyotard that yes, this type of knowledge is then often placed into the cycle of capitalism and value.
Furthermore, Lyotard’s argument that “Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its ‘use-value’” (PC, ch1) pinpoints a crucial reality that we must face up to the commercialization of knowledge before experiencing such consequences as a suffering freedom and individualism.
Fiona Dawson N0275798
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition (1979)
Thanks Fiona, good stuff. A couple of things spring to mind here. I suppose one of them is cognitive closure or something of that ilk. The every increasing saturation of information has a poignant quality. The world is becoming ever more complex yet we only have the cognitive ability to process only a fragment of it. The tragedy is our limited ability to process that information not the lack of information itself. Lyotard's great fear I think is the ever increasing intensification of uncertainty, the ever heightened culture of risk that is being embedded in our lives and economies.
ReplyDeleteThe second point, I suppose to think about in all of this is the role of the individual. Many of the debates in post-structural thinking are taken up as defences of the individual. It would be interesting to investigate this pace Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault.