I was (I think) understanding Lyotard until page 43. “Modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities.”
So after finishing the paper for a second time I came back to that quote. Trying to understand what exactly it meant. And this is what I came up with.
We don’t really know when we start going through a change such as modernity and post modernity. We don’t wake up one day and say, the modern era is over—onto POMO. It is over time in which we begin to expand and explore transferring society into a new era. Part of learning is knowing that you don’t know. The use of the word shattering was pretty interesting to me. I took it to mean something epic had to be discovered; something like discovering that the world was not the center of the universe or the world is not flat. And since at a time, we believed this to be our reality, at some point we came to learn it was not. And then Lyotard uses “invention.” I am confused by this still because to me invention means creating and how are we to create our own realities? I see realities and things that just are. We didn’t invent the sun rising or setting. It just happens and that is our reality.
So if anyone understood this differently/ better than I, I would appreciate your take. J
“Scarlett Wishes”
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So I accidently deleted my blog after working on it. Now that I'm angry I'll try to rethink what I already thought.
Anyways, I was also interested in the same concept.
Lyotard’s argument that “modernity…cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities” was the most interesting to me (43). What I thought he meant from this initially was that we don new ways of thinking when we get to a point that we detach from our current reality (or way of thinking). We realize the meaninglessness of the reality we live in and search for a new reality to think in.
This idea is completely linked to that of Nietzsche’s idea of nihilism. Dictionary.com defines nihilism as “nothingness or nonexistence”. With this, everything is meaningless and existence is without value or really even purpose. Truth and meaning is constantly changing. When we think about nihilism, we can think about I Heart Huckabees. (I guess I just love this movie and its ability to open up all these theories for me). Anyways, in the movie Albert hires a husband and wife team to follow him. They are sort of philosophers who teach him how everything is related, that there are no coincidences. What you do or see affects something down the line. Everyone and everything is inherently connected. Then when he tires of hearing their theories, he ventures to a new lady who tells him that nothing is connected. Everything is meaningless and to be happy he has to disconnect himself from life and realize the meaningless and disconnectedness of everything. This of course is a very nihilistic approach and that which Lyotard and Nietzsche speak of.
Also, in the article, Lyotard talks of Kant’s argument of “’formlessness, the absence of form’, as a possible index to the unpresentable” (44). With the thought of formlessness we are slung back to a reality of meaninglessness. With no form, we have no clear definition, and with no clear definition, we have no complete understanding. It then is misunderstood and without clear meaning. It means nothing in its ambiguity.
Kelsey.
Lyotard.
Nihilism. www.dictionary.com
Thanks for that post.
I see where you are coming from but I still must process alil more:)
Thanks :)
"Scarlett Wishes"
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