GeekinthePink

I think there is a real need for an answer to postmodernity. In Lyotard's opening paragraph, he mentions the call from a critic to "thow out the baby of experimentaion with the bathwater of fuctionalism." This makes the whole thought of postmodern anihilation sound violent and as if it is still in its infancy (which I would venture to say it is at least in its teenage years). I see Lyotard takes a jab at Habermas for his view on neoconservatives and their plea to "get rid of the uncompleted project of modernism."

But I think it's more than just him making fun of him. These two have very different viewpoints; yet each has validity. Habermas says "modernism is dominant but dead." But, he proposes that a religious revival can sort this out. "Religious faith tied to a fatih in tradition will provide individuals with clearly defined identities and existential society." Now, if we are to believe that "postmodernity definitely presents itself as Antimodernity," and yet modernism needs to be united to preserve the norms of tradition, why does he push so hard that modernity is an incomplete project? Should he not see it as a failed project? And further, the regulations he wishes to place on modernity seems like they would stifle any progress, e.g., "the neoconservatives welcome the development of modern science, as long as this only goes beyond its spereer to carry forward technical progress, capitalistic growth, and taional administration." This goes against the very idea of modernism.

Now with Lyotard, he has an excellent definition of postmoderism--"the postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable..." Now this is a defintion that needs to be read with great care, but it's brilliant. He puts postmodernism as the "position of the philosopher" instead of in the position to be judged as Habermas does. Lyotard desires art as something that has to be worked on "without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done." Lyotard and Habermas obviously have very different views of art. For the record, I agree with both of them. (isn't that a little postmodern?)