Steve-O Lyotard-ed.....had to do it

I have read a theorists essay once…His name was Lyotard. I was displeased because I expected to be gratified with a little sense, as were the French with Mille Plateaux (38). I’m glad I chose to read the rather incomprehensible Habermas before venturing into the babble of Jean-François. Incredibly Habermas’ thoughts started to grasp meaning in the much easier reading of the postulating Lyotard. I liked the explanation provided by the latter in understanding the concept through which substantive reason (Habermas 103) splinters into autonomous spherical entities, “to bridge the gap between cognitive, ethical, and political discourses, thus opening the way to unity of experience” (39). This brought to mind good ol’ Jencks and his 11 rules of Pomo poetics. I think the underlying theme throughout Jencks essay is the concept of NO unified view…So would this theoretical idea ignited by Habermas and critiqued by Lyotard go directly against the rules set in place by Jencks? Lyotard questions what type of unity Habermas envisioned, “Is the aim of the project of modernity the constitution of sociocultural unity within which all the elements of daily life and of thought would take their places as in an organic whole” (39)? This statement took me back to Jencks’ rule#8, and his idea of multivalence. Lyotard helped me take this architectural theme and place it in a broader context or as I believe Doc Rog’s would call it, a new Praxis. Jencks states, “The resonance consists in linking forms colours and themes… ‘organic unity’…For mutual modification is the key to mutivalence; only where the diverse meanings have been worked through will art, architecture and daily activity begin to interact and form a greater unity” (Jencks 289-290). This unified view theory has a binary opposition ever present in this cult of the new as Lyotard points out before going deeper in his supplementation of authority, “The demands I began by citing are not all equivalent. They can even be contradictory. Some are made in the name of postmodernism, others in order to combat it” (39). So are we trying to find unification within the UN-unified? In discussing the success of photo and cinematic realism in supplanting art and literature, Lyotard is once again searching for a medium that possesses the ability to cross barriers of communication and language while maintaining a unified view,

To reproduce the syntax and vocabulary which enable the addressee to decipher images and sequences quickly, and so to arrive easily at the consciousness of his own identiy as well as the approval which he thereby receives from others—since such structures of images and sequences constitute a communication code among all of them (40-41).


What I gather so far in our exploration of the POMO is that no one really knows what it is, and if they think they do, under further anatomization, rethink their stances to account for errors in judgment. Basically what is a sign for Postmodernism to you, may be the signified image for me, and may be the signifier for the other spectator. Am I making any sense? Maybe Not! I think I should stop before I go crazy.