Just presenting the unpresentable by political sublime is not enough, we also need to try best to prevent the tendency of totalization or differend, which is the origin of wrongs. This is why I claim that we need a political solution by building up a new kind of government. The role of government is crucial in the fight against totalization.
In history or reality, the role of government is complicated and suspicious because they may be involved in the process of totalization. What I am going to do is to put forth a pure notion of government, the postmodern government. It derives from the reconstruction of Lyotard's postmodern condition. In his view, postmodern condition is a period of history, namely the period after world war II. I will try to reconstruct it as an ideal notion of free society beyond history, from which point we may get a new dimension to review the history, or theories and events in history.
The key of the reconstruction is the reinterpretation of the concept of metanarrative. In Lyotard's mind, it seems like to be a kind of discourse ever existing in the history, that is, in the modern history. However, I would rather understand it as an illusion of legitimate discourse. The death of metanaarative, as claimed by Lyotard, means, in my mind, the nonexistence of metanarrative. There is no such kind of metanaarative as legitimacy. The incredulity toward metanarratives finally turn out to find the truth of history, the so called metanarrative is just the form of totalization of one kind of discourse, where differendd is unavoidable. Appealing to metanarrative means the attempt to be metanarrative, the ambition of totalization. Metanarrative is the justification of totalization. Therefore, I consider all metanarratives in history as products of totalization. That is to say, the metanarrative is just a beautiful coat for totalization. Totalization operates in the name of metanarrative. However, in fact, it is a process of totalization, a process of differendd, a process of causing the wrongs, a history of suffering of victims of differendd.
Just from the postmodern condition, an ideal conception of free society, in my mind, we are able to realize and recognize the wrongs of differendd, the terror of totality, and further the suffering of victims of differendd. Just at this point, as Nuyen drew out, we meet the postmodern ethical demand: how to avoid the wrongs of differ end, and how to present the unpresentable? To answer the ethical problem, Nuyen asserts that there are two kinds of strategies that can be drawn out from Lyotard's theory. He calls them political strategy and reflective strategy, respectively.
But before go further into the two strategy, I want to sketch out an outline of the whole scheme of what Nuyen calls postmodern ethics in my terms. In his postmodern ethics, there are two levels of ethics, one I call micro ethics, the other I call macro ethics. The micro ethic is based on the internal rules of small language games. From this point of view, we can develop a kind of normative theory of different occupation field. The macro ethics is concerned with the relationship between different games. It is based on the rules of just gaming, which aims at resolving the conflicts between different games. My focus would be mainly on the macro level. The two kinds of strategies answering the ethical demand is positioned on the macro level.
On the macro level, the postmodern ethics is to deal with two kinds of problem. One is the direct terrorism, like murder etc. The other is the wrongs of differendd, namely, what Lyotard calls the white terrorism of totality. The political strategy is used to deal with the problem of the direct terrorism. In fact, it is easy to recognize the direct terrorism but not easy to rule it out by postmodernism. So the key is to answer why the terroism should be ruled out according to postmodern ethics. The answer is that it destroys other player's right to play their own games. Everyone has the right and freedom to play any game he or she like to do as long as it does not destroy other's right and freedom to play their own games. The basis is the notion of free agent.
Concerning this issue, Nuyen think that the sole negative rule is not sufficient to rule out the terroism, so he adds a positive component that advocates to maximize the multiplicity of game playing and points out that the positive component works as a regulative rule in Kantian sense, not a determinate rule. But i think it is not necessary to add the positive aspect. It is inconsistent with the postmodern ethics and will bring out some other problems. In my view, the multiplicity is the natural consequence of free game playing, rather not the cause or independent value of game playing. We do not need to assume that the multiplicity is good and therefore it should be maximized. Certainly, the terrorism could be ruled out by it , but it still work to demand us to maximize the multiplicity even in cases not concerning terrorism. So the work left for me is to demonstrate the negative rule is sufficient to rule out the terrorism without adding a demand of maximizing the game playing.
The reflective strategy is used to deal with the wrongs of differendd. The white terrorism of totality is a kind of indirect terrorism, therefore it is hard to realize and recognize ti. From the point of postmodern condition, we can note that when metanarrative arise, then there is totalization. Totalization works under the cover of metanarrative. Totalization means some kind of discourse claim that it is superior to other discourses. Therefore, according to the existing grant narrative, other discourses become unpresentable. However, being unpresentable does not mean they do not exist. Lyotard adapts Kant's esthetic sublime to the political area. The esthetic sublime is an attempt to present the unpresentable when the faculty of imagination is demanded by the faculty of reason to present the object beyond its concept. When the imagination successfully creates new metaphors, symbols etc to present the unpresentable, people feel a kind of pleasure from the pain of imagination. it is the feeling of sublime. Lyotard applies it to the political area, Nuyen calls it political sublime, the presentation of wrongs of differendd.
Depriving other's right to play theory own games is amorally unjustifiable, or everyone has the absolute right to play their own games without intervene. This may be the same basis for rejecting the terrorism and totalization. Because they have the same structure that destroys individual's right of freedom to play their own games. I think this basis is valid enough to rule out the direct terrorism and the white terrorism of totality. The real and most significant contribution of Lyotard's postmodernism is that it realized and recognized the injustice of totality, and successfully draw out the same structure with terrorism by identifying the wrongs of differendd, this is why Lyotard calls the totality the white terrorism, such strong words. Then we can understand why Lyotard asserts that "the question of presenting the unpresentable is the only one worthy of what is at stake in life and thought in the coming century". Nuyen identifies it as the postmodern ethical demand. to respond the ethical demand, Lyotard calls for us "to wage a war on totality" and to be "witnesses to the unpresentable." They are the two sides of one coin. To fight against the totality and to present the unpresentable must be carried out together.
But Lyotard and Nuyen said little about the role of government in the mission. This is what I want to do. But all what I will talk about government is based on the reconstruction of Lyotard's postmodernism and Nuyen's postmodern ethics mentioned above.
No comments:
Post a Comment