Pre Class, Lyotard continued 2/16, meg143

The first time I read the Lyotard article I had a very difficult time understanding what Lyotard’s general message was and how it related to the other theorists. Today’s class gave me a much better idea of Lyotard’s beliefs. Lyotard was a strong believer in realism much like Habermas. Lyotard also felt in this postmodern era it was extremely important to establish a space, or a “gap” as Habermas would put it, between the art and the reader known as the critical. This is known as the “V Effect” and highlights the importance of the critic. “Let us wage war on totality” (46) is a quote by Lyotard in regards to the enlightenment and where our society stands today. The enlightenment created multiple disciplines to study the world and gave a diversified and well-represented view of different opinions in the global media. While this was great progress for our society Lyotard feared that this closes off the possibility for other innovative thought. Lyotard stresses that we still need to insert the critic between the art and the reader. Our media has become, the art, the critic, and even tries to become the reader. Our global media has become the truth, and we need to make sure that we remain critical. “Artists who question the rules are destined to have little credibility and they have no guarantee of an audience” (41). Lyotard explains that it is much more difficult to break from the norms of society and challenge the ideals but in the end it is the critical questioning that has the greatest impact. Today we are used to relying on the media and the idea of the available critics as our source of information and as our grand meta-narrative. Now we have to make a conscious effort and realize the global media should not become our new reality and we as consumers and citizens need to always remain critical.