Melanie Roth - Lyotard

Lets just say that I am extremely looking forward to our class discussion about Lyotard, in hopes of making some sort of meaning to his theories. I found myself reading passages over and over, anticipating a sense of clarity. The most translucent part of the writing was when Lyotard touched upon Jencks theories.

“Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and ‘retro’ clothes in Hong Kong; Knowledge is a matter for TV games” (42). Here, Lyotard relates his theory to that of Jencks, and basically compares the way architecture mixes different styles to the way people combine various styles with modern elements, creating allusive content. I never thought about postmodernism within a human, but it is something that is very prominent in our culture. A peer at my old high school was Caucasian, well dressed with dreadlocks, and excelled at the saxophone when he was not playing soccer. Here we see a young man adopting multiple styles, creating his personal individuality, unique from the norm. This concept of mixing is profoundly demonstrated in contemporary general culture. I related this theory to the idea that, “It must be clear that it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented” (Lyotard 46). I believe that when mixing styles from different cultures, or from the past/present, we succeed in creating these allusions Lyotard touches upon. What I do not understand is, how are we not supplying reality at the same time?

A statement I would love to touch upon in class is the idea that “Modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discover of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities” (Lyotard 43). I tried breaking this passage down, relating it to modern architecture, modern pieces of writings, furniture, and so on. Where do these examples of modernity play into the role of reality?