On the Role of Knowledge in Late Capitalist Society

Postmodernism, as Lyotard so aptly puts it, is an incredulity towards metanarratives. This is the basic thesis of his entire report and it moves on from here to substantiate this claim which is essentially that all our great assumptions have been undermined and that we are in a state of diffusion and multiplicity. Central to this is the role of knowledge and power.

In many ways, Lyotard's report has a lot in common with Althusser's essay on the Ideological State Apparatuses. The role of the educational institution in both cases is as a sort of primer for a specific role in society. Whereas Althusser stresses its function as a reproducer of the conditions of the modes of production, Lyotard stresses its role in relation to wealth and technology and the changes in the meaning and motivation for education. No longer, learning for learning's sake, he mentions that the most important question on the mind of the student is "what use is this?" and in this way, there is an alignment between the mind of the individual and the mind of the state. By focusing on the practical aspect of knowledge as a commodity and by funding those research ventures that aim to increase out technological efficiency, we enter into a new type of economy (and this has been stated oft before). From the importance of ownership to the importance of access, this motif appears again here in Lyotard in this form where knowledge moves from the value of being "true" to the value of being "useful."

These sorts of things had been discussed somewhat in Weiner concerning his research for war technologies but receives a more thorough theoretical treatment in Lyotard. As an information economy, the emphasis of the state's exertions is not just on the exploitation of others for its own benefit; it's how to exploit them better and more efficiently and this is achieved through this development of "useful" knowledge so that new technologies may be created to allow a nation to stay at the cutting edge of efficiency, power, and control relative to its citizens and other nation-states. Education still serves the purpose of training the bureaucrats and administrators of the government but its more general purpose has a much broader scope of possibility.

This goal of the state of total control, however, cannot complete itself. This is brought quite often by Lyotard through his many references to Godel's incompleteness theorem so it becomes that one of the most influential debates in science is that of a meta-debate concerning its own legitimacy in light of quantum mechanics and the like. This also frames facts of history. The Roman Empire and the British Empire have both seen their legitimacy and ability to exercise effective control crumble as they became more totalizing in their mission of territorial control and subordination.

Other things to consider:
-Languages games and the agonistics of discourse
-The crisis of legitimacy in science and its use of narrative knowledge for legitimation while simultaneously disdaining it as non-verifiable

I end with a quote:
"Knowledge is no longer the subject, but in the service of the subject: its only legitimacy (though it is formidable) is the fact that it allows morality to become reality." (36)