Some Questions

I must admit to being rather mystified by Lyotard's report, specifically in my attempt to follow his individual terms throughout, which seem to mutate as he pits them against each other in new ways. Most naggingly, I seemed to have missed where the point where the notion of system performance (i.e. efficiency) became system performativity (i.e. that of linguistic pragmatics). I'm not sure I see how the postmodern system of science operates through performativity, especially given the facts that a) Lyotard mentions on page 41 how the postmodern world is "all about" legitimation not based upon performativity and b) he argues that the "act" is no longer good enough to validate knowledge, but that it must show value with regard to efficiency.

I also don't see how the new system lacks a metalanguage (64). (I can see how it might lack a sweeping metanarrative, but those two ideas seem to differ.) If anything, the postmodern institution(s) sweeps all forms of knowledge into one level playing field determined by a strict language of efficiency and capital. Lyotard also mentions (52) the growth of cross-disciplinary studies (concommitant with the conversion of the university into a kind of productive machine) which outstrip the obsolescing modes of academic specializing. I definitely see a kind of economics as on overarching metalanguage of the sciences, regardless of linguistic divisions at lesser levels.

There are, of course, these moments of extreme specificity within the system. These are the productive play of dissent and paradox which reminds me of Derrida's differance (ultimately meant not to dismantle reason/metaphysics but to make it more productive in its own way). Derrida, in different ways than Lyotard, represented a strong opposition to Habermas' rational consensus community. Both theorists sought a more productive, if negating, specificity within a greater system of language. However, Lyotard's system seems ultimately more uncompromising and terrifying.

It is also unclear how historically minded Lyotard is being when he speaks of the "system." He certainly has a sense of history when speaking of the systemization of sciences, but I also get the sense (especially when he is critiquing Habermas) that he is implying something universal about the way that people interact in language games--man's designs on man that is only now coming to full fruition.