sawsaw Lyotard

I found Lyotards, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?" to be a very difficult read. I found his points to be very scattered and hard to follow. The quote I found to be very interesting was on page 43 where he writes, "Modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the "lack of reality" of reality, together with the invention of other realities." This quote means to me that reality doesn't exist without beliefs being shattered and modernity being questioned. We must discover that reality doesn't exist and that the lack of reality together with the invention of other realities is what makes modernity. Another quote that stood out to me was on page 42, "The objects and the thoughts which originate in scientific knowledge and the capitalist economy convey with them one of the rules which supports their possibility: the rule that there is no reality unless testified by a consensus between partners over a certain knowledge and certain commitments." This idea of reality is one that not very many thinkers identify with. It is very difficult to define reality by a consensus between partners of knowledge and commitments. Reality should be evident to all people and not confined to a certain group or a mutual understanding of knowledge. Reality is a universal truth that everyone should have an understanding of and something that is evident to all. This capitalistic idea of reality proves that there is no reality unless commonly agreed upon by partners. Lyotards points on reality forced me to question the line between what is real and reality. His idea of no reality or lack of reality shows me that our modern views have led us to believe that reality, the now or present, doesn't exist the future and "modern" ideas are what we strive on and base our knowledge of today on.