FloRida, Lyotard

When I began to read the Lyotard article, I was extremely confused! As I progressed through the dense material I could really make a connection with what he was writing and some other subjects we have learned about in the class so far. Postmodernism is new and abstract ideas within culture, art, and language. It actually started out with architecture and the realization that not everything created had to be so structured and boring. The article states that “Modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without shattering of belief and without discovery of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities.” I believe this is a main point in the article. You need to break boundaries to create new and improved ideas that will better society. We need to start thinking outside that box and that is exactly what postmodernism does. Without the modern period we would not have postmodernism because as is it stated, “a work can become modern only if it is first postmodern.” Lyotard actually really connected a lot of the dots for me with the Benjamin article. Benjamin was talking about tropes and how when we have a specific idea or belief in our mind it gives us a base to create assumptions. The statement “She looks like a model,” implies to all of us that “she” is tall, thin, and blonde. What is so interesting about how we described her is that we had never even seen her before! Lyotard talked about film and cinematography, which related to Benjamin’s article about what we as a society sees as reality! Posters, signs, movies, and pictures are reproduced so many times that we identify with them a certain way and it would be hard to change our views. This is what postmodernism does, helps change our views. “ The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.”(Lyotard)