Performativity involves a system logic that reduces questions of justice to questions of efficiency and has no interest in the unknown
"For Lyotard, performativity involves a system logic that reduces questions of justice to questions of efficiency and has no interest in the unknown because it falls outside the system as currently constituted. Against this he 'sketches the outline of a politics that would respect both the desire for justice and the desire for the unknown' (1984: 67). This involves turning away from performativity and towards the other possible legitimating criteria, consensus and paralogy. Lyotard argues that consensus, the criteria preferred by Habermas, is inadequate (1984: 60). It rests on a belief that it is possible to find a metalanguage that could translate all of the 'heteromorphous classes of utterance' into one another, and the assumption that it is possible for all speakers in scientific games to agree about this meta-language and that consensus is the goal of science (1984: 65). Against this, Lyotard argues that 'consensus is only a particular state of discussion, not its end. Its end, on the contrary is paralogy' (1984: 65–6)."
(Campbell Jones, p.512)
Campbell Jones (2003). "Theory after the Postmodern Condition." Organization 10(3): 503-525.
Jean-François Lyotard (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Fig.1 China's Pang Qing and Tong Jian perform in the pairs short programme during the Cup of China figure skating competition in Beijing November 5. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
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Communicating knowledge: How & why UK researchers publish & disseminate their findings
"The motivations that lead researchers to publish in different formats – particularly in scholarly journals – differ significantly across disciplines. Researchers in the sciences are more likely to see publication in a learned journal as a ‘natural’ means of communication with their desired audience, while their colleagues in engineering, the humanities and the social sciences are more likely to see it as meeting essentially external requirements for research assessment and career advancement.
In these latter disciplines, therefore, the rise of journals is more closely associated with an environment where there is increasing emphasis on measuring, assessing, and evaluating research, its outputs and impact."
(HEFCE on behalf of JISC, UK, 2009)
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The liberal and servile arts: internal justification versus external purpose
"'Liberal arts,’ therefore, are ways of human action which have their justification in themselves; 'servile arts’ are ways of human action that have a purpose outside of themselves, a purpose, to be more exact, which consists in a useful effect that can be realized through praxis. The 'liberality’ or 'freedom’ of the liberal arts consists in their not being disposable for purposes, that they do not need to be legitimated by a social function, by being 'work.’"
(Josef Pieper, 1998, p.41)
Pieper, J. (1998). 'Leisure, the Basis of Culture'. South Bend, Indiana, St. Augustine's Press.
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Jean-François Lyotard: Legitimation of knowledge by performativity terrorises the production of ideas
"Lyotard argues that legitimation by performativity is against the interests of research. He does not claim that research should be aimed at production of 'the truth'; he does not try to re-invoke the metanarratives of modernity to legitimate research. Rather, he sees the role of research as the production of ideas. Legitimation of knowledge by performativity terrorises the production of ideas. What, then, is the alternative? Lyotard proposes that a better form of legitimation would be legitimation by paralogy. The etymology of this word resides in the Greek words para - beside, past, beyond - and logos in its sense as 'reason.' Thus paralogy is the movement beyond or against reason. Lyotard sees reason not as a universal and immutable human faculty or principle but as a specific and variable human production; 'paralogy' for him means the movement against an established way of reasoning. In relation to research, this means the production of new ideas by going against or outside of established norms, of making new moves in language games, changing the rules of language games and inventing new games. Lyotard argues that this is in fact what takes place in scientific research, despite the imposition of the performativity criterion of legitimation. This is particularly evident in what Lyotard calls 'postmodern science' - the search for instabilities. For Lyotard, knowledge is not only the known but also the 'revelation' or 'articulation' of the unknown. Thus he advocates the legitimation of knowledge by paralogy as a form of legitimation that would satisfy both the desire for justice and the desire for the unknown."
(Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy)
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