“Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”
Lyotard offers a treatment on the idea behind postmodernism to express the sharp transition from the previous modernist society. He observes that the notion of grand narratives in science, religion, politics, and meaning is rejected in the postmodernist society as opposed to modernism. Lyotard emphasizes the lack of universal beliefs that are present in the meta-narratives that dictate their way of life. Essentially Postmodernists are interested in embracing the futility of life other than seeking universal meanings that offer a social standard. Thus the assertion simplifies the demise of grand narratives that defined modernist value systems.
“...In the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power.”
Lyotard explores the link science and technology has with the system of late capitalism to address the myth of progress. The advancements in science and technology are strategic because knowledge and truth are aimed to be commodities. The decisions behind research funding and progress are attached to the political power that is made by a small faction. Wealth and power have rendered scientific and technological progress to performativity rather than the search for truth.
“Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable, let us activate the different and save the honor of the name.”
The whole concept that nurtured the Postmodernist movement is the rejection of met-narratives and language games. Thus, Lyotard breaks down the replacement of totality in grand narratives with a multitude of smaller narratives. The universality and homogeneity of a modernist culture set rules and notions upon which the artist or writer abide by. Postmodernism in contrast advocates for the idea of ‘unpresentable’ in that there no meaning apart from the meaning one creates of the world.
