Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 23:54:36 EST
Subject: Re: wittgenstein, lyotard, foucault


Hugh

What IS the remedy?

I have to say that when Lyotard defines the postmodern as incredulity towards
metanarratives, this includes the belief in the proletariat as the privileged
historical emancipator.  The paradox of our time is that under the banner of
development and growing complexity, people suffer and unnecessarily so, but
there appears to be nothing which is capable of resisting this force, this
violence.  Where is the inhuman that can oppose the inhuman?

The system (call it what you will (and I don't really think Capital has been
replaced by something else, do you and what would you call it?)) has its own
agenda. More and more people become useless appendages unless they can serve
as input/output nodes and feedback loops. The system is the queen bee.  You
and I are merely drones. 

In this situation, to resurrect Lenin's old hoary question:  "What is to be
done?"

Do you have a theory capable of guiding praxis?