We no longer have recourse to grand narratives ... But as we have seen, the little narrative remains the quintessential form of imaginative invention ... In addition, the principle of consensus as a criterion of validation seems to be inadequate. It has two formulations. In the first, consensus is an agreement between men, defined as knowing intellects and free wills, and is obtained through dialogue. This is the form elaborated by Habermas, but his conception is based on the validity of the narrative of emancipation. In the second, consensus is a component of the system, which manipulates it in order to maintain and improve its performance.

The Postmodern Condition, p. 60

Quotation 2

The pragmatics of science is centered on denotative utterances, which are the foundation upon which it builds institutions of learning (institutes, centers, universities, etc.). But its postmodern development brings a decisive "fact" to the fore: even discussions of denotative statements need to have rules. Rules are not denotative but prescriptive utterances, which we are better off calling metascriptive utterances to avoid confusion (they prescribe what the moves of language games must be in order to be admissible). The function of the differential or imaginative or paralogical activity of the current pragmatics of science is to point out these metascriptives (science's presuppositions) and to petition the players to accept different ones. The only legitimation that can make this kind of request admissible is that it will generate ideas, in other words, new statements.

[...] The second assumption (of Jurgen Habermas) is that the goal of dialogue is consensus. But as i have shown in the analysis of the pragmatics of science, consensus is only a particular state of discussion, not its end. It's end on the contrary is paralogy...Consensus has become an outmoded and suspect value. But justice as a value is neither outmoded or suspect. We must thus arrive at an idea and practice of justice that is not linked to that of consensus. A recognition of the heteromorphous nature of language games is a first step in that direction. This obviously implies a renunciation of terror, which assumes that they are isomophic and tries to make them so. The second step is the principle that any consensus on the rules defining the game and the 'moves' playable within it 'must' be local, in other words, agreed on by its present players and subject to eventual cancellation.

The orientation then favors a multiplicity of finite meta-arguments, by which I mean argumentation that concerns metaprescriptives and is limited in space and time. This orientation corresponds to the course that the evolution of social interaction is currently taking; the temporary contract is in practice supplanting permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family and international domains, as well in political affairs. This evolution is of course ambiguous: the temporary contract is favored by the system due to its greater flexibility, lower cost, and the creative turmoil of its accompanying motivations - all of these factors contribute to the increased operativity.

The Postmodern Condition, pp. 66-67

Quotation 3

Postmodernity is not a new age, but the rewriting of some of the features claimed by modernity, and first of all modernity's claim to ground its legitimacy on the project of liberating humanity as a whole through science and technology. But as I have said, that rewriting has been at work, for a long time now, in modernity itself.

"Réécrire la modernité" (Rewriting Modernity)

Quotation 4

The point is that I’m not a theorist. Please, don’t take the notion of postmodernity as theory. I never used the term postmodernism, only “the postmodern” or “postmodernity”—it’s not an ism. The major misunderstanding is to transform into an ism what wasn’t at all an ism. I hate isms because I’m not a theorist.

Gary A. Olson: Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard

Quotation 5

In the postmodern world, we have to separate writing as a cultural effect and writing as writing. You can take a book as a cultural object and finally test it as having a large audience or as being understandable—as being a poor work or the opposite, a brilliant one. That’s the postmodern appreciation of the works of mind (if I can use this term), of thought, but it seems to me that writing is the opposite: writing is the capacity to resist the network of exchanges in which cultural objects are commodities, and maybe to write is precisely to avoid making a book (or even a small paper or article) a commodity, but rather to oppose, to resist the simple and naive exchangeability of things in our world.

Gary A. Olson: Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard

Quotation 6

There is no language game or genre or discourse which is able to encompass all the different discourses or genres, and there is a real differend in which no court or tribunal is able to decide what is best because there is no best way.

Gary A. Olson: Resisting a Discourse of Mastery: A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard