tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37839658.post5989883692378055739..comments2023-10-24T10:51:56.614-04:00Comments on Citizen of Somewhere Else: Michael Meranze, Meet Jean-Francois LyotardThe Constructivisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07242149985581771922noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37839658.post-27791820177983414182010-04-01T15:08:49.082-04:002010-04-01T15:08:49.082-04:00I have to agree with both of you. I don't ten...I have to agree with both of you. I don't tend to think of Lyotard but it is the case that the language game of the day is efficiency and that the economic determinism has been linked to a technological determinism (having to do with the digital) that seeks to prevent any alternative visions of value and seeks to reduce everyone to completely isolated consumers at computer screens. What is remarkable is that the new University managers are throwing themselves headlong into an embrace with a financial model and technological model that has given us not only a world-wide recession but global climate change. Faculty need to start realizing that they need to organize a counter-voice against a problem that is now international and will end up destroying all of the local ecologies of learning and thinking.Michael Meranzehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05336793340375780406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37839658.post-30816048600627243742010-04-01T11:36:59.893-04:002010-04-01T11:36:59.893-04:00nice post Constructivist. I think Lyotard's d...nice post Constructivist. I think Lyotard's deep definition of postmodernism is a culture ruled by optimization narratives. His critique of PM is the critique of optimization as the justification of economic determinism. this is enormously relevant to the current situation, which is in most ways a replay of the power shift of the 1980s as the business world regained an advantage lost to its economic failure in the 1970s, and did so by saying that it had failed when its unsuccessful strategies had not been followed closely enough. There will be no politics other than further faculty adaptation to the "new normal" when the new normal first presents itself as stable - as "the worst is over" or "there's nothing more to see here folks." At some point later, the new normal will re-infuriate people via some unknown catalyst - a Regent saying faculty should never have gotten used to the idea of pensions, for example. But that too may not be enough. The most likely outcome is extended decline into mediocrity. This has already happened with the US global position in higher education attainment, and only specialists even noticed. It's been happening in US manufacturing for 40 years, where the example of Germany shows that it is completely unnecessary. The psychological dynamics that allow groups to oppose the kind of determinism that Lyotard talked about are not well understood, but it's clear that what happens without this popular opposition is a decline towards the downgrading of the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people. To quote the hybrid on Battlestar Galactia, "All this has happened before. All this will happen again." But it doesn't have to happen to us if people let themselves comprehend just how BAD the unopposed tendency really isChris Newfieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01078395415386100872noreply@blogger.com