"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)
