Lyotard: Community As Heteromorphous Divergent Language Games [552]
"The idea of a single, unified community of free thinkers and the idea of a unified community of free citizens, so important to the visions of enquiry and progress for the modern thinkers, are, for [Jean–Francois] Lyotard, fictions that can only result in the oppression of individuals. This notion is bound to be very difficult for many inquirers to accept. It is important to point out that a rejection of the idea of unity does not mean embracement of some kind of exclusionary ethos. The overall aim becomes diversification of enquiry....If the idea of a unified intellectual community is not desirable, what are the implications for the idea that enquiry is consistent with, and advance, the social good? For Lyotard, the social good resides in the recognition that human society, like nature, is composed of "heteromorphous" language games rather than being a whole (Lyotard, 1984, p.65). Any attempt toward achieving consensus by a new grand metanarrative to rescue humanity from system is out of the question, because such a project would invariably result in another oppressive system (Lyotard, 1984, p.66). Postmodern science suggests that social assent can only be legitimately comprised of "little narratives," language games whose rules and play are "locally determined." (Lyotard, 1984, p.61) The social end of enquiry is not consensus, but an open society that allows for a multiplicity of divergent games and encourages the ongoing imaginative creation of new ones, that is, local relations among small numbers of players"
(Lyotard, 1984, p.66 cited in Roger P. Mourad Jr. p.36).
Lyotard, Jean–Francois. 1984 p.65 The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge, USA: University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816611734
[Lyotard extends Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of "language games" to discuss an ideal for community that is defined through locally negotiated interactions and social interrelations.]
