The Creation Of The Micronarrative

Allow me to elaborate on the details of a little philosophical project I have undertaken, and it has to do with the work of Jean François Lyotard.

Lyotard is the man we owe for the term of postmodernism. In fact, he wrote a book about the whole thing, The Postmodern Condition, which he referred to upon the request of it's conception by the Quebec government as a "report on knowledge". This cannot be said to be inaccurate as he spends the entirety of the book contemplating the effects of the digitisation of information and states, in terms that are very similar to Foucault's own musings on power, that in the future, production of information will have the same power that conventional production of material commodities did in the past for the formation of power. He analyses this digitisation as being the result of scientific development, or rather, the capitalistic ideology that has continually driven scientific development over the course of the last century, what he refers to as "performativity." He does not really mean what we do in the modern age by it, but rather, a focus on performance, optimisation, the least amount of inputs for the most amount of outputs. There is prevalent danger, so says Lyotard, to how this mode of thinking has influenced our greater conception of knowledge in the modern age, and what he does is question the process of scientific legitimation, which leads him to the concept of the narrative.

When he says narrative, he is referring to something along the lines, in the modern sense of it, of the old epic tales of tragedy and epics who's logic of legitimation does not require a concept of proof-based validation, does not require the implicit assumptions of the validity of seeking knowledge through a scientific method. Indeed, he says, that scientific legitimation is a narrative all onto it's own, that science cannot prove it's own validity through it's own internal mechanisms. There is much merit to the conception that Lyotard provides us of contemporary narrative incredulity, that which he refers to as the postmodern condition, but he also uses the works of another philosopher who I think could be used to reverse Lyotard's own concepts and lead us to perhaps a more interesting conclusion with some later add-ons too: Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Lyotard borrows a very important concept from Wittgenstein in his analysis of narratives: the concept of language games. A language game is a predefined set of "rules" by which the participants in language must derive meaning in the midst of language according to said rules that are nebulous and continuously redefined by context. Lyotard argues that language games function as insular closed off systems of communication wherein the conceptions and the rhetoric used by people inside the context of the rules of their own language is consistent, but conflict arises when there is some sort of interference upon a the language game by someone who does not understand the rules. Such is the nature of all debate. Language games are that by which we are continuously trapped by our overarching totalizing metanarratives, those being the overarching systematic conceptions of human development in relation to ideas of history and nature and nurture. Examples would include fascism, Marxism-Leninism and the internal logic of capitalism as well. These metanarratives create and reform a wild web of interconnected language games the rules of which are amorphous as was said earlier, but they are also regulated by the flow of authority and information that Lyotard spoke of. This leads me to the central idea of this: to destroy our bond to all metanarratives and liberate human thought, the only solution is the destruction of vertical flows of information, that is to say, the unjust hierarchies.. this is where anarchism comes in quite handy.

The classical anarchists such as Kropotkin were stuck to their own assumptions of their time, what Foucault would call an episteme, that a tendency towards mutual aid was the natural state of being for humans and the unjust hierarchy of the state constituted in comparison to the natural laws of nature that could be derived through purely rationalistic methods as they saw it an abominable pretension towards profundity. These assumptions despite the fact of the good-natured status of the values underpinning them still constitute would I would argue to be an overarching metanarrative, in the sense that there are presumed teleological functions to human existence. The rejection of that, I think, is the greatest gift that the postmodernists or the post-structuralists or what have you ever gave us; there is in the asystemic conceptions of disorganised flows of power relations and language games a consideration for the fundamentally entropic nature of human existence that continuously makes it difficult for the maintenance of power. However, we arrive nevertheless after our rejection of all metanarratives at a serious impass once we consider the formation of what I have come to refer to as the micronarrative, that by which an individual subjective conception of the world can be formed unrelated to the flux of authoritative knowledge production: wherein comes the process of legitimation?

To put this in simpler terms, if all metanarratives are equally invalid, how do we decide the nature of our micronarrative? By what metric are we allowed to arrive at any concept of truth? This is where I am going to introduce my arationalistic reinterpretation of some of Descartes' concepts.

René Descartes was not a big fan of the senses, as you well know, I hope. It was part of his rationalistic project to disregard the validity of empirical epistemology, to see to it that the mind, as he conceived it, separate from the body, was that by which the person was defined, "cogito ergo sum", the implication is that you are the thinking thing, you are your mind. I would make the argument that the Cartesian conception of mind over sense is arbitrary and that neither is epistemologically sound enough to constitute a full system of certainty. Let us return to the Cogito for guidance: I think, therefore, I am. How do you know it's you that exists in any regard? Very presumptuous even if the existential truth that this is getting at is not entirely negated; it is impossible to deny existence itself because that inherently creates a contradiction and one might make the objection that even the laws of logic are uncertain and can be doubted, but at that point we'd be flown into circular logic rejection. One could, perhaps, simply completely reject these premises, but that is not engaging with the arguments at hand in good faith. Alas, the point being: Something experiences, that being, it thinks and it feels, there is some sort of experience going on, perhaps in a vague abstract sense wherein all of reality is manifested via the mind of some totalizing panpsychic force, perhaps I do in fact just exist. I will assume the latter for the sake of simplicity a la Occam's Razor going forward, but that is not totally certain, what is certain is that experience cannot deny it's own existence. By that metric, we can begin to build some sort of epistemology that allows us to escape the web of Lyotardian language games.

To do this, we require axioms and these are things that are impossible to derive with the same amount of certainty as the fact of existence but the rejection of which is unfruitful and presumptuous utilising the same logic of Occan's Razor: that the outside world exists, primarily, as well as the establishment of our ethical axioms that also simply have to be accepted. Moral relativism is a natural byproduct of the nature of the metanarrative experience by which ethical presumptions shift according to the nature of the specific metanarrative, which is showcasing the need for the establishment of some sort of meta-teleos by which we can proscribe things as being "right" and "wrong", and to do this, we need two essential parts: a way to resolve the Humian problem of is-ought and the incorporation of anarchist egalitarian ideals via postanarchism, namely the conception of Saul Newman.

David Hume a few centuries ago presented us with one of the most striking philosophical quandaries: can you derive an ought from is? Telos from techne? I would make the argument that it is in fact possible to derive an ought from is, but it is not possible to legitimise said ought without the context of some presupposed ethical system already in place by which you can arrive at your conclusions. Suppose, for example: a child is drowning. What are you supposed to do about this when you witness it? One could say, save the child, help them out of the water, but there is an implicit assumption built into that that saving the life of someone in peril when you are able to is an obligation. As such, one ought to take on moral axioms by which they can legitimise their oughts. Of course, axioms can simply be rejected from the outset, but I would argue that there is little point in communicating with those who would reject the idea that it is in fact a good idea to save a drowning child.

This leads me to Saul Newman and his brilliant article wherein he lays out the principles of a postanarchistic view wherein the principles of state abolishment as it relates to the classical anarchists are combined with post-structuralist concepts of metanarrative rejection that, I feel, work extremely well together courtesy of the epistemelogical liberation that such a thing presents us with: if we suppose that the rules of language games are laid out courtesy of a context that is connected to the state of authority, to the vertical flow of information, then a horizontal organisation of truth is abound and such a thing is the only possible way by which we can arrive at a true liberation of our collective states. Now.. I need more time to consider the ramifications of attempting to formulate an ethical framework of the world in depth, but what is most certain is that the anarchist ideals of state abolishment and liberation and egalitarianism are in order, the preservation of plurality a la the Lyotardian concept of the Differund and the preservation further still of the empathy required for the survival of the Differund. The negation of empathy courtesy of the totalizing fascistic metanarratives of the Hitlers of the world are rejected on this premise, of the fact they crush the Differund, but the important thing is to not maintain a totality of difference because that is inherently self-destructive towards the Differund further still.

The general point I am making is that postanarchism does not function under the same sort of utopian assumptions that the classical anarchists did of the idea that it is possible to actually create an actual post-state post-class world in our lifetimes. Perhaps not impossible theoretically but these represent more so abstract goals to work towards that I think the formation of such an epistemological system as this actively benefits. I need to read more and when I do, I will make further additions to the ideas that I've laid out and connected here already.