Liberaldemokratins postmoderna vinst? - Postmodernisme premillénaire CXXV

Lyotard tillkännagiver alltså att en stor berättelse kring tolerant pluralism har segrat og om det enbart är denna som segrat og det samtidigt varandes ett postmodernt samhälle som osså karak­täriseras av samma saker så måste de ju höra ihop enligt anförandena, liber­al­ismen tillhör ehuruväl ej de stora berättelserna ty “the grand narratives have obviously failed”¹ - ambivalensen gör sig gällande, ty ibland är liberalismen den stora berättelse som vunnit och ibland är den inte tillhörande de stora berättelserna då den vunnit men de förlorat.² Lyotard gör i samma artikel en intres­sant resa genom universums historia på ett evolutionistiskt vis för att till slut hamna i nutiden, vi hoppom ehuru över de första bitarna då de äro av mindre uppenbar relevans för resonemanget, men vi kan dogh påpeka att vissa nu laborerar med att det finns flera universa:

Nevertheless, because of the ... particularities characteristic of language, the ability to reproduce and anticipate unexpected events, including failures, an ability that had been introduced by language itself, was developing autonomously. Thus, the task of controlling unexpected occurrences, be they external or internal, became the primary task for systems to fulfill if they wanted to sur­vive. In addition, a number of authorities began to appear in the social, economic, political, cog­nitive, and representational (cultural) fields. After some time, it happened that systems called liberal democracies came to be recognized as the most appropriate for the task of controlling events in whatever field they might occur. By leaving the programs of control open to debate and by providing free access to the decision-making roles, they maximized the amount of human energy available to the system. The effectiveness of this realistic flexibility has shown itself to be super­ior to the exclusively ideological (linguistic) mobilization of forces that rigidly regulated the clos­ed totalitarian systems. In liberal democratic systems, everybody could believe what they liked, that is, could organize language according to whatever system they liked ... Given the in­creased self-control of the open system, it was likely that it would be the winner in the compet­ition among the systems all over Earth.³

Fotnoter

1) Lyotard, 1992 i 1993:120.

2) Se dock även, Kumar, 1999:198.

3) Lyotard, 1992 i 1993:122-123 men se hela evolutionen från p. 120.

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