Лиотарова постмодерна политика несводиве плуралности и бесконачно умножавајућих језичких игара
Lyotard’s Postmodernist Politics of Irreducible Plurality and Permanently Multiplying Language Games

Summary/Abstract: This paper interprets the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard as a postmodernist political theory. Referring to the Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition (1979), postmodernity is marked as the moment when the modernist metanarratives – e.g. Christianity, Enlightenment, Marxism – lose their legitimizing power. A multitude of diverse, mutually irreducible micronaratives weaken the universalistic- oriented project of modernity, and a worldwide fragmentation eradicates any presumption or the possibility to establish social, cultural or any other totality. Lyotard derives his explanation of this world of pluralism from the notion of the language games, a concept introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, 1953). According to the Austrian thinker there are many language games but in their respective heterogeneity it is not possible to reduce all of them to the common set of rules. Similarly, Lyotard’s politics of postmodernism – unimaginable without the influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language – describes the state of our world in relation to unlimited number of disparate language games. At the same time Wittgenstein’s concept informs Lyotard’s theory of different: a conflict between two opposing sides which cannot be ultimately resolved since there is no universal criterion of evaluation. Injustice, in this context, is the result of the forceful imposition of particular framework incapable to recognize specific position and stance of each of the parties involved. Finally, this paper questions the very justification of the present examination of the philosophy of postmodernity. After recent emerging of various theoretical discourses which offer an alternative to postmodernism, the latter approach is recognized as one among many philosophical options within an interdisciplinary field of contemporary humanities. However, Lyotard’s philosophy of postmodernism – interpreted as a political theory – proves to be a relevant theoretical discourse still capable of explaining pluralism, heterogeneity and incommensurability of modern language games in our – post- postmodern – world.

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