Similarities Between Lyotard And Foucault

Efficiency is a concept intuitively associated with business and economics, rather than philosophy. For most of philosophy's history, efficiency remained a concept predominantly untouched, and was secondary to metaphysical and epistemological questions. In modern times, this has changed and the concept of efficiency has played an increasingly important role within the various contemporary philosophical traditions. This is no more apparent than in postmodernism. Although controversial to categorize as a system of thought, postmodernism does have an overall fixation on efficiency's crucial role in shaping society and our beliefs. Two thinkers who focus on this issue are Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault; this essay will analyze how efficiency is a crucial element in their philosophies.

Lyotard's initial conception of efficiency is as one of many language-games. Lyotard borrows from Wittgenstein by formulating that various linguistic utterances are governed by a set of rules determining their use, much like a game of chess (Lyotard 10). Within
The speculative narrative has always had an ambiguous relationship with positive knowledge; knowledge must repudiate itself to be considered such (Lyotard 38). The principle of legitimacy for the speculative narrative ended up being self-defeating; nothing seemed to legitimate the process of legitimation itself (Lyotard 39). The emancipatory narrative broke down based on the realization that science did not seem capable of legitimating other language-games (Lyotard 40). The fact that a statement was true did not mean that it was just (Lyotard 40). This was extenuated by the rapid increase in technology after the second world war and the collapse of a socialist alternative (Lyotard 38). These metanarratives which once legitimated knowledge have broken down with the advent of the postmodern