READING SPACES

Jean-Pranfois Lyotard
A Postmodern Fable

"As to what the human and his brain might look like, or rather the brain and its human, when leaving the planet for ever, prior to its destruction-that, the story did not say." Thus ends the fable we are going to hear. The sun is going to explode. The entire solar system, including the little planet Earth, turns into an immense Nova. Four and a half billion solar years have passed since the moment of the telling of the fable. The end of the story was already foreseen from this moment on. Is this really a fable? The life span of a star is scientifically determined. A star is a burning ember in the void which transforms its elements while being consumed. It is also, thus, a laboratory. The ember ends by going out. The brightness of the ember can be analyzed and its composition defined. In that way we can tell when it will go out. The same goes for the star named the Sun. The narrative of the end of the Earth is not in itself fictitious, but rather realistic. What makes us wonder about the final words of the story is not that the Earth should disappear with the Sun, but that something must have escaped from the conflagration of the system, and from its ashes. The fable hesitates in naming the thing which must survive: is it the human and his brain, or the brain and its human? And finally, how should we understand the possibility? This uncertainty is no less realistic than the prediction of its expiration. We can visualize the vast construction site that the Earth will be during the thousands of years prior to the death of the sun. Humanity, what is still called humanity at that time, will be elaborately preparing the spaceships destined for the exodus. It will have sent up a whole ring belt of outlying stations to relay satellites. The rockets will be aimed.

"must

escape"? Is it a necessity, an obligation, or a

The Yale Journal of Criticism, volume 6, number I, 1993 by Yale University. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, and
ro8 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.

]EAN-FRAN<;:OIS L YOTARD

237

Humanity will time the boarding operations over thousands of centu nes. We can imagine the ant-like busyness with a degree of realism because certain of the means are already realizable at the time of the telling of the fable. Several billion solar years, only several billion, remain for the realization of the rest. In particular for rendering (what we call today) humans capable of realizing them. Much remains to be done; humans must change themselves a lot to reach that stage. The fable says that they can reach it (possibility), that they are pushed to do it (necessity), and that it is in their interest to do it (obligation). It cannot say what they will have become by that stage. Here is what the fable has recounted up to now: "In the vastness of the cosmos, it happened that the energy distributed at random in particles was collected here and there in bodies. These bodies constituted isolated systems, the galaxies, the stars. They dis posed of a limited quantity of energy, with which they would maintain themselves as stable systems. They constantly transformed the particles composing them, thereby freeing new particles, notably photons and heat. But, deprived of afferent energy, these systems were doomed in time to disappear. Energy became deficient. Distributed in them differ entially in order to allow the work of transformation and the survival of the whole, energy was breaking up, returning to its most probable state, chaos, and spreading at random through space. This process had a long time ago been identified as entropy. "In a tiny part of the cosmic vastness, there was a minute galactic system called the Milky Way. And in the middle of the billions of stars making it up there was one named the Sun. As in all closed systems, the Sun emitted heat, light and radiation toward the planets over which it exercised its attraction. And, as for all closed systems, the life expec tancy of the Sun was limited by entropy. At the telling of the fable, it had reached about the middle of its life. "Amongst the planets there was the Earth. And something unexpected happened to the Earth. Due to the fortuitous coming together of diverse forms of energy, the constitutive molecules of the elements of the earth-in particular, water, the filtering of solar radiations through the atmosphere, the ambient temperature-it happened that more complex and unlikely systems, cells, synthesized from molecular systems. That was the first event, the enigmatic occurrence of which was to condition the remainder of the story as well as the very possibility of recounting it. Indeed, the formation of "living" cells meant that differentiated systems from a certain order, the mineral kingdom, could under certain
238 THE YA L E JOURNA L OF CRITICISM

conditions (those which existed at that time on the Earth's surface) produce differentiated systems of a higher order, the first seaweeds. A process contrary to entropy was then possible. "A particularly remarkable sign of the complexification represented by the one-celled bodies was their ability to reproduce by separating into t wo parts almost identical to the original but independent. This ability, called scissiparity, seemed able to guarantee the perpetuation of one-celled bodies in general, in spite of the disappearance of individuals. "It was in this way that life and death were born. Unlike the mole cules, living systems were obliged-in order to survive-to consume external energy in a regulated way (metabolism). On the one hand, this dependence made them extremely fragile, since they were living with the threat of a shortfall in the energies appropriate for their metabolism. On the other hand, the living systems, through the influx of external energies, found themselves exempted from the predictable fate of dis appearance in time which would strike the isolated systems. Their life expectancy could be 'negotiated, ' at least within certain limits. "Another event modified the living systems, that of sexual reproduc tion. This reproductive procedure was much more unlikely than scis siparity, but it did also allow the offspring greater difference from their parents, since their ontogenesis emerged from the more or less aleatory combination of two distinct genetic codes. In this way a margin of uncertainty opened up between one generation and the next. Unex pected events had a greater chance of taking place. In particular, a 'bad reading' of parental codes could give rise to genetic mutations. "A certain Mr. Darwin has already related the following sequence of this story. What he called evolution was remarkable in that, no more than the preceding sequence (which had led from the physical to the biological), it did not assume any finality, but only the principle of mechanical selection of systems which were 'the best adapted.' New living systems appeared at random. They found themselves confronted with the already existing systems, since they all had to procure forms of energy in order to survive" As the sources of useful energy were in limited quantities, competition between the systems was inevitable. Thus war was born. The most efficient systems had the most chances of being selected, mechanically. " In this way, after a certain period (very brief on the astronomical clock), the system named Man found itself selected. It was an extremely unlikely system, for it is unlikely that a quadruped would remain stand ing on the soles of its two hind feet. The immediate implications of this development are clear: the hands are freed to become prehensile,
]EAN-FRANyOIS LYOTARD 239

the cranial cage realigns itself on the vertical axis, a larger volume is given to the brain, the mass of cortical neurons increases and diversifies. Complex bodily techniques appeared, particularly manual ones, at the same time as the symbolic techniques that we call human languages. These techniques were the flexible and efficient prostheses that allowed the system of Man, unlikely and precarious as it was, to compensate for its weaknesses in the face of adversaries. "With these techniques, something happened which was no less unex pected than what had happened with the appearance of the one-celled bodies. The latter had been equipped with the ability to reproduce by themselves. Similarly, symbolic language, due to its recursive character, had the ability to arrange its elements infinitely within the system, while still making meaning, that is to say, giving rise to thought and to action. Symbolic language, being self-referential, had moreover the faculty of taking itself as its object, and therefore of memorizing itself and criti cizing itself. Supported by these properties of language, the material techniques underwent a mutation in their own turn: they could refer to themselves, accumulate and improve their performances. "Language allowed humans, moreover, to inflect the initially rigid (almost instinctive) forms according to which they lived together in the first communities. More likely ways of organizing themselves appeared, diversified among the communities and in rivalry with one another. As in the case of every living system, their success depended on their aptitude to discover, tap and safeguard the sources of energy which they required. In this respect, two major events marked the history of human communities: the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Rev olution. Both the one and the other discovered new sources of energy or new means of exploiting them, thus modifying the structure of social systems. " For a long time (that is, in human terms) collective techniques and institutions had appeared at random. The survival of the unlikely and fragile systems of human beings therefore remained out of their control. It was in this way that more sophisticated techniques were considered as curiosities, and neglected so that they fell into oblivion. It also happened that some communities with greater differentiations than oth ers in politics and economic matters were defeated by systems which were simpler but stronger (as had been the case among the living kinds). "Just as the properties of symbolic language allowed material tech niques to maintain themselves, correct themselves, and maximize their efficiency, so too was it for the modes of social organization. The task of insuring the survival of communities demanded the ability to control those events, either external or internal, which could jeopardize their
240 THE YALE JOURNAL OF CRITICISM

supply of energy. Authorities entrusted with this monitoring appeared in the social, economic, political, cognitive and cultural fields. "After a certain time, it happened that the systems called liberal democratic proved themselves the most appropriate to exercise these regulations. Indeed, they left the programs of monitoring open to debate. In theory, they allowed each unit access to the decision-making functions, so as to maximize the quantity of useful human energy for the systems. In the long term this flexibility proved more efficient than the rigid fixing of roles in stable hierarchies. In contrast to the closed systems in the course of human history, the liberal democracies allowed a space within themselves for competition between units of the system. This space encouraged the emergence of new material, symbolic and community techniques. It is undeniable that frequent and sometimes dangerous crises resulted from these new techniques. But overall the performativity of the latter was enhanced by them. This process was called progress. It induced an eschatological representation of the history of human systems. "In the long term, the open systems insured a complete victory for themselves over all the other competing systems on the surface of the planet Earth: human, living and physical. Nothing seemed able to halt or direct their development. Crises, wars, revolutions contributed to accelerate it, notably by providing access to new sources of energy and by setting up control over its exploitation. The open systems had to temper their success over the other systems in order to preserve the whole (called the ecosystem) from a catastrophic deregulation. "Only the ineluctable disappearance of the entire solar system seemed to thwart the pursuit of development. In order to respond to this challenge, the system had already (at the time of the telling of the fable) begun to develop prostheses capable of perpetuating it after the resources of solar energy had disappeared. "At the time of the telling of the story, all the research currently in progress-logic, econometrics and monetary theory, computing, phys ics of conductivity, astrophysics and astronautics, biology and medicine, genetics and dietetics, catastrophe theory, chaos theory, strategies and ballistics, sports techniques, system theory, linguistics and experimental literature-all this research was devoted,

de facto,

either closely or

remotely, to testing and remodeling the so-called human body, or to replacing it, in such a way that the brain be able to function with the aid of the only energy resources available in the cosmos. In this way, the final exodus far a way from the negentropic system of the Earth was being prepared. "As to what the Human and his brain might look like, or rather the
]EAN-FRANC;OIS L YOTARD 241

brain and its human, when leaving the planet for ever-that, the story did not tell. "

Realism is the art of making reality, of knowing reality and of knowing how to make reality. The story which we have just heard says that this art is going to develop still more in time to come. Reality will be changed: making, knowing, and knowing how to make will be changed. Comparing what we are now to what the hero of the final exodus will be, reality and the art of reality will have been transformed at least as much as they have been from the time of amoebas to our own. The fable is realistic because it tells the story of a force which makes, undoes and remakes reality. It is also realistic because it records the fact that this force has already greatly transformed reality and its art and that, except for a catastrophe, this transformation must continue. It is realistic, furthermore, in that it concedes an inevitable obstacle in the pursuit of the transformation, the end of the solar system. Is it realistic, finally, when it predicts that this obstacle will be overcome and that the force will escape disaster? The fable tells the story of a conflict between two processes which modify energy. One leads to the destruction of all systems, all bodies, living or not, which exist on the planet Earth and in the solar system. Within this continuous and necessary entropic process, another contin gent and discontinuous process has been acting in the opposite direction through a growing differentiation of the systems. This latter movement cannot check the former (unless we find a way of fueling the sun), but it can escape from the catastrophe by leaving its cosmic site, the solar system. On Earth, as elsewhere, entropy leads energy towards its most feasible state, a sort of corpuscular soup, a cold chaos. Negative entropy, on the contrary, combines it in differentiated systems, more complex, let us say-more developed. The development is not a human invention. Humans are an invention of development. The hero of the fable is not the human race, but energy. The fable narrates a series of episodes marked by the success, sometimes of the most probable, and death, sometimes of the most unlikely, the most precarious, which is also the most efficient, complex. It is a tragedy about energy. As in Oedipus
Rex, it ends badly. As in Oedipus at Colonus, it concedes a final remis

SIOn. The hero is not a subject. The word energy says nothing, except that it has strength. As to what happens to energy-the forming of systems, their subsequent death or survival, the appearance of more differentiated
242 THE YALE JOURNAL OF CRITICISM

systems-energy itself knows nothing of it, nor does it want to know anything. It obeys both blind necessity and chance. The human race is not the hero of the fable, but is rather a complex form of organizing energy. As with other forms, it is clearly transitory. Other, more complex forms may appear, which will triumph over it. Perhaps it is one of the forms being prepared by the techno-scientific industry from the time of the telling of the fable onwards. That is why the fable cannot begin by identifying the system which will become the hero of the exile. The fable can only predict that such a hero, if it should manage to escape the destruction of the solar system, will have
to be more complex than is the human race at the time of the telling of

the fable. For even though the human race may be the most complex organization of energy that we know in the universe, it does not possess the means for its exodus at that time. The hero will have to be more complex since it will have to be able to survive the destruction of the terrestrial context. It won't be enough for a living organism (i. e. , the human body) in symbiosis with specific energies found on the Earth to continue to feed this system, specifically the brain. It will have to be able to use the only forms of physical energy available in the cosmos, particles which are not preorganized. That is why the fable leads us to understand that the hero of the exodus, destined to survive the destruction of terrestrial life, will not be a simple survivor since it will not be living in the sense that we understand. This condition is necessary, but at the time of the telling of the fable, no one can say how it will be met. There is uncertainty in the story because negative entropy acts contingently, and because the emergence of more complex systems-despite the research and the monitoring which are in themselves systematic-remains unpredictable. One can facilitate but not commission this emergence. It is a feature of the open systems named by the fable as liberal democratic that they leave open the spaces of uncertainty appropriate for the emergence of more com plex organizations, and that goes for all fields. What we call research is a case, now become commonplace, of these free spaces for invention and discovery. This case itself is the sign of a higher development, where necessity and chance combine not only in the epistemological order, as Monod saw, but in the reality of a new alliance, following the terms of Prigogine and Stengers. This alliance is not that of subjective and objective, but that of rule and hazard, or of consecution and dis continuity. If there were not such areas of uncertainty in the story of energy, the very fable that recounts this story would not be possible. For a fable is an organization in language, and the latter is a very complex state of
JEAN-FRAN<,:OIS LYOTARD 243

energy, a technical symbolic apparatus. Now, in order to unfold itself, fable-telling requires a kind of spatio-temporal and material blank, where the energy of language is not invested in the direct constraints of its exploitation in making, knowing and knowing how to make. In the fable the energy of language is spent on imagining. Therefore, it really does fabricate a reality, that of the story which it is telling; but the cognitive and technical use of this reality is left pending. It is exploited reflexively, that is to say, sent back to language so that it can link up with its subject ( which is what I am doing). Leaving it unsettled is what distinguishes the poetic from the practical and the pragmatic. The fabrication keeps the reality it creates in reserve, at a distance from its exploitation within the system. This reality is called the imaginary. The existence of imaginary realities presupposes, within the system where they appear, zones which are neutralized, so to speak, in relation to the purely realistic constraints of the performativity of the said sys tem. Rigid systems such as the reflex arc or even instinctual programs (to take examples from the life we know) prohibit amoebas, sycomores and eels from telling fables. Realism accepts and even demands the presence of the imaginary within it, and that the latter, far from being foreign to reality, be a state of it, the nascent state. Science and technique themselves tell fables to no less an extent, are no less poetic than painting, literature or cinema. The only difference between them resides in the constraint of verifica tion/falsification of the hypothesis. The fable is a hypothesis which is exempted from this constraint. The fable which we have heard is neither recent nor original. But I claim that it is postmodern. Postmodern does not mean recent. It means the state of writing, in the broadest terms, of thought and action, after it has undergone the contagion of modernity, and has tried to cure itself of it. Now modernity is no more recent either. It isn't even a period. It is a state of writing, in the broad sense. One can see the first traits of modernity appear in the work of Paul of Tarsus (the apostle), then in that of Augustine in reconciling the Pagan classical tradition and the Christian eschatological tradition. A distinctive element of the modern imaginary is a historicity absent from the ancient imaginary. The moderns subject the legitimation of the collective subject, called Europe or the West, to the unfolding of his torical time. In Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus, the Ancients definitely invented

history, telos,

and contrasted it with myth and of the end as perfection, and of

epic, other narrative genres. And on the other hand, with Aristotle, they elaborated the concept of
244

THE YALE JOURNAL OF CRITICISM

teleol ogical thought. But it is Christianity, rethought by Paul and Augustine, which brings eschatology proper, which will govern the modern imaginary of historicity, to the center of Western thought. Eschatology recounts the experience of a subject affected by a lack, and prophesies that this experience will reach its end at the end of time, through the remission of evil, through the destruction of death, and through the return to the house of the Father, that is to say, to the full signifier. The Christian hope linked to this eschatology recasts the rationality that emerged from pagan classicism. It becomes reasonable to hope. And, reciprocally, Greek reason changes. It is no longer the equitable sharing of arguments amongst citizens who are deliberating over what to think and do in the trials of tragic destiny, of political disorder or of ideological confusion. M odern reason is the sharing with others whoever they may be, slave, woman, immigrant-of the experience proper to each, of having sinned and having been acquitted. The ethics of

virtii

crown the ancients' exercise of reason, and those of forgiveness

crown its m odern exercise. Classical consciousness is in conflict with the impassioned troubles that shake Olympus. Modern consciousness puts its fate, in all confidence, into the hands of an only father, who is good and just. This characterization may appear too Christian. But through innu merable episodes, secular modernity has maintained this temporal frame, that of a metanarrative, as we have said, which

promises

at its

end the reconciliation of the subject with itself and the lifting of its separation. The narrative of the Enlightenment, the Romantic or spec ulative dialectic, and the Marxist narrative, however secularized, use the same historicity as Christianity, because they hold onto the escha tologial principle. The end of hist ory, should it always be put off, will reestablish a full and complete relation to the law of the Other just as it had been in the beginning: God's law in Christian paradise, Nature's law in the natural rights dreamt of by Rousseau, and the classless society before family, property or the State as imagined by Engels. It is always an immemorial past which is promised as the ultimate end. It is essential for the modern imaginary to project its legitimacy forward by founding it in a lost origin. Eschatology demands an archeology. This circle, which is also the hermeneutic circle, characterizes ern imaginary of time. The fable we have heard is certainly a narrative, but the history it recounts offers n one of the main features of historicity. First of all, it is a history of physics; it only concerns energy and matter as a state of energy. \ithin it, man is considered as a complex,
JEAN-FRAN<;:OIS LYOTARD 245

historicity as the mod

material system, consciousness as an effect of language, and language as a very complex material system. Next, the time in play in this story is only diachronic. Succession is cut up into clock-units arbitrarily defined on the basis of physical move ments taken to be uniform and regular. This time is not a temporality of consciousness, which demands that the past and the future, in their absence, should nevertheless be regarded as "present" at the same time as the present. The fable grants such temporality only in the case of systems endowed with symbolic language, which allows the memori zation and the expectation, that is to say, the making present of the absent. As for the events ( "it happened that . . . ") that mark the fabulous history of energy, the latter neither expects nor remembers them. In the third instance, this history is in no way finalized through the horizon of an emancipation. Admittedly the end of the fable recounts the salvaging of a highly differentiated system, a sort of super-brain. That the latter would be able to anticipate and prepare for this end will be due to the super-brain's possession, in whatever form it may be, of a symbolic language, without which it would be less complex than our brain. The effect, or feeling, of a finality stems from this ability of symbolic systems. They definitely allow for better monitoring of what comes to light than of what has already come to light. But rather than the effect of a hermeneutic circle, the fable represents the result of a cybernetic closure based on development. In the fourth place, the future for us today that the fable recounts (not by chance) in the past tense is not the object of an expectation. Expec tation is that of a subject of history who promises himself (or who has been promised) a final perfection. The postmodern fable recounts some thing altogether different. The human or its brain is a highly improbable material (that is to say, energetic) formation. This formation is neces sarily transitory since it is dependent on the conditions of terrestrial life, which are not eternal. The formation named Human or Brain will have to be exceeded by another more complex one, if it is to survive beyond the disappearance of these conditions. The Human or the Brain will only have been an episode in the conflict between differentiation and entropy. The pursuit of complexification does not call for the perfection of the Human, but its mutation or its defeat in favor of a more perfor mative system. It is quite wrong for humans to pride themselves on being the motors of development and confuse that development with the progress of consciousness and of civilization. They are the products, vehicles and witnesses of it. Even the criticisms which they may bring against development, against its ine quality, its irregularity, its fatality, its inhumanity-even these criticisms are expressions of development
246 THE YAL E JOURNA L OF CRITICISM

and contribute to it. Revolutions, wars, crises, deliberations, inventions and discoveries are not the "work of man," but effects and conditions of complexification. They are always ambivalent for humans, bringing them the best and the worst. Without going any further, one can see clearly that the fable does not present the features of a modern "metanarrative." It does not satisfy the call for remission or for emancipation. For lack of an eschatology, the combined mechanicity and contingency of the story it tells leave the finality of thought pending. This suspense is the postmodern state of thought, what we agree to call in these times its crisis, its uneasiness or melancholy. The fable brings no remedy to this state, but proposes an explanation of it. An explanation is neither a legitimation nor a con demnation. The fable does not know good and evil. As for true and false, they are determined according to what is operational or not at the time that one judges, and in the name of what has been called realism. The content of the fable gives an explanation of the crisis; the fabulous narrative is in itself the expression of this crisis. The content, the mean ing about which it speaks, signifies the end of expectations (hell, for modernity). The form of the narrative inscribes this content on the narrative itself by relegating it to the status of simple fable. The latter does not open itself to argumentation or to falsification. It is not even a critical discourse, but simply imaginary. It is in this way that the fable exploits the space of indeterminacy which the system leaves open to hypothetical thought. Furthermore, the fable makes itself the almost childlike expression of the crisis in thought today: the crisis of modernity, which is the state of postmodern thought. Without either cognitive or ethico-political claims, the fable grants itself a poetic or aesthetic status. It only has value through its fidelity to the postmodern affection, melancholy. First, it recounts the motive for it. But moreover, every fable is melancholic, since it supplements reality. One could say that the fable we have heard is the most pessimistic discourse that the postmodern could give on itself. It simply continues those of Galileo, Darwin and Freud: man is not the center of the world, he is not the first (but the last) creature, and he is not the master of discourse. All that would be necessary in order to describe the fable as pessimistic would be the concept of an absolute evil, independent of the imaginaries produced by the Human system. But after all, this fable does not ask to be believed-only entertained. Translated by Elizabeth Constable and Thomas Cochran
]E AN-FRANt;:OIS L YOTARD 247