Lyotard and Applied Knowledge

The patron of the chapter is Jean-François Lyotard, who appears here as the author of another groundbreaking book in the twentieth century: La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir (The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge) published in 1979. Its title refers directly to the problem of knowledge, which, as is to justify the reasoning contained in the chapter, Lyotard treats as a pragmatic social phenomenon, removed from man. At the same time, Lyotard places his perception of knowledge in the context of digital technologies, which is often forgotten, since the book is mainly considered the inauguration of the concept of postmodernism. For Lyotard, knowledge assumes the role of a social resource that shapes the historical social reality, and then takes on the role of narratives, created, and changed depending on the circumstances. This resource is strictly linguistic and is based on the phenomenon of discourse. In the chapter there is an extensive explanation of the indicated elements of Lyotard’s reasoning, which leads to a strictly pragmatic treatment of knowledge as an autonomous phenomenon, which can also directly assume the roles of a resource or even a product. The final objectification of knowledge appears in the 1990s as knowledge management, i.e. a very practical business strategy, as well as knowledge organization, i.e. reducing knowledge to its documentary form, which involves direct ordering and searching processes. In this way, the vision described by Machlup and Bell is realized, to which Lyotard gave a historiosophical dynamic. He placed the problem of knowledge directly in the context of such issues as the organization of social and political order and power.