5 (52)
fare’ in information technology. I will also try to define for America’s distinctive character of
‘modernity.’
What has Bush actually created using his stories of ‘different kind of war’ in order to make the
military more efficient? Are these stories between the narrative level and the technological level
different from the local reality of this “new war?” This is actually a question of information and
knowledge, and more specifically a question of what kind of knowledge President Bush’s stories
project to the military audience in the modern and postmodern cultural context. I will mostly fo-
cus on events that took place in Iraq in 2004. Although I first examine Bush’s narrative and then
deconstruct it, my main intention is to understand how his narrative of ‘different kind of war’ can
be interpreted and explained.
2. Knowledge and the question of efficiency
Jean-Francois Lyotard ‘s work The Postmodern Condition argues how the nature of the society
effects on the knowledge it produces. Knowledge is tied to the ways the state and it’s society
lives as knowledge is socially influenced. For Lyotard, the computerization of society shifts em-
phasis from the ends of actions to their means (Lyotard 1984, 108). This characterization of in-
formation society is reflected in the altered character of knowledge. As human observation is
limited, thus technology is required to bring the knowledge forward. Lyotard is very critical for
using technology for producing knowledge because he sees that role of information technology
in information societies results in the denial of the criterion of truth in favour of efficiency. The
modern denotative game (truth or false) is replaced by the technical game, which is based on
the efficient/inefficient distinction.
I will use Jean-Francois Lyotard to explain the question of knowledge and information technol-
ogy and war with his theory of narrative. If we think about what and how can we know about the
war, Lyotard encourages discuss about information, progress of knowledge, phrases, argu-
ments and rules. He therefore returns our discussion to language games. “There are two kinds
of “progress” in knowledge: one corresponds to a new move (a new argument) within the estab-
lished rules; the other, to the invention of new rules, in other words, a change to a new game.”
(Lyotard 1984, 34)
If the latter kind of “progress” in knowledge will be accepted as a fact or truth, it requires a criti-
cal examination of the rules themselves and production of proof. The argumentation process to
win acceptance for a new statement – like ‘different kind of war’ – presents a challenge: it is the
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Convention