as the Third World or the students - on which is conferred in extremes the
henceforth improbable function of critical subject.
The sole purpose of this schematic (or skeletal) reminder has been to specify
the problematic in which I intend to frame the question of knowledge in
advanced industrial societies. For it is impossible to know what the state of
knowledge is - in other words, the problems its development and distribution
are facing today - without knowing something of the society within which it is
situated. And today more than ever, knowing about that society involves first
of all choosing what approach the inquiry will take, and that necessarily means
choosing how society can answer. One can decide that the principal role of
knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act
in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is
a giant machine.
Conversely, one can count on its critical function, and orient its
development and distribution in that direction, only after it has been decided
that society does not form an integrated whole, but remains haunted by a
principle of oppositions The alternative seems clear: it is a choice between the
homogeneity and the intrinsic duality of the social, between functional and
critical knowledge. But the decision seems difficult, or arbitrary.
It is tempting to avoid the decision altogether by distinguishing two kinds of
knowledge. one, the positivist kind, would be directly applicable to
technologies bearing on men and materials, and would lend itself to operating
as an indispensable productive force within the system. The other the critical,
reflexive, or hermeneutic kind by reflecting directly or indirectly on values or
alms, would resist any such "recuperation."
5. The Nature of the Social Bond: The
Postmodern Perspective
I find this partition solution unacceptable. I suggest that the alternative it
attempts to resolve, but only reproduces, is no longer relevant for the societies
with which we are concerned and that the solution itself is stilt caught within a

language. This "atomisation" of the social into flexible networks of language
games may seem far removed from the modern reality, which is depicted, on
the contrary, as afflicted with bureaucratic paralysis. The objection will be
made, at least, that the weight of certain institutions imposes limits on the
games, and thus restricts the inventiveness of the players in making their
moves. But I think this can be taken into account without causing any
particular difficulty.
In the ordinary use of discourse - for example, in a discussion between two
friends - the interlocutors use any available ammunition, changing games from
one utterance to the next: questions, requests, assertions, and narratives are
launched pell-mell into battle. The war is not without rules, but the rules allow
and encourage the greatest possible flexibility of utterance.
From this point of view, an institution differs from a conversation in that it
always requires supplementary constraints for statements to be declared
admissible within its bounds. The constraints function to filter discursive
potentials, interrupting possible connections in the communication networks:
there are things that should not be said. They also privilege certain classes of
statements (sometimes only one) whose predominance characterises the
discourse of the particular institution: there arc things that should be said, and
there are ways of saving them. Thus: orders in the army, prayer in church,
denotation in the schools, narration in families, questions in philosophy,
performativity in businesses. Bureaucratisation is the outer limit of this
tendency.
However, this hypothesis about the institution is still too "unwieldy": its
point of departure is an overly "reifying" view of what is institutionalised. We
know today that the limits the institution imposes on potential language
"moves" are never established once and for all (even if they have been
formally defined), Rather, the limits are themselves the stakes and provisional
results of language strategies, within the institution and without. Examples:
Does the university have a place for language experiments (poetics)? Can you
tell stories in a cabinet meeting? Advocate a cause in the barracks? The
answers are clear: yes, if the university opens creative workshops; yes, if the