Terror operates outside language games and destroys the social bond

Evidence

The question is to determine what the discourse of power consists of and if it can constitute a legitimation. At first glance, it is prevented from doing so by the traditional distinction between force and right, between force and wisdom—in other words, between what is strong, what is just, and what is true. I referred to this incommensurability earlier in terms of the theory of language games, when I distinguished the denotative game (in which what is relevant is the true/false distinction) from the prescriptive game (in which the just/unjust distinction pertains) from the technical game (in which the criterion is the efficient/inefficient distinction). “Force” appears to belong exclusively to the last game, the game of technology. I am excluding the case in which force operates by means of terror. This lies outside the realm of language games, because the efficacy of such force is based entirely on the threat to eliminate the opposing player, not on making a better “move” than he. Whenever efficiency (that is, obtaining the desired effect) is derived from a “Say or do this, or else you’ll never speak again,” then we are in the realm of terror, and the social bond is destroyed. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key distinction: force in the technical game (legitimate efficiency) versus terror (threat to eliminate the player), which destroys the social bond.
• XREF: Terror as outside-language-games connects to the reader’s trust literature: Shapiro on impersonal trust relies on language-games-like mutual constraint; terror is the antithesis of trust. — connects to: Terror is the performativity system’s enforcement by threatening exclusion from the language game — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 441; Terror enforces social oblivion that exceeds biological death — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 991; Social language games are heteromorphous with no common metaprescriptions — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 449

Broader Connections

• Terror is the performativity system’s enforcement by threatening exclusion from the language game #expands (0.85) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 441
• Social language games are heteromorphous with no common metaprescriptions #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 449
• Terror enforces social oblivion that exceeds biological death #complicates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 991