A Study of Lyotard's Concept
of Legitimation
as it is spelled out in The Postmodern Condition
Lois Shawver 
This is a working document 12/08/98 -- all emphasis in quotes is mine.

The concept of legitimation is central to Lyotard and this note is meant to review some excerpts relevant to our improving our understanding of this concept. 
 

I use the word [legitimation]  in a broader sense than do contemporary German theorists in their discussion of the question of authority.[1]  Take any civil law as an example: it states that a given category of citizens must perform a specific kind of action.  Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm. Now take the example of a scientific statement: it is subject to the rule that a statement must fulfill a given set of conditions in order to be accepted as scientific.  In this case legitimation is the process by which a "legislator" dealing with scientific discourse is authorized to prescribe the stated conditions (in general, conditions of internal consistency and experimental verification) determining whether a statement is to be included in that discourse by the scientific community. 

Look at the statement that introduces an illustrative example: "Take any civil law as an example: it states that a given category of citizens must perform a specific kind of action."  To flesh out Lyotard's meaning we might use as an example of a civil law "Don't urinate on the sidewalk."  Of course, we must append Lyotard's description to accommodate this example (because this civil law says what you cannot do, rather than what you must do and perhaps most civil laws are stated in this way), but it is surely within the spirit of what Lyotard has in mind. 

Also note that there is a footnote explaining what Lyotard means by a "broader sense than do contemporary German theorists in their discussion of the question of authority."  Lyotard is comparing his broader meaning with Habermas' more narrow one. 

Next, Lyotard states: "Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm."  That is, legitimation is the process by which the legislator can turn a statement into a law that people must follow. 

Notice that he puts the term "legislator" in quotations.  I think this implies that he is calling anyone given the power to decide what the norm will be to be a legislator (in that one doesn't have to be a real legislator in order to be a "legislator").  Indeed, in his next sentence we see that he has in mind that people might be legislators in science to decide the rules a scientist must conform to if her findings are to be considered legitimate.  Extending from that, I think a mother would be a legislator who said, "This is the way you must always say thank you when someone offers you a cookie" is a legislator in this sense (see Shawver, 1998) although it also seems that Lyotard uses the institutional as the model of what he has in mind.  A teacher is a legistor in this sense if she says, "Any score on this test less than 75 is failing." 

Using Lyotard's own words from this excerpt, we might also say that the legimation enacted by the "promulgation of a law" might also be described as a legitimation enacted by "prescribing the stated conditions ... determining whether a statement is to be included in ...[a] discourse...."  So a listowner is a legislator if she decides, "Only posts of a certain kind will be allowed on this list."  And a publisher is a legislator that legitimates if she decides only books on a certain topic will be published by this publishing house.  An editor is a legislator that legitimates if she decides a chapter must consist of between 4000 and 5000 words. 

However, although we might consider these extended meanings of the word 'legislator" (and hence legitimate), in the passage above, Lyotard is focused on extending the political concept to the scientific.  In the next passage, he continues: 
 

The parallel may appear forced.  But as we will see, it is not.  The question of the legitimacy of science has been indissociably linked to that of the legimation of the legislator since the time of Plato.  From this point of view, the right to decide what is true is not independent of the right to decide what is just, even if the statements consigned to these two authorities differ in nature. 
Perhaps we can make sense of the relationship between legitimation and ethics if we look at our example of a civil law: it being forbidden to urinate in the street.  If there is a civil law that says one cannot do it, then there seems that this has to do with the construction of justice.  Once there is a law, then it is just to punish those who violate it.  And consider the "law" that one must conform to APA publication guidelines if one is to publish in a legitimate APA journal.  Doesn't this create a norm?  Whereby anyone rejected for failing to conform to the norm is rejected justly? 
 
The point is that there is a strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics: they both stem from the same perspective, the same "choice" if you will - the choice called the Occident.
By saying that the linkage between ethics and science is Occidental (western or even western european) he is pointing to the possibility that things could be different.  How cold they be different?  Well, if the laws we generated were not connected to sanctions (as in rules of thumb) or if our sanctions were not tied up to the law (as in there being angry gods who punish as their impulses require. 

A major point for these passages seems be that whereas we often think of "knowlege" as some neutral set of facts unrelated to power issues, that the legislator in science decides what is to count as knowledge and this is a remarkable power.  More and more it is clearer that: 
 

[K]nowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided? 

Footnotes

1. This footnote (27 in the original text) makes it clear that Lyotard is referring to Habermas as the German theorist.  The English translation of the Habermas text in question is translated by Thomas McCarthy, and called Letimation Crisis. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975).  I have not yet looked at this text to determine Habermas' meaning. 

Shawver, L. (1998). Lacan's Theory of Self and the Story of the Last cookie. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis.58(3), pp. 329-336.