Supple Praxis: A Paralogical Strategy for Problems

摘要

Based on Lyotard's (1984) paralogy, I provide a paralogical approach to problems in which participants identify and describe grammars of problems as a means to engage them. I provide paralogical grammars of extant problems and their solutions (i.e., performative, reliable, accidental, and wicked) to articulate how they move from more to less easily solved, with an increasing degree of complexity and stake. I offer paralogical action steps to enact a supple praxis as demonstrated through a discussion of hellish problems, a fifth problem type. Participants paralogically address incommensurability as they solve their current problem, so that they may face their next incommensurable problem. Practitioners using a paralogical approach thus both adeptly solve current problems and prepare for unknown future problems.