Jean-François Lyotard (1924 - 1998)
Related: Postmodernism - France
"Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name." --Lyotard in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir/The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) - Jean-Francois Lyotard [Amazon.com]
La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir/The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) - Jean-Francois Lyotard [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Biography
Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist well-known for his embracing of postmodernism after the late 1970s. Before that, he was a member of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie ('Socialism or Barbarism'), a group of left-wing French intellectuals formed in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising in opposition to the Stalinism of Soviet communism. Later he became a founding member of the European Graduate School.
Lyotard maintained in Le Différend (The Differend) (1983) that human discourses occur in any number of discrete and incommensurable realms, none of which is privileged to pass judgment on the success or value of any of the others. Thus, in Économie libidinale (Libidinal Economy) (1974), La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), and Au juste: Conversations (Just Gaming) (1979), Lyotard attacked contemporary literary theories and encouraged experimental discourse unbounded by excessive concern for 'truth'.
Lyotard famously declared that now - in our postmodern or late-capitalist world - the 'grand narratives' are dead. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%E7ois_Lyotard [Jun 2004]
PoMo [...]
Jean Francois Lyotard looks at what he calls "narrative," the idea that through language we tell ourselves stories about life, stories that have an internal logic and structure. He compares this with scientific language, which sees itself as superior to narrative language because it requires "scientific proof." Lyotard shows how scientific language eventually becomes a self-validating narrative itself through philosophical and political consensus. Science tells itself that scientific thought will ultimately end in the emancipation of humanity through Progress. This, according to Lyotard, is a crock of shit. -- R.U. Sirius Wired June 1994, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/pomo_pr.html [Jun 2004]The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) - Jean-Francois Lyotard
The work in which Lyotard famously declared that now - in our postmodern or late-capitalist world - the 'grand narratives' are dead.
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