The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Francois Lyotard. 1979.
Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism 2nd ed., rev.. Jean-Frarn;ois Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. The Posttnodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Jean-Fran ois Lyotard Translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi Foreword by Fredric Jameson Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10 M IN NE so TA University of Minnesota Press.In La Condition postmoderne (1979; The Postmodern Condition) and other writings, Lyotard declared his suspicion of what he called “grand narratives”—putatively rational, overarching accounts, such as Marxism and liberalism, of how the world is or ought to be.Further, Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition directly challenges the two great Hegelian meta-narratives allegedly underlying the philosophical position of Habermas, namely, the goal of the ultimate emancipation of humanity and the speculative aim of achieving a unity of knowledge.
These are the questions Lyotard asks in The Postmodern Condition. He believes that the method of legitimation traditionally used by science, a philosophical discourse that references a metanarrative, becomes obsolete in a postmodern society. Instead, he explores whether paralogy may be the new path to legitimation.Lyotard begins The Postmodern Condition by pointing out how the field of knowledge has changed in the years since World War II. No field has grown faster than computer science and its corollary.
Postmodern notions of the fluidity of identity bring us to a political and theoretical impasse. (9) But it could be argued that this is only the case if we accept postmodernism itself as a type of totalising theory. The notion of the fluidity of identity is useful and does open up new avenues of theorising and politicising. But as Zizek and.
