Jean-François Lyotard (; French: [ʒɑ̃
fʁɑ̃swa ljɔtaʁ]; 10 August 1924 – 21
April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist,
and literary theorist.
His interdisciplinary discourse spans such
topics as epistemology and communication,
the human body, modern art and postmodern
art, literature and critical theory, music,
film, time and memory, space, the city and
landscape, the sublime, and the relation between
aesthetics and politics.
He is best known for his articulation of postmodernism
after the late 1970s and the analysis of the
impact of postmodernity on the human condition.
He was a director of the International College
of Philosophy which was founded by Jacques
Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre
Faye and Dominique Lecourt.
== Biography ==
=== Early life, educational background, and
family ===
Jean François Lyotard was born on August
10, 1924 in Vincennes, France to Jean-Pierre
Lyotard, a sales representative, and Madeleine
Cavalli.
He went to primary school at the Paris Lycée
Buffon and Louis-le-Grand.
As a child, Lyotard had many aspirations:
to be an artist, a historian, a Dominican
monk, and a writer.
He later gave up the dream of becoming a writer
when he finished writing an unsuccessful fictional
novel at the age of 15.
Ultimately, Lyotard describes the realization
that he would not become any of these occupations
as "fate" in his intellectual biography called
Peregrinations, published in 1988.
He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in the
late 1940s.
His 1947 DES thesis (diplôme d'études supérieures,
roughly equivalent to an MA thesis), Indifference
as an Ethical Concept (L'indifférence comme
notion éthique), analyzed forms of indifference
and detachment in Zen Buddhism, Stoicism,
Taoism, and Epicureanism.
In 1950, Lyotard took up a position teaching
philosophy in Constantine in French Algeria
but returned to mainland France in 1952 to
teach at the Prytanée military academy in
La Flèche, where he wrote a short work on
Phenomenology, published in 1954.
Lyotard moved to Paris in 1959 to teach at
the Sorbonne: introductory lectures from this
time (1964) have been posthumously published
under the title Why Philosophize?.
Having moved to teach at the new campus of
Nanterre in 1966, Lyotard participated in
the events following March 22 and the tumult
of May 1968.
In 1971, Lyotard earned a State doctorate
with his dissertation Discours, figure under
Mikel Dufrenne—the work was published the
same year.
Lyotard joined the Philosophy department of
the experimental University at Vincennes,
later Paris 8, together with Gilles Deleuze,
in the academic year 1970-71; it remained
his academic home in France until 1987.
He married his first wife, Andrée May, in
1948 with whom he had two children, Corinne
and Laurence, and later married for a second
time in 1993 to Dolores Djidzek, the mother
of his son David (born in 1986).
=== Political life ===
In 1954, Lyotard became a member of Socialisme
ou Barbarie, a French political organisation
formed in 1948 around the inadequacy of the
Trotskyist analysis to explain the new forms
of domination in the Soviet Union.
Socialisme ou Barbarie had an objective to
conduct a critique of Marxism from within
during the Algerian war of liberation.
His writings in this period mostly concern
with ultra-left politics, with a focus on
the Algerian situation—which he witnessed
first-hand while teaching philosophy in Constantine.
He wrote optimistic essays of hope and encouragement
to the Algerians, which was reproduced in
Political Writings.
Lyotard hoped to encourage an Algerian fight
for independence from France, and a social
revolution.
Following disputes with Cornelius Castoriadis
in 1964, Lyotard left Socialisme ou Barbarie
for the newly formed splinter group Pouvoir
Ouvrier, before resigning from Pouvoir Ouvrier
in turn in 1966.
Although Lyotard played an active part in
the May 1968 uprisings, he distanced himself
from revolutionary Marxism with his 1974 book
Libidinal Economy.
He distanced himself from Marxism because
he felt that Marxism had a rigid structuralist
approach and they were imposing 'systematization
of desires' through strong emphasis on industrial
production as the ground culture.
=== Academic career ===
Lyotard taught at the Lycée of Constantine,
Algeria from 1950 to 1952.
In 1972, Lyotard began teaching at the University
of Paris VIII; he taught there until 1987
when he became Professor Emeritus.
During the next two decades he lectured outside
France, notably as a Professor of Critical
Theory at the University of California, Irvine
and as visiting professor at universities
around the world.
These included: Johns Hopkins University,
University of California, Berkeley, Yale University,
Stony Brook University and the University
of California, San Diego in the U.S., the
Université de Montréal in Quebec (Canada),
and the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
He was also a founding director and council
member of the Collège International de Philosophie,
Paris.
Before his death, he split his time between
Paris and Atlanta, where he taught at Emory
University as the Woodruff Professor of Philosophy
and French.
== Work ==
Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent
opposition to universals, meta-narratives,
and generality.
He is fiercely critical of many of the 'universalist'
claims of the Enlightenment, and several of
his works serve to undermine the fundamental
principles that generate these broad claims.
In his writings of the early 1970s, he rejects
what he regards as theological underpinnings
of both Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud: "In Freud,
it is judaical, critical sombre (forgetful
of the political); in Marx it is catholic.
Hegelian, reconciliatory (...) in the one
and in the other the relationship of the economic
with meaning is blocked in the category of
representation (...) Here a politics, there
a therapeutics, in both cases a laical theology,
on top of the arbitrariness and the roaming
of forces".
Consequently, he rejected Theodor W. Adorno's
negative dialectics because he viewed them
as seeking a "therapeutic resolution in the
framework of a religion, here the religion
of history."
In Lyotard's "libidinal economics" he aimed
at "discovering and describing different social
modes of investment of libidinal intensities".
=== The Postmodern Condition ===
Lyotard is a skeptic for modern cultural thought.
According to his La Condition postmoderne:
Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge) (1979), the impact
of the postmodern condition was to provoke
skepticism about universalizing theories.
Lyotard argues that we have outgrown our needs
for grand narratives due to the advancement
of techniques and technologies since World
War II.
He argues against the possibility of justifying
the narratives that bring together disciplines
and social practices, such as science and
culture; "the narratives we tell to justify
a single set of laws and stakes are inherently
unjust."
A loss of faith in meta-narratives has an
effect on how we view science, art, and literature.
Little narratives have now become the appropriate
way for explaining social transformations
and political problems.
Lyotard argues that this is the driving force
behind postmodern science.
As metanarratives fade, science suffers a
loss of faith in its search for truth, and
therefore must find other ways of legitimating
its efforts.
Connected to this scientific legitimacy is
the growing dominance for information machines.
Lyotard argues that one day, in order for
knowledge to be considered useful, it will
have to be converted into computerized data.
Years later, this led him into writing his
book The Inhuman, published in 1988, in which
he illustrates a world where technology has
taken over.
=== The collapse of the "grand narrative"
and "language-games" ===
Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne:
Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition:
A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he proposes
what he calls an extreme simplification of
the "postmodern" as an 'incredulity towards
meta-narratives'.
These meta-narratives—sometimes 'grand narratives'—are
grand, large-scale theories and philosophies
of the world, such as the progress of history,
the knowability of everything by science,
and the possibility of absolute freedom.
Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe
that narratives of this kind are adequate
to represent and contain us all.
He points out that no one seemed to agree
on what, if anything, was real and everyone
had their own perspective and story.
We have become alert to difference, diversity,
the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs
and desires, and for that reason postmodernity
is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.
For this concept Lyotard draws from the notion
of 'language-games' found in the work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
Lyotard notes that it is based on mapping
of society according to the concept of the
language games.In Lyotard's works, the term
'language games', sometimes also called 'phrase
regimens', denotes the multiplicity of communities
of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable
separate systems in which meanings are produced
and rules for their circulation are created.
This involves, for example, an incredulity
towards the metanarrative of human emancipation.
That is, the story of how the human race has
set itself free that brings together the language
game of science, the language game of human
historical conflicts and the language game
of human qualities into the overall justification
of the steady development of the human race
in terms of wealth and moral well-being.
According to this metanarrative, the justification
of science is related to wealth and education.
The development of history is seen as a steady
progress towards civilization or moral well-being.
The language game of human passions, qualities
and faults (c.f. character flaws (narratives)),
is seen as steadily shifting in favor of our
qualities and away from our faults as science
and historical developments help us to conquer
our faults in favor of our qualities.
The point is that any event ought to be able
to be understood in terms of the justifications
of this metanarrative; anything that happens
can be understood and judged according to
the discourse of human emancipation.
For example, for any new social, political
or scientific revolution we could ask the
question, "Is this revolution a step towards
the greater well-being of the mass of human
beings?"
It should always be possible to answer this
question in terms of the rules of justification
of the metanarrative of human emancipation.This
becomes more crucial in Au juste: Conversations
(Just Gaming) (1979) and Le Différend (The
Differend) (1983), which develop a postmodern
theory of justice.
It might appear that the atomisation of human
beings implied by the notion of the micronarrative
and the language game suggests a collapse
of ethics.
It has often been thought that universality
is a condition for something to be a properly
ethical statement: 'thou shalt not steal'
is an ethical statement in a way that 'thou
shalt not steal from Margaret' is not.
The latter is too particular to be an ethical
statement (what's so special about Margaret?);
it is only ethical if it rests on a universal
statement ('thou shalt not steal from anyone').
But universals are impermissible in a world
that has lost faith in metanarratives, and
so it would seem that ethics is impossible.
Justice and injustice can only be terms within
language games, and the universality of ethics
is out of the window.
Lyotard argues that notions of justice and
injustice do in fact remain in postmodernism.
The new definition of injustice is indeed
to use the language rules from one 'phrase
regimen' and apply them to another.
Ethical behaviour is about remaining alert
precisely to the threat of this injustice,
about paying attention to things in their
particularity and not enclosing them within
abstract conceptuality.
One must bear witness to the 'differend.'
In a differend, there is a conflict between
two parties that cannot be solved in a just
manner.
However, the act of being able to bridge the
two and understand the claims of both parties,
is the first step towards finding a solution.
"I would like to call a differend the case
where the plaintiff is divested of the means
to argue and becomes for that reason a victim.
If the addressor, the addressee, and the sense
of the testimony are neutralized, everything
takes place as if there were no damages.
A case of differend between two parties takes
place when the regulation of the conflict
that opposes them is done in the idiom of
one of the parties while the wrong suffered
by the other is not signified in that idiom."
In more than one book, Lyotard promoted what
he called paganism and contrasted it with
both the rejection of the pagan gods in Book
II of Plato's The Republic and the monotheism
of Judaism.
Lyotard argued that the pagan gods, unlike
Platonic philosophy and monotheism, never
claimed to have universal truth, but instead
were better than humans because they were
better at deceit and metamorphosis.
Lyotard's paganism was also feminist because
he argued that women, like paganism, are antirational
and antiphilosophical.
=== The Differend ===
In The Differend, based on Immanuel Kant's
views on the separation of Understanding,
Judgment, and Reason, Lyotard identifies the
moment in which language fails as the differend,
and explains it as follows: "...the unstable
state and instant of language wherein something
which must be able to be put into phrases
cannot yet be… the human beings who thought
they could use language as an instrument of
communication, learn through the feeling of
pain which accompanies silence (and of pleasure
which accompanies the invention of a new idiom)".
Lyotard undermines the common view that the
meanings of phrases can be determined by what
they refer to (the referent).
The meaning of a phrase—an event (something
happens)--cannot be fixed by appealing to
reality (what actually happened).
Lyotard develops this view of language by
defining "reality" in an original way, as
a complex of possible senses attached to a
referent through a name.
The correct sense of a phrase cannot be determined
by a reference to reality, since the referent
itself does not fix sense, and reality itself
is defined as the complex of competing senses
attached to a referent.
Therefore, the phrase event remains indeterminate.
Lyotard uses the example of Auschwitz and
the revisionist historian Faurisson’s demands
for proof of the Holocaust to show how the
differend operates as a double bind (a dilemma
or difficult circumstance from which there
is no escape because of mutually conflicting
or dependent conditions).
Faurisson will only accept proof of the existence
of gas chambers from eyewitnesses who were
themselves victims of the gas chambers.
However, any such eyewitnesses are dead and
are not able to testify.
Either there were no gas chambers, in which
case there would be no eyewitnesses to produce
evidence, or there were gas chambers, in which
case there would still be no eyewitnesses
to produce evidence, because they would be
dead.
Since Faurisson will accept no evidence for
the existence of gas chambers, except the
testimony of actual victims, he will conclude
from both possibilities (gas chambers existed
and gas chambers did not exist) that gas chambers
did not exist.
This presents a double bind.
There are two alternatives, either there were
gas chambers or there were not, which lead
to the same conclusion: there were no gas
chambers (and no final solution).
The case is a differend because the harm done
to the victims cannot be presented in the
standard of judgement upheld by Faurisson.
=== The sublime ===
Lyotard was a frequent writer on aesthetic
matters.
He was, despite his reputation as a postmodernist,
a great promoter of modernist art.
Lyotard saw postmodernism as a latent tendency
within thought throughout time and not a narrowly
limited historical period.
He favoured the startling and perplexing works
of the high modernist avant-garde.
In them he found a demonstration of the limits
of our conceptuality, a valuable lesson for
anyone too imbued with Enlightenment confidence.
Lyotard has written extensively also on many
contemporary artists of his choice: Valerio
Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques
Monory, Ruth Francken, Shusaku Arakawa, Bracha
Ettinger, Sam Francis, Karel Appel, Barnett
Newman, René Guiffrey, Gianfranco Baruchello
and Albert Ayme as well as on earlier artists,
notably Paul Cézanne and Paul Klee.He developed
these themes in particular by discussing the
sublime.
The "sublime" is a term in aesthetics whose
fortunes revived under postmodernism after
a century or more of neglect.
It refers to the experience of pleasurable
anxiety that we experience when confronting
wild and threatening sights like, for example,
a massive craggy mountain, black against the
sky, looming terrifyingly in our vision.
A sublime is the conjunction of two opposed
feelings, which makes it harder for us to
see the injustice of it, or a solution to
it.
Lyotard found particularly interesting the
explanation of the sublime offered by Immanuel
Kant in his Critique of Judgment (sometimes
Critique of the Power of Judgment).
In this book, Kant explains this mixture of
anxiety and pleasure in the following terms:
there are two kinds of 'sublime' experience.
In the 'mathematically' sublime, an object
strikes the mind in such a way that we find
ourselves unable to take it in as a whole.
More precisely, we experience a clash between
our reason (which tells us that all objects
are finite) and the imagination (the aspect
of the mind that organizes what we see, and
which sees an object incalculably larger than
ourselves, and feels infinite).
In the 'dynamically' sublime, the mind recoils
at an object so immeasurably more powerful
than we, whose weight, force, scale could
crush us without the remotest hope of our
being able to resist it.
(Kant stresses that if we are in actual danger,
our feeling of anxiety is very different from
that of a sublime feeling.
The sublime is an aesthetic experience, not
a practical feeling of personal danger.)
This explains the feeling of anxiety.
What is deeply unsettling about the mathematically
sublime is that the mental faculties that
present visual perceptions to the mind are
inadequate to the concept corresponding to
it; in other words, what we are able to make
ourselves see cannot fully match up to what
we know is there.
We know it's a mountain but we cannot take
the whole thing into our perception.
Our sensibility is incapable of coping with
such sights, but our reason can assert the
finitude of the presentation.
With the dynamically sublime, our sense of
physical danger should prompt an awareness
that we are not just physical material beings,
but moral and (in Kant's terms) noumenal beings
as well.
The body may be dwarfed by its power but our
reason need not be.
This explains, in both cases, why the sublime
is an experience of pleasure as well as pain.
Lyotard is fascinated by this admission, from
one of the philosophical architects of the
Enlightenment, that the mind cannot always
organise the world rationally.
Some objects are simply incapable of being
brought neatly under concepts.
For Lyotard, in Lessons on the Analytic of
the Sublime, but drawing on his argument in
The Differend, this is a good thing.
Such generalities as 'concepts' fail to pay
proper attention to the particularity of things.
What happens in the sublime is a crisis where
we realise the inadequacy of the imagination
and reason to each other.
What we are witnessing, says Lyotard, is actually
the differend; the straining of the mind at
the edges of itself and at the edges of its
conceptuality.
=== Libidinal Economy ===
In one of Lyotard's most famous books, Libidinal
Economy he offers a critique of Marx’s "false
consciousness" and claims that the 19th century
working class enjoyed being a part of the
industrialization process.
Lyotard claims that this is due to libidinal
energy.
The term "libidinal" coming from the term
libido which is used to refer to the psychoanalytical
desires of our deeper consciousness.
Lyotard’s writings in Libidinal Economy
is an achievement in our attempts to live
with the rejection of all religious and moral
principles through an undermining of the structures
associated with it.
Structures conceal libidinal intensities while
intense feelings and desires force us away
from set structures.
However, there also can be no intensities
or desires without structures, because there
would be no dream of escaping the repressive
structures if they do not exist.
"Libidinal energy comes from this disruptive
intervention of external events within structures
that seek order and self-containment."
This was the first of Lyotard's writings that
had really criticized a Marxist view.
It achieved great success, but was also the
last of Lyotard's writings on this particular
topic where he really went against the views
of Karl Marx.
=== Les Immatériaux ===
In 1985, Lyotard co-curated the exhibition
Les Immatériaux at the Centre de Création
Industrielle of Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris, together with the design theorist and
curator Thierry Chaput.
=== The Grip: Childhood and mancipium ===
Lyotard was impressed by the importance of
childhood in human life, which he saw as providing
the opportunity of creativity, as opposed
to the settled hubris of maturity.
In 'The Grip', however, he also explored the
hold of childhood experience on the individual
through the (Roman) concept of the Mancipium,
or authoritative right of possession.
Because parental influences affect the new-born
before it has the linguistic skill even to
articulate – let alone oppose – them,
Lyotard considered that "We are born from
others but also to others, given over defenceless
to them.
Subject to their mancipium."
== Later life and death ==
Some of the latest works that Lyotard had
been working on were both writings about a
French writer, activist, and politician, André
Malraux.
One of them being a biography, Signed, Malraux.
Lyotard was interested in the aesthetic views
of society that Malraux shared.
Lyotard's other book was named The Confession
of Augustine and was a study in the phenomenology
of time.
This work-in-progress was published posthumously
in the same year of Lyotard's death.
Lyotard repeatedly returned to the notion
of the Postmodern in essays gathered in English
as The Postmodern Explained to Children, Toward
the Postmodern, and Postmodern Fables.
In 1998, while preparing for a conference
on postmodernism and media theory, he died
unexpectedly from a case of leukemia that
had advanced rapidly.
He is buried in Division 6 of Père Lachaise
Cemetery in Paris.
== Criticism ==
There are three major criticisms of Lyotard's
work.
Each coincides with a school of thought.
Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy have written
deconstructions of Lyotard's work (Derrida
1992; Nancy 1985).
They focus on Lyotard's postmodern work and
on The Differend in particular.
A differend depends upon a distinction drawn
between groups that itself depends upon the
heterogeneity of language games and genres
of discourse.
Why should these differences be privileged
over an endless division and reconstruction
of groups?
In concentrating on specific differences,
Lyotard's thought becomes overly dependent
on differences; between categories that are
given as fixed and well defined.
From the point of view of deconstruction,
Lyotard's philosophy gives too much credit
to illegitimate categories and groups.
Underlying any different there is a multiplicity
of further differences; some of these will
involve crossing the first divide, others
will question the integrity of the groups
that were originally separated.Manfred Frank
(1988) has put the Frankfurt School criticism
best.
It attacks Lyotard's search for division over
consensus on the grounds that it involves
a philosophical mistake with serious political
and social repercussions.
Lyotard has failed to notice that an underlying
condition for consensus is also a condition
for the successful communication of his own
thought.
It is a performative contradiction to give
an account that appeals to our reason on behalf
of a difference that is supposed to elude
it.
So, in putting forward a false argument against
a rational consensus, Lyotard plays into the
hands of the irrational forces that often
give rise to injustice and differ ends.
Worse, he is then only in a position to testify
to that injustice, rather than put forward
a just and rational resolution.From a Nietzschean
and Deleuzian point of view (James Williams
2000), Lyotard's postmodern philosophy took
a turn toward a destructive modern nihilism
that his early work avoids.
The different and the sublime are negative
terms that introduce a severe pessimism at
the core of Lyotard's philosophy.
Both terms draw lines that cannot be crossed
and yet they mark the threshold of that which
is most valuable for the philosophy, that
which is to be testified to and its proper
concern.
It is not possible repetitively to lend an
ear to the sublime without falling into despair
due to its fleeting nature.
Whenever we try to understand or even memorize:
the activity of testimony through the sublime,
it can only be as something that has now dissipated
and that we cannot capture.Charles J. Stivale,
of Wayne State University, wrote a critique
of Lyotard's The Differend for The French
Review, in 1990.
In it, he states: "Jean-François Lyotard's
is a dense work of philosophical, political
and ethical reflection aimed at a specialized
audience versed in current debates in logic,
pragmatics and post-structuralism.
Even George Van Den Abbeele's excellent translation,
complete with a glossary of French terms not
available in the original text (Paris: Minuit,
1983), does not, indeed cannot, alleviate
the often terse prose with which Lyotard develops
his reasoning.
With this said, I must also observe that this
work is of vital importance in a period when
revisionism of all stripes attempts to rewrite,
and often simply deny, the occurrence of historical
and cultural events, i.e. in attempting to
reconstruct 'reality" in the convenient names
of "truth" and "common sense" … This overview
must leave unexplored the broad philosophical
bases from which Lyotard draws support, as
well as important questions that he raises
regarding history, justice and critical judgement.
I can conclude only by suggesting that this
work, despite the formidable difficulties
inherent to its carefully articulated arguments,
offers readers a rich formulation of precise
questions for and about the current period
of critical transition and re-opening in philosophy,
ethics and aesthetics."
== Influence ==
The collective tribute to Lyotard following
his death was organized by the Collège International
de Philosophie, and chaired by Dolores Lyotard
and Jean-Claude Milner, the College's director
at that time.
The proceedings were published by PUF in 2001
under the general title Jean-François Lyotard,
l'exercice du différend.Lyotard's work continues
to be important in politics, philosophy, sociology,
literature, art, and cultural studies.
To mark the tenth anniversary of Lyotard's
death, An international symposium about Jean-François
Lyotard organized by the Collège International
de Philosophie (under the direction of Dolores
Lyotard, Jean-Claude Milner and Gerald Sfez)
was held in Paris from January 25–27 in
2007.
== Selected publications ==
Phenomenology.
Trans.
Brian Beakley.
Albany: State University of New York Press,
1991 [La Phénoménologie.
Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954]
ISBN 978-0-7914-0805-6.
Discourse, Figure.
Trans.
Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2011 [Discours, figure.
Paris: Klincksieck, 1971] ISBN 978-0816645657.
Libidinal Economy.
Trans.
Iain Hamilton Grant.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993
[Économie libidinale.
Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1974] ISBN 978-0253207289.
Duchamp's TRANS/formers.
Trans.
Ian McLeod.
California: Lapis Press, 1990 [Les transformateurs
Duchamp.
Paris: Editions Galilée, 1977] ISBN 978-0932499639.
Just Gaming.
Trans.
Wlad Godzich.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1985 [Au juste: Conversations.
Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1979] ISBN 978-0816612772.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
Trans.
Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1984 [La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur
le savoir.
Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979] ISBN 978-0816611737.
Pacific Wall.
Trans.
Bruce Boone.
California: Lapis Press, 1989 [Le mur du pacifique.
Paris: Editions Galilée, 1979].
The Differend: Phrases in Dispute.
Trans.
Georges Van Den Abbeele.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1988 [Le Différend.
Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1983].
The Assassination of Experience by Painting
– Monory.
Trans.
Rachel Bowlby.
London: Black Dog, 1998 [L’Assassinat de
l’expérience par la peinture, Monory.
Bègles: Castor Astral, 1984].
Driftworks.
Ed.
Roger McKeon.
New York: Semiotext(e), 1984.
[Essays and interviews dating from 1970 to
1972.]
Enthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History.
Trans.
George Van Den Abbeele.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009
[L'enthousiasme, la critique kantienne de
l'histoire.
Paris: Galilée, 1986].
The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence,
1982–1985.
Ed.
Julian Pefanis andMorgan Thomas.
Trans.
Don Barry.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993 [Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants:
Correspondance, 1982–1985.
Paris: Galilée, 1986].
The Inhuman: Reflections on Time.
Trans.
Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991
[L’Inhumain: Causeries sur le temps.
Paris: Galilée, 1988].
Heidegger and "the jews."
Trans.
Andreas Michael and Mark S. Roberts.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1990 [Heidegger et "les juifs."
Paris: Galilée, 1988].
The Lyotard Reader.
Ed. Andrew Benjamin.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1988
[Pérégrinations: Loi, forme, événement.
Paris: Galilée, 1990].
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime: Kant’s
Critique of Judgment, §§ 23–29.
Trans.
Elizabeth Rottenberg.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994
[Leçons sur l’"Analytique du sublime":
Kant, "Critique de la faculté de juger,"
paragraphes 23–29.
Paris: Galilée, 1991].
The Hyphen: Between Judaism and Christianity.
Trans.
Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas.
Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999 [Un trait
d’union.
Sainte-Foy, Quebec: Le Griffon d’argile,
1993].
Political Writings.
Trans.
Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993.
[Political texts composed 1956–1989.]
Postmodern Fables.
Trans.
Georges Van Den Abbeele.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997 [Moralités postmodernes.
Paris: Galilée, 1993].
Toward the Postmodern.
Ed.
Robert Harvey and Mark S. Roberts.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,
1993.
[Essays composed 1970–1991].
Signed, Malraux.
Trans.
Robert Harvey.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1999 [Signé Malraux.
Paris: B. Grasset, 1996].
Jean-François Lyotard : Collected Writings
on Art.
London: Academy Editions, 1997.
The Politics of Jean-François Lyotard.
Ed.
Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner.
New York: Routledge, 1998.
The Confession of Augustine.
Trans.
Richard Beardsworth.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000
[La Confession d’Augustin.
Paris: Galilée, 1998].
Soundproof Room: Malraux’s Anti-Aesthetics.
Trans.
Robert Harvey.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001
[Chambre sourde: L’Antiesthétique de Malraux.
Paris: Galilée, 1998].
== See also ==
Continental philosophy
Post-structuralism
Aestheticism
== Notes ==
== Further reading ==
Lewis, Jeff.
Cultural Studies.
London: Sage, 2008
Lyotard, Dolorès et al. Jean-François Lyotard.
L'Exercice du Différend (with essays by Alain
Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Claude
Milner).
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001
The critical analysis of David Harvey in his
book The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell,
1989).
Elliott, Anthony, and Larry J. Ray.
"Jean Francois Lyotard."
Key contemporary social theorists.
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
Lemert, Charles C..
"After Modern."
Social theory: the multicultural and classic
readings.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993.
Mann, Doug.
"The Postmodern Condition."
Understanding society: a survey of modern
social theory.
Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press,
2008.
Parker, Noel.
The A-Z guide to modern social and political
theorists.
London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1997.
Callinicos, Alex.
Social theory: a historical introduction.
New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Sica, Alan.
Social thought: from the Enlightenment to
the present.
Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2005.
Grebowicz, Margret.
Gender After Lyotard.
SUNY Press, 2007
Bamford, Kiff.
'Lyotard and the 'figural' in Performance,
Art and Writing'.
London: Bloomsbury, 2012.
Bamford, Kiff.
'Jean-François Lyotard: Critical Lives'.
London: Reaktion Books, 2017.
== External links ==
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jean-François
Lyotard
Jean-Francois Lyotard at European Graduate
School (Biography, bibliography, quotes and
web resources)
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
(The first 5 chapters)
International symposium.
Collège International de Philosophie January
25–27, 2007 (in French)
Les Immatériaux: A Conversation with Jean-François
Lyotard
