Jean-François Lyotard  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision as of 08:43, 7 June 2015
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

← Previous diff
Revision as of 08:43, 7 June 2015
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

Next diff →
Line 4: Line 4:
|} |}
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-'''Jean-François Lyotard''' ([[August 10]] [[1924]] – [[April 21]] [[1998]]) was a [[French philosopher]] and [[Literary theory|literary theorist]]. He is best-known for his ''[[The Postmodern Condition]]'', an articulation of [[postmodernism]] after the late [[1970s]] and the analysis of the impact of [[postmodernity]] on the [[human condition]].+'''Jean-François Lyotard''' (August 10 1924 April 21 1998) was a [[French philosopher]] and [[Literary theory|literary theorist]]. He is best-known for his ''[[The Postmodern Condition]]'', an articulation of [[postmodernism]] after the late [[1970s]] and the analysis of the impact of [[postmodernity]] on the [[human condition]].
=== The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"=== === The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"===

Revision as of 08:43, 7 June 2015

"Auschwitz peut être pris comme un nom paradigmatique pour l'« inachèvement » tragique de la modernité." --Le postmoderne expliqué aux enfants

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Jean-François Lyotard (August 10 1924 – April 21 1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is best-known for his The Postmodern Condition, an articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

The collapse of the "Grand Narrative"

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. Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he argued that our age (with its postmodern condition) is marked by 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. 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 Wittgenstein.

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 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, of paying attention to things in their particularity and not enclosing them within abstract conceptuality. One must bear witness to the 'differend'.





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Jean-François Lyotard" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools