Lyotard and The Postmodern Condition

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Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He was a key figure in the development of postmodernist philosophy. Beyond helping to define postmodernism, Lyotard also analyzed the effect of postmodernism on the human condition. The Postmodern Condition is one of Lyotard’s seminal works on the impact of postmodernism on the modern world. The focus of the work is the current transition of societies from an industrial to a postindustrial framework. How does this shift revise the means and methods of productions and the products created? How does the alteration of legitimation from Enlightenment/Newtonian criteria for legitimation to postmodern ones affect the nature and status of science and knowledge? What change will this perform on the structure and nature of society?

Lyotard argues that the transformation will have a distinct significant impact on knowledge. “Its (knowledge’s) two principal functions— research and the transmission of acquired learning— are already feeling the effects or soon will.” (Lyotard, 4) As with many seismic changes in society, the shift is the result of an invention. Just as Gutenberg’s printing press democratized knowledge, the invention of computers is once again altering the dissemination of knowledge. “It is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information-processing machines (computers) is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of knowledge as did advancements in human circulation (transportation systems), and later, in the circulation of sound and visual images (the media). (Lyotard, 5)

Science has altered from a system based on revelation of some "objective truth" (final signified anyone? lol) to one within and ...

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...in to perceive the State as a factor of opacity and ‘noise’. It is from this point of view that the problem of the relationship between economic and State powers threatens to arise with new urgency.” (Lyotard, 5) Lyotard goes so far as to say that modern multi-national corporations have reached the point of imperiling the state, an interesting evolution of who controls the means of production within a society.

The Postmodern Condition endures as one of the canonical works of postmodernism theory. Whether or not one subscribes to all the points made by Derrida, it serves as a remarkable look into a remarkable mind. The postmodern view of science and knowledge is a radical one, but Derrida offers plausible reasoning for why that view is the most sound.

Works Cited

Jean-François Lyotard (1979). La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Minuit.

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