The Postmodern Condition

Introduction

A short report commissioned by the Council of Universities of the Quebec government and published in Paris in 1979 with the subtitle “A Report on Knowledge”. Lyotard asks how knowledge is legitimated in computerised societies. Modern science justified itself through “grand narratives” – the emancipation of humanity, the self-realisation of Spirit; under postmodern conditions these lose credibility, and knowledge splits into many “language games” in Wittgenstein’s sense, increasingly judged by “performativity”, the efficiency of the system. Lyotard prefers the small narratives and the search for “paralogy”, moves that unsettle established rules. The book made “postmodern” a key term of debate in philosophy and the humanities in the 1980s.

Connections

Builds on

• Philosophical Investigations1953 · Ludwig Wittgenstein

Criticizes

• Phenomenology of Spirit1807 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• The Communist Manifesto1848 · Karl Marx

More works by Jean-François Lyotard

• 1983The Differend