The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge by Lyotard, Jean-Franco Paperback

Preowned in good condition see photos for details. Much has been written in recent years about how our era differs from that of high modernism. Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed dynamically. In The Postmodern Condition Jean-François Lyotard extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information and knowledge are controlled in the Western world His book is about what Jürgen Habermas has called "legitimation." How do we legitimate the criteria for sorting true statements from false? In the modern era, legitimation took the form of a narrative in a set of stories about the growth of knowledge and culture. The collapse of metanarrative as a legitimizing or unifying force marks the end of the modern era. But Lyotard's approach to the crisis of legitimation is different from that of Habermas, who concerned himself with questions of authority and consensus. Lyotard emphasizes language; the world of postmodern knowledge can be represented as a game of language where speaking is participation in the game whose goal is the creation of new and ever-changing social linkages. "Lyotard's thought is as original and as important as those two influential maitres penseurs of the new human sciences, Derrida and Foucault.