There is something appropriate about Lyotard’s last printed work being his most intimate and revealing. Best known for The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard died in the April of 1998, leaving his Confession d’Augustin, as Dolorès Lyotard tells us in her “Forewarning,” “scarcely half” finished. Although his New York Times obituary claimed that “awaiting publication is his final book about the ‘Confessions’ of St. Augustine”, this work is less a book about the Confessions as it (...) is an insight into a twentieth century philosopher at the end of his life. Revealed here is a philosopher struggling with the perennial themes of Augustine’s own odyssey: confession as praise and contrition. Perhaps it was Lyotard’s own battle with leukemia and his growing sense of mortality that gave him such insights into Augustine’s early fallacy of thinking of God as encircling and filling all things throughout space that he is able to write, “Such is flesh visited, co-penetrated by your space-time, disturbed and confused with this blow, but steeped in infinity, impregnated and pregnant with your overabundant liquid: the waters of the heavens” ; and regarding the relationship between time and immunity, Lyotard understands that, “God only sees himself in God. Compared with the incomparable brightness, all is night, and speech is noise after the silence of lauds. In the sky of skies, the heaven of heavens, wisdom celebrates its glory. The intelligence with which the angelic creatures are infused is not co-eternal with their creator, but it is exempt from becoming”. Passages like these not only present Augustine in a new light, but invite readers to see themselves in this light as well. (shrink)

This is a book about what becomes of the truth when it succumbs to generational memory loss and to the fictions that intervene to cause and fill the gaps. It is a book about the impossibility of writing an autobiography when there is a prepossessing cultural and familial 'we' interfering with the 'I' and an 'I' that does not know itself as a self, except metastatically — as people and characters it has played but not actually been. A highly original (...) combination of close readings and performative autobiography, this book takes performance philosophy to an alternative next step, by having its ideas read back to it by experience, and through assorted fictions. It is a philosophical thought experiment in uncertainty whose literary, theatrical, and cinematic trappings illustrate and finally become what this uncertainty is, the thought experiment having become the life that was, that came before, and that outlives the 'I am'. (shrink)

The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as wide-ranging as film, painting, psychoanlaysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard's work means that it cannot be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise.

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented (...) as a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

Jean-Francois Lyotard is often considered to be the father of postmodernism. Here leading experts in the field of cultural and philosophical studies, including Barry Smart, John O' Neill and Victor J. Seidler, tackle many of the questions still being asked about this controversial figure.

Starting with Lyotard’s characterisation of postmodernity as incredulity, this is related to another of his key concepts—that of ‘performativity’. Lyotard appears to deploy performativity to characterise those technologies that bring about the optimisation of efficient performance. However, there is another sense of performativity where it is linked to performance. Performance conditions the possibility of any and all performatives, or to put it another way, as performance is itself enabled by performativity, so too performativity is realised through its performance. (...) Both senses of performativity and the linkage between them are clearly manifested in the space of knowledge production that is the contemporary university. This linkage is itself a feature of the semiotic process within which contemporary knowledge and knowledge production is located and which Lyotard himself recognised, albeit implicitly. The implication of this therefore is that Lyotard himself performs his text and in so doing both manifests and contributes to realising both senses of performativity. (shrink)

Lyotard's notion of the differend can be analysed as a philosophical theory of radical disputes, that is, disputes with no possible resolution other than the silencing of one of the parties. The concept is explicitly meant to shed light on ethical, historical and political debates, while literature and psychoanalysis are strikingly absent from this theory. However, the concept of the differend is crucial to Lyotard's own discussions of literature and art. Developing from a reading of some of his (...) texts on literature and art and on psychoanalysis, this essay shows how the concept of the differend operates in Lyotard's understanding and appreciation of literature and art, in order to then ask how the differend can help us think issues of ‘modernity’, ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism’ in terms other than those of literary history, and can help us think experimental writings and artistic practices of the twentieth century in terms other than those of provocation or scandal. (shrink)

This collection presents, for the first time in English, Jean-Francois Lyotard's major essays on film: 'Acinema', 'The Unconscious as Mise-en-scene', 'Two Metamorphoses of the Seductive in Cinema' and 'The Idea of a Sovereign Film'. Then, eight critical essays by philosophers and film theorists examine Lyotard's film work and influence across two sections: 'Approaches and Interpretations' and 'Applications and Extensions'. These works are complemented by an introductory essay by leading French scholar Jean-Michel Durafour on Lyotard's film-philosophy, an overview (...) of Lyotard's practical film projects written by his collaborators Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman, and the synopsis for a later film project Memorial Immemorial, which Lyotard proposed but was not produced. Jean-Francois Lyotard was the most significant aesthetician of the poststructuralist generation, but this dimension of his thought is only recently beginning to receive the attention it deserves in the English-speaking world. He devoted a number of essays to film, and was involved in making several experimental short films. Lyotard's reflections on film offer a perspective which seeks to do justice to it as an art by focusing on its aesthetic, material qualities. His work in this area remains a largely untapped resource, with the potential for inaugurating exciting new directions in film-philosophy. (shrink)

This article explores the changing position of Lyotard's writing on Algeria within his corpus. The essays gathered together in La Guerre des Algériens: Ecrits 1956–63, and published much later in 1989, are certainly among his most overtly politically engaged. These pieces track the progress of the War of Independence from the early signs of unrest in 1952 to what Lyotard perceives as the divisive effects of FLN ideology in the aftermath of independence, and the collection as a whole (...) underlines not only the conflict between coloniser and colonised but also that between the rural masses and the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, despite his commitment to Algerian independence at the time of writing, Lyotard later lamented the failings of these essays. He also alters his stance on his own use of Marxism, and condemns his attempts to offer a Marxist revolutionary critique. He then chose to republish the work in 1989, yet this volte-face testifies to the author's ongoing ambivalence towards his own writing on decolonization. At one moment, Lyotard mocks and undermines his own efforts to understand and systematize the mechanics of the liberation movement. Yet he then goes on to suggest that the Algerian conflict exemplifies his later concept of the ‘differend’. This unease both within and towards the volume La Guerre des Algériens will be the focus of this article. The essays’ eclecticism, and Lyotard's own altering response to them, can be understood as an early testimony to an increasing scepticism towards Marxism in French critical thought, and, at the same time, towards what Lyotard conceived as dogmatic ‘theory’, in the context of decolonization in Algeria. (shrink)

This work initiates a dialogue between pre-enlightenment mystic Julian of Norwich and post-modern philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard. The first section of this paper gives an account of the post-modern subject for Lyotard and of how he renews the “unknown” and the “un-mastered,” in opposition to Kant’s autonomous subject. The second section shows the outer and inner strata of Julian’s treatise. The outer portion evidences the paradigm shift that places Julian’s reflections more prominently within Lyotard’s configuration of the sublime. (...) The inner section examines the shifting emphases within Julian’s work between vision and speculation and the meaningful parallel this yields for the understanding of the sublime. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Piotr Schollenberger, Jednostkowość i wydarzenie. Studia z estetyki Lyotarda, 283 pages./ Piotr Schollenberger’s book entitled Jednostkowość i wydarzenie. Studia z estetyki Lyotarda is a thorough and extensive – nearly 300-page – philosophical analysis of a number of topics selected from the vast, polyphonic and complex body of Jean-François Lyotard’s philosophy. It ought to be noted that Schollenberger does not focus his analysis on themes that prevail in the existing interpretations of the philosophy of Lyotard.

This paper relates to Lyotard's philosophy of a différend. The paper has a dual purpose. The first is to explain what is meant by a différend and also a petit différend. The intention here is to preserve both the intrinsic validity and ethico-political value of the concept in cases where its legitimacy might easily be denied. This feeds into the second and main purpose of the paper, which is to testify to a petit différend in quality of care, so (...) that care may be taken in how the term ‘quality of care’ is actually used. It is here that the implications of a petit différend in quality of care are opened up from the perspective of cared-for and professional carers, respectively. It will be shown that the idea of quality of care is open to multiple interpretations, and therefore to disputes that judgement cannot resolve to the satisfaction of all parties. (shrink)

This paper explores the continuing relevance to education of ideas about art and resistance that Jean-François Lyotard signalled in his curated exhibition in 1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris entitled Les Immatériaux. The exhibition was for Lyotard the ‘staging’ of a resistance at the dawning of an information age that challenged the prioritisation of computerised ‘data’ through the very deconstruction of data as presented in artistic form. While the implications of this event for art exhibitions are (...) still being theorised and debated, it is the insight Les Immat​ériaux provides as pedagogical encounter that is the focus of this article. The paper explores the exhibition in the context of the immateriality of art and develops this argument towards a notion of artistic testimony that then culminates in an analysis for the pedagogical significance of the exhibition in the information drenched, highly networked context of contemporary education. (shrink)

This article discusses the Australian government’s immigration policies in the context of the global refugee crisis in the years 2015–2016, as reflected and dramatised through the polemical novel b...

This article explores André-Marie Ampère's autobiography in order to analyse the dynamics of science in early 19th century French institutions. According to recent works that have emphasised the value of biographies in the history of science, this study examines Ampère's public self-representation to show the cultural transformations of a life dedicated to science in post-revolutionary French society. With this aim, I have interpreted this manuscript as an outstanding example of the scientific rhetoric flourishing in early 19th century French Romanticism, which (...) celebrated the life and works of men of science by means of biographies. Following this approach, Ampère's account has been analysed in relation to certain commonplaces shared with other autobiographies of that time, such as his traumatic experience linked to the French Revolution. Finally, this article discusses Ampère's autobiography as revealing an emerging model of scientific personae, i.e. a new collective way of thinking, feeling and perceiving, which announced the category of the modern scientist. (shrink)

First published in 1985, the _Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education_ quickly established itself as the essential reference work concerning gender equity in education. This new, expanded edition provides a 20-year retrospective of the field, one that has the great advantage of documenting U.S. national data on the gains and losses in the efforts to advance gender equality through policies such as Title IX, the landmark federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, equity programs and research. Key features include:_ (...) Expertise_ – Like its predecessor, over 200 expert authors and reviewers provide accurate, consensus, research-based information on the nature of gender equity challenges and what is needed to meet them at all levels of education._ Content Area Focus_ – The analysis of gender equity within specific curriculum areas has been expanded from 6 to 10 chapters including mathematics, science, and engineering._ Global/Diversity Focus_ – Global gender equity is addressed in a separate chapter as well as in numerous other chapters. The expanded section on gender equity strategies for diverse populations contains seven chapters on African Americans, Latina/os, Asian and Pacific Island Americans, American Indians, gifted students, students with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. _ Action Oriented_ – All chapters contain practical recommendations for making education activities and outcomes more gender equitable. A final chapter consolidates individual chapter recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers to achieve gender equity in and through education._ New Material_ – Expanded from 25 to 31 chapters, this new edition includes: *more emphasis on male gender equity and on sexuality issues; *special within population gender equity challenges ; *coeducation and single sex education; *increased use of rigorous research strategies such as meta-analysis showing more sex similarities and fewer sex differences and of evaluations of implementation programs; *technology and gender equity is now treated in three chapters; *women’s and gender studies; *communication skills relating to English, bilingual, and foreign language learning; and *history and implementation of Title IX and other federal and state policies. Since there is so much misleading information about gender equity and education, this _Handbook_ will be essential for anyone who wants accurate, research-based information on controversial gender equity issues—journalists, policy makers, teachers, Title IX coordinators, equity trainers, women’s and gender study faculty, students, and parents. (shrink)

One of the less-appreciated modalities of Lyotard’s rethinking of aesthetics is a consideration of the way that technologies, and in particular information technologies, reconfigure the nature of aesthetic experience. For Lyotard, information technology presents a particular problem in relation to the arts and aesthetic experience. When art uses communication technologies themselves as its matter or medium, the “traditional” model of aesthetic experience becomes problematised. Lyotard argues that this is the case because information technologies determine or “program” a (...) conceptual meaning in advance of an aesthetic experience. Therefore, we no longer have a situation of the “free play” between sensible forms and concepts that constitutes the aesthetics of the beautiful for Kant. Lyotard argues, however, that this decline in aesthetic experience as traditionally conceived need not be understood negatively: rather, it may be seen positively in so far as it furthers experimentation with materials. This chapter concludes by highlighting the positive potentials Lyotard sees in what may now be termed “new media arts,” but also indicates the limitations in Lyotard’s analysis – delimited in part by the theoretical models of information and communication he employed – and suggests directions for further research into new aesthetics from the bearings Lyotard has given us. (shrink)

One of the major cultural philosophers of our time addresses, in his powerful and allusive critical voice, Malraux's reflections on art and literature. The result tells us as much about Lyotard as it does about Malraux.

본 연구는 장-프랑수아 리오타르의 숭고의 미학의 통합예술교육에의 적용가능성에 대한 탐구를 목적으로 한다. 숭고의 개념은 이성과 사고로는 도달할 수 없는 새로운 영역을 개방해준다는 점에서, 지식과 이성 중심의 근대적 교육의 체계 하에 적지 않은 갈등과 문제에 직면하고 있는 오늘날의 교육환경에 모종의 빛을 던져줄 수 있을 것으로 기대되기 때문이다. 따라서 먼저 숭고 개념의 형성과 변천과정을 살펴보기 위해, 모던적 미의 예술과 포스트모던적 숭고의 예술을 대결시키면서, 양자의 간극을 규명하기 위해 고고학적 방법을 적용하고, 이어서 포스트모던적 숭고의 개념을 천착함으로써 선진 산업사회에서 숭고와 교육 사이의 연관성을 밝혀내고, 끝으로 (...) 숭고개념을 통한 통합예술교육의 교육적 활용방안을 모색하고자 한다. 모더니즘에 근거한 교육이 숭고의 감정을 존중하고 고양하는 과정을 간과하였고, 그 결과로 숭고의 감정을 통하여 발현되는 순수한 상상력의 가치를 무시해 왔다면, 포스트모던적 숭고교육론은 현시할 수 없는 것을 현시하고 암시하기 위해 인간의 무한한 상상력의 배양을 필요로 한다. 즉 포스트모던적 입장은 숭고의 교육관에 따라 표현될 수 없는 사고가 존재함을 인정하고, 그 사고를 기르는 상상력의 고양을 교육내용으로 편입하고자 시도한다. 이 과정에서 숭고개념이 교육이론과 실제에서 구체적으로 제시할 수 있는 실천 가능성과 그 방법이 제시되며, 숭고의 미학에 기반한 통합예술교육은 피교육자들의 상상력과 창의력을 발휘할 수 있도록 자극하는데 적잖이 이바지할 것이라는 점이 드러날 것이다. 그러므로 숭고의 고고학적 사유에 입각하여 지식과 아름다움에 의해 은폐되었던 것들의 가치를 드러내고, 이성을 통한 사고로부터 상상력을 통한 사고로의 전환에 의해 새로운 이해의 가능성을 열고, 타자의 교육학을 실현하기 위해 숭고에 기반한 통합예술교육을 제안할 것이다. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics have seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that descriptions of what used to be seen as specific to aesthetic experience can instead be viewed as a general model for human cognition. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed and debated than the dense, complex paragraphs inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: (...) the Analytic of the Sublime. This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is always constituted through a similar incompatibility between different intellectual and affective faculties. These lessons thus try to isolate the analysis of a differend of feeling in Kant's text, which is also the analysis of a feeling of differend, and to connect this feeling with the transport that leads all thought (critical thought included) to its limits. (shrink)

Wheeler's contribution in this unique partnership gives a woman's consciousness to the philosophy of sexual equality.

Colour plays a fundamental role in the philosophical treatments of painting. Colour while it is an essential part of the work of art cannot be divorced from the account of painting within which it is articulated. This paper begins with a discussion of the role of colour in Schelling's conception of art. Nonetheless its primary concern is to develop a critical encounter with Jean-François Lyotard's analysis of the Dutch painter Karel Appel. The limits of Lyotard's writings on painting, (...) which this paper will attribute in part to Lyotard's ‘empiricism’, becomes most apparent in his treatment of colour. (shrink)